ASSIMILATING ANIME:
THE AMERICANIZATION OF JAPANESE CULTURAL PRODUCTS
HEDWIG STRIKKERS 1539949
THESIS
Japanese anime is assimilated into American popular culture, rather than posing a threat to it. Anime only influences American culture on a material level, i.e. the products on the shelves, Hollywood’s cinematography, and the commercial success of prime time children’s TV shows. However, on an ideological level, Japanese popular culture already contains many elements of American culture or is highly Americanized, either by the distributors of Japanese products in the US, or by the individual mainstream consumers.
MA THESIS DR. A.L. GILROY UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN
Contents
Introduction………Page 03
Chapter 1:
American Adaptations of Anime: Translating Ghost in the Shell into The Matrix………...Page 14
Chapter 2:
Global Themes in Japanese Anime: The Universal World of Miyazaki Hayao..………Page 26
Chapter 3:
Material Excess of Anime: Pokémon and the Power of Consumerism…...…………...……….Page 37
Conclusion……….Page 48
Introduction
In 2002, Foreign Policy contributor Douglas McGray published an influential article about the rise of Japanese consumer products on a global scale. “Japan’s Gross National Cool” describes how Japan has become a “cultural superpower,” by the successful dissemination of its cultural products. These products range from sushi to specific types of Japanese ice tea, to manga and anime, and commercial characters such as Hello Kitty and Pikachu. The popularity of Japanese products in the United States rose steadily during the last ten years, raising questions about their potential influence on American identity. Most noticeable is the increase of Japanese pop culture on American television. For decades, America has disseminated its morals through television shows and movies (Allison 69). However, some Japanese anime has managed to become very successful in America, which leads some scholars to the conclusion that Japanese culture has “invaded” the US.
However, in order to establish the impact of Japanese consumer products on the average American, it is important to outline what is being consumed. Sushi has become one of the most popular foods in metropolitan areas, such as New York (Kelts 16). Moreover, in his book
Japanamerica, Roland Kelts discovered that Japanese green tea sold better “in the original
Japanese packaging, complete with Japanese characters unintelligible to Americans,” than in the packaging that was especially designed for the Western market (94). This suggests that
However, these products are not intrinsically Japanese. The most popular sushi in
America is the California Roll, which was created in 1970s Los Angeles, and especially produced for the American market. Furthermore, Hello Kitty, despite being a Japanese design, was
marketed as being “British,” because Europe was very popular in Japan during the 1970s, and the designers felt that being British would make her more successful. It is therefore difficult to claim that Hello Kitty contains specific Japanese cultural traits. As Jackson discovered, “[t]he image of Hello Kitty had become a recognizable brand in America, synonymous not so much with
‘cuteness,’ as it was in Japan, but with ‘innocence,’ a quality conflated with feline independence as popularized by popular music stars…and emulated by adolescent girls who saw it as sexy and desirable” (32). In other words, Hello Kitty is not consumed for its Japaneseness, but rather for something that resembled conservatism and “upper-class consumerism” (Jackson 35).
Despite the popularity of Japanese food and Hello Kitty, it is reasonable to claim that these products in no way infringe on American cultural identity. Most Americans identify Sushi and Hello Kitty with a bourgeois lifestyle, and trendy Americans who can afford to pay extra for well-made products. One Japanese scholar who specializes in this field is Iwabuchi Koichi.1 He argues that “the recent international success of Japanese popular culture…expresses the universal appeal of Japanese cultural products and the disappearance of any perceptible ‘Japaneseness’” (61). Iwabuchi refers to this as mukokuseki or nationalitylessness (61). In other words, most Japanese cultural products are “culturally odorless”; they are branded to suit global tastes.
According to Henry Jenkins, Iwabuchi “draws a distinction between circulation of cultural goods that are essentially ‘odorless,’ bearing few traces of their cultural origins, and those that are embraced for their culturally distinctive ‘fragrance’” (Fans, Bloggers and Gamers 159).
Nevertheless, even though Japanese products do not threaten American identity with their Japaneseness, their abundance does signify a risk for some Americans. A form of Japan-scare was very prominent in the 1980s. After Japan’s defeat in WWII in 1945, the Japanese began to rebuild their nation with great fervor. As a result, in a period of only thirty years it became the second biggest economy in the world, right after the United States. Japan’s rapid growth shocked the Americans, who believed Japan might overtake America on an economic level. Moreover, the Japanese style of doing business was different from American business strategies. According to Douglas McGray “[t]he key to Japan’s economic ascendance was not ideology, at least not by cold war standards; but it was method, it drove the most dynamic economy of the era, and it was indisputably Japanese” (47). Japan was able to compete with America with a method that differed from renowned American capitalism. Many Americans felt that this was a direct blow to
American supremacy. As Kelts observed “there was an ill-informed jealousy and fear at the speed of Japan’s economic growth and its ability not only to compete with U.S. industries, but also possibly to destroy some of them…Slightly more sophisticated was an irritation that Japan was able to succeed with a style of capitalism that was not a direct copy of its American counterpart” (120).
The biggest blow came from the fact that the Japanese were particularly successful in the automobile industry. Cars had been an integral part of American identity. They represented freedom, movement and independence. The American car industry had turned America into an economic superpower and now it seemed that the Japanese were beating Americans on their own turf. As Susan Napier notes “[t]o Americans, cars were more than simple means of
is the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit in 1982. The Chinese Chin was mistaken for being Japanese and murdered by two men who believed their layoff from the Chrysler plant was due to the Japanese competing with the American car industry (Napier 92). However, what Detroit failed to understand was that Americans turned to Japanese cars because of their superior quality. According to Napier “[s]mall Japanese automobiles became popular during the oil crisis of the 1970s because of their fuel efficiency but Americans also discovered that the cars were well made and had fewer problems than domestically produced automobiles” (92). For this reason alone, Americans kept buying Japanese cars.
The American Japan scare came to an end in the 1990s when the Japanese economy collapsed and no longer posed a threat to American economic hegemony. However, at the same time the influence of Japanese cultural products abroad began to grow. It seemed that fifty years after Japan’s atrocities in WWII, the Japanese were confident enough to export products that were no longer culturally odorless. Japanese-style cartoons, or anime, had slowly made it from an underground phenomenon to the American mainstream. Other than Japanese cars, anime
does hold specific Japanese values, because they were made by Japanese artists who have a Japanese audience in mind. Though most anime remains popular only among certain subcultures in the US, some productions have gained a wider audience. Pokémon would be the foremost example, but Hollywood is also increasingly inspired by anime and in 2002 Miyazaki Hayao’s
Spirited Away won the Oscar for best-animated feature. It was the first time the award went to a
Japanese production.
containing nudity and sexuality was genuinely hard to encompass, since both animation and comics have been traditionally seen as children’s entertainment and therefore ‘innocent’” (“From Impressionism to Anime” 133). Moreover anime has some characteristics that seem to clash with Hollywood conventions. First of all, anime makes no clear distinction between good and evil. Generally, “evil” characters do good things too or are evil out of naivety. Likewise, “good” characters tend to make mistakes and are not the stereotypical heroes we know from Hollywood films. Furthermore, anime tends to avoid clear beginnings and clear endings. In addition, they also do not always conclude on a positive note. Moreover, much is left to the interpretation of the viewer, whereas Hollywood has a tendency to spell out the meaning of everything that happens.
