Ask John: If Adult Oriented Video Games are Common, Why not the Same With Anime?

Question:
Anime has been around for a long time in Japan, longer than video games at least. But in America and Japan video games have grown to have more depth to them, to be for an adult audience. But in terms of anime, the only sort of adult anime there tends to be is hentai. There are a few noteworthy pieces of anime that tend to stay serious; Samurai X, I think, does the best job. But why is it that most anime tends to have a child-like orientation to it? Even if the show is about death in every episode, like Basilisk, there are still a few moments in the show where the guy tries to see a woman naked or grab her breasts. So I would like to hear your thoughts about why there isn’t a larger portion of adult anime.

Answer:
I’m no longer the gamer I once was. The only video games I’ve played in recent memory are Street Fighter IV and Oneechanbara Vortex – neither of which are particularly adult, despite Oneechanbara having an “M” (Mature) rating. So I’m not expert on the content of contemporary games thought of as respectably “adult” oriented. However, I presume that games including Bioshock, Mirror’s Edge, Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil 5, and a variety of first person shooter and war simulation games are typically thought of as adult oriented. Sports games that attract adult players also significantly contribute to the American perception that video games are more suitable for adult consumption than animation is. That very perception, more than the actual content of anime, explains a lot of the respect skewed in favor of video games. The actual content of anime does need to be carefully examined because proper evaluation itself may uncover a revealing misperception. Finally, I’ll argue that there actually is a significant amount of “adult” anime that American viewers simply aren’t conscious of.

Modern video games are an American invention dating back to the incorporation of Atari in California in 1972. Americans have grown up intimately familiar with video games, and have always perceived video games as an outgrowth of computers. On the contrary, animation has been considered a children’s medium in America for a hundred years. Japanese animation was introduced to America as children’s entertainment, and its most recognized examples in America are children’s franchises like Astro Boy and Pokemon. America has had an active domestic industry advocating the maturity and artistic integrity of video games for over a decade. On the other hand, since its earliest introduction into America, domestic and Japanese distributors have made diligent efforts to obfuscate the cultural and artistic origins of anime with dubbing and editing. In effect, contemporary Americans have a predisposition to grant the possibility that video games can be intelligent, provocative, and dramatic adult entertainment and a predisposition to assume that animation is childish.

There’s a cultural divide between the abstract concepts that Japan and America consider comprehensible and appropriate for their children. In a possibly self-propagating tendency, American society deems children unprepared to comprehend concepts including death and sexuality. With the exception of “unrealistic” exaggerated violence, consequential violence, and sexuality including nudity, are instinctively considered adult subjects in America. Japanese children, on the other hand, are considered prepared and capable of understanding these “adult” concepts; therefore circumstances like character deaths and nudity that would be strictly taboo in American children’s media are absolutely normal in Japanese children’s entertainment. So it’s necessary to distinguish exactly what constitutes “adult” anime. For example, calling Basilisk “child like” because it includes characters groping breasts or spying on nude women ought to make it more “adult” rather than less. By American standards, the inclusion of sexuality automatically makes something more adult oriented. So, in actuality, the question may be better posed as why there seems to be a lack of dramatic anime starring adult characters and free of lowbrow, slapstick, or exploitive content.

In comparison, I consider Basilisk more “adult” than the Rurouni Kenshin OVA series because Basilisk doesn’t depict a romanticized world in which everyone is young and beautiful and every death is a glorious, heroic tragedy. Furthermore, Basilisk includes nudity and sexual violence while the Rurouni Kenshin OVA series is tastefully chaste. While the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs come across like a beautifully constructed Shakespearean tragedy, Basilisk plays out closer to the grim reality of passionate, avaricious and grotesque human nature. But the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs superficially feel more “adult” because they’re subtle, include visual and thematic symbolism, concentrate heavily on characterization, and largely avoid gratuitous sensationalism. In other words, the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs, just like video game franchises such as Bioshock and Metal Gear Solid, seem “adult” because they’re not “cartoony.”

Anime that match this description are available to viewers that look for them. Shows including Ristorante Paradiso, Okami to Koshinryo, Higashi no Eden, Toshokan Sensou, Seiyou Kottou Yougashiten, Moonlight Mile, Eikoku Koi Monogatari Emma, Nodame Cantabile, and Seirei no Moribito star young adult or adult characters and largely or entirely avoid hyperbolic situations. Anime including Baccano, Kurozuka, Mouryou no Hako, and One Outs have adult casts that do dive into fantastic, exaggerated situations of the sort expected of adventure video games, yet these shows still retain the feel of anime for adult viewers. Recent anime including Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, Dennou Coil, Eve no Jikan, and RD Sennou Chousashitsu have teen and children casts but come across as anime aimed at adult viewers. And even recent shows like Fight Ippatsu! Juden-chan!! & School Days that star young protagonists and narratives filled with sensationalism and exploitation still hardly feel like anime suitable for Japanese or American children.

My inclination is to guess that the percentage of “adult” video games among all video games is similar to the ratio of “adult” anime among all anime. The biggest audience for both video games and anime are children and young adults. Video games commonly thought of as “adult” are frequently filled with the same sort of hyper exaggerated sensationalism found in “adult” anime. In fact, how many video games compare to the serious, staid drama anime like Okami to Koshinryo about a medieval traveling merchant trying to profitably deal in animal pelts, salt, and armor, or Ristorante Paradiso, a romantic drama about a young woman’s attempts to earn the respect of her co-workers in a small Rome restaurant? There’s no lack of serious, dramatic, literate anime. There’s simply a disinterest among average Americans in knowing about and watching these types of anime.