Forum - View topicIs anime considered mainstream?
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5839 Location: Virginia, United States |
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As I said, you wrote off Justin Sevaksis, as if, he has not worked in the anime industry for years, I don't know anyone else in this forum or at ANN who has the years of experience and connections working in the anime industry as Justin Sevaksis has. |
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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I'll just comment further that these types of debates are sort of why I made my other thread about people claiming certain themes or tropes in anime are "not for you" (with the "you" in question broadly meaning westerners.) There's an impulse among Weeaboo to fetishize all things Japan, including unrepresentative works created by any Japanese person, to the point that such things attain a status of cultural superiority. Thus, we are told that Japanese, by their inherent nature, are more stylistic or appreciate style more than Westerners. Thus, anime = better style and is thus superior to all thinges Western. This is tiresome to me.
Last edited by ChibiKangaroo on Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:19 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23811 |
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In fairness to Jose Cruz, I don't believe he is arguing that Japanese or Asians appreciate style more or that their tastes are superior to Western tastes. I took it more along the lines of him saying, "The West prefers apples, Japan prefers oranges and, for that reason, the manufacture of orange juice is a bigger industry in Japan relative to the West." I didn't discern any attempt to assign a value judgment to the observation.
My response boils down to, "It's undeniable the manufacture of orange juice in Japan is more prevalent than in the West, but that isn't necessarily because Westerners have a bias against oranges. There may be historical and structural reasons in play that have a larger role." |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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Its hard for me to see an evaluation of "more stylistic" and certain people being biased against style as anything other than a value judgment, particularly when style is being used as a descriptor for "anime" and we are all participating in a forum dedicated to fans of anime.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23811 |
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Personally, I think that is just a reflection of your own hyper-sensitivity to the issue of certain Western fans over-worshipping all things Japanese. An attitude which does exist, of course, but one that I haven't seen Jose Cruz espouse.
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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Fair enough, but I also have rarely seen the general anime fan devote the sheer amount of time that he has devoted to constructing massive, near wall of text responses passionately arguing the perceived differences between how Japanese and Westerners value animated works and "style". So, whether you think I'm "sensitive" or not, I think three pages worth of said wall of text arguments on Japanese style vs western style more than validates my concerns.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23811 |
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I think it's unfair to use a metric like "wall of text" to derive some kind of negative meaning. You, yourself, have been known to write walls of text and to continue a discussion on for several posts. That is a methodology. You like to be thorough and marshal as much evidence for your point of view as possible. I see Jose Cruz uses the same methodology. That's no reason to ascribe an attitude to him (i.e. the superiority of Japanese taste) that I do not see reflected in his actual words.
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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I certainly do spend the time to put together carefully articulated arguments, and some of them do approach wall of text levels. That being said, I've looked back through this thread and seen multiple posts that require extensive use of the scroll bar to see the entirety of a single post. I don't get quite that verbose. Keep in mind though, I'm not criticizing his method of argumentation itself. I'm actually impressed by the level of dedication he has shown to making a point that he obviously feels very passionate about. I am simply observing that this level of passion and dedication to an argument stressing the differences between Western "style" and Japanese "style" is highly probative of value judgment, particularly when Western style is characterized as "biased" and "not stylistic" and Japanese is portrayed as in favor of stylization. I think in that context, claiming that no value judgments are being made is a bit silly. Again, we are on an anime lovers forum. We all like anime. When someone is saying "Japan and anime = style, Western stuff does not," this is a value judgment. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23811 |
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I think you are getting confused with the different meanings of the English world "style." Here's what I perceive Jose Cruz's point is: "Westerners gravitate towards photo-realistic images. They prefer photo-realistic images over artificial representations like animation or drawing. In Japan, such a bias does not exist to the same extent, thus anime and manga are more mainstream there than animation and comic books are in the West."
What I don't perceive, infer or assume is that Jose Cruz is saying, "thanks to the more sophisticated sensibility of the wonderful Japanese people, they are able to properly judge the works of non-photo realistic forms of art and entertainment unlike us benighted gaijin." That's an attitude you are imposing on Jose Cruz's words, not what they are really saying. |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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Assuming that your articulation is correct (and I think you are downplaying his position a bit), you are making a distinction without any significant difference. Context is key. We are on an anime forum. People here love animation and generally see it as one of the higher forms of art. Saying Westerners don't appreciate that high form of art due to intrinsic biases that are inherent to "the West" is a negative commentary in this context. If this were a forum on cooking shows or car mods, your point might have more merit, though I would still argue that his arguments speak to values. But at least then the context wouldn't matter so much. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23811 |
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But you are oversimplifying his point. Obviously he's not saying NO Westerners like animation or ALL Westerners are biased against animation. All he is doing is making an observation - that anime and manga are more mainstream in Japan RELATIVE to animation and comic books in the West (which is true) and that the reason for that is that more people in the West are biased in favour of photo-realism over artificial images due to some cultural factor (which is false).
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1775 Location: South America |
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Thanks for defending me Blood-.
