Ask John: Are All Anime Classics Well Known?

Question:
My wife and I have the privileged of being host family for a Japanese college student this fall. As an avid anime fan, I was curious to find out what anime, if any, he liked watching. Much to my surprise, there were some he was not familiar with. The most shocking was that he did not know what Super Dimensional Fortress Macross was nor did he know who Lynn Minmay was. I thought Macross and Lynn Minmay were huge icons in Japan. Am I wrong in assuming this?

Answer:
A situation like this clearly illustrates the fact that average Americans don’t have a clear and accurate impression of the popularity and recognition of anime in Japan. I’ll include myself in that statement, although I probably am slightly more knowledgeable than many American fans. I can provide my own impressions, based on second-hand knowledge and my personal experience of having visited Japan several times, but a Japanese exchange student will definitely be able to provide a more current and accurate perspective on mainstream Japanese awareness of anime than I can.

American anime fans are fairly well aware of roughly how much anime is available in Japan (a lot). And I think that Americans are used to frequently seeing references to major titles. For example, it’s impossible to be an anime fan and not bump into images, toys, and other references to Macross or its American iteration, Robotech. However, I think that American fans don’t consciously process the fact that Macross is a 24 year old show. In fact, even the most recent Macross anime to premier on Japanese television aired 12 years ago. When there are a hundred new anime TV series a year in Japan, it’s difficult for even the most hardcore otaku to remember even programs from a year or two ago. So it should come as little surprise that an average Japanese student may not be familiar with a TV series that aired before he/she was born.

Simple age creating obscurity is easy to apply to average anime series, but would seem to be less applicable to classic shows that have made a major historical impact on anime. Yet within that exact statement lies its explanation. Macross is a very well known and respected franchise within the anime community, but it’s not a particularly well known title in mainstream Japanese society. Pocket Monster and One Piece have their own specialty stores. Lupin the 3rd gets a new TV movie every year. Macross, by comparison, hasn’t had any exposure on mainstream network Japanese television in 12 years. A good example would be to compare Macross to an American title like the original Battlestar Galactica or Lost in Space television series. Sci-fi television shows like Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Logan’s Run, and Lost in Space were more widely known when they were new and current. Battlestar Galactica and Lost in Space are now acknowledged classics, but hardcore sci-fi fans wouldn’t expect average American teens or twenty-somethings to be familiar with these old programs. As hardcore anime fans, we may think of titles like Macross as ubiquitous, but we think that way specifically because we’re anime fans and are frequently exposed to these vintage classics. In fact, in a 2005 “Nihon Zenkoku Tetei Chousa Suki na Anime Ranking 100” poll sponsored by the TV Asahi television network, Macross ranked 80th on the list of Japan’s 100 most popular anime titles, suggesting that mainstream Japanese society doesn’t value Macross quite as highly as the hardcore anime community does.

Titles like Kyojin no Hoshi, Ashita no Joe, and Dororo, along with more recent shows such as Urusei Yatsura and Macross are recognized as classics, but when they’re older than current Japanese students, and these titles haven’t had new installments to bring them out into the public eye, it’s natural to expect that mainstream Japanese youths may not be familiar with them. The problem is not with contemporary Japanese youngsters; the misperception lies in American fans who unconsciously expect their familiarity with anime to be reflected in other people who may not happen to be hardcore anime fans.