It's the second Tuesday of the month which means...ANIME MOVIE NIGHT at the Parkville Branch. Tonight, the teens and I are watching several Christmas episodes of different anime shows, and we decided to write a blog together. So here are some of our top 5 lists. Enjoy!
There are many things that transcend the age-level they are geared for. Books written for teens and children frequently find themselves popular amongst adults for their amazing worlds and well-written stories. So, I hope that I can convince people of all ages to give this amazing animated show a try.
Anime, or Japanese animation, has had a very large fan base for years. The first known anime was a short released in 1917, with anime quickly becoming a popular medium for cartoonists in Japan by the1930s. It became its own style – ceasing to be called cartoons and being influenced by the American Walt Disney Company to become true-to-the-core anime.
In our last blog post, we looked at the world of Japanese giant monsters, the daikaiju. But Japanese pop culture has had an equally long love affair with giant robots. Unlike the daikaiju, which mostly feature in live-action tokusatsu, giant robots are also a mainstay of manga and anime. And, as we’ve seen with daikaiju, what starts in Japanese pop culture often finds its way into American pop culture as well.
Over the last few blogs, I’ve been looking at the cross-fertilization between American and Japanese pop cultures. In our post on giant robots, we wandered into the world of television anime. In the age of Netflix and dedicated cartoon cable networks, today’s anime connoisseurs have it easy. There was once a time when Japanese anime was a new and rare phenomenon to American kids like me. My grade school compatriots and I didn’t even know it was called anime.
When you ask most Americans about animation, they immediately think about Walt Disney or the Saturday morning cartoons that they grew up on. Primetime animation has also been around for a while, going back to The Flintstones in the 1960s all the way up to The Simpsons today. And recently, there has been an upsurge in the number of animated shows geared towards adults. However, with exception, most animation has historically been focused on either comedy or action/adventure, and it hasn't really been taken too seriously.
