So how long have we had anime in this country then? It’s been close to 50 years since Astroboy in all its black and white goodness hit Australian TV screens. Still remembered quite fondly by baby boomers, it didn’t stop there. A ton of English dubbed anime was broadcast in the 1960’s. It then waned a bit in the 1970’s, however we still had stuff like “Adventures of Kum Kum” and repeats from the 60’s. Of course the 1980’s brought us the big ones; Star Blazers, Robotech, Voltron and the colour Astroboy remake. Even bigger was the 1990’s with Akira and the “Manga Video” boom. Anime hasn’t left our TV screens or video shelves since then. It’s everywhere, even in limited runs in cinemas. With Miyazaki films and shoujo stuff like Fushigi Yuugi and even Gravitation, we know that Japanese animation covers a wide range of genres and that the media understands this, because they’ve grown up with this stuff too, right?
Uh, no. On Sunday’s Dateline on SBS, Adrian Brown looked at the “anime cartoon industry” (I’m looking forward to their expose on the manga comic graphic novel industry) and the financial woes they’re having. Anybody who has been vaguely following what has been happening in Japan knows a little bit about what is happening there. I will give Mr Brown a couple of points for naming the low birth rate in Japan (no kids to watch the anime) and illegal file sharing as a couple of the reasons why the situation isn’t great. However I should have realised the tone of what was to come by his explanation of what was anime;
“Anime depicts big-eyed male and female heroes who look like children or teenagers but often engage in adult levels of violence and sexuality, usually in some apocalyptic or futuristic setting”
Oh right, so stuff like “Marmalade Boy” or “Cardcaptor Sakura” or “Detective Conan” or “K-on!” for crap’s sake. Seriously, where have you been for the last 20 years Adrian? It’s really hard for him to claim ignorance here as over the top of his spiel is images from the Tokyo International Fair with images of “K-on!”, “Pretty Cure” and “Naruto”. You know, stuff that full of sex and violence.
Anyway, surely those whom interviewed about the decline can point him in the right direction. For example, Kazumori Hashimoto of A-line Production;
"We can't make what we want to make. To keep the business going our products must sell. The industry is geared to where demand is - which is the obsessive fan market, not the general public. That's the trend I worried about most".
He's obviously talking about the moe stuff, the bishoujo stuff, niche stuff, the stuff that's geared toward the otaku. Fair call. Aside from the kids stuff and the big family shows, this is it; the otaku niche stuff. What about with Toyoo Ashida (director of “Fist of the North Star” and “Vampire Hunter D”);
"With the declining birth rate the target of animation production has moved towards young people and adults who grew up watching animation. We now produce anime specifically for those people. So we were able to expand our target audience and our market, but to meet the shift in the market we developed late-night anime."
Straight after that comment, Adrian Brown says
"The new animation Ashida is coyly referring to is anime porn."
Uh, say what? He's talking about late-night anime, literally the anime that airs late at night like "Angel Beats!" and "K-on!". The explicit hentai shown during Brown’s interpretation of Ashida’s comments would never be broadcast on TV, it’s OVA stuff. And it's not like late-night anime is some fangled new thing. It's been around since the late 1990's. How flipping ignorant can you get? Oh, then we have;
“Graphic comic books can already be found in any Japanese convenience store, but anime porn comes in forms that escape the rules covering photos and live-action videos, even when children are depicted sexually - one chilling online video game, called 'RapeLay', lets players choose victims of any age - and a growing number of animation studios are turning to porn to survive.”
Anime studios are doing what now? Name one studio that has turned to making hentai to make a profit. Uh, what does “RapeLay”, have to do with the animation industry? Ignoring all the other rape simulation games out there and the fact the game is over four years only and has been out of print for at least a couple of years and the fact there has been other rape fantasy material in Japan for more than 30 years (e.g. "Rapeman" manga and live action films), well this game is obviously the downfall of Japanese society! And even if anime studios were making hentai to make ends meet, strange that no one in the anime media has picked this up. Brown must have some sort of scoop. Ah, no, his take on anime clear for all to see by the questions he asks the animators;
“So the pictures of the little girls, that's what sells?”
And
“In lots of the pictures the girls always seem very innocent.”
In other words; “You Japanese are a bunch of perverts. I’ve just had the causes of the woes of ther industry explained to me in detail, but I’ll go down the porn path which is irrelevant to the story and I’ll make up some bullshit story about studios making porn to survive, despite the lack of evidence”. It’s also very telling that the word “ecchi” is translated as “soft porn”, which ecchi really it isn’t.
Is it really too much to ask that journalists to do a decent job and report the facts? Brown seems to be still stuck in the mid 1990's and still thinks anime as is all about porn, and if it’s not, he’ll do his best to make the story fit his preconceived ideas. He has deliberately misinterpreted what Hashimoto and Ashida said either because he thought it was too hard to get the whole otaku concept across to a general audience (or didn't understand it), or more likely the porn angle was more up his alley. Crap journalism is crap journalism. Journos are there to inform the public, not make up stories where non-existent mainstream studios are turning to porn to make a buck.
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