For many scholars in the field, the success of anime in the United States signals the breaking down of America’s worldwide cultural dominance. Anime is seen foremost as a form of Japanese soft power. According to McGray, Japan has perfected “the art of transmitting certain kinds of mass culture” (48). As one Japanese diplomat put it, “the Japanese do not find it easy to project their ideas in the form of values. Japan’s ideas are better conveyed by being translated into logical strings of words through the mediation of language” (qtd. in Napier, “The World of Anime” 49). This so called “mediation of language” contributed to the beauty and otherness of anime and at the same time sets anime apart from American popular culture. As a result,
to this day no scholar has been able to argue satisfactorily how Japanese pop culture infringes on American identity in America.
There are two American scholars who are especially interested in the influence of anime on a global scale, and particularly the influence of anime in the US. The first is Susan J. Napier. Napier is often seen as the foremost American scholar on the topic of Japanese culture in general and anime in particular. In her book From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan
Cult in the Mind of the West, she shifts her focus from the characteristics of anime to how anime
is received in the US. In her book, she relies on interviews and questionnaires she conducted with American anime fans. Although she is able to present some interesting insights into how
American anime fans define themselves and how anime influences individual lives, she fails to answer whether anime affects the perception of America in the minds of individual anime fans. Moreover, she barely focuses on the influence and impact of anime and Japanese cultural products on mainstream American society.
The second scholar I would like to mention is Roland Kelts. In his casual, yet influential book JapanAmerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US, he presents some
interesting anecdotes about the anime industry in Japan and the dissemination of Japanese pop culture in the US. He argues that:
Just like Napier, Kelts makes the assumption that anime impacts on American society, yet they both fail to address to what extent and whether it harms American identity as Kelts’ ambitious title suggests.
What both scholars fail to take into account is the nature of American identity and American culture. Both scholars have an extensive knowledge about Japanese culture but they ignore how American culture functions to assimilate and incorporate foreign culture. Therefore, anime does not so much “invade” the US as it is absorbed into mainstream culture, becoming, in fact, American. In this essay, I would like to explain how America has dealt with different popular anime and how it was able to Americanize these films. Subsequently, I would like to clarify that some anime have become more popular than others, because they could easily be absorbed into American cinematographic and narrative tradition. I will argue that those anime, which were able to penetrate American mainstream culture are in some way Americanized, already represent American values, or are completely harmless on an ideological level. Japanese anime is assimilated into American popular culture, rather than posing a threat to it. Anime only influences American culture on a material level, i.e. the products on the shelves, Hollywood’s cinematography, and the commercial success of prime time children’s TV shows. However, on an ideological level, Japanese popular culture already contains many elements of American culture or is highly Americanized, either by the distributors of Japanese products in the US, or by the individual mainstream consumers.
case of The Matrix), or influences different ways in which to exploit capitalism or business strategies (in the case of Pokémon), it does not make Americans see things in a Japanese perspective. For this essay, I have chosen to focus on three different works of anime, which reached a mainstream audience in the US. The first is the Wachowski brothers’ adaptation of Oshii Mamoru’s Ghost in the Shell, which resulted in the Hollywood blockbusters of The Matrix
Trilogy. Secondly, I will analyze the work of acclaimed director Miyazaki Hayao, in particular Spirited Away. Finally, I will look at the cultural phenomenon that is Pokémon.
Up until 1998, American distributors of Japanese anime adapted it especially for the American market. In other words, the remaining product that was still Japanese was
Americanized. Extra dialogue was added to clarify the story and American morals were added by means of an additional live-action character (Maple Town). Some characters would be changed to be more distinctly good or evil (for example, in the adaptation of Nausicaa of the Valley of the
Wind which was entitled Warriors of the Wind in America). Moreover, distinct Japanese
characteristics would be Americanized (Samurai Pizza Cats). In the case of the Mighty Morphin
Power Rangers, a famous “live-action” TV series that came from Japan, the Japanese characters
were traded in for an all American cast. In many of these cases, Americans would not have realized they were watching Japanese shows. Then again, Japan was not as popular at that time as it is today and, therefore, remained unknown for most Americans.
In the twenty-first century, however, Japanese cultural products are really popular because they are Japanese. Nevertheless, they still only impact on American identity on a material level: the goods that are consumed and also the way in which Hollywood productions are shot
this represents Japanese society, which is very closed. In America, on the other hand, Karaoke has also become increasingly popular but the approach to Karaoke is radically different. In the US, people sing Karaoke in public and in front of strangers. As Kelts puts it “[i]n America, land of the open spaces, you are out in the open, performing for the masses” (149). The same goes for the way in which Americans embraced cosplay (COStume PLAY: dressing up in often self-made outfits of anime and game characters). In Japan, this happens behind closed doors and restricted areas because it is deemed strange and not in line with Japanese ideals of sameness and
constraint, whereas in America people are allowed to cosplay virtually everywhere and being different is celebrated.
Americans have thus adapted forms of Japanese popular culture and knowingly or
unknowingly changed them to suit American habits and tastes, while at the same time discarding elements that were deemed un-American. I will try to explain this by analyzing the Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix. The directors were heavily inspired by Oshii Mamoru’s anime Ghost in
the Shell (1995) and they copied certain elements of this particular anime: the opening credits, the
plugs in the back of a person’s neck, the market-chase scene, and most notably camera angles and the anime trait of a shot that is frozen in time. However, I think it is more interesting to look at what they did not copy. Using Pierre Macherey’s theory of the importance of gaps in a text, I will argue that The Matrix was, in a sense, a perfect American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. The original and controversial Japanese version of Ghost in the Shell was not adapted as an American live-action film, because if the producers stayed true to the original anime, they would have alienated the mainstream American viewer.
starting in the 1930s. Disney influenced the earliest Japanese anime and because of this, it is difficult to claim that anime is distinctly Japanese. The relationship between Japanese anime and American cartoons is somewhat overdetermined. A good example of this is anime fandom. Fandom in Japan (or specifically Otaku fandom as fans of anime are called) is an American invention. As Japanese scholar Azuma Hiroki points out “otaku culture in reality originated as a subculture imported from the United States after World War II, from the 1950s to the 1970s. The history of otaku culture is one of adaptation—of how to ‘domesticate’ American culture” (11). This Otaku culture is now again brought to the US, but because this type of fandom is not new to America, it is very easily incorporated into the American way of life, rather than presenting something radically new.
postmodern society can be acknowledged in both Japan and the US as both nations deal with the excess of consumer society on a daily basis. This may answer the question why his work is so popular in America.
