Anime the Narrative Jump.

For my auto autoethnographic summery I will be discussing the changes that involve re-entering the anime world after first being exposed to it as a child. I started watching anime from a young age (see: Pokemon, Dragonball Z, Yugi-Oh!) and as most do I grew out of it, but as some do I rekindled my interest, and for me this happened in my senior years of high school.  This wouldn’t of happened if I was coming back to the exact same product as the one I watched as  a kid, I mean I have grown as a person and developed new more mature tastes. Sure, I have watched the odd Angry Beavers episode or binge watched Ren and Stimpy late at night when I can’t sleep, but my return to anime was different, it was serious it wasn’t a fling.  Unlike watching old Nickelodeon cartoons this wasn’t nostalgia I was finding fresh new content I hadn’t seen before and becoming invested in it. This is because the level of maturity and reach in anime is drastically long, the same genre that appealed to me as a child  could appeal to me as an adult but in a completely different way. When watching early morning programs like Voltron, and Dragon Ball Z I sensed something was different from the western cartoons that they were mixed with. Each episode contributed to a longer narrative and when something changed it committed to that change. The straight-lined art form separated itself from its softer more rounder counterparts in more ways than just visual style. Marc Steinberg (2006) describes anime as a cell based animation that is character centric and has a strong tendency towards the development of complex human relationships, stories and worlds. This is evident in almost any form of anime, but I realised to varying degrees once I started watching anime again in my later years of high school. I found a whole new level of narrative in shows like Bleach, Naruto, Trigun, Evangelion, and Attack on Titan. These shows completely re-shaped my perception of anime from the one I had as a child and is what I call the ‘Narrative Jump’, which shows the giant leap forward in complexity and depth between certain anime’s.

Anime is a unique art in how flexible and vague the genre is. It has developed considerably since the first known Japanese animation in 1907 a 50 frame work drawn directly on a strip of celluloid that depicts a young boy removing his hat and saluting the camera. It first became part of mainstream culture in 1963 with Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. This was the first time that anime was made producible on TV by creating a style that utilised a lower cel count, and created a ‘moving magna’ style. While Astro Boy (1963) had a lot of westernised influence that was noticeable in the show it started the growth of anime which eventually took on its own unique image and culture, such as the creation of Mecha.

The 1970’s proved an important era for anime, and the formation of the ‘Narrative Jump’. Because while anime was enduring an unspoken ban in America due to the “Otaku Killer” and the actions of the Action for Children’s Television (ACT) group (Chambers, 2012) anime in Japan underwent an important stage of development. This is described by Chambers, 2012 ” The protagonists in anime often had vices, thus making them human (Gorica, 2007). Content that contained androgyny, adult language, and pornography was seen as permissible for adult entertainment, though not necessarily in children’s films (Newitz, 1995). Even death was considered to be an appropriate topic in children’s anime. The Japanese acknowledged that death was a part of life by occasionally allowing characters to die instead of having the characters stay immortally young as in many American television shows.” Basically anime was not just for children anymore, which was basically the creation of the ‘Narrative Jump’ by creating multi dimensional characters with deep and complex narratives, to exist alongside with the more traditional children’s anime. Anime began to re-emerge in America in the 1980’s mostly buoyed by the formation of fan groups made up mostly of people who grew up on shows like Astro Boy, and re-discovered the genre in their adult life, another example of the ‘Narrative Jump’ that I myself experienced.

Back to the present day and my auto-ethnographical experience, and while shows like Evangelion and Gundam (any Mecha anime really), created this experience for a generation of fans, the example I choose to use is the show Bleach. I wasn’t exposed to this program  at all prior to my second stint watching anime, I approached it with a set of fresh eyes, with no nostalgia or bias. The reason why I watched, and enjoyed, and re-watched the show was the compelling, deep, and complex narrative that was weaved over numerous seasons (if you ignore the filler) depicting the one overarching story. Bleach depicts Ichigo Kurosaki, a substitute soul reaper developing as a warrior and a person, as he is involved in a series of events revolving around the antagonist Sosuke Aizen as he wages war on the Soul Society. It is a political plot based heavily on personal relationships and the corruption of power, as well as the motivations for good. Bleach also contains Confucian values which where introduced to Japan in the 6th century and helped create and sustain social values and order in Japan. An example of this is shown by Born (2009) “In this interchange, we see a father and son bonding in a moment of intimacy before the grave of the mother. Both father and son want to live up to her memory. The father encourages the son to live life to the fullest and have no regrets, especially since his wife gave her life for Ichigo without hesitation. The son wants to protect the family the way his mother protected him. There is a sense of Confucian reciprocality in this scene. ” The layers of culture in anime’s such as Bleach creates a compelling narrative and multi-dimensional characters which creates a contrast between less complex pieces of work in the same genre.

