Forum - View topicCan you get too old for anime?
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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On a final note. The idea that animation is for children (which is obviously nonsense) was first developed by North American animators in the 1920's and 1930's and after US victory in WW2 and the establishment of the US as the world's foremost economic and cultural power lead to the standardization of US cultural norms as the world's cultural norms. Japan, being the first non-Western country to industrialize, was less affected by US cultural norms than Western countries and as a result managed to partially overcome US's prejudice against the medium of animation.
However, it is still true that even today animation is not as respected in Japan as live action (though it's respected enough that the leading live action director of Japan, Takeshi Kitano felt "oppressed" enough by animation that he had to say he disliked animation and Miyazaki's work's, something that would never happen in the west, where live action reign's supreme). It shows how enormous is the cultural imposition of the US (and the west's) over the rest of the world. However, gradually anime has become more and more adult, if you take the hit anime series over the decades they are gradually more and more targeting older viewers: 1960's - Astroboy, kids 1979 - Mobile Suit Gundam, young teenagers 1995 - Evangelion, teenagers in a more "sophisticated" way 2011 - Madoka, young adults Although anime is also gradually focusing more and more on otaku instead of the mainstream: in the 1990's directors such as Junichi Sato and Ikuhara worked in Sailor Moon, a mainstream teenager anime, now they work with otaku moe stuff (Sato with his photography anime series) and auteur experimental work (ikuhara with Penguindrum). Japan should treasure their otaku population instead of discriminate against it. Since Japan's greatest artistic and cultural development in the 20th century, in fact, perhaps the world's most important artistic post-war development is manga and anime. Graphic literature and animation are mediums that were underdeveloped before manga/anime came into picture and still today they are not well developed outside of East Asia (comics are extremely popular in Korea, Taiwan and increasingly, in China, animation is following suit but will take longer to develop). Older mediums such as live action film, literature, painting and music are extremely well developed all across the world, animation and graphic literature is a Japanese/East Asian creation and the outcome of the industrialization of East Asia following WW2, being perhaps an extremely important artistic and cultural development that reflects the changing center of gravity of the world away from the North Atlantic (Europe+US) and towards East Asia. In Ancient Greece sculpture, painting and literature developed in Greece's golden age, in recent decades, the rise of East Asia, first happening in Japan and now across the rest of the "subcontinent", caused the development of manga and anime. I find the disrespect of Japan's own population to their most internationally influential art and to the connoisseurs/fans of animation is appalling. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Don't get me wrong I love anime and manga, but saying it's Japan's greatest artistic and cultural development, let alone most important global post war artistic development period, is simply far fetched. The latter being simply ludicrous. You're going to say anime and manga are more important artistic cultural developments than any sort of art, stonework, innovative building structure, etc in the world? As I said I love anime and manga but that's just woefully inaccurate. As for Japan's treatment of the otaku fandom.....that's a huge ball of wax I am not going to touch. Not in this thread anyways. That would easily need it's own thread and many long drawn out posts to adequately even touch that subject. |
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PopetherevXXVIII
Posts: 17 |
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I'm 33
Last month I spent over $400 on anime. The Answer is no, I've been watching anime for 20 years and I only want to get more in the loop as to what's going on in the past few years I've only wanted to find old shows and still do (See my thread seeking Tatsunoko shows) But since I opened myself to newer shows I've found that masterpieces are still being made (Gargantia, Watamote) There you have it. 33 still love anime, and not only that I WANT MORE! |
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t-Roy
 Posts: 17 Location: Lancaster, PA |
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Well, been absent here for over a month, just checking in. Hey Pope - very good effort for last month - keep it up! Lol, I just updated my anime spreadsheet for the month of November, and I only spent $975 on anime for that month... and my total for 2014 on anime purchases so far is just over $8,000, with a month to go yet... and I'm 53... 
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shiranehito
 Posts: 793 |
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I don't think people can get too old for anime, or cartoons. You know how My Little Ponies is targeted for young girls, yet a lot of middle age men like it - as they call themselves: Bronies. Sure, it seems wrong for some people, but I don't see that as a huge problem.
I was studying graphic design, and some of my lecturers are aware of anime and JRPGs. One of them is a Gunpla enthusiast, one of them has several artbooks from oldskool mangaka like Tsukasa Houjou, one of them who was already old enough to have grandchildren actually made reference to Suikoden when explaining history of art, and several attended local anime convention, wearing K-ON t-shirt, no less. Although I'm not as enthusiastic about anime as before, I think maybe it's not because I think I am too old for it, but because I'm more picky about it. I still watch cartoons aimed for children too and I don't think they are "retarded" just because I'm already a grown up. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Essentially, yes. Why? Because circa 1950, animation and comics were completely underdeveloped artforms, while all other mediums: sculpture, literature, film, music, were all well developed. The development of animation and graphic novels in Japan since the 1950's is extremely important in global cultural history since mediums that were unexplored before expanded in size dozens of times. Let's see what we have competing with manga and anime: Painting and sculpture are pretty dead artforms, yes, there are people working in the area but the marginal addition made since 1950 were rather insignificant. Literature? With the exception of fantasy and science fiction, considered second rate genres, all the big masterpieces of literature were made before 1950. Architecture? Well, there were some developments but they pale to those before 1950. Film? Now, we have many masterpieces of live action film made since 1950, though the most influential masterpieces of film are almost all dated from the first half of the 20th century, like Chaplin's work, Fritz Lang's, Welles' Citizen Kane, etc.
