Let’s get this straight: anime is a medium, not a genre.
Specifically, anime is a style of animation, spearheaded by Japanese animators as early as 1917. The famous characteristics – large eyes, small mouths, sharp penciling, action lines, facial expressions – shot forward with work of Osamu Tezuka, creator of legendary series “Astro Boy” and “Metropolis.” With the advent of video cassettes and eventual internet revolution, anime became more and more well known outside of Japan and is possibly one of the most thriving and influential animation industries possible. Most notably, many recent American animated programs and films are showing signs that anime’s popularity is beginning to seep into the minds of American animators.
From the directing to the composition to the art to the cutting, anime’s influence is profound and prolific in much of modern American animation. The opening of “Toy Story 3” had distinctly sharper cutting that was immediately reminiscent of anime action-cutting: the zoom ins and outs, the close ups and pan outs, the Dutch angles – it was interesting watching the film, seeing how Pixar was subtlety celebrating the anime boom in America. And only a couple of years ago with Dreamwork’s “Kung Fu Panda” did we also see the same techniques employed, where a visually fantastic and comedic effect swept over the film’s premise with sweeping camera movements and razor-sharp shots and cutting.
Then there’s the most obvious influence – the art style. Big multi-colored eyes, spiked hairstyles, unusual body proportions, exaggerated/default expressions – this is what we think of when the term “anime” pops up in conversation. American animated series have transitioned towards this stylization, away from the Golden and Silver age of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and towards projects like “Teen Titans” (2003–2006), “Totally Spies” (2001–2008), “The Animatrix” (2003), “Halo Legends” (2010), “Batman: Gotham Knight” (2008), the “Ben 10” franchise (2005 onwards), and most famously “Avatar: The Last Airbender” (2005–2008).
Whether or not one considers these American productions as anime is up for debate – what is undebatable is that these productions were obviously influenced by anime in stylization and perhaps composition and directing. The influence is there, and you’d be hardpressed to believe any animator who’d claim otherwise.
Now after writing the article “FacePainting,” I got a lot of responses that claimed the original series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” was racist in itself because Americans were taking an Asian convention (anime) and using it themselves, and had therefore created a whitewashed version of anime into a American storyline.
It must be reiterated thoroughly that anime is a medium, not a genre. So while it is a product of Japanese animation and invention it is still a means for which a story can be told and visually presented. What is distinctly Western or Eastern is the narrative intent and driving force of a story.
In fact, some of the best and most well-known Japanese anime are either inherently Western in narrative or borrow several elements from Western lore. Shinichirō Watanabe’s “Cowboy Bebop” (1998) frequently alluded to American jazz and bebop culture, taking numerous narrative and characterization cues from classic film noir, pulp fiction, westerns and crime stories. Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster” (2004–2005) takes place in Eastern Europe in which a Dr. Kenzō Tenma pursues a sociopath/psychopath he saved years ago. “Gunslinger Girl” (2003–2004) takes place in modern-day Italy in which a Social Welfare Agency exploits its rehabbed patients and turns the girls into counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism killing machines. And Hayao Miyazaki’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989) takes place in a northern Europe-inspired universe where the young witch, Kiki, deals with misconceptions and prejudices while trying to establish herself as a successful witch.
I find it hard to call these listed anime productions “yellow washing” because at their core, each narrative either strongly understands or alludes to distinctly Western culture and aesthetics. “Cowboy Bebop” is about as American as it gets, and its entire production team was Japanese – director, producers, composer, animators, voice actors, and so on. “Kiki’s Delivery Service” borrowed heavily from northern European environment, from its Mediterranean-like coast towns to its forrest enclosed cottages, and it too had an entirely Japanese production within the doors of Studio Ghibli.
So with regards to “Avatar: The Last Airbender”: the anime-inspired style and Eastern influences in the developed Avatar universe – outfits, traditions, implied ethnicities, philosophies, etc – are an American production team’s homage to “Avatar’s” aesthetic roots. Claiming that it is “racist” because it is an American “whitewashed” anime version implies that anime is exclusive to Japanese animators while in reality, art styles are not bound solely by race or ethnicity. If this were the case, modern graffiti would have stayed where it was originally born – the ancient Greek city Ephesus (or modern-day Turkey).
Anime is a style, and while it is prolific in Japan the stylization is not exclusive to Japanese animators. “Avatar” was animated in this style and vein primarily due to the series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko drawing heavily from Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro,” (1988) “Spirited Away” (2002) and “Princess Mononoke” (1997), Shinichirō Watanabe’s “Cowboy Bebop” and “Samurai Champloo” (2004), and Gainax’s “FLCL” (2000), as well as other studios like Production I.G. (“Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”) and Studio 4ºC (“Transformers Animated”).
What matters most in the debate of “racist or not?” is the narrative function and presentation, not the animation or drawing style itself. For instance, Belgian artist Georges Rémi’s series “The Adventures of Tintin,” while drawn in a graphic friendly style, is arguably racist by modern standards because of how non-European/Caucasian ethnicities were presented in narration: their narrative function was generally secondary, arguably even caricatured and ignorant.
Stories are a crucial component of society. Fictions indirectly and nonfictions directly reflect various shades and hues of social and technical constructions at any given time. They are told through various media of choice – writing, photography, film, music, sculptures, poetry, animation – and though each medium offers its unique narrative characteristics of strengths and shortcomings it is essential to focus on the core components of a narrative and what it entails – directly or indirectly so.
By focusing on style over substance, you invariably lose focus and detract away from the bigger issues at hand whether it be racism, sexism, politics or religion. So while narration and its implications employs a style in a medium, style is not bound to reciprocate this back.
Anime is a style. It has never been a narrative genre, and it never will be.