One of the main components of anime is that it respects mortality, and this is a way to measure the  maturity level of an anime program. While most western animation shy’s away from death, anime has always seemed to embrace the strength of the plot device. While anime programs on the children’s end of the spectrum would hardly/never use it, it becomes more frequent and permanent the further down the spectrum. In the middle of the spectrum you have shows such as One Piece and Dragon Ball Z which frequently use death as a plot device but treat death as something that is reversible. You also have bleach which embraces death as the basis of the story as it is set mostly in the after life, and finally a show like Attack on Titan which is built on death and loss. As a child anime was one of my first real exposures to the idea of loss and death (beside the Lion King) as I still remember the morning that Butterfree left Ash Ketchup in Pokemon, and the second episode of Dragonball Z where Son Goku died. These where almost foreign concepts to me, and the instance of death and loss that I had experienced earlier was solely from Disney, who placed it at the beginning of their films before feelings of attachments where made, and you almost knew it was coming. It can be argued, that the use of death and loss is a good measuring stick for ‘Narrative Jump’, as the topic varies in severity throughout the genre allowing for levels of diversity and maturity.

The genre of anime finds itself on a wide spectrum that goes from innocent and naive, to corrupted and filthy, and everything in-between and thats what creates the room for something like a ‘Narrative Jump’. My personal experience with it has been very interesting as I would not consider what I watch now at all kids programming, but the previous anime I watched was. It is almost like black and white flexibility which is a contradicting term, it has such vastly different pieces of work that fall under one umbrella. Anime is continuing to evolve as seen in Attack on Titan, and will continue to grow as it has since the 60’s, and I’m sure we will see yet another attempt at Astro Boy yet again, very soon.

References:

Anime History, Gojapango.com, viewed 20 September 2015, http://www.gojapango.com/culture/historyofanime.

Anime’s Great Deception – The Difference Between Anime and Cartoons, tofu.com, viewed September 20 2015,http://www.tofugu.com/2015/07/01/animes-great-deception-difference-anime-cartoons/.

Born, C 2006, ‘In the Footsteps of the Master: Confucian Values in Anime and Manga’, Teaching About Asia, Vol. 27, No.1, pp. 39-52.

Chambers, S 2012, ‘Anime: From Cult Following to Pop Culture Phenomenon’, The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, Vol.3, No.2, pp.94-101.

Ellis, C & Adams, T & Bochner, A  2011, ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Vol.12, No.1.

Anime 3 ways.

Much like eggs, anime can be consumed multiple ways, and are good to start your day. Anime, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and some juice and I couldn’t be happier. But I am going on a tangent here, back to my point. Anime is unique because the stories themselves can be administered in multiple ways, you can read the magna, yu can watch the anime, or you can talk an alternative approach which I do, AMV’s. For those that don’t know what AMV’s are they are ‘Animated Music Videos’  which has been adopted quite well by fans of Anime.

Now here is example using the battle between Ichigo and Grimjow From Bleach.

Now, I don’t use AMV’s for most of my first experiences with a storyline, although sometimes I do read the pollen, then just watch the AMV’s of the central battles, which I find an enjoyable method and very time efficient. But the main value in AMV’s is going back an reliving key stories/battles in a new and time efficient way. Since every video is different it allows me to watch the same story from several different perspectives which keeps it fresh, and lets me almost re live the story once again. This is an example of the different ways anime can be consumed and another unique wrinkle that makes anime special.

Anime a Growing Narrative.

Since I began watching Anime again in my late teens, I began watching different shows to the one’s I grew up on for a variety of reasons, wether it was because they were new, or at a more suitable maturity level.

