The Segregation of Anime

“Hero, second class. That is the designation given the artists of animated films. Their work receives the highest praise, yet at awards time they are deemed creatures of some cuter, smaller species.” That quote is from Time Magazine and I find it truer and truer every day.

Every time my friends and I go to watch a movie, I suggest something like Howl’s Moving Castle, Paprika, or Summer Wars. I think, hey, they like fantastical stories like Lord of the Rings, why not do something like this? But no. We end up watching some smut like Transporter or Contact. It should be noted that I like both of those movies for very different reasons, but the three aforementioned anime movies are better. Much, much better.

The reasoning I get for not wanting to watch anime movies is they would prefer to watch them by themselves with their headphones on, isolated from the world. That is ridiculous. These are movies, just like anything else. I’ll understand something like Tokyo Godfathers or Millennium Actress since those are subtitled, but to pass up Princess Mononoke or Ghost in the Shell is criminal. These are great movies in their own right, animated or not. I hear that you would rather watch these by yourself on a screen that’s not likely to be bigger than 25’ instead of enjoying the movie experience with friends on a screen that’s somewhere around 40-odd inches.

Don’t give me that bull. Tokyo Godfathers is quite likely the best movie I saw in 2011. And yet my friends seem to have an innate and unchangeable prejudice against anime (and prejudice is the right word here). I love watching anime. I love it more when I’m watching it with friends, especially if it’s new to all of us. But I’ll never truly get that experience because I’m either showing an anime to someone or watching it new by myself because no one else wants to.

I suppose what I’m asking is why do people have this innate prejudice against anime? And with my friends, it is just anime. Because we’ve seen movies like Wall-E and How to Train Your Dragon without hesitation. But not anime. Well, guess what people: Spirited Away won Best Animated Feature at the 75^th Academy Awards and the growing trend is leaning toward anime. So get over yourselves and watch a little sometime.