Anime, Animation, and Modern Media

Elliot, also known online as Thoskowski may or may not be a trust-fund baby, may or may not be a successful crypto investor, may or may not be living in his mother’s basement. Elliot was a gifted child (validated by Stanford-Binet), and he was always aware of it. We can speculate that at some point he was a passionate left-wing liberal arts student, or, at the very least, that he went through an intense phase. He was probably one of the best students of his class. If you spend enough time in the anonymous parts of the internet, at some point you will come across an Elliot.

Every day for the past four years, Elliot has been watching animation, films, or reading books. Right now his primary concern is animation. His is an encyclopedic approach. He watches six hours of anime every day, and publishes an intelligent review on myanimelist every Friday. He engages with people for however long they are able to maintain a conversation with him for. People in the myanimelist community tend to not be able to hold a meaningful conversation with him for very long.

It’s hard to find people to talk about animation with. You first need to find someone who you get along with. This is hard. For them to additionally share a niche, somewhat taboo interest with you is to expect too much. I talk to Elliot about animation.

Note that up until now I have been using the word animation rather than ‘anime.’ This is both a social and mental defense mechanism. To express interest in ‘anime’ is to invite certain associations. The associations are almost unequivocally undesirable. Though its status has recently improved, in certain social circles, to express interest in anime is social suicide. Dave Chappelle gives good insight into the phenomenon:

We have bombed the masculinity out of an entire continent. We dropped two atomic bombs on fucking Japan, and they’ve been drawing Hello Kitty and shit ever since.

Anime—-more particularly, certain sub-genres within anime, are escapist. They allow its viewers to live vicariously in alternate universes. In these universes, it is taken into account that they, the viewers, who are living through the MCs, are the protagonists. Everything works out. Even the things that ‘do not work out’ work out. These are self-contained and perfect universes of meaning.

Anime, along with other mediums in Japan, were deeply impacted by Japan’s defeat in World War II. Over night, Japan went from a fascist, militaristic nation with ambitions of an Asian sphere of influence, to a defeated nation. There is a story of a Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, who hid in the Philippines jungle for 30 years after the war. When leaflets announcing Japan’s surrender were found, he deemed it propaganda. Tens of years later when letters from his family urging him to surrender with pictures attached were airdropped, he again deemed it an Allied subterfuge. He returned to Japan in 1974 to a hero’s welcome after surrendering and being pardoned by the president of the Philippines, Marcos Ferdinand. He refused a large sum of money by the government. He left for Brazil in 1975 after expressing unhappiness at the deterioration of traditional Japanese values. This is the origin of anime: it is emasculation, and shame, and defeat.

Today, anime continues to grow in popularity. In a recent survey (keep in mind that this is a small sample size of 4,275 participants), 3% of boomers reported watching anime weekly, as opposed 42% of Gen Z. Only 25% of Gen Z reported to watch the NFL weekly.

There was a recently released anime called Dandadan which was heralded as the next Chainsaw Man. I am very, very big fan of Chainsaw Man and think that its author, Tatsuki Fujimoto, is a generational talent. Needless to say, I had very high expectations. What I was met with, unfortunately, was poorly disguised escapism. Not animation, but anime. I read some of the reviews for the show. Near the top was:

Very refreshing anime, all the negantiveness ive seen is from people who in a casual conversation would say “you dont know my traumas or triggers”. And you shouldnt listen to what anyone has to say, just give it a few episodes, i was hooked from the 1st, ive wauw’ed, laughed and cried (eps 7 broke me, i cant even… i stared at the wall for 5-10 min after it ended)

Overall, watch it, do it now…. Why are you still reading this, just do it Reviewer’s Rating: 10

Perhaps this is my generation’s version of Family Feud, of the soap operas that you find on in mom-and-pop, immigrant run barber shops. These are just the different forms that ‘circus’ in ‘circus and bread’ have taken over the generations. Shakepeare’s plays were entertainment. Books were entertainment. There were penny dreadfuls. The difference between these mediums and new, modern mediums is that, in the past, mediums catered to those with substantial means before catering to the general population. They had to appeal to the higher class in order to find patronage, and so, in the need to hold their attention, historically rooted dialecticals had to be present in these works. In the modern era, due to commercial imperatives, the general population comes first. All classes are, for the most part, on an even playing field. The elite are just a niche, negligible minority. They offer a poor ROI. Things that tend to best hold the attention of the masses as well as be easily producible include: memes, scandal, sex, and comedy. Content that allows us to be reactive rather than proactive have better margins.

