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Ch.1: The storytelling potential of anime and its stagnant nature at this time.

By Typheus WolfPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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The Late night Blog

Ch. 1

The storytelling potential of anime, and its stagnant nature at this time.

I have been in love with not just anime, but stories for as long as I can remember. I have suffered from a type of suffocating feeling since I was a child. The type of closed-off asphyxiation that makes you feel alone in a filled room. Disconnection might be the simplest word to use.

When I first laid my eyes on the television and watched Ash Ketchum (Pokemon) travel the world with his good friends, I was speechless. I felt a connection, for perhaps the first time. Then I watched “Naruto”, as it was aired on Cartoon Network. A boy who was so alone it hurt. My world grew, and I learned to be outside of myself. It was inspiring.

Stories are the fabric of our reality. To say otherwise is to underestimate the power of communication itself. Communication, singlehandedly brought humanity from an age of tribes, slaves, and stones, to this technological monstrosity of contemporary society. Ancient civilizations were built on the spoken and written word. Future civilizations were built on a type of communication that transcends time, the books, and their printing press. Before it was scribes and monks that would copy and write scripture in Europe. But with the printing press, any handwritten book was mass-produced at an insane pace. The biggest advancements we made in history were thanks to this drive, where people simply refined the method of communication over and over again. It won wars, cured diseases, continues to heighten the quality of life, and has even brought on an evolved concept of civil and human rights. To share not simply an idea but a story is the most powerful thing that we were gifted.

“But what does this gift have to do with anime?” Anime has become one of the most popular international trends in history. But why? It has become an international success, but why? Japanese cartoons even have a place on every conceivable streaming service in existence. Millions of dollars move at the whim of these studios, games, merchandise and creators, all over the world. Why? Because it connects with people. It connects with young people, who are a large percentage of the global population, who have intense emotions, who struggle with friendships and life itself, a common theme found in anime. It connects with people who are depressed, and have anxiety. Who are afraid of failure. It's therapeutic because anime tells them to do better, when everything is falling apart, when it feels like loneliness will choke them out, when heartbreak destroys our passions in life. It tells them that it doesn't matter if they think everything is pointless, and not worth the effort, that they need to cheer up. That it's only worth it, if they believe it is. And that has never been more true, than it is now.

Uncertainty has been the theme of the past twenty years. Nine eleven. Hurricanes and other natural disasters. School shootings. The gulf war. Terror attacks. The recession. The pandemic.

The only thing that my generation can be certain of, is that anime is simply fucking amazing. The stories that can be shared on an animated platform are limitless in storytelling potential.

But now it's December of 2021 as I'm writing this, and anime itself has become saturated with empty and tasteless trash. For every well-known franchise, there are a hundred others that hold no value. This is mostly due to studios mass-producing cloned anime series, based on a genre's success. For example, a high-quality treasure, “The Rising of the Shield Hero,” and its predecessors, “Spirited Away”, and “Sword Art Online” are what motivated the concept of isekai, and made it a popular genre. You go to watch something that is like it in some way, there are many titles to choose from, but only some that are worth watching.

This is happening to every single genre in anime. This saturation is proof of anime's international success. Every creator is trying to get their cloned series in the ring to get a decent payday.

It's somewhat revolting because a common travesty in the industry is that creators, animators, and writers do not get paid enough. It's rare to find anyone in the industry getting paid more than twenty thousand dollars a year.

This saturation, I would like to compare to, is when the bible was getting mass-produced on the printing press. The bible was the most common book anywhere in Europe. And it's here where we come back to the idea that communication has been refined to a point where an idea isn't simply shared to many people very quickly, but aggressive advertising and the media constantly bombarding people with anime; It's become infectious. When I open Instagram, all I see are people, normal people, who are posting edits, and it's always about anime. Anime is no longer just a platform, or an idea, or even a type of entertainment. It's a religion.

Before you could go anywhere in the world, and they would have some form of television entertainment. A drama or romantic comedy, and it would be in live-action. It was then that the idea of having a show like that was international. But now it's the show that's become an international concept. Anime has bridged fandoms that span from Japan to here, to Russia, to India and even Europe. Anime is the most successful storytelling platform, ever.

“But it's not relatable, because it's cartoonish, and it's not real.” Whoever says this, is either lying, has never watched anime, and or is an idiot. They don't know what they're talking about. They are the type of people who are always sad and never get excited about anything and who also refuse to connect to anything at all. Relatability is a mindset. You have to be active in having an open mind, to truly experience anything. It's also ridiculous to think that live-action television and film are any more real than animation.

The only thing holding back this titan of storytelling is something I have noticed after trying to increase my own aptitude in storytelling. Much of anime suffers from very limited storytelling ability. Naruto for example. Naruto is set in a world of ninjas, and their nations. They have supernatural abilities powered by their life force which is chakra. Some people are born with more than others, much like athletic talent in real life.

Many messages within the series deal with things like determination and hard work. But this is thrown under the bus, when the main character essentially has a cursed but unlimited power source to dispatch his enemies. The show is amazing, and should be watched, but this is the main issue that I and others in the community have recognized. In fact in Naruto, there is a supporting character, by the name of rock lee, who is based on the martial arts legend in real life, Bruce Lee. This supporting character is completely talentless and has no aptitude to use his chakra in any other way than amplifying his physical attacks. He is my definition of a hard worker, and probably the communities as well. Writing it this way, makes one wonder “why wasn't rock lee the main character?” It kind of hurts the message about all this grit and perseverance, when the character that is given all the power since birth, is the lead character. The show goes on to depreciate rock lee. The message we are left with is that hard work will always beat out talent. Unless talent works hard. Keep in mind, this one example does not represent every anime in existence, but is one I and many others observed to be a contagious issue.

This is only one example of flaws in the writing in anime, and along with predictable and classic tropes, it might be the reason why there is a shortage of high-quality stories out there. The most crippling, however, is what I myself have dubbed, “The shonen god theory.”

Shonen anime has this tendency to overdevelop its characters' strengths and abilities. They become gods, as we the audience are still simply human. This breaks immersion, and the audience loses connections to these characters. In some cases, the characters were not cared for in the first place and are let go. But for the characters who are absolutely adored, they are put on pedestals to be idolized instead of critically examined by the audience. This is one of the most crippling things in anime writing that I have observed because the characters have become misunderstood in some way. Once this happens, the rest of the experience falls apart. The insane balancing act in keeping interesting characters that develop, but not too much, is what plagues the industry, and is why the market has been so saturated with garbage. This tension will ultimately explode, as the next era of popular manga have made their way to studio executives, and are being prepped for adaptation. The golden age of anime continues for the next three years is what I see. However, if their writing does not evolve, I fear this stagnation will persist, and it will be a long while before another masterpiece is born.

Just some thoughts I had,

Typheus Wolf,

a weeb.

entertainment
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About the Creator

Typheus Wolf

Aspiring author.

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