Animation or anime is at present a popular or mass culture in Japan. It is a popular cultural form that clearly builds on previous high cultural traditions. Japanese animation’s medium does not only show influences from its traditional arts but it also makes use of worldwide artistic traditions of twentieth-century cinema and photography. (qtd. in Napier)
The issues it explores are ones familiar to readers of contemporary "high culture" literature (both inside and outside Japan) and viewers of contemporary art cinema. Anime texts entertain audiences around the world on the most basic level. It also moves and provokes viewers on other levels as well, stimulating audiences to work through certain contemporary issues in ways that older art forms cannot. (qtd. in Napier)
Moreover, because of their popular reach they affect a wider variety of audiences in more ways than some less accessible types of high cultural exchange have been able to do. In other words, anime clearly appears to be a cultural phenomenon worthy of being taken seriously, both sociologically and aesthetically. (qtd in Napier)
Japanese animation runs the gamut from historical epics to sci-fi sexual thrillers, and portraying important social and cultural issues such as alienation, gender inequality, and teenage angst. (qtd. in eBook Description of Anime)
Japanese animation has become impossible to avoid. Two of the best animations that hit the anime world were “Princess Mononoke" and "Akira”. The directors of these animes portrayed a dysfunctional past and future that mirrored the present and the future of Japan.
Akira is a Japanese anime movie created by Otomo Katsuhiro that was based on a long running serial manga (or comics) of the same name. The movie was very successful in terms of popularity and its ability to make money. Many consider Akira the finest of all the movies in the anime genre. (Spiegler)
In Isolde Standish’s work "Akira, Postmodernism and Resistance", he used the "nonfilmic and filmic intertexts" found in Akira to explore aspects of modern day Japanese culture, more specifically in the Male Domain. Resistance is captured in the article by defining the meaning of bosozoku style, which according to J. Fiske is "the refusal to accept the social identity proposed by the dominant ideology and the social control that goes with it". Some young men from blue collar families follow Bosozoku, forming motorcycle gangs as a way to rebel against mainstream Japanese society. (qtd. in Spiegler)
Postmodernism was also reflected in Akira simply in its 21st century landscape with a Tokyo which had lost its distinguishing characteristics due to the ravages of commercialism. It also focused on the militaristic aspects of the postmodern society, with references to the atomic bombs unleashed on Japan at the close of World War II and the pursuit of psycho-kinetic weaponry through the Akira Project. (qtd. in Spiegler)
Akira was meant to be more significant than a Western animated movie or action adventure movie for that matter. The film's purpose was to display some of the shortcomings of modern day Japan and the ability of Japan's youth to correct these problems. (Spiegler)
Princess Mononoke, on the other hand, was a great work of fantasy, a classic quest narrative in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. It was covered not only with magic and wonder but also flavored with enough adult sadness and realism that its world brushes awfully close to ours. (O’Hehir 1999)
It was not only about a heroic quest into the realm of the supernatural but it also offered a complicated and untraditional view of gender and a highly contemporary lesson about human economy and its inevitable effect on the environment, along with a steadfast refusal to think in simplistic good-vs.-evil equation. (O’Hehir 1999)
If Akira dealt with the Male Domain, Princess Mononoke, conversely, dealt about the Female Domain as discussed in the work of Susan Napier’s “Princess Mononoke: Fantasy, the Feminine and the Myth of Progress”. The discussion of the Female Domain can be seen in the case of the Shojo. The Shojo is a Japanese term that can best be translated as "young woman". Napier was able to examine the view which mainstream Japanese society has on it young women. She was able to show how different young women handle the expectations and stereotypes presented to them by their society. (qtd in O’Hehir)
References
Isolde, Standish. Akira, Post Modernism and Resistance. The World of Japanese
Popular Culture. Ed. D.P. Martinez. Cambridge UK: 1998
Napier, Susan. Anime:From Akira to Princess Mononoke. Palgrave Macmillan:Palgrave, 2001.
Napier, Susan. Vampires, Psychic Girls, Flying Women and Sailor Scouts: Four faces of the young Japanese female in Japanese Popular Culture. Ed. D.P. Martinez. New York: 1998.
O’Hehir, Andrew. “Princess Mononoke”. Salon. 1999. 11 Sept. 2006. < http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/1999/10/27/mononoke/>
Spiegler, Jason. Akira, Postmodernism and Resistance. Middlebury.11 Sept. 2006.
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