2. Is anime a high or low cultural medium, according to Susan Napier (2005) and what are some of its subgenres?
Anime (animation) can be seen on TV in Japan 24/7, on the big screen and in video stores, according to Napier (2005), anime is a high cultural medium.
The audience covers a vide spectre and includes people of all genders, ages and backgrounds. Anime can be funny, philosophical sci-fi, horrifying porn or all three combined into one.
Anime is not just for kids, it is used as a medium to get across difficult topics such as love, death, war and also more philosophical questions to an adult audience (Drazen, 2014). It has the ability to reach a wider, different audience then what other, less accessible types of high cultural media are able to do. Anime also explores these issues in a complex way which would be familiar to people who read “high culture” literature (Napier, 2005). Swale (2015) states in his work that anime is an important medium to get across political, cultural and philosophical questions.
Thanks to the internet anime has become a global phenomenon, it’s still spreading and growing (Drazen, 2014). According to Napier (2005) anime is growing as an intellectually challenging form of art, it is a popular cultural form that builds on high cultural traditions, and it also reinforces cultural myths (Drazen, 2014). Anime is influenced by old arts such as Kabuki and woodblock print, but it also uses artistic traditions from 20th century filmmaking and photography (Napier, 2005).
Swale (2015) writes that anime has gone from being a “domestic cultural product” and is now evolved into a “global cultural commodity”, or as Napier (2005) says: mainstream pop cultural phenomenon. Although it belongs to the popular culture in Japan it has started to make its way into the subculture in America and is made itself a niche in the mainstream culture (Napier, 2005).
Anime is both a high and low cultural medium depending on where you are in the world, it is still a growing media and I will assume that anime will continue to grow.
Anime is an umbrella term (Denison, 2015) and it is characterized by its huge spectre of subgenres (Tomos, 2013).
Tomos (2013) writs that: the development of the dystopian cyberpunk sub-genre underpins one of the most global influences of anime.
Ghost in the Shell and Akira is examples of the cyberpunk genre (Denison, 2015).
You also have other subgenres such as Chanbare which romanticises the samurai code, Moe (means cute), which is aimed at children, Maho-Shojo, the ‘magical girl’ genre who are characterized by strong, female main characters. Shonen-ai features beautiful men and their romantic (gay) relationships, this genre targets woman and plays on the “female gaze”. You also have Hentai (basically porn) is anime for adults and follows a long line of Japanese visual aesthetics (Tomos, 2013).
Mecha which features giant, flying robots are also a popular subgenre.
Denison (2015) points out that Ghibli’s popularity and worldwide range have turned it into a “branded subgenre hybrid” and that Ghibli is becoming its own genre. The list of subgenres is almost never ending and as other mediums I can imagine that the different subgenres will continue to develop into new ones.
Sources:
Drazen, P. (2014, January 10). Anime Explosion! The What? Why? and Wow! of Japanese Animation. Stone Bridge Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Denison, R. (2015, October 22). Anime: A Critical Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing.
https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=IKOfCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=no&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan. (PDF)
Swale, A. D. (2015, August 10). Anime aesthetics: Japanese animation and the ‘post-cinematic’ imagination. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Tomos, Y. (2013, September). The significance of anime as a novel animation form, referencing selected works by Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon and Mamoru Oshii. (PDF) https://pure.aber.ac.uk/portal/files/10592318/Tomos_Y.pdf
Pop Genres 2020 