These included Deathnote, One Piece (Uncut Dub), Full Metal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and most importantly Bleach. Obviously all these shows have their own divorces and unique characteristics that differeniate themselves from each other that what makes them pieces of art (Yes, anime is art although I doubt I have explain this to anyone who is reading a digital Asia blog). Bleach will be my main example though as it stands out to me as probably my favourite anime since my emergence into the genre. Now comparing this to my favourite anime pre-break which was Dragonball Z on the surface they seem to be very similar shows, but they are not.

While both rely on both psychical and emotional conflict to drive their narratives, as well as using supernatural settings, and strong moral cores (namely friendship) the way these things are delivered as a narrative are vastly different. Bleach is a very complex saga that, when you take out the use of fillers tells the one epic tale for a majority of the show. This differs greatly from the episodic format, of more child based anime such as Pokemon. You may argue that shows like Dragon Ball Z does this and they do to an extent, they use the over arching storyline module to deliver the narrative, but its very shallow and basic story telling I.E bad guy is bad, bad guy destroy world/universe. Dragon Ball Z also tells several major stories. Where Bleach really just tells the one and it a political drama with moral gray area’s and with twists and drama associated around the relationships of the characters. This depth of story telling is what differentiates it from the early morning anime’s of the Cheese TV era, and why Anime is adaptable to age.

The Anime Gap.

I Think with a lot of people there relationship with Anime follows a bit of familiar pattern, you watch it as a kid Pokemon, Dragonball Z, and One Piece were all regular viewing before you went to school. Then you grow out of it a little explore your options, then a true Anime comes back to the holy craft sometime in their teenage years. My next series of blog posts will be about the experience and changes of that second stage of Anime fandom which will lead to my digital artefact which is exploring those initial days of anime with the very black and white moral compass of those week day anime’s on Cheese TV.

But I am going to go backwards and talk about my experience of re-emerging myself in anime, and the differences this time around. It can be argued Anime is unique because of of the broadness of the term, and the diversity within the genre the narratives presented. It has gone from a basic black and white moral compass used in shows such as Pokemon, to the layered complex drama of Bleach. My main example moving forward will be Bleach as I only started watching it after my re-entry into anime.

This blog opens the next chapter of my auto-ethnographical experience, and starts my deep foray into studying anime which involves my group project on reverse dubbing, and my final project on the early influence of anime on myself as a child.

Goijra, Context is Everything.

My auto-enthographical experience in watching Gojira (read in your mind GODZILLA!) was much more immersive than I had originally expected. The more I looked into the film the more I started to realise the greater meaning of the character, context is everything. The best example of this that I could find is by Brian Merchant of Motherboard.com

“It’s an unflinchingly bleak, deceptively powerful film about coping with and taking responsibility for incomprehensible, manmade tragedy. Specifically, nuclear tragedies. As such, Godzilla isn’t just the best monster flick I’ve ever seen. It’s arguably the best window into post-war attitudes towards nuclear power we’ve got—as seen from the perspective of its greatest victims.” You can read the full article here.

The point is made that it’s a symbol of nuclear disaster by the victims themselves, so automatically my experience is going to be different from the intended audience, once again context is everything. Not to say that I don’t get my own form of symbolism out of it. As I have said in a previous blog post when I think of destruction the first image in my mind is the morning that I woke up as a child and instead of the morning cartoons I found out about 9/11 and what terrorism was. This moment was a realisation to myself that these type of things are real and not just in the movies, that is probably the closest I can come to understanding the context of nuclear war.

The more I examined the underlying message of Gojira and re watched parts of the film, I realised how truly sombre and driven home the point was. Fact is, the seriousness of the message was covered up in part by the outdated acting, and cinematic techniques which was a little disorienting as I was trying to follow the film. This helped it lose a bit of its context but I still see it as a powerful warning to the damage man can create.

This might be why the American attempts to create Goijra have never quite reached the Summit of the Original. Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956) was a recut version of Goijra (1954) with a new subplot featuring an American reporter, the drastic re de-design of Godzilla (1998), and maybe the closest attempt to the original Godzilla (2014), none of these held the same underlying power as Goijra. They weren’t the sobering warning that Goijra was. I always felt something was missing from these films, as I had seen all of them before I saw Goijra. I never understood what was missing until now; context. Goijra was designed by people who knew all to well the reality of destruction, it was made for people who understood it. The message had become diluted by re-makes and re-cuts, but I think the original film is still an appropriate message more than ever considering the times we live in. When I think about the 60 year old message Goijra is trying to send  it is a little disheartening, that the message still needs to be sent and may even be more relevant than ever. Goijra might always be culturally relevant if we don’t learn our lesson about destruction.

