A new series from Shinichiro Watanabe could help bring Japan's animated
TV shows, often dismissed as low-brow or kiddie entertainment, some
well-deserved critical consideration.
from The Atlantic, 3 January 2014
When Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement from feature films last
September, countless media outlets and fans around the world mourned the
loss of a beloved filmmaker—Japan’s most famous since Akira
Kurosawa—whose movies had brought gravitas to the country’s animation
industry, long a niche interest in the West. Thanks to thought-provoking
films like
Akira,
Ghost in the Shell, and of course,
Miyazaki’s work, American interest in Japanese animation had exploded
over the last three decades and made a huge cultural impact.
Critical focus, however, has stayed largely on feature films, while
anime—referring specifically to Japanese animated television series—has
not earned the same kind of respect. An animator like Daisuke Nishio,
for example, who directed the hit
Dragon Ball and
Dragon Ball Z series, is not considered an artist like Miyazaki, whose drawings have been displayed in museums in Paris.
 |
| image: Cartoon Network |
But while anime has always struggled to be taken seriously as an art
form, one director might be able to make critics reconsider: Shinichiro
Watanabe, director of
Cowboy Bebop, whose new series
Space Dandy is debuting on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on January 4.
Japanese filmmakers first began experimenting with animation in the
early 1900s, not long after animators in the West like Winsor McCay (
Little Nemo in Slumberland),
but it was not until the 1960s that the industry began to take shape
under Osamu Tezuka, the artist whose large-eyed aesthetic is most
associated with anime to this day. In 1963, Tezuka's
Astro Boy
was the country’s first popular televised animated series and was such a
hit that it was the first anime broadcast overseas. Demand grew over
the years and spread around the world, but despite its by-the-numbers
popularity, anime remained a largely subcultural taste, not helped by
the social outcast
otaku image that persists, even in Japan. In
general, animation is still widely considered children's entertainment,
which has been difficult to overcome, and anime has added cultural
boundaries to conquer.
Read more
+half+sheet.jpg)