Because anime is not a genre but a media, it can be concluded that some anime are more fitted for the American market than others are. Whereas Sailor Moon, for example, failed,
Pokémon became an instant success. It seems that Pokémon perfectly suited American tastes
during the late 1990s. Although some episodes never aired in America due to alleged sexual or racist content (and dumplings were changed into donuts), Pokémon was the first mainstream anime success that remained virtually unchanged. However, I doubt that Pokémon really changed American children’s identity, in part, because it was not typically Japanese. It did, however, impact on how products for children were marketed, but consumerism was already part of
American identity. I would like to argue that, in the case of Pokémon, Japan’s ideology is diluted. This speaks to the strength of American identity. In order to make this claim, I will use Raymond Williams’ theory of emergent and dominant culture to illustrate how the instant popularity of
Pokémon was soon made harmless and assimilated into mainstream American culture.
pre-production phase of anime adaptations, so it will take a while longer to see if Hollywood can make a truly successful “Japanese” live-action remake of anime. As for now, most Japanese anime is predominantly a subculture within the United States. Only those anime which are already “American” or those which can be Americanized become mainstream.
Chapter 1
American Adaptations of Anime: Translating Ghost in the Shell into The Matrix
During the 1980s, a small percentage of children’s cartoons that were broadcast on American television were of Japanese origin. However, these cartoons or more specifically anime were completely Americanized, making it difficult to spot their Japanese roots. One great example is the anime Maple Town (Meipuru Taun Monogatari) that aired between 1986 and 1993. Besides dubbing the Japanese version and changing the story in many places by adding a lot of dialogue that was not present in the original, the Americans added a brand new character, Mrs. Maple, who appeared as a live-action character at the beginning and the end of the show. Mrs. Maple’s function was to add American and Christian morals to the story, something that was missing in the original Japanese version. This was not an isolated incident. The Japanese anime Samurai
Pizza Cats (Kyatto Ninden Teyandee) that aired in 1991 is filled with references to the Japanese
Another striking example of an Americanized Japanese television series are the Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers, which aired between 1993 and 1995. This famous live-action TV series
consists of two separate settings. One is a typical high school scene where five American teenage characters deal with everyday problems. In the other setting, the five teenagers can morph into superheroes. The moment they morph, the viewers are presented with footage from the original Japanese version in which colorful superheroes defeat the bad guys. Though the idea of the Japanese and the American version is the same, the American producers felt that they needed to exchange Japanese live-action scenes with American ones in order to sell the series to the American audience, turning the show into another American high school drama.
What is interesting, however, is that despite that fact American producers subsequently changed the content of Japanese anime, they nevertheless saw a need to air the Japanese shows in the US. Many scholars have tried to analyze why there is such a need for anime or Japanese pop culture in America. Joe Wezorek has tried to explain this by looking at the demand and
popularity of Japanese videogames in the United States. Wezorek essentially sees an economic reason for this. He argues that American “[s]oftware companies invest huge amounts of money up front for a game that will be on the shelves for an average of six months. They can’t afford flops, so they no longer take many risks. They stick to tried-and-true formulas” (98). The success of Japanese games lies, according to Wezorek in their inventiveness, because the Japanese
companies are less driven by market research. They still take risks and the final product “fulfills a need in America. The video-game market was created in the 1980s. At the time of its creation, it was a diverse market. Japanese developers still cater to the original video-game market” (103).
that are made in Japan. But, anime also presents the American viewer with something completely different, even if the final product is heavily Americanized. Americans have grown weary of the American products, because they are no longer innovative or inspirational. Critic Charles
Solomon explains, “[s]ince MTV and the increasing battle for audience attention spans in this country, fewer American filmmakers are willing to risk losing the audience…If you look back at the great animated films in this country, though, you see that Bambi, for example, has about 1,000 words in the entire film” (qtd. in Kelts 56).
A lack of inventiveness has made Americans jaded with American shows but at the same time, Japanese shows can be too alien for Americans to enjoy. As Wong argues “Without a doubt, the American market is less tolerant of ‘alien’ cultural products, and almost all foreign cultural products must be adapted and altered to suit local tastes” (37). Japanese anime is so radically different in its cinematography that it can be hard for American viewers to watch. In order to understand how and to what extent Japanese cultural products are Americanized I will take a closer look at the Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003). The three Matrix movies are heavily inspired on the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell (1995) by director Oshii Mamoru. The Matrix is a perfect adaptation of Ghost in the Shell (GS) suited for the American market, because it uses standard Hollywood conventions to deal with the thematics of
posthumanism, notably by introducing the good/bad dichotomy, getting rid of the open ending, and leaving out most of the philosophy that is incorporated in GS.
with real actors” (qtd. in Ruh, Stray Dog 139-140). However, the Wachowski brothers’ love of
GS went further. Not only did they introduce the American audience to alternative camera angles,
they set out to reinterpret GS’s themes about posthumanism, or the relationship between men and machine. As Ruh points out “The Matrix fuses specific elements from Ghost in the Shell into its own storyline. This was in fact one of the original goals of the Wachowski brothers when they set out to make their film (Ruh, Stray Dog 139).
When an author writes a text or a filmmaker makes a movie, the subtext consists of ideological meaning that underlies the surface text. The artist is a product of a particular place and time. When artists write their narratives, they not only construct their story, but they subconsciously imbue it with the dominant ideology that produced both the author and the tale. This is best explained by French literary theorist Pierre Macherey. For Macherey, texts are never ideology-free, because human beings need ideology to make sense of their world and texts are always human-made. Ideology is, therefore, always present. However, people are mostly unaware of ideology and writers do not purposely, but rather unconsciously create ideological narratives. According to Terry Eagleton “[f]or Macherey, a work is tied to ideology not so much by what it says as by what it does not say. It is in the significant silences of a text, in its gaps and absences, that the presence of ideology can be most positively felt” (34-35).
It is not surprising, then, that the interpretation of the Wachowski brothers on
radically different from the original. In line with Macherey’s theory about the importance of the gaps, I will analyze what the Wachowski brothers have kept and what they have left out in their reinterpretation of Ghost in the Shell. In order to explain these differences, I will first summarize both films.
As a Japanese filmmaker, Oshii Mamoru has always had the freedom to make the films he wanted to make without having to please the big studios or avoid alienating his viewers. He has directed both anime (Urusei Yatsura 1&2, 1983-1984; Patlabor, 1989; Patlabor 2, 1993) and live-action films (StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops, 1991; Talking Head, 1992; Avalon, 2001). Many deal with philosophical questions about the future of mankind and the influence of technology on society. They also deal with questions about what constitutes reality. In Ghost in
the Shell, an adaptation of the Manga by Shirou Masamune, we follow the secret government
agency Section 9. During the opening credits, we see how the female protagonist, Major
Kusanagi Motoko’s body was assembled. We thus learn that she is also a cyborg and that she is fully mechanical.