You grossly underestimate the cultural importance of manga. Manga is the driving force of Japanese and increasingly East Asian popular culture. Even in the west comics are becoming ever more important. It's true that anime's importance is second to manga and it's not as important to Japanese popular culture as adult anime has not attained the same degree of penetration on the population compared to adult manga. Actually, thinking about it, since 1950 what were the most important artistic developments in the west? I would guess, popular music: Rock was the most important artistic development in the western hemisphere since the end of the war while manga was the most important artistic development in East Asia. So yes, Rock and Manga are perhaps the two most important artistic developments in our post-war world. Though videogames are also very important now and growing in importance as we speak. I dislike the general trend people have to underestimate the artistic value of popular cultural developments and overestimate the importance of the modern developments in fine arts, even though almost nobody really cares about it: most important developments in the fine arts were in the earlier periods of history, before 1950, when most talent was allocated to that area. Currently there are far more artists working in manga, rock and videogames than in sculpture and painting. |
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Desslok
Posts: 178 |
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45 here, cut my baby teeth on SPeed Racer, grew up with Star Blazers, learned that "Hey, Robotech comes from Japan? Cool" through the Playground Information Network and was fortunate enough to catch the Vampire Hunter D / Demon City Shinjuku / Robot Carnival / Twilight of the Cockroaches anime boom of the late eighties.
Oh sure, I'll wander away for a couple of years now and again. Didn't touch the stuff from about 2004 to 2009, and it's usualy a case of looking at my shelf and going "Wow, I haven't watched Totoro in years!" that opens up the flood gates - as is what happened in the last couple of months. But I dont think I'll give it up forever. |
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Spore_777_Mexen
 Posts: 18 |
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Too old? No. Too busy? Maybe.
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Aylinn
 Posts: 1684 |
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Are you now an expert at painting, sculpture, architecture and literature to say nothing produced after 1950 can be considered great? I will not speak about architecture, painting and sculpture as I am not knowledgeable about them. However, from what I know they are doing well and painting possibly even better than literature. But, literature is certainly not dead and there are outstanding books written after 1950, for example: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in 1955. There are also books of writers like Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, José Saramago, Joseph Heller, Cormac McCarthy, Italo Calvino, Gore Vidal, etc. Other newer forms of expression may be more popular now, but it doesn’t mean older forms are dead. Besides, that these newer forms of expression are more popular doesn’t mean all those people who casually read, listen or watch something care about them. Those who truly care and invested a lot in certain art, not just money, but time, thought etc., are always few, no matter if it is literature or manga. There is also one other thing. You wouldn’t hear about masterpieces from literature, painting and sculpture from the last fifty years, precisely because it is an older form of expression. Attaining a highly regarded position in older forms is harder for an obvious reason, there are already plenty of highly regarded, excellent works there. With such a numerous competition it is not easy to create something that will be considered masterpiece right off the bat, don’t you think? Another reason is that acquiring it always takes time. In anime calling anime from eighties or seventies classic may be possible, because anime itself is rather new, but attaining this statues in literature after 20 years, when literature has been present for thousands years, seems silly. After such a short period of time you cannot know, for example, whether the book will influence subsequent writers of merit. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Ok but that was the essence of my point: I said that anime/manga are extremely important artistic developments because these mediums did not exist in large quantities before the 1950's (anime actually before the 1970's). Hence it's the birth of new dimensions in art.
Though I concede that older mediums are still very important and there are still a great number of people working in them. My point is that the marginal contribution of new works in these already very well developed mediums tends to be rather small if compared to the marginal contributions in the new fields where competition is much smaller and hence the importance of new works is much greater. Animation is currently the smallest artistic medium. Even the totality of Japanese anime output is a small fraction of the number of literature books published in the world each year (300 new anime titles versus tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of books), if we add all animation produced outside of Japan that figure doesn't change much. But 50 years ago animation was almost nonexistent compared to now while all genres of literature were well developed. So if you wanted you could read masterpieces of literature in any genres in 1964 while in animation, in 1964, there existed a very small number of films and series which were mostly made for small children, plus some experimental shorts. Hence, that's why I think the development of modern anime is so important because it opened up the medium of animation to a large span of possibilities hitherto unexplored. So my original argument was a bit wrong: it's not that older mediums are dead but that the marginal addition in animation is so much greater because there was almost nothing before. |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6523 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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With all due respect, Japan's greatest cultural contributions to the second half of the twentieth century were this:
and this: 
And, if you don't understand how revolutionary these two artefacts were, then you're unlikely to be too old for anime. |
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BabooJ1
Posts: 2 |
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Well, I am 47 and still love anime and am not in he manga business at all. Having said that I did I suppose go through the phase of getting married, having kids and the 9 to 5 job that did put a big dent in watching and enjoying anime but now the kids are older I can get back to the watching anime. |
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