Week 5

Week 5

Is anime a genre or a media? Is it a branch of film or another mode?

Anime is the name given to animation produced in Japan or in the Japanese style, once known as “Japanimation”. Animation is original from Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime as "Japanese animation".
Anime is not just a genre or a media. It is a complex medium. As Napier (2005) considered “Anime is a medium in which distinctive visual elements combine with an array of generic, and philosophical structures to produce a unique aesthetic world.” (Napier, pp. 10) Anime created by manga (graphic novels), use cartoons to express. It is a combination of cartoons and manga.

I think it is difficult to defined anime is a branch of film or another mode. Anime is basic on manga. There is not real human in it. However, in my opinion, we can consider it is a special kind of film. Because from the type of expression, the length of time as same as a movie.

Is it a high or low cultural genre/media, according to Napier (2005)?

Accord to Napier (2005), he considered anime is not a high or low cultural genre/media, it mixed high and low cultural together. He considered “Not only does the medium show influences from such Japanese traditional arts as Kabuki and the woodblock print (originally popular culture phenomena themselves), but it also makes use of worldwide artistic tradition of twentieth century cinema and photography.” (pp.4) As a form of popular culture, anime is important in Japan, but it doesn’t have the same status in Western, like in American, even anime’s popularity has grown enormously in the last decade, it is still not the mainstream. However, anime is far more important in Japan than in the West, is truly a mainstream pop cultural phenomenon. And is also a useful mirror on contemporary Japanese society. (Napier, 2005)
“Anime texts also explore history in contemporary society.” (pp.12) For example, Princess Mononoke through the mixture of fantasy and the fact reveals the problem of relationship between human being and nature.
Napier classified anime to three major expressive modes-- apocalyptic, the festival and the elegiac. He showed “the three modes used to examine anime are ones that go beyond any distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture or beyond any nation-specific site to illuminate in a timely fashion some of the major issues of global society at the turn of the millennium.” (pp. 14)

Reference

Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (pp.3-14). Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan.