THE RISING POPULARITY OF ANIME IN WESTERN CULTURE

Going from a small demographic to a bigger audience, from television cables, to movie theaters and streaming services. 

 

We live in a time where information and entertainment is as easy to obtain as snapping your finger. Unlike 20 years ago, in a time where only people who had the money to afford Wi-Fi under their roof. 

So with limited access to the Internet, children were mostly left with television programs and channels that showed appropriate cartoons suitable for the children’s’ tastes, sitting in front of their small old-styled tube with the screen flickering in waves as it was flipped through many channels. 

 

 

Back in the days…

A few anime were shown on these television cables. A few being “Bakugan,” an anime that promotes a card games franchise, and “Inazuma Eleven”, an exaggerated soccer anime with power shot tricks and kicks, were children cartoons shown on Cartoon Network. 

Other popular animes that were shown on the same channel were

“Dragon Ball,” where a young boy, Goku, goes on many quests in order to become stronger, and “Sailor Moon,” an anime about a school girl who, with along her friends, transforms into a magical girl to defeat the forces of evil that threaten her world. 

What attracted the young audience at the time when anime was first making its appearance in the west?

Perhaps it was the passion and justice permeating through the big pearly eyes of the magical girls or the stubbornness, persistence and endurance of Goku to become stronger and surpass his limits. 

Maybe it was the journey that the audience experienced alongside the characters, their refusal to give up and push through even in their lowest times. It is undeniable the strong feelings experienced through watching your favorite character prevail and reach their end goal. Anime has a way of captivating the audience’s hearts through its characters and story. 

 

 

Watching is made easier.

Anime jumped from being shown in cable networks such as Cartoon Network and Boomerang, the mainstream anime such as “Naruto” or “Pokemon”, to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Now, why would these companies suddenly decide to show eastern animations?

“Overseas sales by Japanese companies involved in animation content, including those licensing characters for toys and other goods, grew to about $10 billion in 2018 from some $2.3 billion six years earlier and accounted for nearly half of total industry revenue, according to the Association of Japanese Animations.”

The answer is simple. Money. For the companies, at least. It is easy to make profit out of eastern animations because, unlike “live action content,” anime “doesn’t require actors and crew to expose themselves to virus contagion” as proclaimed by Chieko Tsuneoka, a seasoned researcher at the Wall Street Journal. 

In other words, streaming such content is an easier way to make more money for these companies. 

However, it cannot be denied that the initial exposure from cable networks sparked interest within the young audience, and continues to do so today with new and more recent animations, going beyond Studio Ghibli films such as Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke.” 

Viewership has increased especially during the pandemic. Staying quarantined gives people more time to scroll through Netflix, giving them a chance to try out a new medium, a new method of storytelling in a way that the viewers of the west are not accustomed to, and it is thanks to these streaming services that Japan is gaining more attention through their unique medium of storytelling.

Last year, the “biggest anime hit…,at least for the people in Japan” was the new movie “Demon Slayer” or “Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Train,” which had “grossed more than $200 million in Japan in less than a month” at initial release, “drawing full houses of mask-wearing theatergoers,” as reported by Tsuneoka. 

 

 

The Art of Anime.

Accessibility and exposure are certainly a few of the factors that helped contribute to the rise of popularity in anime. However, those were not the main role.

It is simply eloquent art. The fluidity of the story’s animation. The detail to the background. The intensity of the story.

Take, for example, an anime like “One-Punch Man.” Specifically, the first season, which created a blast of attention due to its insanely intense animation. A lot of detail went into the fluid and action packed style of the animation, the exaggerated and at times, simple, expressions of the main character, Saitama.

The fight animation scenes in “One-Punch Man,” especially, is one of the many reasons why the series got so much attention. Here’s a link to a fight between two of the main characters in the series. A lot of detail and attention went into the anime and it certainly shows. 

A very well known Japanese animation director in Japan as well as in the anime community is Hayao Miyazaki. He’s worked on well known animation films such as “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” 

Kazuaki Nagata, a journalist in The Japan Times, claims that one of Miyazaki’s works, “Nausicaa of the Wind” (1984), was “considered more a movie than merely anime” because of “its smooth artistic animation and elaborate, deep story.” The film was able to widen the audience “across generational lines.”

 

Age is but a number.

Anime considers all ages. It is a type of art for everyone to enjoy. Both the children and adults.

While children grew up with shows like “Captain Tsubasa,” another soccer anime, or “Naruto,” a ninja boy who strives to be Hokage, nowadays, interests of the current adults and young teens are shifted into more mature shows with a deeper story and stronger themes.

With its new release of the recent season, “Attack on Titan” was capable of reeling their old audience back into the story alongside new viewers. At first, the story seems to portray a young boy, Eren, and his friends fighting against the titans who are out to eradicate the human race by devouring them. However, as the story goes further into the plot, this is simply not the case anymore. 

What the anime does well with is giving the audience bits and pieces of information, leaving a trail of metaphors and more questions left unanswered than what was revealed. The audience is slightly pushed over to the edge of a cliff but still kept far to keep them guessing on what’s beneath. Themes of fear, death and the consequences of war are prevalent in “Attack on Titan.” 

