In Defense of Anime: Part III

When I set out to write a review of a show that would be suitable for both children and adult audiences, the first thing that came to mind was Ghibli. Unfortunately, my Ghibli collection is sparse, though I have seen most of the movies through other outlets like video rental places and Netflix and even VHS tapes. In fact, I still have the VHS for My Neighbor Totoro, which I’m pretty sure is the dub before Disney did theirs. I also remember being disappointed when I got the VHS for Princess Mononoke for my birthday. Imagine that! Disappointed in received a Ghibli movie. Now, I treasure each Ghibli movie I have (my collection thus far only includes Nausicaa, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Whisper of the Heart). And that’s where we are right now. I’m watching Kiki’s Delivery Service as preparing my brain for reviewing it as if I was a child and as if I was me, a child in an adult body.

The first things that appeal to children is going to be the age of Kiki and her call to action. [Side note, fans of the Sam Raimi Spiderman films will recognize Kiki as Kirsten Dunst.] Also there’s a talking cat. But Kiki is a 13-year-old witch who is setting out on her own for a year to hone her witch-y powers. Kiki isn’t perfect, though; she’s a normal teenager who’s way too sure of her own powers and gets to get out of the family life that we 13-year-olds hated sometimes. Kids will love seeing an adolescent around their age able to set out on their own, much like Ash in Pokémon. And in her character, kids will relate to her fun, easy-going, and often naïve ways and adults will appreciate the accurate, albeit sometimes too childish, portrayal of a 13-year-old girl.

It’s something that I love in Miyazaki’s work, and really Studio Ghibli’s work in general, that they have strong, young, female leads. This does two things for me: A. It’s very interesting to see a female in this kind of lead position, especially in an anime and B. It makes a character that nearly anyone of any age will be able to relate to. It’s something in our psychology that makes it easier for us to relate to females as opposed to males. I mean, how different a movie would it be if Kiki was a male?

But Miyazaki initially portrays Kiki’s adventure as something that will be seemingly easy. Everyone accepts witches as a part of this world and would, of course, love to have a witch stay with them. Us adults realize that hardships are yet to come, but kids love the free-spirited-ness of the first 20 minutes. But she starts to lose control of her broom, almost causes a traffic accident, almost gets arrested, and eventually fails to find immediate lodging at a hotel. Because who would give a hotel room to a minor? Realism hits the kids like a ton of bricks, reminding them that this fantasy is indeed steeped in realism.

It isn’t all horrible real-world realism though. Soon, Kiki starts her delivery service, from which the film derives its name. She begins to stay at a bakery with some really nice people. [Another side note, Simpsons fans will recognize the pregnant woman as tons of voices from The Simpsons.] Soon, the beautifully childish music that children will love to dance to and we adults will love what it adds to the already child-like ambiance. This delivery portion is really just a segway for more to come.

It eventually leads to her and the boy, Tombo, becoming closer. Tombo is the boy that the male children can relate to. Just having the female with more female leads could work, but the addition of characters like Tombo and Sosuke and Howl into Ghibli’s movies makes it so much more relatable to the younger male audience, who might find more difficulty relating to Kiki than the older audiences and females might. We’ve all been in that situation where the girl we like doesn’t really want to talk to us or hang out with us or associate with us and the dynamic between Kiki and Tombo brings back nostalgic memories for the adults and puts kids in a very relatable right now situation.

Kiki then hits her big road block in life with her powers starting to wane. She’s hitting an age where all people, males and females, are confused about what they want in life because of the changes their bodies would be going through. We adults recognize that her magic difficulties are representing these changes but the kids relate to the general hardship of overcoming that one big road block (for kids, probably just parents and their seemingly unfair rules) to reach a higher pinnacle.

Even the characters represented in the story provide great relation for both kids and adults. First, the kids see Kiki’s mother and father as, of course, the parents they always wanted who would let them roam free. Then there’s the bakery shop owners who are like an aunt and uncle to both Kiki and the view. Then there’s Ursula, the woman in the woods, who is like an older sister/older woman figure for Kiki. We adults recognize the roles that these characters are playing and love how they’re portrayed in the series at the times when Kiki needs them the most (the aunt and uncle take Kiki in when she feels like she’s at her lowest; Ursula is the fun woman who provides sometimes childish wisdom for the even more childish Kiki; and the mother and father simply provide a place where Kiki knows she’s always welcome, which allows her to be so free-spirited in her journey away from home). The roles that these characters play in Kiki’s life can be represented so simple, so a child could recognize them even on a subconscious level, yet can be analyzed in a much more complex way so we as adults can see them and love them for that deeper meaning. Even the old woman who gives Kiki the pot pie delivery and her cake represents the kind, old, grandmotherly figure in Kiki’s life. But she’s the voice of reason for Kiki, who finally gets the push she needs to overcome her hardships involving her magic and allows Kiki to be able to fly easily again.

