Animation

One interesting fact that I discovered a few days ago is that in Japan, anime films now account for 60% of Japan’s entire film production. I find it really interesting that animation reached such popularity in Japan, such that the medium is now so big that it has become one of the main forms of entertainment. This is in direct contrast to American cartoons, which are still viewed only as a form of entertainment for children, and there are very few animators and cartoonists who work to cater to a more mature audience. Despite the fact that there have been gritty American comic books geared toward older readers for a long time now, western animation just cannot seem to shake the label of children’s cartoons. Even CGI movies from Pixar and Dreamworks Studios, the most popular form of mainstream animation, while having elements that can appeal to adults (The Incredibles, Up), are still mainly seen as entertainment for children and marketed that way as well, with vibrant colors and a relatively “straightforwardly happy” plot (I don’t mean cliché, but there are very few, if any, examples of tragedy or horror in western animation, for instance). Although Japanese animation was inspired by early Disney movies and western children’s cartoons, it somehow developed into a more diverse storytelling medium that is used alongside more traditional live action movies. I think since animation was a newer medium in terms of development in Japan, more people were willing to experiment, whereas in the West, the tradition of children’s cartoons had become so normal that animators don’t often even consider the idea of trying to use the medium. I think it’d be interesting, although I’m not sure how plausible it is in our society, if western animation began to broaden its range of genres as a result of Japanese animation, which was in turn initially inspired by western filmmakers in France, Germany, US and Russia.