Thursday, April 7, 2022

What does Anime Inspired even mean?

As I've been thinking more about my past complaints about allegedly Anime inspired cartoons in the West, I realize the inspiration they are taking is all Art Style.  Catwoman Hunted is allegedly "Anime Style" but the actual content and writing of the story is the same as I'd expect from any Catwoman movie.

There was a time when a Cartoon being as "Dark" or "Edgy" as Netflix Casltevania would have been very rare if at all in the West.  But the way that show was written draws more from Live Action American Dark Fantasy like Game of Thrones then it does something like Berserk.

For me the actual art style isn't much of why I like Anime.  Yeah I do prefer it to what the Internet calls the Cal Arts style, but there is plenty of Western Cartoons I think look great like Batman The Animated Series.  And actually the only animated content I've ever found literally unwatchable solely because of how much it's art style doesn't appeal to me are Anime, like Pokémon Sun and Moon.  Even my old complaining about the New 52 artsyle of the DCAMU films was more about my DC fandom hang-ups then any preference for Anime and I was able to enjoy some of them regardless.

That's the thing, the Cal Arts style is being thought of as the antithesis of Anime style right now, but it's Steven Universe that drew actual thematic inspiration from Sailor Moon and Utena, while High Guardian Spice drew on Little Witch Academia.

A lot of what I like about Anime is the Meta, characters within Anime who are Anime fans, Anime that are in part about Otaku culture, and the only reason I have any desire to see Americans successfully make an "American Anime" is so we can finally see the particularities of Otaku Culture in the West represented in that, the representation American Otaku visiting Japan get in Anime is pretty bland, even Patty in the otherwise phenomenal Lucky Star.

So yeah I'd like to see what a show with the basic premise of a Lucky Star or a Yuri Yuri [or Comic Party] would be like if it was set in America and written not by just any Americans but specifically American Otaku who are long time fans of those kinds of shows and the Anime they reference.  Or if you're gonna need fantastical elements to get the budget do something very directly inspired by Anime adapted from SciADV games, or an Isekai where it's an American Otaku who gets randomly transported to a JRPG Fantasy world, but of course American Otaku Gamers would probably use Final Fantasy or SaGa as the model rather then DragonQuest.

Miyazaki's whole complaint about the state of Anime is how insular it is, it's pretty much all being made by Otaku for Otaku and only drawing inspiration from other Anime.  So called "American Anime" is being made not by Otaku but by at best Anime Fans who're nostalgic for what was well known in the U.S. in the 90s and early 00s.  

Even western Magical Girl shows are still made by people who've only seen Sailor Moon and maybe Cardcaptor Sakura, or think Utena counts, and maybe super recently might have seen Madoka.  But the true Magical Girl experience also requires exposure to Pretty Cure, Nanoha, and at least one Post Madoka show (hopefully they'd choose Yuki Yuna), but I'd really be hoping for people who've dug even deeper then that and seen Symphogear, Pretear, Wedding Peach, Pretty Sammy and Prisma Illya.

Don't confuse this with another "Style vs Substance" dichotomy, visual style and writing style are both styles.  In Anime especially Style is Substance.

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