The cross appeal in anime, and in anything, really comes with having a simple enough story that children can understand it (in this case, the story of Kiki learning to be a witch and overcoming not having full control over her magic), but complex enough that we adults can see something further underneath the childish surface. In this case, the characters Miyazaki has woven into his adaptation represent something simple, but can go so much deeper than that.

Children can appreciate Avatar for its humor with Aang and Sokka. But adults can recognize the complexities and nuances of each character and how they’re more than just the cool Avatar and the cool waterbender and the cool blind earthbender. It’s the same with Kiki’s Delivery Service. Kiki is more than just a witch who has cool witch powers. Kiki is the little girl we can remember being or we can remember hanging out with who’s a little naïve, but a lot of fun. But she’s also the relatable character that so many kids can see themselves in because of her naïveté and childishness, whether those kids be male or female.

Brief IV

Utakoi’s delving into the 100 poems of Japan is done with an extremely interesting blend of modern popular culture references and traditional Japanese roles (in terms of both gender and class, which is extremely important for the poems themselves). Not only that, but the animation style—with thick black lines outlining everything and simply the way they animate rain—is some of the most interesting animation I’ve seen from anime. Most importantly, it doesn’t really alienate those who are unfamiliar with Japanese culture to a huge extent (it does alienate us some, however). You just have to remember the time period in which these poems were written; a time period where it was not only ok but expected of the women to stay at home and protect the house while the man earned their keep.

In Defense of Anime Part II

I gave my quick thoughts on a few shows that demonstrated, one way or another, that the target audience for anime is kids (or so they say). Pokémon, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Hellsing all hold a separate but equal place in my heart in terms of anime. I still watch Pokémon as it comes out. I like to go back to Evangelion at least once a year. Hellsing still keeps my interest even after watching the so-so (compared to the OVA) TV series, watching the OVAs, and reading the manga. You’d think that after so many iterations of the same thing, you’d just get sick of every adaptation. But you just can’t get sick of Alucard ripping people to ribbons.

Before I go into an extended analysis of the appeal to adults and children in one series or movie (it’s likely going to be a movie), I’d like to give some history of children’s anime from my perspective and knowledge. This is for two reasons. 1. I want more time to pick something and 2. Knowing the background is nearly as important as the analysis itself.

First, a few points brought up to me. 4kids has tons and tons of merits (as much as they did to One Piece, they still have merits). They brought anime to a huge audience with Pokémon and they knew they hit gold at just the right moment. Yu-Gi-Oh came two years later and that was, arguably, the second biggest thing to happen to children’s anime (after Pokémon). But, to target kids, what do you have to do? You have to put the anime in the right time slot and you have to make that anime as accessible to kids as possible. Take out any reference to Japanese culture (“No! My donut!” screams Brock as his rice ball is caught by a Pokéball) and, most importantly, air it alongside the other Saturday morning cartoons or just morning cartoons in general.

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing back in the early stages of the anime boom. Pokémon actually preceded the big anime boom of the early 2000s by two or so years. Yu-Gi-Oh just barely by a year or two at most. But they provided a great stepping stone for anime to get itself into the spotlight.

But it wasn’t all great. 4kids was Americanizing these shows to a dreadful extent and its time placement put it where misconceptions were the only thing that could grow from it. Both of these were necessary to properly market the shows, but it led to a drastic change in perception about anime. Prior to this, arguably the most know form of anime was hentai. Because you only heard of it if you were older and older males (anime’s target audience) typically like pornography. And that will, of course, lead to hentai. So in that case, this new misconception is a good thing. Because I’d rather not have to write a piece about how anime isn’t all hentai (though shows like Kissxsis and Oniichan no koto don’t make that case very easy).

But something happened around 1996 that changed that landscape a bit. Anime was no longer clearly a kids show to some people. Dragonball Z changed it into a hit teen show, akin to the superhero shows and other things that were airing in the afternoon on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. That’s not to say that kids didn’t watch it. I remember coming home from third or fourth grade (1998 or so) to watch Dragonball Z on Toonami. But DBZ was the perfect testosterone fest for budding teenagers as well.

What Toonami and 4kids has done to the anime industry and for us as fans has been great an unquantifiable. I can say with almost 100 percent certainty that I wouldn’t be an anime fan without 4kids’s adaptations and the Toonami block on weekday afternoons.

So here’s how these misconceptions started. Or at least how they probably started. So what does appeal to us as adults in anime? And what appealed to us as kids in anime? Certainly the visuals compelled us to like it when we were kids and the complex mythology compel us to like it now. But more on that next time.