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Violence's Niche In Cartoons
madro writes: "An article in the New York Times (registration req'd) discusses the emergence and influence of anime throughout recent 'children's' programming. Stuff goes way beyond the Power Rangers stuff that some parents groups protested long ago, but people don't seem to mind so much now. Funniest bit? A programming exec anticipates the end of anime thusly: 'But then it gets to the point where even the nerd gets into it, and then the cool kids have to move on to something else.'" Apparently the author watched the chimpokomon episode of South Park to get his conclusion *grin*. Actually the article is pretty funny, but I doubt that was the author's intention.
The author lost all credibility when he tried to portray Cardcaptors (the americanized version of Card Captor Sakura) as extremely violent and targeted at young boys. This show is about as violent as an episode of CareBears. It was also created for young girls. The cuteness factor alone should make pretty clear, along with the girl-power storyline, except, apparently, to writers for the NYT.
Yes, it's been done for a while. But most of us grew up with Looney Toons. Sure, it's violence, but it's blatantly obvious that it's FUNNY violence. Not many of us can easily get our hands on an anvil, or 482 sticks of dynamite, or any of the various implements used in these classic 'toons. So even the dullest of young minds can (usually) sort out that this isn't something to try at home -- if for no other reason than it'd be impossible.
Many anime cartoons are more realistic -- at least as realistic as any of these things can be, at least. There are sci-fi or fantasy elements, but the characters are clearly human. Witness Gene Starwind (the guy from "Outlaw Star") carrying something that looks suspiciously like a sawed-off shotgun, or Son Gohan wielding nothing but a broken arm and gallons of chi energy.
Anthropomorphizing the violence doesn't make it go away, though. Surely, at some point, someone's tried falling off a cliff with nothing but an umbrella for protection...
Where is all this going, then? Right where it should: back to the parents.
It doesn't matter how busy your job is, nor how many sadistic demands your bosses place on your time. You will make time for your kids. Maybe sit down with 'em, watch a few of their favorite shows. Not only are they occasionally more entertaining than this dope from the New York Times gives them credit for, but you'll know what you're up against as a parent.
And if you can't make time for this, you might need to give your life priorities a serious re-think.
It also became somewhat fashionable to dislike Microsoft - and I really hate people bitching about Microsoft who don't even understand the major dynamics of the effect they had on teh industry (not that I claim to be a god of the tech world or anything) - so much that I would see people have very badly configured computers (Macs or PCs) running, for example, IE, and if it crashed, they would blaim MS, and not themselves first for not configgin the system properly for Trojans, etc., Viruses.
It's like people refuse to take responsibility for being fucking lazy. So now linux has become cool, it's lost it's edge, etc., but it doesn't matter, as I have totally lost the fucking point of my reply.
PS - this is in no way directed at the poster, I am just ina bad mood and the the comment about "Linux is cool because nobody uses it" is exactly right. Same with everything in life.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
That's funny, in my understanding anime was a fringe thing to begin with, and is just becoming popular now ... more like "it gets to the point where even the cool kids get are it, and then the nerds have to move on to something else."
Forager
student of animation and the fine arts
It's amazing how wrong this article manages to be. Even discounting minor quibbles (calling anime a genre) there are more factual misstatements than I even want to count. Let's see...
Current televised children's anime is more violent than Road Runner and Tom & Jerry? I don't see Pikachu dropping anvils on Team Rocket, or blowing anyone up with barrels of TNT, or going after a bunny rabbit with a shotgun, all of which were regular occurences (and more linked to the real world than Pikachu's electric bolts or whatever) on Looney Tunes.
They imply that Batman Jr. kills someone by strangling him with a pole. I didn't see that episode, but I really doubt that the guy was meant to be dead rather than unconscious. (And personally, I don't see any anime influence on Bruce Timm's design/animation style that Batman/Superman/Batman Beyond are based on.)
They hold up "Saved By The Bell" and "Goosebumps" as being benign. If the way Screech's "friends" treated him on SBtB is supposed to be a "benign" behavioral model, well, that would explain a lot of that Hellmouth stuff... Goosebumps was a friggin horror show, fer cryin out loud! Mild, but still involving zombies and vampires and other things that give kids the heebie-jeebies. Not that there's anything wrong with heebie-jeebies, but they're making Goosebumps sound like Winnie the Pooh, and later on they make it sound as if adult-oriented anime "with sex and violence" is being shown on Fox on Saturday mornings.
