Anime Vs. Cartoons

Sharon :  ♪ ♫ ♪ One thing I don't know why

♪ It doesn’t even matter how hard you try ♫

♫ Keep that in mind, I designed this rhyme ♪

♪ To explain in due time ♪ ♫ ♪

- What the-! Morpheus, why the hell are you growing mushrooms in the corner of our study?

Morpheus: 72 ND "Woa! You still watch cartoons at this age!" cartoons??...of all things CARTOONS!!!!!

Sharon: ありえない!!! I just got over my 68th one! I think it's high time we enlightened this world, for our sake and for our comrades out there still suffering! *Curl fists*

Morpheus: Aaaannooo........

Sharon: …..

Morpheus:
AAAAAAAnnnnnnnoooooo......I......I...

Sharon: …..

Morpheus:. I GOT IT!!!!

Sharon: はい! *Snaps back to reality*
So, just like Manga don’t equal to Comics, Anime don’t equal to Cartoons either. How can people confuse them?

Morpheus: Exactly! If people just used their dictionaries more often, our workload would definitely decrease.
Anime (pronounced Ah-ni-may), as defined by the dictionary is "a Japanese style of motion-picture animation"! It is a style of animation that originated and is still heavily centered in Japan. Now, doesn't the vast difference in its history, say it all?

Sharon: !!! Absolutely! Cartoon comes from 'caricatures'. Cartoons basically originated from the political drawings of the west. The ones drawn during The Great Depression are the best example. The ones drawn at the time of the French Revolution are a classic too. They were intended to be light hearted
satires. Representative of the new genre, it is a quick, impressionistic drawing that exaggerates prominent physical characteristics to humorous effect.

Morpheus: Whereas for Anime it all began in the early 20th century when Japanese pioneers were experimenting with animation techniques from France, Germany, Russia and the US. The first anime thus produced was a 2-minute clip depicting a samurai testing his new sword in 1917. A talkie anime also followed in 1933 named Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka, produced by Masaoka. Another animated film followed called Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors directed by Seo in 1945 with sponsorship by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Then Osamu Tenza.....

Sharon: Astro Boy!!!! *all smiles*

Morpheus: Yeah...The author of Astro Boy, to be precise a mangaka (manga artist in English), considered one of the legends of Japan’s anime and manga industry. He was inspired by Disney’s work and experimented & improved upon the techniques to create animation that was cost effective and needed the least number of frames to produce. Thus in this way not only could he cut down the costs, but also developed a technique in which he could easily recruit inexperienced people. By 1990 it began to be widely accepted in the West too. 

Sharon: IMO....I'd simply put that as 'Anime is to Japan what Hollywood is to the West', i.e., an art style that is used to tell stories or bring to light more realistic issues or simply give form to the creator’s wildest emotion. 

Morpheus: Yes, now that I think about it, I find that Hollywood is mostly, if not totally, similar to that notion. Heck, even some of the Hollywood movies were inspired by anime; a case in point would be the Matrix trilogy, which was inspired by the Ghost in the Shell series, which is an excellent series, by the
way.

Sharon: One of my fav in that case is "Blood: The Last Vampire", a manga turned Hollywood movie.....in which Koyuki Kato starred as the Vampire. :)

Morpheus: Umm, I feel it’s not that safe to start talking about Koyuki or Jun in front of you. Else I'll have to sit here for days listening to your fantasization.

Sharon: Hehehehe....Okies. Coming back to the main topic. Western cartoons generally caters to the comical aspect of a situation and mostly tries to bring that situation out in a comical light, Anime on the other hand also focuses on serious topics, though concerning Japanese society more, and doesn’t only cater to comical situations.

Morpheus: Welcome to the N.H.K!!!! It’s one of my favourite anime. It focuses on the multiple problems of present day society, like pyramid schemes and social recluses.

Sharon : Don’t start nagging me again, but here I would like to mention the manga Kimi Wa Petto (tramps like us).....which touches the sensitive issue of younger guy- older woman relationship. And which also (its live action) stars Koyuki and Jun. Awesome....just awesome.

Morpheus: Sharon, we get the idea. You can cut on those 'awesomes'.

Sharon: Okay, okay! Back to topics, not all anime are super-heroes shows, there are anime that focuses on the seemingly mundane topic of a student’s life, Paradise Kiss is one such anime where the protagonist is torn between following her heart of being a model and keep up with her mother’s dream of getting her into the topmost college of Japan.

Morpheus: Also, let’s not forget two of my top-most anime, Code Geass,(my Fav of the lot *Wide Grin*), an excellent anime that’s about a boy who would change a harsh world into a gentler place for his little sister, and Death Note….

