What is ANIME ?
When
you drop in a video shop or a rental video shop
, you can easily find the shelves labeled "ANIME".
Normally both sides of at one aisle are spared for them (anime) at least.
I'm pretty sure that everybody knows anime is an abridgement of animation.
It's partially true.
If you are in Japan , Anime is supposed to stemmed from animation.
But
here in the States , anime has a particular meaning
which is definitely distinguished from animation.
At
American TV programs , you can watch a lot of motion pictures
such as Tom & Jerry , Scooby Doo , Flint Stone and something
like that.
All of them are called cartoon.
And
world famous Disney's motion pictures such as Tarzan
, Lion King and so on are called Disney animation.
So what does anime mean ?
You can use the word "ANIME" only for motion pictures made in Japan.
In short , an anime is supposed to be an animation film imported from Japan.
So
it's actually amazing that you can come across
so many Japanese animations in the States.
Dragon Ball , bunch of Gundums , Ghost in the shell , Akira ….. what a company !
But
unfortunately Japanese animations are believed by American people
to include a lot of violence and sexual expressions.
So prejudice of common American for Anime is not good.
People conceive that it should drive their children into wrong direction of life.
In last Autamn , the Princess Mononoke had been released all over the States.
And
according to those reviews for that movie on newspapers or
internet web pages
, it had been applauded very much.
It seemed that many American people discovered
that Japanese animation could be a true art ,which was not like Disneys' absolutely.
Probably in this spring, the Castle in the Sky will be released in the States.
And
I suppose that it might be more acceptable for American audiences
than the Princess Mononoke.
Here is one trivaia.
In
those reviews for the Princess Mononoke
, I found an interesting opinion sometimes.
It was about shapes of eyes in Japanese animations.
Characters
in the movie had wide and round eyes
, which were just same as in other typical Japanese animations.
And some writers of the reviews didn't give a welcome to that.
But it was strange.
Because the shape of eyes are based on old Disney's animations.
When
Mr. Tezuka made the first commercial animation film in Japan (
Atomic Boy )
, he tried imitating aspects of Disney's characters such as the
Micky Mouse.
And after since the size of Disney's characters eyes had gotten smaller and smaller.
Eventually huge difference between Disney and Japanese animations had come out.
However
nowadays Japanese animations represented by Mr. Miyazaki's
masterpieces
have affected very much on American animation creators.
In fact there are a lot of Miyazaki's fan in Disney.
And those affected creators have been making their characters' eyes bigger and bigger.
It's easy to realize that characters have had big and round eyes in recent Disney's movies.