One can’t help but wonder what is going to come of this. How will children, how will their children’s children engage with media given increasingly predatory algorithms, given content further and further optimized for holding our shorter and shorter attention spans?

Anime itself has not changed. Shows like Dandadan and Jujustu Kaisen are the Narutos of today. What has changed is the audience. Yes, part of it is just increased awareness of anime. But also, the reason for this growth in popularity is that what anime offers—-escape—-is beginning to appeal to more and more people. One thinks of the growing popularity of AI girlfriends, of teenagers being driven to suicide by these products, and one can’t help to assume a sinister overlap of this demographic with the anime watching demographic, which, as we saw above, is experiencing rapid growth. Damage to the collective psyche is one of the tradeoffs of capitalism and progress. This is one of the strange sights in our transition to transhumanism: the escape of the weak into a web of online attractions, of varied, alternative systems of meaning.

There is an important distinction to be made within ostensibly “escapist” media. Escapism in anime is realized a dishonest reflection of reality. For example, a commonly followed pattern, such as is present in Dandadan, is that of a power fantasy: a social outcast, usually a loser with no romantic interests, magically stumbles upon power that catapults him to the top of the social hierarchy. His actions, thoughts, and emotions come to hold importance. He develops romantic interests. In short, all his feelings of inadequacy are made to disappear. Others, which are also categorized as escapist by virtue of having fantastical plots, but which are in truth not escapist, contain truthful reflections of reality. It is abstraction—-“escapism” for the sake of a more faithful depiction of reality. Feelings of inadequacy, amongst other problems, are not run from, but explored. As examples, within animation, one thinks here of Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg and Ghost in The Shell. In the former, the idea that rebirth can only be found in complete destruction is explored through a plot that follows a young, frail girl in a post apocalyptic world who holds onto an egg, a symbol for warmth and survival. In the latter, what it means to be human, and, more largely, the meaning of sentience is explored through a future version of our world where artificial intelligence and transhumanism are further developed.

I think that, like porn, you know anime when you see it. For anime, like for porn, there is not a clear definition of what constitutes anime. Anime is gratuitous and dishonestly represents reality, but these are both subjective criteria. Another analogue for anime and animation is the distinction between ’literature’ and ‘books.’ Since anime and animation are recent phenomenons, the distinction between the two has not yet been made clear within the public consciousness. And so productions such as Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze, and Ghibli films, while fitting the same description as anime of being made by the similar techniques and being produced in Japan, are incorrectly thought in the same vein as Dandadan, Naruto, and One Piece. This is the equivalent of failing to distinguish that John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson are very things with very different purposes.

And so, with new forms of media, as we see with anime, philosophical and artistic undercurrents become less visible. Classic western philosophical threads can be found at the forefront of animation. In fact, animation shows itself as a potent medium for the exploration of these ideas, given its marriage of plastic arts, cinema, and literature (As a sidenote Ukiyo-e woodblock prints are the clear predecessors of anime and animation). Still, since, for anime, metaphorically speaking, Percy Jackson came before Paradise Lost, in the public consciousness, animation is thought of as being distinct and unworthy of these conversations, and so the exploration of these topics through the medium is hindered. To a lot of people, to say that you watch anime, or animation, is still akin to saying that you are a Percy Jackson fanatic. Fanatic, because in the anime community, morbid obsession is not uncommon. People often form their identities around anime. I’m sure most have a memory of a dubious classmate running with their arms behind their back, like a Naruto character.

The difficulty of building public awareness of animation within anime is a uniquely modern problem. The medium developed bottom up, not top down. For this reason, when I want to talk about animation I have to talk to Thoskowski, who may or may not be a trust-fund baby, may or may not be a successful crypto investor, and may or may not be living in his parent’s basement.

A sword driven through throat, to body. He was effaced. And there he stood, post-mortem.

Space assumed its expected physical dimensions. The distortion and compression came to a close, temporarily.

Ciao signore, said the child. Buon lavoro. Ora lo so.