In the scene that follows, section 9 investigates the body of the prime minister’s translator who has been ghost hacked by something, which calls itself The Puppet Master. In the futuristic world of GS, advanced technology has made it possible to electronically access someone’s ghost (by which Oshii most likely means something akin to a soul). Kusanagi and her collegue Batou follow the trail of the hack and come across a garbage man, who is brainwashed into
memories are false and that he in fact is a single man living all by himself. Kusanagi and Batou listen in on the conversation and discuss the following:
BATOU: That’s all it is: information. Even a simulated experience or a dream is simultaneous reality and fantasy.
KUSANAGI: Well, I guess cyborgs like myself have a tendency to be paranoid about
our origins. Sometimes I suspect I’m not who I think I am…Maybe there wasn’t a real me in the first place and I’m completely synthetic like that thing [puppet master].
BATOU: You’ve got human brain cells in that titanium shell of yours…It sounds to me like you’re doubting your own ghost.
KUSANAGI: What if a cyberbrain could possibly generate it’s own ghost, create a soul all by itself, and if it did, what would be the importance of being human then?
PUPPET MASTER: The advent of computers and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data have given rise to a new system of memory and thought, parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the
consequences of computerization…I’m not an AI. I’m project 2501. I’m a living, thinking entity created in a sea of information…I’ve grown aware of my existence.
Kusanagi feels a connection with The Puppet Master and decides that she wants to dive into its ghost to speak with it more freely. Cyborgs and technological advanced humans have a socket in the back of their necks through which they can connect to the Net and to each other. However, before she can make contact, the torso is stolen by another government branch. She and Batou go in pursuit and follow the abductors to an isolated abandoned museum. Here, Kusanagi is on her own and encounters a tank. She is able to avoid its bullets, but it does destroy an image that contains the “tree of life” wiping out all but the top, which reads “hominis”
Although the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy seems radically different, the thematics are quite similar to Ghost in the Shell, albeit in a Hollywood fashion with a different ideological framework. In The Matrix Trilogy, we start with hacker Neo who is invited to learn about something called the Matrix. He follows the lead and encounters another hacker named Trinity. He soon learns that he is being followed by people called agents (dressed in black suits) and is contacted by Morpheus to help him escape. He fails, and is taken into custody. He is interrogated by an agent, named Smith: a computer program designed round up dissidents in the Matrix. The next moment, Neo wakes up in his bed, thinking it was just a dream. When Neo and Morpheus finally meet, Morpheus explains that the Matrix is everywhere. “When you go to church,” “when you pay your taxes,” it is “a prison for your mind.” Neo is offered two pills. The blue one will take him back, the red one will show him what the Matrix really is. Neo takes the red pill. He is taken into another room and engulfed by what seemed to be an ordinary mirror. He then wakes up naked and without hair plugged in a pod in a completely different world. Neo is rescued by a flying futuristic ship. On board are Morpheus, Trinity and an entire crew. Neo is unable to see or move and Morpheus tells him this is because he has never used his eyes and muscles before in his life.
artificially manufacture human beings who would function as batteries. In order to make them compliant, they created the Matrix: an alternative reality that looked like life at the end of the twentieth century in which “souls” of men could live, unaware of the “truth.”
Because the Matrix is nothing more than a computer program, some of the laws of physics can be broken, for example, gravity. At one point, Morpheus is captured by the agents during a trip to the Matrix world. In the end, Neo saves Morpeus by breaking free of the
constraints of the Matrix, which makes him able to dodge bullets and even fly. In the subsequent movies, he needs to save the last human bulwark in the “real” machine-ruled world, named Zion. The machines want to terminate all organic human life. In the meantime, the program that is agent Smith in the Matrix becomes a virus, taking over the Matrix reality. At the end of the trilogy, Neo lets Smith take over his Matrix self, and because he has encountered the head of the machines he lets the machine kill his “real” self and simultaneously program Smith, making the Matrix go back to normal. In exchange, Zion is saved.
than one possibility of reality” (113). For Oshii, animation is already an alternative reality, not simply a work of fiction.
The question for Oshii is thus not if technology will take over humanity, but when and how. This is made clear in the scene where the tank destroys the tree of life. According to Ruh “[t]his scene is illustrative of Oshii’s problematization of technology—in one way, we are killing ourselves and our past through technology’s sheer drive forward, but in another way,…successful negotiations of relationships with technology can potentially open powerful avenues of freedom” (Ruh, Stray Dog 130). The fusion between humans and technology is thus both positive and negative, i.e. a reality in Ghost in the Shell, whereas in The Matrix, technology solely had a negative effect on human civilization and people are fighting to keep humanity alive. The Matrix presents technology as an unnecessary evil that can be overcome, whereas Ghost in the Shell presents it as a way of life.
At the same time, in The Matrix freedom means conquering the evil machines, whereas in
GS, freedom is achieved by the merger of humanity and technology. A good example of this is
As Ruh points out“Oshii’s solution to this central problem is not to divorce technology from the body, however, but to rethink the relationships between the two. The new Kusanagi at the end of Ghost in the Shell still has a cyborg body; however, she has slipped the bonds that previously held her in place, tying her to the government and section 9” (Ruh, Stray Dog 138). In
The Matrix, Neo fights to sever the connection between humans and technology and to save
organic human beings. The solution in The Matrix is thus not to engage technology but to shut it down. Kusanagi, in the end, “creates a new form of life. This being possesses a fuller concept of self than Kusanagi did previously, as she worked solely at the command of the governmental structure” (Ruh, Stray Dog 139).
When it was first released, many critics in America believed that The Matrix Trilogy was something radically new. It was admired for its daring cinematography and to a lesser extent its bold philosophical topic. Yet, it did not come close to the philosophical impact of GS. However, in a way, the Wachowski brothers created a perfect American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell that abided by the ruling Hollywood conventions, and pleased the American audience and the studios. First of all, they made a clear distinction between good and evil (humans v. machines), something that was not present in GS. Second, they provided the American viewer with a linear story that has a clear beginning and a clear ending. Furthermore, they made sure that the
AGENT SMITH: Illusions, Mr. Anderson [Neo]. Vagaries of Perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect, trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself.
However, because of Smith’s “evil” nature, the idea that all our realities are, in fact, false can be discarded by the audience and those ideas no longer appear to be threatening.