The "won't somebody think of the children!" folks seem to have calmed down a little and realized that "Not all violence is equal, and not all fighting is equal [...] Who are the heroes? Is aggressive behavior being re-enforced? [sic]" Two paragraphs later, a dean emeritus (read: geezer) explains that parents aren't being more reasonable, they're just "desensitized."
Worst Article Ever.
Now, consider anime; while it's expensively made in Japan, it's rather cheap to get the rights. WB got Pokemon for practically a song, compared with how much they would have had to spend for a similar episode run. Even the stuff on Toonami isn't that expensive to license, and in the end, probably cheaper than a new seasons of Powerpuff Girls or the like. So if you're a network, the bottom line is going to be better if you license an existing program than it is to make a new one. Thus, the rise of anime in mainstream television.
Now you also have to recall the differences in standards that anime and American animation goes by; the FCC requires a bit more in terms of non-violence and such from American counterparts than from anime. And with television ratings, the networks can simply show these more violent shows and slap a TV-Y7 on it, satisfying the FCC and most parents. So all we're seeing is typical american fare being replaced by anime on a larger basis, but beyond that, nothing's really changed. American cartoons haven't changed in violence level, nor have anime shows.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
'On "Dragon Ball Z," ...Cell, an evil emperor, is approached by a cowering television news correspondent. He knocks the correspondent onto his back and then kicks him so hard that the man flies across a field head first into rocks, presumably dead.'-aforementioned article
First of all, he obviously watched clips of various anime shows brought to his attention. Cell is as much an emperor as I can fly and shoot Kamehameha waves. Also, if he had watched the entire episode(or more to really give it a fair chance) he would have realized that the reporter does not die, and is a little dazed. Jesus, people! When did reporting stop being about research and start simply preying on the fears of parents?
Secondly, Mr. Rutenburg(writer of the article) and the rest of the media does not realize the difference between child anime and teen/adult anime. He talks of Digimon, and Pokemon(bleh!) while comparing them to the likes of Ghost In The Shell and Akira! Shame on him for tainting the minds of unwitting parents who now believe that anime=evil. Shame on the media for targeting the more violent shows towards the children. I guess that since it's a cartoon, it's meant to be watched by children! What about Heavy Metal, or those dirty porno animes? should children watch that as well? Jesus H. Christ in a handbasket, Houston!
The article claims that anime shows appearing in the U.S. or mirroring the video games that many japanese companies produce. Hello?????!!!!! Anime was around long before the Nintendo 8-bit and especially before anything that was really advanced enough to mirror anime! I think someone has this relationship backwards.
And who is this other guy to foretell the future of anime? The nerds were into it first! It's just like when the punk scene stopped liking Blink182 because all the 'cool' kids are into them now. The nerds are gonna stop liking anime long before those kids find out that we've moved onto something much better and 'cooler'.
http://partners.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/business/28 TOON.html has the article without the registration
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Yes, the NYT article sucks yea verily, and the author obviously hasn't done much research. However, one of the distinguishing features of the New York Times is that they pride themselves on their journalistic integrity and thoroughness.
I suggest we point out the lack of thoroughness demonstrated by this particular writer, Jim Rutenberg, by dropping a letter to the editor.
Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
fax: (212) 556-3622
This guys one main assumption is that all of anime is violent. At least he didn't get into the old standby that its nothing but tentacle sex.
However, this isn't the point. Everything that he mostly said occured on episodes last week. And even then, all he looked at was the violence, as if the entire show was based off of it. Such as Batman Beyond, anyone that has seen any of the WB animation shows in the past few years KNOW that they DONT kill anyone. there is always something or someone that saves the villan.
And when has there ever been a spot where the 'Violence' that exist in Pokemon was ever directed at the humans? Its all been Pokemon against pokemon, and the equivilent to looney tunes.
As for the quote that sometimes friends have to fight each other to get their point across. that was taken out of context. What occured is that one of the guys on digemon was down on himself as he caused the trouble that he was in, one of his friends hit him to snap him out of it. and his brother said that the the only reason that friends should fight is if they are boxing partners.
The Pokemon anime was not inspired by Nintendo's videogame. I think it was the other way around
First, there were Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue for the Game Boy handheld console, quite good console RPGs. Then the TV show came out and fscked up the whole franchise. For example, instead of Team Rocket being like the Mafia, it became two dumbarses. And Ash was also dumbed down and given a voice nearly identical to that of Noddy from PBS's Noddy. It's almost as bad as what happened to Super Mario Bros. the Movie. Ecch. And then they tried to turn the TV show into a video game (Pokemon Special Pikachu Edition, commonly known as Pokemon Yellow).