Sharon: Eeeeeeeeeeppp!!!!!!! *Jumps up excitedly* Death Note!!!! It’s an excellent anime I don’t even have fitting words to describe the awesomeness of it.

Morpheus: Hey, wait a sec! It isn’t normal. I mean, for me, it is. But you saying you love "Death note"....its seinen not shoujo!!

Sharon: Hello Mr. Racist. Now, doesn’t a true anime lover watch almost all genre's of anime without discrimination? Or do you now-a- days, call those wannabe "naruto" freaks as "true anime lovers"???

Morpheus : *Laugh Out Loud* Nope.

Sharon : What’s there to LOL? It isn’t funny! These people get my blood boiling. They kind of made me so sick of Naruto, that I kind of started disliking the anime itself!

Morpheus: It was because; it reminded me of the time DB was airing. Every one became an anime otaku....but the only anime they ever talked about was Dragon Ball!!! People really fail to see that anime carry a lot of variety and generally cater to all age groups. Genre-wise anime can’t really be put under some definite few. Though it encompasses the general ones like comedy, rom-com, fantasy, mecha(their version of super-slick robots and my fav), thriller, slice of life, horror, action, anti-hero etc.

Sharon: Yup. For more age oriented classifications, starting from the kodomo ones (or anime for kids) like Shinchan, Doraemon.....

Morpheus: Hagemaru......to shonen, for boy’s ages 12-18

Sharon : Shoujo, for girls age 12-18. Josei is for adult ladies above the age of 20; mainly working women. Seinen is for young men between the ages of 18 and 30.

Morpheus : and Hentai is pornographic, adult anime.

Sharon : Ahhmm, aahhhmm!! Now that was fast.

Morpheus: I do not watch those!

Sharon: Yea, I never said you do.

Morpheus: I really don’t!!!

Sharon : Don’t worry, we believe in the theory of being "total anime lovers" now, don't we Morpheus?

Morphはいeus: Keep this up and I'm gonna start writing a really horrible review of Jun's new series!

Sharon: Okay, I’ll stop! :D Coming back, the thing that drives me mad about people the most is how can they not see the difference between cartoons from the art-style? I mean, the Big-eyes, the crazy hair-dos and the generally human looking proportions are a dead-giveaway. Though the stylizations differ from artist to artist, with some going for the wild, while some for realistic and while some go for a uniform style, but overall the depictions are based on proper human proportions, with the human body as base. Even the expressions used in cartoons are different from those in anime. How can people miss those?

Morpheus: People always seem to miss the most obvious. And speaking of eyes, Osamu Tenza was the who first pioneered the technique. Apparently, he was inspired by the works of Disney in Mickey Mouse & Bambi. So, as an experiment, he used big eyes, with a personal addition of a big Iris in his work, Ribbun no Kishi, which also happens to be the first ever Manga targeted towards young girls. He used the big eyes as a tool to convey emotions easily. And even after decades have passed, his method is still used and is considered as a template in Shoujo genre. That’s how effective it was.

Sharon: The part about emotions just reminded me of the language of anime. That’s one thing every anime lover knows isn’t it? Why don’t we revise THE ANIME LANGUAGE?

Morpheus: Yes, agreed. Let’s do it the anime way.

1. Growing mushrooms = extreme depression

2. A # on the forehead (top left side) = irritation

3. Glistering eyes = trying to flatter

4. Doki doki = heart beat faster (excitement)

5. Zzzzzz= dozed off

6. A flickering eye = angry to the power infinity

7. A big droplet on the forehead = Phew!! Lost it

8. X eyes = Dead/dumbfounded

9. Blushing cheeks = embarrassed

Sharon: I guess, we have successfully conveyed the difference between an anime and cartoon. So, I expect we won’t make it to our 73rd and 69th 'You guys still watch Cartoons'! But, we sure got a lot sentimental along the way, now didn't we Morpheus?

Morpheus: Yup. We did. But, then, we had our reasons. Our reasons, of loving anime.
 The first Anime that I saw, and which made me fall in love with anime, was CardCaptor Sakura (CCS), back when I was in school. It used to air on Cartoon Network. When I first saw the anime, the first thing that struck me was the eyes. I’m a sucker for big eyes. I just love big eyes. So, I was reeled in and hooked by the big eyes of the cast of Sakura, so much so that I went on to find out why this program had this unique art-style, which was quite different from all the others airing on CN. That’s how I stumbled onto the world of anime. Also, the various depictions of their life, which were very different than ours piqued my interest. For me it was an alien world, a world that I had to explore. Plus the stories of my uncle, who lives in Japan, fascinated me. I always asked myself how can a country that was anything but annihilated during WWII, progress so much and yet be so polite and kind after suffering so much. The notion amazed me and I just had to investigate it. The closest thing I could find then was Anime. That was how I got into the world of Anime.

