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Americanization of Anime by: Justin Musterman
Japanese animation, more commonly known as
anime, has recently become a commercial dream for many Americans in the
entertainment and advertising industries. For many years, anime
and manga (a comic book form of anime) have been a staple of Japanese television.
Contrary to American cartoons, anime has more depth, both in story and
animation. This is one reason for the appeal. Its sheer beauty
and contrasting serious and whimsical qualities are others. These
reasons, along with the efforts of die-hard fans and distribution companies,
are what have allowed anime to make it to our shores.
For the early years of anime in america, however,
it stayed mainly an underground hobby, making very few appearances in the
mainstream (example: Speed Racer). These few appearances, however,
were met with popular appeal, once they had been edited for American audiences.
Many people, today, for example, still do not know that Speed Racer is
an import, convinced the show was the hard work of Hanna Barbara or Warner
Brothers. Since then, more assimilation has occurred, but often at
the expense of the integrity of the show, movie, or manga. Prime
examples of this are the two most popular anime series in America and Japan,
Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. In both of these series, though the
plot remains essential the same in the American and Japanese version, they
appear to be two totally different shows. There is much less violence
in both, and also the editing of nudity. The irony to this is that
in Japan, this is never edited, yet there are very rarely problems with
it in society, where as sex crime and violent crime rates in America are
amongst the highest, suggesting that its a society problem, and not something
that is caused by cartoons, leading us to butcher them. The representation
of anime in the United States, is also something which cuts into the integrity
of the industry.
Often times, the sugary sweet shows, such as Pokémon,
Sailor Moon, and the like are brought over. When a good, action
acked, gory anime does comes over, such as Voltron, it is often edited,
even redrawn in parts to make it more American looking. This also
happens with live action Japanese shows, such as Power Rangers. This
show, which is originally from Japan, has been made to be a little kiddy
show, and a very trite one at that. The only thing that they actually
retained from the original are the fight scenes. A recent worst case
scenario of the Americanization of anime is in a new commercial series
from what appears to be a soft drink company, I believe, which I have termed
ghetto-tron. It is a partially live action, artially animated
commercial series in which mecha, very similar to those from Voltron or
Thundercats, or even Transformers, are piloted by what can easily be interpreted
as feuding African American warlord in an urban area. During the
commercial Japanese subtitles are running and hip hop is playing in the
background as the mecha fight. At the end of each commercial, it
appears that they are attempting to establish a story line, but they consistently
fail. The commercial is bviously trying to use the appeal of
anime, in combination with hip hop, hoping to have cross cultural appeal,
but they fail, with commercials resulting a bastardized version of a great
anime with senseless fighting, which promotes gang violence and has nothing
at all to do with the product (note in the beginning of this case study
the indecisiveness on the product being advertised).
Personally, all these examples of the bastardization and Americanization
of anime will only be bad for the true fans and the distribution companies
that have been there from the beginning, bring us such great movies
and series as Eva, Fushigi Yuugi, Saber Marionette, and Akira. It
wouldn't be as bad if the larger powers of entertainment wanted to use
anime, so long as the keep in the original form, but they don't, so they
should stop.