@Chibikangaroo, I never said the Japanese have "superior tastes". I said that the Japanese culture is more accepting in taking comics and animation seriously. I think the reason is cultural: stylization is seem in Western culture as inferior to photorealism while in Japan they lack that. Of course many westerns can enjoy stylized stuff and we as westerners animation fans do that. For instance, in Western fiction, when it's serious it is either live action film or they try to drawn the comic in a very realistic way. In Japan they can make serious stuff with very cartoony looking characters like for instance those dark mahou shoujos like Madoka or Magical Girl Raising Project. So far, that's only true for Japansee animation and Korea and Taiwan for comics. While these exists mainstream cartoony animation in the West it's like The Simpsons and South Park, which does not take itself seriously. I read a book, The Beautiful Fighting Girl where the author goes into details of why only in Japan we got those types of animation and comics. I was very convinced of that point although I didn't agree on everything he said in the book. He said the difference is cultural. And cultures are different: attitudes regarding stuff can be different because of deep cultural reasons.
I was a bit harsh in there. But for him to say that "in Japan serious animation is underground like in North America" is a bit off. It's pretty obvious that animation is more popular in Japan than in the West since they make so much of it in so many genres. Although I understand it was a reaction against the impression that some anime fans might have that in Japan animation has displaced live action in TV as the standard way of telling stories. While it's true that live action dramas are still in general more popular, in terms of TV ratings, than animated ones. It's also true that manga is more popular than both live action film and animation: Manga sales have surpassed movie ticket sales since the late 1960s and have been about 10 times bigger since the 1980s, today the biggest box office smashes in Japan are "manga movies" like Your Name. I made my assertions based on sociological, critical books I read such as: Manga Manga, the World of Japanese Comics (1983), Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Comtemporary Japanese Society (2000), besides the aforementioned book and other academic books and articles. |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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And I have not said that he made any straw man "all westerners do X" statements. I said he is making broad generalizations about westerners, claiming that people of "the West" have an inherent bias that somehow is part of their western identity (if there is such a monolithic thing). It's a broad stereotype that's no different from saying Americans generally have a bias toward being violent dick heads or Irish have a bias toward being drunks. You're not saying they all do whatever thing is being "biased in favor of," but are implying a propensity toward that thing. In this case, the thing in question, "lack of appreciation for stylization" is a negative for lovers of anime. Thus, it is a negative value judgment. This type of argument is wrongheaded because it necessarily relies on a presumption that there is some sort of inherent quality to people "of the west" i.e. people who aren't Japanese in this case, like a gene or a piece of DNA or something that makes them more likely to be biased against "stylization" i.e. anime, in this context. That's the only way you can interpret it, just like it's the only way you can interpret any broad stereotyping claim about such a macro group as "the West." (Again, a less macro version of such generalizations might refer broadly to "the Chinese," or "the French," or in this case, "the Japanese.") You have to assume that there is some inherent quality that this group all share that is objectively qualifiable. Making these types of claims about anything is dicey, at best. Making these types of claims about purely subjective, fantasy-heavy, escapist media like animated works is completely absurd and far beyond any realistic capability of proof. But beyond that, again, I think if I went into a forum for a website called SUPERCUTEDOGNEWS.com, and I started making broad proclamations about how "the Japanese" are biased against appreciating the cuteness of dogs and, as a people, instead prefer cats. I think that would be rightly perceived as a negative value judgment on Japanese people to the general audience of dog fanatics on that site. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23811 |
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@ CK - your examples make absolutely zero sense. ANN is a board that is dedicated to fans (primarily non-Asians who understand English) of Japanese animation and graphic images. So the equivalent of Jose Cruz coming here and saying, "anime and manga are more mainstream in Japan than animation and comic books are in the West because the Japanese are more accepting of non-photo-realistic images," would be going to a board that celebrates the cuteness of Japanese dogs and saying, "dogs are relatively more popular in Japan than in the West because Japanese people are more accepting of animals that bark." That's the one to one comparison.
Your cute dogs example doesn't work because if you flip it around it would be like Jose Cruz came to ANN - a board celebrating Japanese animation and graphic images - and said that Japanese people don't really like anime and manga, but prefer live-action entertainment. And yes, that would probably irritate those who are Western anime and manga fanatics. However, that's not what he did. Next, characterizing his assertion that, generally speaking, more people in Western countries favour photo-realism over animated/drawn images is akin to saying Americans have a bias to being violent dickheads or that Irish people have a bias to being drunks is a wildly unequal analogy. YOU have attached some sort of horrible connotation to his theory that there is a greater desire for photo-realism in the West compared to Japan, but I assure you that nobody else takes that sort of umbrage, especially to the point of likening it to genuinely offensive and negative stereotypes. I actually find that argument of yours kind of scummy because you are making it seem like he is trying to perpetuate some kind of negative, insulting quality about Western viewers, which he is not. |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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My analogy is perfectly fine. It is a generic analogy speaking to the fact that he is going into a forum that is more or less dedicated to people who love subject A, and then claiming that an entire class of people have a bias against appreciating subject A. I could have substituted anything for subject A and any class or group of people as the group being stereotyped.
It doesn't matter what your subjective view is of the offensiveness of the claim. My point is that if you can make one claim based on stereotypes then any claim based on stereotypes is just as legitimate. In other words, it is just as legitimate to say Dutch people have a bias in favor of liking chocolate as it is to say Dutch people have a bias in favor of liking snuff films, or Dutch people have a bias in favor of liking Nazi paraphernalia. If one claim based on stereotyping of subjective, individual human desires or thought processes is legitimate, any such claim is equally legitimate. |
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