This is exactly the strength of The Matrix. All the themes of Ghost in the Shell are there, but they are made harmless. By saving the human race in the end, the Wachowski brothers do not question the due date of humanity, and therefore do not anger Christian viewers who will frown upon the concept of posthumanism, or a downloadable ghost/soul. Second, they hold on to a true reality (the real world), whereas, the idea of reality in GS is ambivalent, and “a real world” does not seem to exist (this becomes clear in the scene with the garbage man). Thirdly, The Matrix presupposes that individual human freedom is obtainable. This is in compliance with the American notion of freedom as a human right. GS, on the other hand, questions freedom
altogether, by arguing that we are never free from societal agencies, or in other words ideology, as long as we are human. This is an idea that would likely not be accepted or understood by the American viewer. Because of the different ideological makeup of the American mainstream audience, the meaning of Ghost in the Shell as a contemporary Japanese societal critique would have been lost.
Although Ghost in the Shell was relatively successful in the American arthouse scene, it could not have reached a mainstream audience without the necessary changes that the
relevant in the US. Therefore, not all anime needs to be Americanized. Some can be viewed with a Japanese and an American ideological background.
Chapter 2
Global Themes in Japanese Anime: The Universal World of Miyazaki Hayao
The incentive of American studios to always alter Japanese anime was not always successful. In a revealing essay, Brian Ruh explains that the Americanized version of Miyazaki Hayao’s
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä, 1984) entitled Warriors of the Wind (1986), was contested by critics and viewers alike. As Ruh found out, footage was removed
from the original in nineteen instances, to drastically shorten the film (“Transforming US Anime” 39-40). According to the distributor New World Pictures, it was necessary to cut scenes that were deemed too violent for children (40). However, the cuts that were made did not necessarily leave out violence: they left out complexities in the main characters. As Ruh observed “[n]one of the characters in Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind could be really called ‘evil,’ even though some do horrible things. Rather, such characters are shown to be working for what they think is best, even if they might be misguided” (43). It turned out that the changes were made to make the characters more one-dimensional, i.e. good or evil. However, as Ruh explains these simplifications “work against the complexity of the world Miyazaki tried to create in the original
Nausicaä film, which was never supposed to present two opposing sides in such stark terms”
(43).
Nausicaä tells the story of the princess of the Valley of the Wind, who discovers that
neighboring society wants to destroy the wasteland (and the Valley) to eradicate the spores, Nausicaä needs to convince the people that the wasteland is there to help them and that its destruction would mean the end of mankind. The movie tries to reveal the interdependence of men and nature. As a result of the changes that were made by the American distribution company, Warriors became another action cartoon where Nausicaä, renamed Princess Zandra, fights the gargantuan insects that live in the wasteland. The American viewer, in this case 1980s science fiction fans and art house lovers, who were familiar with the work of Miyazaki were appalled by the result. In the case of Warriors, Americanizing worked against the film’s success, because it completely failed to grasp the complexity of Miyazaki’s world (46-47). Nausicaä is foremost a story about the interdependent relationship between human beings and the
environment. This topic was not alien in 1980s America after fear of total nuclear destruction. As in the case of nuclear war, these matters were also not believed to be one-dimensional and there was a need for critical narrative about these issues. Nevertheless, in the 1980s, anime was not seen as something for adults, and by turning Nausicaä into a kids-proof movie, it marginalized its controversial content and neglected its universal appeal.
Nausicaä is not the only Miyazaki movie that touches upon universal and global themes.
Moreover, even though most of his films are set in Japan (both historic and contemporary), they nevertheless deal with issues that are global in nature. Princess Mononoke (Mononokehime, 1997) deals with similar issues about the bond between humans and nature. Laputa: Castle in the
Sky (Tenkuu no Shiro Rapyuta, 1986), deals with the excess of human power. On the other hand, My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) appeals to children all around the world because
Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, 2001), although it can also be seen as a critique on the
excesses of postmodern society (and at the same time the environmental damage it causes). In addition, Miyazaki does not shy away from criticizing Japanese society, causing some Japanese to regard his themes as un-Japanese.
A great example of this is the role of femininity in Kiki’s Delivery Service. This anime revolves around a young witch named Kiki, who, on her thirteenth birthday, leaves home with her little black talking cat Jiji to find her true identity and independence elsewhere. After traveling a couple of days on her broomstick, she settles in the village Koriko. After a couple of de-motivating days, she returns a pacifier to a baby, which its mother had left at a bakery store. Amazed by her flying skills, the baker’s wife tells Kiki she should start a delivery service to pay for her living. She also offers Kiki to stay with her. During one of her deliveries, Kiki meets a young woman named Ursula, who lives deep in the woods and makes paintings. She shares Kiki’s independent spirit and the two become friends.
Kiki’s is also followed by a boy named Tombo, who tries desperately to catch her
Miyazaki himself has explained why he decided to make Kiki. He wanted to “depict…the gulf that exists between independence and reliance in the hopes and spirits of Japanese girls” (Miyazaki). He goes on to argue that in the past “financial independence…[was equal to] spiritual independence…In today’s society, however, where anyone can earn money going from one temporary job to another, there is no connection between financial independence and spiritual independence” (Miyazaki). What Miyazaki means is that children, especially girls in Japan never learn to be fully independent because life has become very easy. “[I]t might be more difficult than ever to achieve a real sense of independence since you must go through the process of discovering your own talents and expressing yourself” (Miyazaki). However, Miyazaki’s appeal seemed rather outlandish, because in Japan girls are often taught to be subservient to their parents, husbands and in-laws.
Kiki is not the first Miyazaki girl with an independent spirit. Nausicaä too, is an unusually brave and upright leader, unusual by Japanese standards because most leaders in Japan are male (Nagata). Susan Napier points out that Miyazaki’s aim is to defamiliarize his viewers in order to tell his story. In the case of Kiki, she argues that “[t]he idea of a girl leaving home and setting up her own business would be surprising in any culture but particularly so in Japan” (Anime 162). Moreover, this defamilization works in two: “first…by having a heroine who is independent and active, and second by making her a witch whose fantastic powers are prosaically anchored in the need to survive in a modern money economy. By balancing fantasy with the real, the film’s message of empowerment becomes far more effective” (164). Miyazaki tries to show his Japanese audience that Japan’s disposition towards women is not necessarily the only one.
character was not altered for her independent spirit, but for her ambiguous alliance (she understands the motives of the “good guys” as well as the “bad guys,” making such categories obsolete). Kiki’s empowerment too, might not be as surprising in the US as it was in Japan. When Kiki was first released in the US, almost a decade after its release in Japan, a majority of the critics praised it. It was also the first release after Disney bought the distribution rights of Miyazaki’s studio Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli had warned Disney not to change anything and the English dub of Kiki was pretty close to the original. None of the reviews remarked Kiki’s “unusual” independence as they did in Japan. That is perhaps not so strange, because Disney already released a couple of films that touched upon that same issue. The Little Mermaid (1989),
Pocahontas (1995) and Mulan (1998) also deal with female protagonists, who leave home to find
their identities. What is more, female independence, or, individual independence is not unusual in the US and Kiki is simply another veneration of that value.