Other examples are “Promised Neverland,” a story of three genius kids fighting for their freedom and escaping from being a demon’s next supper, and, a classic, “Berserk,” depicting the swordsman Guts who fights against the demons that hunt him down. 

An artist and Youtuber that has delved in anime and manga for more than 10 years, Juha Ekma, states that the animation studios in Japan are aware of their diverse audience, encouraging them to experiment “with genres, plots, styles, and characters for all ages, from the youngest to the most adult.” Fans of anime are found “all over the world, which is why anime is a popular phenomenon around the globe.”

 

Going Overseas.

Due to its international exposure through the streaming platform services, there has been an interest with the companies to invest time and money into this new form of medium of storytelling. Netflix, in particular.

Netflix has leased two soundtages of Toho Studio, a Japanese film and theater production studio, Stage 7 and 10, with a plan to animate two old and classic anime series, “Yu Yu Hakushou” and “Sanctuary” and many more in the upcoming years. 

Another company that was interested in dipping its toes in this new pool is Sony Corp., who bought off Crunchyroll, “a specialist anime service with a cult following” that was previously owned by AT&T, as Tsuneoka states. 

Possibly, with the new movie, “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train,” that came out last year, Sony wished to capitalize on that as fast as they could, and it was quite successful since the movie not only was popular in Japan but in the US as well. 

The movie “brought in $21.1 million in its opening weekend” which set a “record for a foreign-language film debut in the United States” as it nearly beat “Mortal Kombat,” “which brought in $23.3 million” claims Palmer Haasch, a digital culture reporter at Insider. 

 

Interestingly enough, the US is not the only place where Japan’s animated films and series is reaching. In 2010, “Scan2Go” was “created by Tokyo-based d-rights, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, South Korean broadcasting firm SBS and New Boy, a toy maker based in the United Arab Emirates,” presented by Nagata. The series was later premiered in the US on Cartoon Network.

 

Now in the present times, the United Arab Emirates have been interested in dabbling in anime as well. In 2017, the production of “The Journey” began, by Saudia Arabia’s Manga Productions and Japan’s Toei Animation. It centers around a potter by the name Aws who throws himself into battle when his home is under attack. 

Nagata mentions that Amer Biar, the managing director of Spacetoon, a TV channel in UAE, believed that Japanese anime “could be hugely popular in the Middle East and North Africa regions,” because of “the high population of young people there,” and to harvest that market they would need to appeal to the audience. 

The film was initially going to be released in February but due to Covid, plans had to be delayed. 

 

Maybe a quick visit?

Japan has grasped the attention of many tourists eager to fly by for a quick visit. Now it’s not the beautiful, bright pink Sakura trees that bloom in the spring with its petals fluttering about, or the old temples and shrines rich with history. 

Nowadays, even avid anime fans are eager to fly over and visit the areas that they had witnessed in their favorite movie or series. 

“Your Name” was an animated film that captured the hearts of many viewers. It wasn’t just the story and the characters that the audience were intrigued by, but the animation, the fluidity of the animation, the mixture of colors, and the landscape especially. 

Viewers visit these sites, “walking in the footsteps of fictional characters,” or “seichi junrei (sacred pilgrimage)” as Nagata states. 

There is a site that shows the locations that most anime-fans who were fond of “Your Name,” visit. It shows the images taken from the movie and in real life to compare, including little facts and information as well, adding to the excitement and anticipation of when the audience gets a chance to witness the scenes themselves. 

The whole pilgrimage has been there long before, when Sailor Moon was airing, but it hadn’t been as popular until around the mid-2000s, as that’s when the internet helped with the spread, as Nagata expresses. 

To take action, the Anime Tourism Association was formed by many firms, including Kadokawa Corp., and JTB Corp., a travel agency, and Japan Airlines. It was to help guide tourists interested in visiting these sights by “offer[ing] the list of spots in various foreign languages.” They even collaborated with “municipalities whose sites appear in programs.”

The attraction of more tourists helps the economy of Japan, but how are other people, the visitors, impacted? How would tourism impact people who are recently getting into the new medium, the new art?

Close your eyes and imagine setting your foot down onto a land you only heard of through a screen, portrayed by stories and films, walking past familiar buildings and sights up close, grazing your fingers against the cold, solid railing of the red Suga Shrine staircase. 

Imagine the excitement and adrenaline racing through your body as you walk through historical statues and buildings, seeing landscapes transform from your memory to physical reality. The scent of adventure. 

Foreigners and fans have a chance to adventure around Japan and learn more beyond the animations they see on the screen. Anime helps to expose the historical and cultural aspect of Japan, leaving them wondering what else the country has to offer beyond their unique stories and fluid animations.

 

Afterword.

After understanding how anime rose in popularity, to stand and compete against other animations, to be considered a form of art instead of children’s cartoons, it makes you wonder what other productions will come to fruition in the next few years, weather or not more anime will be shown on network channels like Cartoon Network or Boomerang, more than they show today. 

Fans of anime, companies that distribute and spread this new form of art, and the animation industries that create the art for their audiences, surely cannot help but wonder about the development of anime, and pursue with passionate ambition in creating something bigger than the anime art form previously was.

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