Anime needs a new name
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I know the words, it's merely that, to the everyday person who has never watched any anime before, and is prone to the pre judgements that are so often part of social occasions: anime, cartoon, japanimation - all of these are words which would be thoroughly out of place at, say, a party.Glademaster said:
But again, I reaffirm the fact that this is just a light hearted 'think of something' thread, not something to be examined in too much detail.
It really does make me think of porn. I can't take somebody seriously if they say they watch anime. But I can't really think of a suitable substitute. Asian cartoon girls...? Doesn't quite have the same ring.
Almost, it actually means "Strange desires" though it was adopted as a slang term for perverted in japan, later as you said used by forieners to mean Japanese animated porn.RollForInitiative said:
Well I do see where you are going with the thread but that is a problem with misinformation, lack of information or ignorance on the general populace's part. Obviously not everyone is stupid but everyone has a few topics when they think they know what they are talking about but are usually misinformed because one opinion is shouted out louder than others. This is just one of those things.Niagro said:
I have had discussion about Anime at parties but that just might be the ones I go to.
Well I do see where you are going with the thread but that is a problem with misinformation, lack of information or ignorance on the general populace's part. Obviously not everyone is stupid but everyone has a few topics when they think they know what they are talking about but are usually misinformed because one opinion is shouted out louder than others. This is just one of those things.Glademaster said:
I have had discussion about Anime at parties but that just might be the ones I go to.[/quote]
At least someone can see what I mean, this is merely attempting to think of a way of reselling the anime medium to the general populace.
Except not really that won's actually happen, but you can still come up with names anyway =)
Maybe Platinum cartoons?Niagro said:
A reference to rape/porn games in Japan being called this in an Escapist article
I love how topics like this brings out all the smug, self satisfied and thinking-they-are-intelligent-yet-all-they-can-do-is-structure-a-sentence-properly arse scrapes that dwell in forums.
Call it Japanimation, call it Mangaroid, call it blarglesnarfwoopwoop, it's still cool!
Call it Japanimation, call it Mangaroid, call it blarglesnarfwoopwoop, it's still cool!
Well we need some social interaction. Also watch insults new rules are quite strict on such things just to let you know.AntonyD said:
japanimationTheYellowCellPhone said:
also to me anime doent remind me of any sort of porn. so i cant see the general public thing that either. maybe the epeople from the general public that you got this statistic from are using the word anime to get to tenticle porn sites?
I don't think most people relate anime to tentacle rape. Most people wouldn't know what anime is, even less know that animated tentacle rape porn exists. The people who know either of those terms don't tend to associate the two in my experience. The image problem with anime is the opposite; it's only widely-known from children's shows. Its connotations are juvenile rather than vulgar.
What really needs a new name is comic books. No wait, I mean graphic novels! Suuuure, whatever you say. Graphic novels. That sounds much less like a feeble rebranding effort for a medium desperate to be taken seriously. It's a shame because it's not worth talking to most people about, say, Maus or Persepolis. A fellow who brings up a comic book over dinner is then tied into defending the medium, and takes on all the comic-book-reader connotations. I always think a book like Persepolis ought to be read in school.
Getting a little off topic there. It's broadly related though, so I'll leave it in.
What really needs a new name is comic books. No wait, I mean graphic novels! Suuuure, whatever you say. Graphic novels. That sounds much less like a feeble rebranding effort for a medium desperate to be taken seriously. It's a shame because it's not worth talking to most people about, say, Maus or Persepolis. A fellow who brings up a comic book over dinner is then tied into defending the medium, and takes on all the comic-book-reader connotations. I always think a book like Persepolis ought to be read in school.
Getting a little off topic there. It's broadly related though, so I'll leave it in.
To play devil's advocate, the term "cartoon" has connotative meanings that, even if the proper definition works, would render it a problematic name for anime.Souplex said:
To elaborate, whenever you think the word "cartoon," you most likely think of Bugs Bunny, Micky Mouse, Felix the Cat, and other mascots of old-school animated shorts. You may also think of things like Spongebob. Basically, the term implies animated shorts of zany characters doing zany things (kid-friendly or no; several Adult Swim series would fit the connotative meaning). Even though "cartoon" may simply mean animated (though I'll address that in a bit), by calling anime cartoons, you're lumping things like Gundam, Darker than Black, Baccano, and other things like that with things like Loony Toons, whether you mean to or not (not that I have anything against Loony Toons, but you can see the problem, no?). Basically, even if cartoons and anime are the same by proper definition, steps must be taken to avoid connotative issues (extrapolating, of course, you'd need to do the same thing with a good bit of western and (former) Soviet Bloc animation).
On a side-note, "cartoon" originally referred to newspaper comics in the early 20th century, becoming adapted to also refer to animations of the time due to their stylistic resemblance to said newspaper comics. Its referring to animation in general is a bit of an artifact.
