Weeks 5 & 6, Anime

According to Lent (2000), what place does animation occupy in Asian societies? How different is this across Asia (ie comparing China and Japan)? 

I believe that animation is a notable art these days. Especially in Japan, animation is awash with the great writers and stories. That is why Japan has a strong and powerful animation culture.

There are some reasons the Japanese animation has a higher class and quality than the Korean animation.

 1. Manga and animation are the chief exports in Japan. Everyone knows that animation in Japan has one of the largest markets in the world. With a huge animation market, there is an increase in he demand of the animation. The number of writers as providers are gradually growing. By increasing number of the writers, probably, diverse stories are written by them. Therefore, audiences are showing such interest in some different topics and creative stories.  They are trying to seek more creativity and initiative thoughts, even new fields from the animation. Therefore, the power of animation in Japan is getting stronger.

 2. Korea has a constrained animation market. People can see the difference animation market between Korea and Japan clearly. The Korean animation market can be described as a darkness, because everyone downloads and copies the animation from the internet illegally in Korea. They also have a prejudice which is comics and animation are for the children. That is why the scale of Korean animation was reduced. It can be impossible to make diverse genres as well.

What is the ‘shojo’ and how does it often function in anime?

Shojo is a female hero character from a Japanese anime. It also can be a type of anime. According to Cavallaro(2006), the target audiences of Shojo are generally for teens specially girls. Highlighting female characters in the story, it may bring a considerable change , and positive and assertive view on women not only in diverse media but also real life (Napier, 2005). In the anime, the Princess Mononoke for example, the character made by Hayao Miyazki, who is well known for a feminist writer, there are three powerful figures, San as a princess of wolf gods, Lady Eboshi with the women  in irontown and Moro, which are the female characters from Shojo. Eboshi is showing, as a leader of irontown, with massive power, her status is much greater than the male’s. She is also ambitious, has a huge dream to dominate the mountain and she killed  all the forest spirit. Moro, as a god of the wolves, is literally a mother of San. Especially, the audiences hate lady Elboshi, because, she is a military industrial who can destroy nature. In other hand, she is showing, good personality to humans: protecting women and providing works such as making weapons. Therefore, she improves the status of women.

References.

Cavallaro, D. (2006). Introduction:In The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki (pp.5-13). London: McFarland & Company.

Napier, S. (2005). Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.