It is not surprising that different societies have different ideals and they will look at a certain film with their own ideological outlook. Thus, what might be viewed in Japan as un-Japanese (independent women) might be normal in the US. Because, as I have argued before, anime is a media and not a genre, some films might be closer to US ideology then others.
Whereas Ghost in the Shell challenged US ideology and was unsuited for the mainstream market (and needed to be adapted), many of Miyazaki’s movies (unintentionally) reinforce many
American values and concerns. This might be because both Japan and the US are postmodern societies that both deal with the excess of consumerism and the degradation of human
relationships, which Miyazaki addresses with tangible examples.
Althusser calls these institutions, e.g. the educational system, churches and the media, Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). These apparatuses give ideology a material existence. People,
Althusser explains, are never born in a vacuum. They are “always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects” (302). They are born into the dominant ideology and this is not something that they can consciously shape. John Fiske best explains this when he states that “[i]deology is not…a static set of ideas through which we view the world but a dynamic social practice,
constantly in process, constantly reproducing itself in the ordinary workings of these apparatuses. It also works on the micro-level of the individual” (307). Because people are never ideologically free, they also cannot look at movies, detached from ideology. This means that when US viewers look at a Japanese film, they will look at it with the dominant, in this case, American ideology in mind.
According to Stuart Hall, texts do not exist in a vacuum. Not only are they imbued with the dominant ideology, the audience can only make sense of the text if they can interpret it within their ideology, or as Hall calls it, codes. This implies that the author (the encoder) and the
audience (the decoder) do not necessarily have to share the exact meaning of the text. However, the decoder does not have the liberty to interpret the text in whichever way he or she wants. The encoder sets limits to this. As Hall remarks “encoding will have the effect of constructing some of the limits and parameters within which decodings will operate. If there were no limits, audiences could simply read whatever they liked into any message…[T]he vast range must contain some degree of reciprocity between encoding and decoding, otherwise we could not speak of an effective communicative exchange” (“Encoding/Decoding” 135-136).
audience, in this case, rejects the text by taking an opposite stance. Hall calls this “oppositional reading” (Chandler, ch. 11).The films by Miyazaki Hayao offer a more neutral platform. Though inherently Japanese, they nevertheless present a more universal worldview. Therefore the
audience can relate to it more easily and modify those bits that that need to be adapted to fit within the code. Hall defines this as “negotiated reading.” He argues that “‘[n]egotiated’ decodings…allow wide ‘exceptions’ to be made in terms of the way the audience situates itself within the hegemonic field of ideologies, but which also legitimate…the grater overall coherence of the dominant encodings” (“Culture” 344-345). Although not as natural as the
“dominant/hegemonic reading,” in which the reader fully shares the code, a “negotiated reading” is nevertheless accessed by a wide audience, because they are not completely alienated by the text. In order to explain this, I will analyze Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning anime Spirited Away. I will start by giving a short overview of the movie to introduce my discussion.
Spirited Away tells the story of the young girl Chihiro. In the beginning of the movie, we
back to her parents to discover that they turned into pigs who are taken prisoner by the transparent shadows.
Chihiro panics and tries to find a way back across the river only to discover that it turned into a lake. She then encounters a boy named Haku, who tells her she cannot go back and the only way to survive is to go to the big temple-like building, a bathhouse for dislocated gods, and find the proprietor, a witch named Yubaba and beg for a job. After some hesitation, the slightly spoiled Chihiro succeeds. As a security, Yubaba takes Chihiro’s posh name and changes it into Sen. She is to start immediately as a cleaning lady. Not long after, she has to prove herself by having to draw a bath for a particularly smelly stink-god. When she falls, head down into the tub she discovers a pin sticking out of the stink-god’s muddy and oozing exterior. With the help of the other women, Sen attaches a rope to it and together they pull a heap of garbage from the god, who changes back into a clean river god. As a thank you, he gives her an enchanted pellet. After this success, Sen is accepted in the bathhouse.
men build a residential area where it was once located. All of a sudden, the dragon turns back into the human Haku and thanks Sen for recovering his true identity as the river god Kohaku. After his river dried up, he came to Yubaba because he had no other place to go. Sen never forgot her true identity, because Haku had secured the goodbye card that Chihiro had received from her friends that bore her name.
When they come back to the bathhouse, Yubaba has lined up a number of pigs. If Chihiro guesses which ones are her parents, all three of them would be free to go. Chihiro tells Yubaba that her parents are not there. She is right, and regains her freedom. In the final scene, we see Chihiro and her parents crossing the river again, which went back to its small size. She says goodbye to Haku and knows she will be seeing him again someday. Once again, her parents walk through the gate, oblivious to what has happened. When they get to the car, they find it covered underneath a pile of dust. Chihiro finally has her life back but the experience significantly shaped her character. She is no longer the spoiled girl in the beginning of the movie, but someone who found great insight and empowerment.
For Miyazaki, a change in someone’s personality often occurs by means of labor. Miyazaki sees labor as a key force shaping a person’s identity. In the beginning of the film Chihiro represents another middle-class Japanese girl who is bored, spoiled and does not show a lot of confidence. However, by working for Yubaba, even if it is a menial job, we see her character blossoming as Chihiro discovers her talents and accomplishes something on her own, probably for the first time in her life. Thus, Miyazaki’s answer to a consumerist society with passive and spoiled children
Away has a similar offbeat work regime with Chihiro tending Japanese gods and learning responsibility and purpose. This has less to do with stereotypes of the industrious Japanese than with Miyazaki’s own leftist leanings and belief in empowerment through labour. (Osmond 35)
On the other hand, Miyazaki does criticize the working environment in Japan by “contrast[ing] the women spirits’ lowly roles to those of males who act as bathhouse hosts, keeping audiences conscious of traditionalist gender inequality” (op de Beeck 276). Yet, he sees labor in itself as something that will improve the new generations.
Labor thus indicates a form of self-reliance, empowerment and individualism, values that may have been lost in Japanese labor culture where subordination and compliance is the norm. However, these values are still respected in American culture. In some ways, Kiki resembles the American ideal of the self-made men and Chihiro overcomes all obstacles by simply working hard. Spirited Away, therefore, reinforces common American values about hard work and self-sufficiency. This is in sharp contrast to the message in Ghost in the Shell, where labor is viewed as an infringement on freedom; a means of being tied to societal powers, i.e. a new form of slavery. Besides the issue of labor, Spirited Away also resembles many Western narratives. It is often compared to Alice falling down the rabbit whole and having to find her way out again. Moreover, as Osmond points out “the film’s opening demonstrates the cross-cultural universality of fairy tales. A family wanders, or is lured, into a magic place where the parents eat tempting food and turn into pigs. Miyazaki cites Japanese folk tales as his influence here, but one could equally invoke Hansel and Gretel or Circe in Homer’s Odyssey” (34).
hands of men, represent this environmental decay. What Miyazaki wants to achieve is that the new generation, represented by Chihiro, will be more responsible with regard to nature. Chihiro’s parents represent current postmodern society. According to Napier, “they are unloving,
…unsupportive…and materialistic” 182). Op de Beeck adds that Chihiro’s father’s assumption that he can simply use his credit card in every situation represents that he is oblivious to the fact that “he is in a place where the market has failed, with the implication that not all economies work the way adults expect” (275-276). Nevertheless, the question remains whether young Americans understand or even notice these thematics. As Harris observes “Clearly, one point Miyazaki is making through his satire…is that the young Japanese of Chihiro’s generation will find themselves making up for their parents’ excesses, and will be spiritually tougher, and more self-reliant…[However it] is obviously not something that is readily apparent to the children and young people who have been enjoying the film so much” (65).