Sharon: Woa!! Amazing yaar! It was my 1st anime too. Although I would suggest that people watch anime according to their age. Yet, no matter how old you are, CCS sure is a very sweet and nicely done anime, which you won’t regret watching.

Morpheus: Yeah, I think after reading through this, the readers will have a proper idea where they would want to start from. And even if they are stuck after that long a discussion, there's always sites like Anime-Planet.com that not only tracks your views, but also recommends you new ones based on your watching taste or genre-wise.

Sharon: and dramacrazy.net and animefreaks.com and myshojo.com , etc too. Ja minna, looking forward to an increase in the rate of growth of anime lovers across the globe. Sayonara!

Morpheus: Sayonara!

Sharon is a blogger, the one who came up with this article’s idea and a co-writer of this article, whose blog can be found at http://sharoncardsofheart.blogspot.com/, where you can also find this article.

Welcome to the N.H.K Review

Being a fan of Anime, I thought I should start sharing my impressions of the various Anime that I watch. So, beginning with this post, I have decided to add Anime Reviews too, to my Blog. As for the first Anime, I would like to share one of my all-time favourite, Welcome to the N.H.K.

Welcome to the NHK is a great anime that tells the story of Tatsuhiro Sato, a social recluse. The story not only tells of his present predicament, but also why he became a recluse in the first place, as well as why he couldn’t accept the society around him. But the story just doesn’t stop there. It goes on into how a girl, about whom he didn’t know anything comes to him and offers to help him for nothing in return, and how he meets an old junior schoolmate, who also impacts on his life. Along with these, the story shows the different traps of society that’s just lying outside to snare people, and how Tatsuhiro manages to fall into almost each and every one of them and then be saved by his 2 friends.
Welcome to the NHK is not an anime which you can classify as a single genre. There are multiple types of anime, all rolled into one. The first and foremost would be the comedy. This anime has soon very good laughing moments that will force your funny bone. Sure the amount isn’t as much as other dedicated comedy, but there are enough to keep the sailing smooth and keep you interested in the story.

Then there’s the second type that showcases the various social traps and the vices of society that we can see people falling into regularly like pyramid schemes, online gaming addictions and suicide. Not only does Sato manage to get involved into all of these, but he also manages to experience them from the perspective of the addicts, that is why they do what they do. It really makes us think, having a perspective that is common with the society and the perspective that is of the people that are involved.

The third type of story that goes on in this anime is obviously the story of Sato. The anime develops his character very nicely, with his motivations of becoming a recluse, why he suddenly believes that the mysterious girl can help him, or why he can’t really bring himself up to lie to his mother easily. The story also deals with his view of the world, how it was influenced and how he manages to relate his senpai’s notion that the world really is a conspiracy to be true and everybody in this world is part of that conspiracy plotting behind his back, or how the society feeds off recluses like him and how they have measures ready to keep him a recluse. At the end his conclusion that he really is alone in this world seems to be perfectly right.

Lastly, there’s the story of the human nature. Like it was said in the anime, the human nature makes us think we are better than others. So, as a result, when we can’t accept something we blame it on others to make ourselves superior. In this case, Sato influenced by his Senpai, the conspiracy to keep Sato a Hikikomori. So, in a way Sato being a Hikikomori is actually following his human instincts of being superior. Since he was always afraid of what the people are thinking about him, he decides to cut him off from the society and think himself to be alone in the world, and thus automatically make himself superior.

Apart from the story, the animation is great. The characters animations are quite believable. The animation where Sato comes at Misaki with his fist raised and anger on his face, and how Misaki, like the little girl embraces herself and pleas, was great. The anger showed how angry Sato was, and Misaki reflex does show how really afraid she was at that point, even though spending all those time with Sato and thinking she had reached out to him.
In the sound department, the starting theme is good, while the first ending theme wasn’t to my liking, but that might be because I’m not into rock music. That being said, the second ending theme is very nice. The voice acting is also quite good, with Sato’s character having that reserved tone that really brings out his character. The other characters are also voiced just as good. But the special mention in this segment is definitely the background score that plays during the anime. This anime has one of the best and the most spot-on background score. The guitar riffs really sets up the mood for the different emotional scenes throughout the anime.

All in all, this is a great watch, for anyone that wants something serious. The characters develops properly, the story moves on at a great pace, and at the end of it, you have a great story that stays on your mind for quite a long time. Overall it is a fine example of an anime. As was said by the person that recommended me this, this anime really did manage to leave a mark on me!