The 1954 version of Godzilla is the most important and iconic but William M. Tsutsui described the evolution of the character for foreignaffairs.com

“The Godzilla of the inaugural 1954 feature Gojira was dark and vengeful. Born of American nuclear testing in the South Pacific, the monster was a visceral reminder of the horrors of war for a nation less than a decade removed from Hiroshima and unconditional surrender aboard the USS Missouri. By the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of the series, as memories of the war faded and Japan prospered economically, Godzilla was transformed. In that more confident and optimistic time, he was recast from an avenging radioactive threat into a defender and champion of Japan. ”  You can read the full article here.

Based on this the character of Godzilla is almost a reflection of the current state of Japan, and that is no more prevalent than in the original Goijra, but coming my perspective a western perspective, how am I meant to see it? I can tell that Goijra is much more soulful movie than I expected or some people can see, because the imagery of Goijra contains pain and sorrow, but this pain and sorrow is from a first person perspective of a recent tragedy. But what does that mean for western audiences in 2015? It was Winston Churchill who said “If you don’t learn from history you are bound to repeat it.” So I think Goijra has much more value to us than we realise it’s a warning to the western world just how much destruction we can cause. The fact that we have missed this message for a long time is evident in the soullessness of Godzilla (1998). The destruction that Godzilla represented was not caused by the Japanese the Japanese was the victims Godzilla represented the Americans, and that is something that I did not realize until I reflected deeper on the film. While I first thought I could not relate to the movie because the context was directed towards A culture I couldn’t understand, and a tragedy I was not around to experience. I realise now that the movie could also be seen a message to America, to show the destruction that they can cause, and a warning against bombs Nuclear or Hydrogen. Once again context is everything, because now when I reflect on the film from that perspective I see it in a different light, a darker message but the choices of man to hurt another.

While I can find ways to relate to the message in Goijra probably the people that could relate the most to the message is the people in the middle east. I got this thought after reading an article by Vivek Suvana for thefocuspull.com,

““Gojira” (1954) in fact deals with some intense socio-political conversation under the mask of a creature feature. The early 50’s were a tumultuous time for Japan and its people. The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn’t yet worn off, and the post-war occupation of Japan by the United States was anything but comfortable.” You can read the full article here.

Living in a developed nation and a democracy that is bubbling along at decent rate even under a coalition government, I can’t relate to that aspect of symbolism. In a sense Godzilla can be seen as a symbol of oppression doing more harm than good, and while the Abbott government have taken some backwards steps I would hardly compare them to the King of Monsters, they are Mothra at best. But I can see Goijra in the context of how damaging western cultures can be when trying to rebuild other countries and cultures. It is a still a contemporary issue America, and tagging along Australia involving themselves in international issues that don’t directly involve them for better or worse. Goijra helped me understand the situation from a different perspective. Most of the substance of the movie came to me in reflection rather than watching it, but the style of the film made it very digestible and memorable more so than modern films which is a testament to its cinematic style.

But, I think the beauty of Goijra is its context is interchangeable it can represent many different man made disasters. I think for me Godzilla most represents climate change, a natural force of destruction that was caused by human ignorance. I got this thought while reading an article by Vic Delon for the artifice.com,

“The original 1954 Black and White, Japanese version of Gojira is much, much more than just a dude in a cheap rubber dinosaur suit stomping on plastic and wooden models of Tokyo. Gojira is actually one of the most significant and timeless cautionary tales of the Atomic Age. Once again, scientists wander extremely close into the domain of the creator with the comfortable assumption they can do no wrong. Things of course do go wrong and it turns out very ugly.” Read the full article here.

Really, Goijra is like Delon said a cautionary tale, and the context that is broad and adaptable it could mean many things to many different people. What originally was a warning of the consequences of atomic war, now could mean climate change and 15 years ago terrorism. Our own experiences determines the context we see it in. I plan to re watch Goijra with all these new thoughts and as I like to say when I am walking into the movie theatre to see Mission Impossible 5: Rouge Nations, for the third time, you never see the same movie twice. With Goijra I think this is definitely the case after spending 4 weeks analysing it.