Chapter 3:
Material Excess of Anime: Pokémon and the Power of Consumerism
Although Miyazaki’s films are predominantly made for children, many adults love them for their aesthetic appeal and their level of realism. As I have tried to point out in the first chapter, many anime had to be adapted for the American market. However, the universal appeal of Miyazaki’s anime made them successful for the mainstream American market. This was not the case for
Sailor Moon. This anime series about five teenage girls who morph into superheroes, which
appeared unaltered on American television between 1995 and 1996, never became the success the distributors had hoped for. According to Ann Allison, the reason for this was the lack of
promotion and a failed marketing strategy that did not take the desires of American consumers into account (83).
This cannot be said for Pokémon, which started airing in the United States in 1998.
Pokémon is an anime series about a ten-year-old boy named Ash Ketchum who sets out on a
journey away from home to catch and collect all Pocket Monsters or Pokémon. Pokémon are little creatures that somewhat resemble real-life animals. They can be caught and carried around in one’s pocket by means of a Pokéball. Ash not only wants to catch and own all of them, he also uses them to fight battles against other Pokémon trainers. Ash is accompanied by a group of friends he meets over the first episodes and a Pokémon named Pikachu, whose main power is to electrocute its opponents. In his search, Ash is continuously thwarted by Team Rocket (Jessie and James) and their Pokémon Meowth who looks a lot like a real cat.
came to them in relatively unaltered form. American distributors were afraid that Pokémon would be too cute for the American market but they were mistaken (Kelts 93). When Pokémon first aired, it became an instant success. What was striking is that many American parents felt the series was too violent and teaching kids the wrong lessons. When the series was at its most popular, a lot of parents believed Pokémon was dangerous for their kids to watch. Several schools banned Pokémon related items from school grounds and religious groups protested against its evils (Elza).
The problem for many parents was that Pokémon, was more than just an anime: it was a franchise with trading card games, videogames and merchandise. On an ideological level, parents and religious groups were afraid that Pokémon alienated kids by exposing them to a make-believe world where there is no sense of authority. Ash leaves home when he is ten and although he is guided in his journeys by Professor Oak, the latter is often of little help. As Elza points out “Professor Oak has rendered himself obsolete with his invention of the Pokédex, a
comprehensive, computerized index of information on all known Pokémon that looks suspiciously similar to a Game Boy” (59). Moreover, many parents felt distanced from their children because Pokémon let them acquire a lot of knowledge parents did not have. Elza explains, “the exclusion of adults from an entire world of knowledge is a power trip for kids, who are told at every turn to learn as much as they can. Memorizing hundreds of facts about
Pokémon allowed children to consider themselves experts in their chosen field” (54).
Pokémon also caused a new sense of a Japanese scare. Some people believed that there
In the episode “Chinpokomon” (S03E10), the four main characters join in with a new fad at school. Chinpokomon is a new television series and videogame and the boys urge their parents to buy the toys that are advertised. However, the toys silently awaken and brainwash the kids with phrases like “Down with America” and “”Let’s be friends and destroy the capitalist American government.” A while later, the boys visit the Chinpokomon camp (led by the Japanese emperor Hirohito who, in reality, died in 1989—a reference to Japan as superpower) and are taught warrior ethics and the ability to speak Japanese. They also learn that the evil power they have to destroy is the United States government, to which the character Cartman replies, “is this cool or not? I can’t tell.” When they come to class the next day, they are completely disciplined and act as perfect Japanese children. At the episode’s climax, the boys are seen climbing fighter jets to bomb Pearl Harbor. Just in time, the parents figure out how to stop the fad, by joining in the Chinpokomon craze. The boys become uninterested and all ends happily.
What the South Park episode tried to make clear was the overreaction of many parents to
Pokémon and the alleged Japanese scare, similar to the one in the 1980s. As Napier points out:
The ‘Japaneseness’ of Pokémon…cropped up in American adult reactions to the craze. Often these reactions were negative to the point of implicit racism…[s]ome commentators suggested sinister connections between Pokémon and a ‘samurai’ ethos at odds with the American way of life…Other more up to date critics suggest that Pokémon playing may turn young Western children into Japanese-style otaku beings with no social or inner life who live only to accumulate. (“From Impressionism to Anime” 131)
wanted to collect the Pokémon cards in the way Ash was collecting real Pokémon. In addition, the franchise also offered extensive merchandise that was heavily advertised.
In this sense, the problems many parents had with Pokémon was not its Japaneseness, but the way in which it targeted children as consumers. However, this claim was not entirely fair. For many years, Disney had targeted children as its main market. In his book The Mouse That
Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence, Henry Giroux points to the ways in which Disney
markets its products for children. He argues that Disney participates in the de-democratization (or postmodernization) of American society. For Giroux:
Children as consumers has little to do with innocence [which Disney likes to portray] and a great deal to do with corporate greed and the realization that behind the vocabulary of family fun and wholesome entertainment is the opportunity for teaching children that critical thinking and civic action in society are far less important to them than the role of passive consumers. (209)
In a similar way as their “Chinpokomon” episode, the creators of South Park also made an episode presenting the boss of Disney, a mean Micky Mouse, as a power-driven force of evil, who lures his audience into buying his products. In order to do so he uses the Christian moral of the Jonas Brothers to appeal to young girls, who then proceed to buy Disney products (“The Ring” S13E01). As the makers of South Park have observed, the advertising strategies of Disney are quite similar to that of Pokémon. According to Elza, their main goal is “[to make] a concerted effort to convince children that the only way to be happy is to acquire the newest and best things” (63).
of family fun. He did not just sell food; he sold a brand. As Eric Schlosser observes in his book
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side if the All-American Meal, “Kroc understood that how he sold
food was just as important as how the food tasted...Promoting McDonald’s to children was a clever, pragmatic decision. ‘A child who loves our TV commercials,’ Kroc explained, ‘and brings her grandparents to a McDonald’s gives us two more customers” (41). This strategy is what made McDonald’s exceptionally successful, because in the decade after World War II and the baby boom that followed it, children made up a large part of the country’s population. However, the level of advertising never diminished. According to Schlosser “The explosion in children’s advertising occurred during the 1980s. Many working parents, feeling guilty about spending less time with their kids, started spending money on them. One marketing expert has called the 1980s ‘the decade of the child consumer’” (42-43).
