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W4

Is Anime a high or low cultural medium, according to Susan Napier (2005) and what are some of its subgenres?

Anime in Japan has its free, creative form in many ways. Japanese animation popular in their country with the flexibility, creativity, and freedom in the medium itself on its society and it is not just because of their economy, constrains and aesthetic traditions (Napier, 2016).

Anime is high, or low culture medium depends on where were you and your culture. America sees it as a “sub” genre (Susan, 2005). In Japan, Anime has been inspired by their own culture, which is from great cultural Japanese tradition. Some of their animation or anime genres have been found in a significant fluency on their tradition.

Anime is in a vast industry nowadays, even in the United States. Anime was not for only children watching anymore but adults as well (Chambers, 2012). Anime has in many genres to attract adults, such as an anime in history that is unforgettable (Chambers, 2012). Some anime seems like not interesting or much connection with people has been banned in the United States continued up until the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan “dismantled agencies created to protect the public, and signalled to broadcasters that the FFC, which had bowed to the demands of ACT, would no longer be so stringent in its oversight” (Ladd, 2009). Japanese Anime is free in the medium itself to mark a point that is suitable in Japanese society. Japanese animation is as a narrative art form, and not only for its arresting visual style (Napier, 2016). Anime in medium identifies the combination of optical elements with an arrangement of generic, thematic and deep structures to produce a unique artistic world (Napier, 2016). The anime highlight the characters and setting them in neither western nor Japanese, they explore in the way that audiences can revel in a safe form of Otherness unmatched by any other contemporary medium (Napier, 2016).

According to Susan, Arika works extraordinary well in the subgenre of the hybrid genre that mixed the narrative of science fiction, horror and the feeling of an audience when they watch the movie delighted (Napier, 2016). “Sci-Fi anime: cyberpunk to steampunk” (Denison, 2015) anime has its popularisation and its subgenres of cyberpunk and steampunk, which used many metaphors and similar to get it out of this genre to explore and illustrate upon perspectives of human existence (Denison, 2015). Akira is a remarkable mark in America for Anime and global markets to discourse the story on the ultimate nature of Japanese animation; the story links with sci-fi and subgenres of a high spectrum in life and existence of Japanese style. In Denison’s works, he said that Anime’s subgenre had been explored and expanded in useful spaces that could be tested as a category that we understand of staring point that science fiction provides us. Anime is essential to keep the development of a transnational, transmedia genre of science fiction (Denison, 2015). “Dramatic” is another genre of Anime that makes sense because of Anime’s origins in Kabuki theatre and because American adults understand Japanese social cues as over the top in a specific way (Napier, 2007).

Animation of Japan is not the same as any other animation in other countries such as America. Mostly, the animation is for children in other countries, but Japan creates some of the animations in different ways of illustration which is not just only for children but in a different type of target audiences such as male, female, children or adult. Depending on the diverse target audience, they have a different kind of genres to create different visual elements in the anime or animation.

Reference:

Denison, R. (2015). Anime: A critical introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chambers, S. N. I. (2012). Anime: From cult following to Pop culture phenomenon. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 3(2).

Ladd, F., & Deneroff, H. (2009). Astro boy and anime come to the Americas: An insider’s view of the birth of a pop culture phenomenon. Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc.

Napier, S. J. (2007). From impressionism to anime: Japan as fantasy and fan cult in the mind of the west. (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Napier, S. J. (2016). Anime from Akira to Howl’s moving castle: Experiencing contemporary Japanese animation. St. Martin’s Griffin.