Anime Explosion!

by Drazen, Patrick

  If nothing else, popular culture, from whatever country, is to some degree self-congratulatory. It believes in its own answers to the great cosmic questions of life and death. It’s not about a right or wrong answer, but it is a recognition that there are many approaches to varying problems—problems which often end up being universal. Questions of love and death, feelings of loss, and quests for hope, touch all of humanity, and the variety of solutions, while not workable for everyone, are each capable of speaking to someone.

  One is All, and All is One.

  1. Manga artist Arakawa knew the title was a problem; when Edward is first given his title, he comments, “That’s quite a mouthful.” See Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist, trans. Akira Watanabe (San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2006), 6:142.

  2. Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara has written about the moment that enlightenment came to the Buddha: “As he gazed at the morning star, he said, ‘How marvelous, I, the great earth, and all beings are naturally and simultaneously awakened.’ This phrase teaches us the great lesson of interdependence, that we are not separate from all that is, but rather we are interconnected, a piece of the grand whole of the universe. And at the same time, this very piece, this ‘I’ sitting here is an integral and vital component of the whole.” (Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, Ph.D., “Bodhi Day: Celebrating the Buddha’s Enlightenment,” Huffington Post, December 9, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roshi-pat-enkyo-o/bodhi-day-celebrating-the_b_791349.html [accessed December 9, 2010].)

  3. Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), 11.

  Key the Metal Idol

  It may not be the loudest, most violent, or most sensuous anime, but Key the Metal Idol is that very rare animal: a meta-anime, animation about (among other things) animation.

  The 1994 OAV series Key the Metal Idol was created to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Pony Canyon animation studio, a fact that takes on a greater significance once the film is understood in all its layers. It’s a fifteen-part science-fiction picaresque quite unlike anything else in anime—a tour-de-force for director and writer Hiroaki Sato (the episodes are of varying lengths but have a total running time of almost nine and a half hours).

  The main word in that description, however, is “picaresque.” A literary form with a long and important history, the picaresque is characterized by a satirical tone, improbable coincidences, characters popping into and out of the plot for no apparent reason, dizzying changes of (preferably exotic) scenery, and an altogether fantastic journey for the protagonist, either a naïve youth or a lovably sly rogue. In Western high culture, the best example of the picaresque form is probably Voltaire’s satiric novel Candide. Yet, as can be imagined, many of these elements can be found (to one degree or another) in many anime. Key just happens to have more of them than most, and is in its own way one of the best examples of the picaresque form created in the twentieth century.

  Unlocking Key

  The story opens in present-day rural Japan. A young girl named Tokiko Mima, usually called Key, may actually be a robot, as she claims. Her grandfather is, after all, a noted if eccentric inventor. Or she may be a pubescent human being with a psychosis that makes her think that she’s a robot. In any case, the people of the village, including Key’s schoolmates, accept that she is what she says she is. One day she is sent home from school because her grandfather has died. The grandfather leaves an audio tape telling Key that, even though she’s a robot, she can become human—if she receives the love and friendship of thirty thousand people. Without a second thought, she sets off for Tokyo, where she hopes to emulate the career of the top idol singer of the day, Miho Utsuse. (As far as we know, Key has no experience as an entertainer, but that doesn’t seem to matter.)

  On her first night in Tokyo, just as she is about to run afoul of a porno movie producer, Key happens to bump into an old friend from the village, a girl roughly her own age named Sakura. This girl is everything that Key is not: loud where Key is quiet, active where Key is sedentary, confrontational where Key is passive. You’d think there’s no reason why Sakura should hover over Key so solicitously, even taking it upon herself to try to launch Key’s career as a singer. As we find out much later, there’s a perfectly good reason: Sakura and Tokiko may have the same father. As for Key’s mother, that’s where the story really begins . . .

  Where the story will end is back home, at least figuratively. Once again, conservative values assert themselves in providing a context for an otherwise outrageous plot.

  It Takes A Village

  Key was born in the kind of pastoral Japanese countryside that seemingly hardly exists going into the twenty-first century, a village of about a hundred people in a secluded valley. She has psychic abilities, a legacy she shares with her mother and grandmother and generations of Mima family women before her.1

  These women were miko, priestesses at the village’s Shinto shrine. Tokiko’s mother Toyoko and grandmother Tomiko were subjected to Grandfather Mima’s experiments trying to harness their psychic energy; after she was born, Tokiko was hidden in plain sight by the suggestion that she was a robot. The point of all this was to shield her and her powers from the boss of Ajo Heavy Industries, who first approached Professor Mima about building mechanical self-propelled bombs during World War II.

  All in the Family

  The professor who saw Tomiko Mima dance in Key the Metal Idol proposed marriage to her and changed his last name to his wife’s. Gendo Rokubungi proposed to Yui Ikari in Evangelion, and changed his name to Gendo Ikari. The custom of a man marrying into his wife’s family and taking her surname as his own does not exist in the United States, but is allowed for in Japanese culture.