References:
Delon, V 2012, ‘Gojira (1954) Review: The Darker Side of Godzilla’, November 12, viewed August 28 2015, http://the-artifice.com/gojira-1954-review-the-darker-side-of-godzilla/

Merchant, B 2013, ‘A Brief History of Godzilla, Our Walking Nuclear Nightmare’, Motherboard, August 23, viewed August 28 2015, http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/godzilla-is-our-never-ending-nuclear-nightmare

Suvana, V 2014, ‘ Goijra: The Japanese Original’, thefocuspull.com, May 12, viewed August 28, 2015,
http://www.thefocuspull.com/features/gojira-japanese-original/

Tsutsui, W 2014 ‘ For Godzilla and Country How a Japanese Monster Became and American Icon’, foreignaffairs.com, May 27, viewed August 28 2015,https:www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-05-27/godzilla-and-country

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Godzilla the Symbol

In this weeks blogpost I wanted to expand a little more on Godzilla, I did some research and the main thing that stuck out to me was that Godzilla was originally a symbol for the nuclear bomb.

This made me stop and think what Godzilla represented to me and destruction was in a contemporary context. When I think of destruction the first thing that comes to mind as a kid was getting up to watch my morning cartoons (ironically anime) and they weren’t on all I saw was  burning buildings, I didn’t fully understand the significance of September 11at the time but the image will always be scared into my memory.

That type of imagery, of complete destruction is what Godzilla is intended to be a living manifestation of disaster. Later on Godzilla took on more of a role of a protagonist but its origin as a symbol for destruction is what created its lasting presence.

The image of Godzilla is as powerful as your personal experience and can represent destruction, pain, and disaster, or it could be a big dinosaur running a muck. It really is in the eye of the beholder.

Reflecting on reflecting on Godzilla

Last week I pondered, I examined, and I discuss Godzilla the original Godzilla, the Godzilla before Mothra.

I have had a week since then to ponder and examine some more, not so much Godzilla but myself and how my conclusions were a reflection of my previous interactions with Asian media.

My earliest interactions came from the anime I crammed in each morning before school, and formed my early perceptions of asian media. I know now that the spectrum is much larger than that but my thoughts on Godzilla were still being folded by those early days.

I saw the differences between Godzilla and more contemporary movies and tried to different if the differences were culture based or a reflection of the movies age. When looking for culture based difference I used anime as a way to find similarities in the story telling style. This shows the influence that those early morning cartoons had, and my continuing interest in the genre.

Drawing on previous experiences is a natural human exercise and I found myself doing that upon my reflection, and I am sure I will again next time I watch Godzilla, although you never watch the same movie twice.

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Godzilla, and Me

Watching the original Godzilla in class was a lot like looking at baby pictures of one of your close friends you hardly recognised them and it was kind of weird and awkward but you knew it was them.

Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed it but there was a sense of awkwardness after watching a movie that has evolved into a legend and then an icon for world cinema. Groundbreaking and revolutionary for its time my senses and tastes are separated by about 65 years worth of a generational gap. So the cinematic style took some getting used to it was a potent cocktail of the era, and of the Japanese culture. I couldn’t help but notice the extra attention to explaining Godzilla and the amount of backstory leading up to Godzilla while also allowing for little character development. The character development was either non existent or extremely fast the opposite to the methodical pace of explaining Godzilla. This made me wonder if this reflected the Japanese style of story telling which from my own experiences (read anime) tends to focus more on psychical conflict than romance (read Bleach, One Piece). The personal stories within the film were one dimensional or cliche, although its hard to call something a cliche from such an early period, thats where my mind went after being condition to modern day story telling.

But, the amazing thing about the movie despite the thing that I said it still worked, it was still an enjoyable film from a mixture of sentiment and nostalgia to the fact it was something different. It was still a well told story despite some things perceived as flaws through my eyes, but which were probably a result of my condition through contemporary media.

Later in the week I found out that the other tutorial class watched Ghost in a Shell, which made me glad to be in the first tutorial group because watching Godzilla offered a unique experience. Even though my own lecturer did not want to watch it twice in one day. To be fair once was probably enough.