From Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning fantasy flick "Spirited Away" to the violent voyeurism of "Ghost in the Shell," kiddie fare such as "Pokemon," TV shows on cable's Adult Swim and video game offshoots such as "Final Fantasy," anime has spread its tentacles across American culture.Snerk. Tentacles.
Women, surging ahead in the video-gaming industry, have embraced anime and manga in a similar way.Do videogames go hand-in-hand with anime? This is not a connection I have explored before.
Regardless, this article is awesome purely due to the following:
"It was more men before. Nobody knew what anime was. It was a small group of dedicated fans mostly in high school," said Tony Oliver, the voice of hero Rick Hunter from the famed anime television series "Robotech," which ran in the U.S. from 1985 until 1988.Ah, Tony Oliver. Right now, somewhere out there, he's probably wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
They also got the webmaster of robotech.com to comment, for whatever reason, and here's his gem of wisdom:
"Back in the day, anime was all science fiction," he said. "Now it's everything: war, horror, romance."Yeah, they didn't have, say, historical fiction or dramas back in the day. (You meant to say "in the U.S.", right, Steve?)
The article also delves into yuri and yaoi, because, honestly, what self-respecting piece about anime wouldn't? :>
Cross-posted to Japundit.
2 comments:
LOL at people-who-should-know-better-since-they're -in-the-industry. =)
I think the connection between video games and anime is fairly self evident, in so far as 95% of games in our market are just english-translated versions of successful japanese games, and 'anime' style is prevalent in character designs of many classics, like, pretty much every game after ff7.
It's interesting, and I've definitely noticed what was once a shy and mostly unrecognized geek phenomenon grow into an increasingly mainstream way of doing things over the years. I hope China lets us keep our anime when they take over the world.
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