Anime or animation as I like to think it means, is a perfect name. I've never heard of tentacle porn(Bravo Girls >:|) Until I heard three people complaining about it...online. If someone thinks Anime is childish, then they don't really talk about it. So in short-Anime is a perfect name for it and it doesn't need to be changed.
The name is fine. What anime needs is a long enough break to come up with a mess of new ideas. Many of which will undoubtedly come from the West. Which brings up the other thing it needs: Fewer fanbois wrongly insisting that anime is soooo original and the West is "always stealing" from it. Uh, no. The Japanese are gigantic borrowers. I love them, but neighbors who borrow your lawnmower, paint it pink and put kitties on it and never return it, they most certainly are.
I love anime to death, and before you question that, you can imagine one-year-old Bruunwald sitting in front of a grainy TV in 1971, watching Speed Racer like it was a Christmas gospel, and proceed from there, through Gatchaman, Star Blazers, up through Akira, through a decade of great one-offs like Cyber City, Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, on to marriage to a woman who loves Fushigi Yugi, Love Hina and Boys over Flowers, and finally onto later series like Bleach, Trinity Blood, Claymore and Tsubasa. I even have always liked Sailor Moon and we own VHS of all the original Japanese broadcasts.
But really, at this point, after 40 years of anime, there are two important things I have learned.
One is that the little girl helping the heroes on their quest is actually the missing empress they are trying to find, that the hero who shouldn't overuse her power is going to become a monster by doing so but will be saved by the love of the person she tried to send away, that the two main characters who fight constantly are actually in love, that the girl the guy likes is going to punch him a lot, that two characters meant to hook up are never going to during the series run, that everybody knew each other in a previous life (or as children), that most situations can be resolved by the timely third act arrival of the title character, and that there is some hidden power deep within any hero that is going to rise up after he should have been defeated.
The other thing is that Western kids, especially Americans, possess such self loathing, and are so under-educated regarding their own folklore and myth, that they are unable to recognize endless incarnations of Western influence in modern Japanese storytelling, and will buy eagerly into any argument that our side of the world borrows solely from that side of the world without so much as a spellcheck. A wrongheadedness that is the greatest source of my frustration with, and gigantic dislike of Fanbois.
Seriously. Search Wikipedia. Do a little homework. Japan is the source of many interesting ideas. So is China. So is India. So is Africa. So are Germany, France, England, Ireland, the Slavic nations, Native American lore, South America and shock of all shocks - Greece (whod've thought?). Anime borrows from all of them, quite liberally (not to mention a too-heavy reliance on hackmasters like George Lucas), so please let us not continue on with the myth of the Collective Japanese Genius from Which All Things Borrow.
Instead of renaming anime, let's just educate its fan base.
I love anime to death, and before you question that, you can imagine one-year-old Bruunwald sitting in front of a grainy TV in 1971, watching Speed Racer like it was a Christmas gospel, and proceed from there, through Gatchaman, Star Blazers, up through Akira, through a decade of great one-offs like Cyber City, Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, on to marriage to a woman who loves Fushigi Yugi, Love Hina and Boys over Flowers, and finally onto later series like Bleach, Trinity Blood, Claymore and Tsubasa. I even have always liked Sailor Moon and we own VHS of all the original Japanese broadcasts.
But really, at this point, after 40 years of anime, there are two important things I have learned.
One is that the little girl helping the heroes on their quest is actually the missing empress they are trying to find, that the hero who shouldn't overuse her power is going to become a monster by doing so but will be saved by the love of the person she tried to send away, that the two main characters who fight constantly are actually in love, that the girl the guy likes is going to punch him a lot, that two characters meant to hook up are never going to during the series run, that everybody knew each other in a previous life (or as children), that most situations can be resolved by the timely third act arrival of the title character, and that there is some hidden power deep within any hero that is going to rise up after he should have been defeated.
The other thing is that Western kids, especially Americans, possess such self loathing, and are so under-educated regarding their own folklore and myth, that they are unable to recognize endless incarnations of Western influence in modern Japanese storytelling, and will buy eagerly into any argument that our side of the world borrows solely from that side of the world without so much as a spellcheck. A wrongheadedness that is the greatest source of my frustration with, and gigantic dislike of Fanbois.
Seriously. Search Wikipedia. Do a little homework. Japan is the source of many interesting ideas. So is China. So is India. So is Africa. So are Germany, France, England, Ireland, the Slavic nations, Native American lore, South America and shock of all shocks - Greece (whod've thought?). Anime borrows from all of them, quite liberally (not to mention a too-heavy reliance on hackmasters like George Lucas), so please let us not continue on with the myth of the Collective Japanese Genius from Which All Things Borrow.
Instead of renaming anime, let's just educate its fan base.
There tones of anime that could qualify as cartoons simply because of the nature of the show, but even in the Western world, there are animated pieces that lack several qualities cartoons have. American Pop, Song of Fire and Ice, at least one French film that was Rotoscoped: all of those take a turn for the serious for most of their content.
There, my nit picking has been done.
There, my nit picking has been done.