Most noticeable was the increase of children’s advertising on television. The average American child spends most of his or her after-school time watching TV. Although there were some proposals to ban child advertising on TV in the 1980s, these demands were never met. Consequently, “[t]he Saturday-morning children’s ads that caused angry debates twenty years ago now almost seem quaint. Far from being banned, TV advertising aimed at kids is now
been exposed to aggressive advertising. Consequently, the resentment towards Pokémon’s aggressive marketing strategies is only one part of the critique.
Advertising for children is nothing new in America. Thus, claims of Pokémon’s excessive marketing strategies seem to incorporate feelings of fear that Pokémon somehow changes (or Japanicizes) American kids. However, Pokémon is also a product of a particular place and time. As Elza notes “[c]hildren today enjoy instant gratification of information in a way that has never before been possible, and it’s no coincidence that Pokémon’s biggest fans have never known a world without the Internet. Technology becomes the ultimate alternative to authority” (Elza 70-71). Because cultures are never static, it is not surprising that new forms of technology impact on our daily lives. In other words, the cultural impact of technology is incorporated in a particular society. Nevertheless, the prevailing trend in post World War II America is consumerism and that is not just going to go away.
that new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences, are continuously being created. But there is then a much earlier attempt to incorporate them, just because they are part—and yet not a defined part—of effective contemporary practice. Indeed it is significant in our own period how very early this attempt is, how alert the dominant culture now is to anything that can be seen as emergent. (Williams 385)
Just as Americans loved Japanese cars and Japanese videogames, they also embraced Japanese anime, because it was radically different from what Hollywood had to offer. Though, some anime may have been too alien for the mainstream audience to enjoy, Pokémon was easy to understand, extremely colorful, fast-paced, interactive (through the card games) and completely new. In addition, it aired at a time that new types of media and technology were able to deal with mass consumerism on an even larger scale. Not coincidentally, the Japanese high-end
postmodern society had found even greater ways to further consumerism.
“In the future,” as Jean Baudrillard observed in his book America, “power will belong to those people with no origins and no authenticity who know how to exploit that situation to the full. Look at Japan, which to a certain extent has pulled off this trick better than the US
It is simply a cute character that sells well, because the Japanese marketers were able to find a way to make it attractive for Japanese consumers by giving Mickey Mouse a more odorless appeal.
The Japanese have learned how to exploit marketability to the fullest. They also learned that an audience does not simply want one episode of a certain story. When a story is popular, they want it to never end. Moreover, they also want to take part in the story. This is partly why anime is so popular. According to Kelts “[A]nime and manga provide an increasingly content-hungry world with something that Hollywood…has not yet found a way to approximate: the chance to deeply, relentlessly, and endlessly immerse yourself in a world driven by prodigious imagination. It is a world with no ceiling limiting the number of times you may visit and explore” (116). What Pokémon offers is a never-ending story because the number of Pokémon seems limitless, and the search for all of them is endless. Moreover, kids could join in with Ash on his quest by trying to collect all the Pokémon cards. This added to the popularity of Pokémon. “The modern younger viewer, in particular, is no longer satisfied with a few brief glimpses of a new world, or the idea of an invisible book describing every nook and cranny and explaining why things are so. They want to see it all for themselves” (Kelts 116).
According to Ann Allison, children want characters and stories to transfer them to another world (69). With the universal characters of Pokémon and the Internet, other worlds have become readily accessible. Allison agrees with Arjun Appadurai when she writes that “as
this phenomenon exists for quite a while. In Japan, high-end consumers of anime and manga are referred to as otaku. Japanese cultural theorist Azuma Hiroki defines the term otaku as “referring to those who indulge in forms of subculture strongly linked to anime, video games, computers, science fiction, special-effects films, anime figurines, and so on” (3). According to Thomas LaMarre “we can relate the otaku phenomenon to transformations in capitalism, to changes in how we interact with and through commodities, and to transformations in technologies, especially communications and information technologies” (Galbraith and LaMarre 364).
What Azuma and LaMarre have observed is that new technologies and rampant
consumerism have significantly changed the way in which people function and interact on a daily basis. Henry Jenkins came to the same conclusion. In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old
and New Media Collide, he explains that the Internet has altered the role of the media
considerably. In particular, he notices the way in which consumers have gained more freedom when it comes to participation in the entertainment industry. In the past, entertainment was linear. Media conglomerates offered films, TV shows and music and the consumer could either buy or ignore it. Nowadays, consumers can actively participate by offering alternative self-made versions of stories to a wide audience or to comment or critique openly about what is offered. According to Jenkins “Fans reject the idea of a definitive version produced, authorized, and regulated by some media conglomerate. Instead, fans envision a world where all of us can participate in the creation and circulation of central and cultural myths. Here, the right to participate in the culture is assumed to be ‘freedom we have allowed ourselves,’ not a privilege granted by a benevolent company” (256).
are no longer distributed over one single form of media, they can now be advertised and
consumed over many. This is exactly what Pokémon taught American distributors. However, at this point in time not all consumers are ready for such changes. As Jenkins observed,
“Hollywood can only go as far down that direction if audiences are not ready to shift their mode of consumption. Right now many older consumers are left confused or uninvolved with such entertainments, though some are learning to adapt” (130). Pokémon, at least, introduced this new type of media consumption outside Japan to the new generation.
Pokémon gave American children a glimpse into a new world. The success of Pokémon
can also be attributed to the fact that it was not too alien. In any case, it opened the door for anime to make it into mainstream American culture, something many of its predecessors had failed to do. The rise of the Internet may have aided the success of Pokémon, by introducing children to alternative realities. Another benefactor could have been Pokémon’s superb
American society has thus incorporated the marketing strategies of Pokémon. In a way, this new approach enhanced the prevailing ideal of consumer capitalism. Although it may have seemed controversial when it first aired, the material excess of Pokémon has been fully adapted by American culture. As Allison sums up “[t]he new global system promotes rather than suppresses difference—but ‘difference’ only of a certain kind, managed (and contained) by common structures. As Richard Wilk argues, hegemony has not disappeared, but operates now at the level of form rather than content” (69). After Pokémon, not many anime have become popular on such a mainstream level. Nevertheless, Pokémon did affect how products are marketed to children. American cartoon makers are inspired by the look of anime. Japan and anime are thus presented to the American audience as a new form, rather than a set of ideas. America has incorporated the material excess of anime, but mostly discarded any Japanese ideology that accompanied it.
In other words, in contemporary America, Japan is a hype, but only on the level of an exclusive brand. Similar to the craze in the 1980s, Japan represents made, and