  The Japanese call this practice and the person involved mukoyoshi, a word made up of the Chinese characters for “son-in-law” and “adopted child.” As in the West, the norm in contemporary Japan has come to be the nuclear family, in which the wife takes the husband’s family name and they set themselves apart from their parents as a new family. But Japan has an ancient and powerful tradition of marriage-as-clan-membership, and a man may become a mukoyoshi if there is no male heir in the wife’s family to carry on the family name. By adopting his wife’s family name, he becomes the successor to his father-in-law as the legal head of the household. Men who become mukoyoshi are typically second or third sons who do not jeopardize the continuity of their own family name in the process (since the first son is regarded as the inheritor and continuer of the lineage). This practice of adult adoption is still the most prevalent form of adoption in Japan.

  The family of miko, the inventor, and the industrialist came together first when Key’s grandfather came to the village and saw Tomiko dancing. This was not the wild ecstatic dance of a miko entering a trance state, but was purely for entertainment. As she went through traditional stylized moves onstage, a wooden marionette without strings copied her every move, thanks to her psychic abilities. The professor proposed marriage almost immediately, but did so in order to study and try to harness Tomiko’s powers.

  These powers were found to have two wellsprings. One was the continued line of miko in the Mima clan, continuing from one female temple performer to the next. The other was the villagers themselves, whose love and devotion empowered the performers. This is the most blatant parallel between Key’s calling as a miko and her decision to be an idol singer.

  But another connection is even more important. The particular shrine served by generations of Mima women is specifically dedicated to the goddess Uzume. Remember the Kojiki and the story of the cave? Uzume was the dancer whose antics caused the audience to react in such a way that Amaterasu was tempted to look out of the cave, thus restoring the sun and saving the world. Just to make it all blatantly clear, the president of the Miho Utsuse Fan Club refers to Uzume as “the goddess of show business.”

  “Welcome my friends, to the show that never ends. . . .”

  Uzume can certainly be called a goddess of the
popular culture, and in doing so we come full circle. In spite of a cult leader’s dire warnings that Key must become a shamaness for his cult instead of a pop singer, Key’s career path is basically the same whether she becomes a miko or a singer. Each exists because of the need of the audience. They need to see a certain kind of theater take place, theater which may be novel but which is also built on a traditional foundation. Of course the idol singer tradition may not be as old as Shinto, but the emotional investment by the audience is just as great. They both came to see more than just theater; whether at the shrine or at the concert hall, the audience wants a kind of miracle.

  And this is just as true of those who draw manga and produce anime, as well as those who enjoy them. Whether the artist and the audience see robots who act like people (Astro Boy), or people who act like robots (Key), or children who pilot robots (Giant Robo), or pigs who pilot airplanes (Porco Rosso), or even something as real and as prosaic as a schoolgirl drawing a picture of a horse (Chibi Maruko-chan) or putting new words to an old song (Mimi o Sumaseba)—all of these and more are miraculous, in their own way. Maybe they exist in our place and time, maybe they used to exist, maybe they never did exist and never will. Like all art, though, these images have their own degree of power, as long as there is an audience.

  And now we can see Key the Metal Idol as more than just an elaborate sci-fi tale of idol singers and warrior robots. It can also be seen as a meta-anime: an animated film about animated films. This isn’t as direct as Takeshi Mori’s infamous Otaku no Video, a pair of mockumentaries from the ’80s about the life and trials of an anime fan; instead, it sets up an elaborate metaphor of the power of art—even popular culture—to be capable of simple entertainment, or magic bordering on the miraculous—or both.

  Ajo tried to harness the power of the Mima priestesses during World War II to create a self-propelled bomb. This came to nothing, but it inspired his later attempts at using the psychic power of the miko to create warrior-robots. This is another way the power of an audience works in the popular culture. The images do not always convey examples of gentle hearts and noble deeds; sometimes they can be twisted to promote sinister ends, or to pander to bad taste and worse instincts.

  The good news is that the worst side of the popular culture seldom seems to last for long. Sometimes racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and other inhumane messages pop up in the culture. Fortunately, bad messages seldom result in good art. They may have a brief vogue, but they eventually go their way when the majority of the culture would rather hear a different message.

  A message that even an outsider can understand, if that outsider knows what to look for, and how it may be seen.

  1. “Most anime miko are young girls, and in most cases their powers are more related to heredity than training. Moreover, that heredity is almost always along the female line. This idea is most clearly found in the manga Mai: The Psychic Girl” (Antonia Levi, Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation [Chicago: Open Court, 1996], 127). See also the sisters Kikyo and Kaede in InuYasha and the Devil Hunter Yoko series.

  Afterword: The Future of Anime 2.0

  A book like this usually ends with a list of resources—titles of anime that qualify as “required viewing,” for example. This book has no such list, for two important reasons.

  For one thing, pop culture is very ephemeral. Some manga and anime titles are literally here one month or year and gone the next, and new material rushes in to fill the vacuum. Think of American television: in any given year, two to three dozen new series premiere, of which only a handful survive to a second season. Even if some of those short-lived “failures” were works of actual merit, with superior acting and compelling stories, they’re probably gone for good—even with cable channels picking up some older series.

