Ask John: Why is Anime so Unaccepted by Society?

Question:
It seems that anime is, in general, deemed the least acceptable form of visual entertainment by the majority of society. Be it religious groups dedicated to bashing the medium for misrepresenting or outright defying their spiritual beliefs, parent groups outraged by the sexual content in anime, or any number of entertainment critics that insist that anime is nothing but crude and violent sexist exploitation, America seems to be absolutely full of anime naysayers. Personally, I’ve found many anime far more tasteful than many American programs, always animated 1000 times more professionally, and more often than not containng important, redeeming values, if not outright psychological or philosophical debates the likes of which few in American entertainment have seen fit to address.

Is there any way to combat this widespread rash of misinformation and help people see anime in a different light? Granted, we’ve made leaps and bounds in that direction over the last decade, but it seems for almost every step anime takes forward in the public eye, it stumbles three or four steps backward. Anime has many staunch supporters, but they can do little to battle the unfair image anime has been branded with. How can we go about repairing the damage?

Answer:
I completely sympathize with your frustration. Regrettably, I don’t believe that anime will ever be accorded the respect that its fans think it deserves. As a diehard anime fan myself, I’m well aware that not every anime title has significant, serious artistic, cultural, or educational value. However I do wholeheartedly believe that anime, as a genre, contains enough art, literacy, culture, and intelligence to be as worthy of respect as any other type of creative art. But to my dismay, animation, not limited to just Japanese animation, is universally considered an inferior type of creative art to live action film. Ironically even low budget Z-grade movies and pitiable sitcoms are more popular, and are more commonly respected than even outstanding animation with thought provoking philosophy and touching stories and characters. Even in Japan, where anime is more popular than it is anywhere else in the world, anime is still not commonly accepted and acknowledged to the same degree that live action film is.

Worldwide, critics and consumers naturally think of animation as inherently inferior to live action. Although countless anime have proven otherwise, animation is still naturally thought of as an alternative to live action used to film what cannot be conveniently shot with live action. Rather than being a separate equal, animation trails behind live action, even when all of the objective cinematic characteristics of an animation surpass a live action film. Typical people of all nationalities seem to instinctively value live action over animation because live action is “real.” Animation is criticized by those who don’t understand it or whom prefer to make generalizations based on superficial and second hand knowledge. And there are even self-professed serious anime fans who belittle the art form with statements like “90% of everything is crap” and “most anime is just children’s toy commercials.” I presume that these “fans” make their statements in order to appease their psychological insecurity over being interested in an “inferior” art form.

After this long- contemporary anime has existed for roughly 50 years- if anime still isn’t commonly respected, I don’t think it ever will be. But I think that time will help. The generations of American anime fans who are growing up with anime right now will be the influential adults of the future. The attitudes toward anime that are developing now will develop and, in the future, replace the perceptions that are predominant right now. From the 1960s through the 1990s, anime was largely considered a disposable commodity in America that could be altered as necessary. The prevailing opinion today among many American fans is that manga should be left in its Japanese format as much as possible, and anime shouldn’t be censored. Even this degree of increasing respect for anime has taken decades to evolve in America. I think and hope that the perception of anime in America is a continually evolving. If that’s the case, when today’s children growing up watching Yu-Gi-Oh and “Mew Mew Power” on television and reading translated manga become adults, they’ll have a different attitude toward animated and illustrated art than current generations that still see anime as a strange foreign import.