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anime is merely a medium, independant of its message. Watch "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and then watch "Pokemon" and tell me that they are the same.
True, the anime medium was traditionally shunned by the US for many years, and now has come into acceptance. This is not so much a consequence of the medium as the proconceptions people had about it. Most people thought it was obscure, confusing crap in a foreign language, or thought it was all porn, or any number of other misconceptions about anime (most of which apply to at least some anime, but hardly to all of it.) However, when pokemon came into popular acceptance, many of those misconceptions were proven wrong. True, pokemon and the like will, at some point, fall from favor, but how many artistic movements have passed without the dissapearance of oil on canvas?
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Funny you should say that, because a couple of hundred years ago, that's exactly what a lot of (mostly Puritan) people thought. There are gobs of writings about fairy tales and their deleterious effects on children from the 18th and 19th centuries - not to mention the huge amount of children's literature designed to give kids a shove in the right direction (like those nice little morals most kids' shows seem to end with now). There really is "nothing new under the sun"...
-Cyclopatra
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
My favorite part of the article is when the author says that violence in these new shows is gretaer than anything found in Roadrunner or Tom and Jerry. How blatantely wrong can you be? I don't see anyone in Pokemon shoving dynamite in a rabbit's mouth and laughing as it explodes.
This really gets to me. Why is it worse to show consequences of actions? In most anime, violence has effects. People get hurt, scarred, or die. The author comes out and says that the violence in animes is the sole selling point, that it is essentially worthless. This is the opposite of the truth. In most US cartoons, the violence really does *not* serve any purpose other than superficial. What is there to Roadrunner when you take away the violence? What about GI Joe? In most anime's, the violence *does something*. Children learn to face obstacles, and grown ups learn new things about themselves. The plot moves along. Not to mention that a huge number of animes have strong anti-violence messages. Trigun and Kenshin are the best two examples of this. US cartoons usually don't even have a plot to move along, as they proceed on an episode-by-episode basis, as opposed to the arcs in anime.
Additionally, the article makes it seem like the nefarious Japanese are deliberately inflicting this on out children. The article makes the point that anime's are usuallly produced with about 5 times less money than american cartoons, and the author says, essentially, that this is because Japanese animators are churning out cheap thrills, with the violence as the selling point. In truth, Japanese producers just make do with less money. The author even insults the technical animation in animes, saying that it is "choppy".
Arg. I think my head is going to explode.
!sirE liaH ->- Hail Eris!
Things become uncool once _everyone_ likes it. Linux is cool because no one uses it. Five years down the line when everyone is using it, /. will have moved on to something more cool because no one uses it. Or how about those stupid scooters. One day everyone had them, and they instantly became "overdone" and thus not cool. Likewise, anime will have a big surge in popularity, then once the trend-seekers (NOT -settters) move on it will go back to noise level from whence it came. I think everyone knows that cool kids merely latch onto someone else's trends, whether they be oppressed minorities (blacks or geeks) or marketoids like Mattel and Sharper Image.
My first experience with a "violent" film was seeing a commercial for Little Shop of Horrors at age 6 (they fed an innocent man to the plant -- I ran from the room screaming and crying). When we had to see a flick on railroad safety in 4th grade I threw up (they showed someone getting hit by a train and later, bodybags).
Since my Dad died 9 years ago (when I was 13), my little brothers have been exposed to a lot more violent imagery than I have. Nothing major, but the little ones saw Scream around age 11. The proof in the long run has been, however, that they are a lot more social with their peers, handle life's challenges more adamently (they don't run away like I did in high school), and generally lead happier lives. It seems to be a culture phenomonom.
I won't say that all kids should be forced to watch violent media (one of my high school teachers force fed Braveheart to his 3 year-old son. I think that's just wrong), but it seems in today's society you get along a little better with peers if you do. This seems to make you happier and friendlier with kids your age, Columbine whackos be damned.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
The author of the article says that violence in these anime cartoons goes beyond the level seen in old WB/MGM/etc cartoons, but I would be inclined to disagree. How many shootings are there in your average Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam cartoon? For that matter, how many acts of violence in your standard fairy tale (he asked, kicking the witch into the oven)? Even the westerns and pioneer stories that today's concerned adults grew up with were chock full of violence. We're a bloodthirsty species; we like our adrenaline. This isn't new or reprehensible; it's just the way things are.
All I know is that everything I know about fighting supervillains from outer space, I learned from watching television.
There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets? - Dick Cavett