Anime Clichéd? Touché!: Part 2

Part 1, if you feel the need to view it. =) Instead of generalizing anime as a whole, I thought I'd look at this from the perspective of a few anime genres where certain cliches are most noticeable. Starting with the action/fighting/shounen genre. Fighting, huge weapons, crazy magic, and incredible superpowers define this genres very soul. And that soul is what I'll be looking at. Please set aside animes of this category which have comedy/romance 'bla bla bla' in them. After all, in such a vast market, hybridization (I feel like I'm in a chemistry lecture) is unavoidable. There are literally over a hundred stereotypes in any particular genre, but I'll try to look at what stands out as idiotic, repeated ideas, which are just so tired that they really have to undergo some change. Well, considering there's always a hero in these shows, let's first take a look at that, shall we? A critical difference between a good anime and a crappy anime is that a good anime seeks to humanify characters, while a crappy anime tends to rely upon stereotypes to create stock protagonists or antagonists with little depth. Well, then: i) The hero who is never cool enough - This is a funny thing. Main characters in these sort of shows are NEVER the strongest nor the coolest. There is always one of his companions or enemies who are always, always head and shoulders above the hero in terms of strength, wit, and the cool-factor. Naruto is one such example. Is it not enough that he is a whiny dolt (that's a story for another day), but his 'best' friend is the ultra-cool Sasuke? Goku of Dragonball Z is never the strongest character. Every time he gains a certain degree of power, some other bloke appears with a certain degree MORE power. And wasn't Vegeta that little bit cooler when you first saw him? I feel this sort of stereotyping has a lot to do with actually wanting the viewer to be able to connect with the hero. I mean, if you wanted to imagine yourself as one of these heroes, would you rather be the already cool guy, or the Naruto-esqu weakling who is gonna whup some big-time ass at the end? That is probably the appeal of these under-powered protagonists, the slight feeling that they are more based in reality than the rest. Bleach itself has Kurosaki Ichigo that I certainly feel is the coolest among his group. But it never fails, Byakuya was waaay more impressive than the reckless Ichigo, and even Ishida the Quincy had more power when they first met. Which brings me to the 2nd cliche: ii) The hero's rapid ascent to 'god-like' - Note Ichigo of Bleach. Stage 1: Schoolkid that seems to be able to see ghosts. Stage 2: Temporary Shinigami. Stage 3: Temporary Shinigami after Urahara's training, about twice as powerful. Stage 4: After getting angry a few times, defeating Renji, loads stronger. Stage 5: Bankai Boy! Okay, I'm not sure if everything is there, but that's the gist of it. All this in the 60 episodes of development, which really, spanned about a month in the show's reality or so? Another reason why they always make the hero underpowered. Viewers get the thrill of watching the hero grow stronger every episode. Can we actually escape from this particular cliche? I believe it is possible. After all, there are SOME animes out there that make the hero a horrible weakling all the way (lol). But not many are brave or imaginative enough to concoct a series based on the main character being strong from the beginning. Some have tried, and most have failed. They should devise ways to perhaps place the 'strong hero' in situations which test more than his strength, like an inner struggle (although thats horribly cliched too). The next bunch of cliches involves the fights in this sort of anime. Fights are a delicate thing. Sometimes these overused ideas still manage to meld together producing one hell of a battle. Sometimes, if wrongly done, it all falls apart for the animators, and the show itself. iii) The Kamehameha! Syndrome - Generally, in la-la anime land, for superpowers and sword skills etc. to be effective, they MUST have a name. And the name MUST be shouted out when the skill is used. Most shonen animes which involve any sort of usage of sword/bo/fist skills will fall prey to this. In certain deeper, more serious (apparently) animes, which try to deviate from this disease, supporting characters or the antagonist him/herself will go something like "..Oh, no...that's the 'insert power name here'...". This, I guess, is a move to make the hero look less idiotic when attacking. Very easily named examples of this are Dragonball, Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, Bleach, Trinity Blood, and every other anime of this sort. Okay, I heard the samurai of feudal Japan used to do this to gain honour during battle. Shouting out your secret technique and striking your foe down was deemed as a great honour because you defeated your enemy based on your skill, not by some underhanded trick (okay, I'm not sure if this is true, it's only based on web-sources). All this reinforces is that the Japanese were looney from way back =P. As tired as this is, we wouldn't want to watch animes where 2 people fight each other silently, right? So, all I ask is that animators do not repeat the whole sequence of 'name screaming and power boosting' every blessed time they want to perform an attack. iv) Foes who tell each other everything - The sheer idiocy and foolishness of sequences where two enemies start blabbering on about every detail of their technique ie. how it works, where and when they mastered it, how strong it is, never ceases to amaze me. Of course, doing so usually results in said technique getting countered, and the speaker getting pummeled. Why do they do this? The animators justification of these scenes are most probably 90% economics and 10% entertainment value. It's just so much more profitable when a big battle lasts over 3 episodes. In the case of (yes, again) Dragonball, fights can drag on for more than 10 episodes. There is another explanation for this, though. The anime sometimes catches up with the manga, and this is found to be the simplest of ways to let the manga storyline evolve before the anime catches up again. Off the tip of my tongue, Naruto and Dragonball are victims of this. The 10% entertainment factor is probably directed at those otaku who WANT to know every detail of the aforementioned attack. v) Stopping time - Most characters have ample time to perform lengthy transformations or super attacks. We ALL know this. Even people who hardly watch anime know this. I know I'm supposed to assume that most of these lengthy chanting or whatever is done quickly, but is shown over a longer period for viewer gratification. But when a 2 second jump into the air is transformed into a 5 minute sequence of flashbacks and magic chanting, that already fragile basis wears very thin. Watch Fate recently? Is it possible to i)concentrate, ii) say 'Trace On', iii) remember good ol' Archer, iv) stare in awe at Avalon v) have Saber get up and run towards you...all while Gilgamesh just stands there, obviously in awe at our wounded pair of Shirou and Saber. Is this glaring problem insurmountable? Hardly so. Either make these sequences much shorter; a good shout is plenty, or make it more believable. Believable meaning animators should set up scenes where an adversary is either far away, or recovering from a blow while the hero goes about the hocus pocus. Simple no? Sadly, that's not savvy business-thinking, is it? The average attention span of an internet user is what, 5 seconds? So, if you made it this far, I appreciate your reading this. =) I'll wrap up this genre and look at cliches in the increasingly popular harem cum romance genre next time. >>> Animania Tags: Animation, Anime, Japanese Animation, Manga, Anime Cliches, Anime Stereotypes, Tenjou