  So it is with anime: today’s masterpiece may be tomorrow’s museum piece, or may be totally forgotten, with a rapidity that would put American television to shame. In manga, the wellspring of many anime, some successful series run on for years, leaving that much less space in the magazines for a new story to catch on with the public. One solution has been to start new magazines. These come and go, and occasionally these stories will be enough of a hit that it will be animated. Still, the majority of manga appear and disappear without ever making it into animation, and even among those that do, a number of them do not make the transition to anime well, and never quite catch on.

  Fortunately for the followers of popular culture—and unfortunately for writers who try to document it—these changes are continuous, ongoing. Old talents leave the scene, new talents come on; tastes change; innovations may become commonplace, and may then become boring. Still, the best of the best in anime always seems fresh, both to the veteran viewers familiar with it and to the upcoming generation seeing it for the first time—and, thanks to the Internet, more and more of the old classics are finding a new online home. Some scenes (the dozens of bodies under the ice of Pluto in Galaxy Express 999, Sharon Apple singing while flying through the streets of Macross in Macross Plus, Nausicaä waiting for certain death from a stampede of Ohmu, Ayako the miko summoning tree spirits in the Ghost Hunt series, the entire On Your Mark music video) never seem to lose their power—for me, at least.

  Another factor is my own subjectivity. If you’ve paid attention, you’ve noticed this entire book is a collection of my personal favorites. It’s based on my exposure plus my experience, not limited to anime. This book necessarily draws on my entire past—from manga I read a week ago to college courses I took a decade ago—and of course anyone reading this book will have an entirely different set of exposure and experience.

  Your taste comes into play as well. Even if all the anime ever made somehow became available to everyone, some titles simply won’t interest some fans. There are those who consider themselves too old for titles like Pokémon or Monster Rancher, some consider Di Gi Charat and other kawaii series too cutesy to bear, some dismiss Dragon Ball Z and Fist of the North Star as just one fight scene after another, sports stories like Prince of Tennis or Inazuma Eleven are just too sporty, and some won’t watch anime that give off even a whiff of hentai.

  Three Little Words

  So it’s the height of presumption for me to declare that some anime must be seen and others must be avoided. I do, however, have a few recommendations.

  The first is: watch. As much as possible. Too many judgments have been passed on whole subgenres of anime, not to mention on anime itself, without really perceiving its breadth, complexity, and sophistication. No one could draw an accurate conclusion on Sailor Moon, for instance, having only seen Akira—or vice versa—and neither would really prepare you for something as freeform as Shamanic Princess or as epic as Princess Mononoke. Besides, some of the funniest anime are funny precisely because they parody other anime. (I’m thinking of Sailor Victory, which manages to spoof Sailor Moon, Evangelion, Key the Metal Idol, and a half-dozen other anime titles.) By all means focus on a genre if it’s your favorite, but don’t neglect the others.

  My second recommendation: read. While anime as we understand the term has existed for just over fifty years, human beings have been around a lot longer than that. Anime is an art form that is especially good at reflecting the human condition, as well as cultural specifics unique to Japan. But you’ll be limited in your understanding of anime if you don’t read outside of anime. Many anime and manga were directly inspired by great writing. Even a casual look through a collection of videos points back to a hundred literary sources: Japanese and American history, writers from Homer to Jules Verne to Conan Doyle to Mark Twain, ecology and theology and the quest for perfection in an imperfect world. If you ignore literature and history and everything that ties into popular culture, you’ll only be seeing a fraction of what’s on the screen.

  Of course, words don’t only appear in books. So the third recommendation: surf. The Internet has contributed beyond measure to the growth in popularity of anime. Fans build cybershrines for the
ir own favorites and for the entertainment and education of others, and the artists and animation studios themselves have also taken to the Internet as a way to advertise new works or commemorate the old. There’s a lot of misinformation, speculation, rumor, and wishful thinking on the Web, but also a lot of information that’s hard—if not impossible—to come by any other way.

  And, of course, reading and watching can, and should, be done on the Internet as well as off. Blogs, message boards, and sites such as the Anime News Network are well established now, and no longer the work only of amateurs.

  Pros and Cons

  Reading may be a solitary activity, but fans of anything, from baseball teams to opera singers, like to get together with other fans, compare notes, trade information, and remember why they have that particular fandom in common. This certainly applies to anime fans.

  As anime grew out of manga, anime conventions grew out of the first convention of fans of dojinshi manga; about 700 fans in the Tokyo area got together to celebrate their favorite medium in 1975. It was called Comiket, a shortened version of Comic Market. The fans weren’t the only ones paying attention: it was a ready-made marketing opportunity, and the message wasn’t lost on studios, publishing houses, and everyone from cooks to costumers. The conventions (“cons” for short) grew in size and number and are now a major part of anime fandom, especially in the United States. Every large city (and many smaller ones) has at least one con per year.