Anime overly violent?

After being an anime fan for so long, I'm almost tired of combating public statements by members of the media or the general American public who really know nothing of anime and yet still try to make decisions about it. Lately, it seems that a lot of people have been trying to say that anime is overly violent compared to American cartoons, and unsuitable for children. There was a recent article on the New York Times website (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/28/business/28TOON.html) that contends that anime is much more violent than American cartoons, but no one is doing anything about it. The author, Jim Rutenburg says, "The violence in the new shows often goes well beyond the antics in such enduringly popular shows as 'Roadrunner' and 'Tom and Jerry.'" This one statement almost by itself tells the well-known story of how anime is misrepresented by those who know nothing of what they speak.

When you say "cartoon" to someone in the US, people immediately get an image of something like Bugs Bunny, or maybe if they're younger, something like Animaniacs, who knows. But the major point here is that cartoons in America are pretty much exclusively associated with the lighthearted, kid-oriented fare that cartoons have always been. To the general American populous, anime should follow these same rules, but to their surprise, anime is much more than just another "cartoon." The majority of anime shown on TV in America is similar in some ways, being aimed at a younger audience, and containing some sort of epic story that involves a lot of fighting. Based on this, people have come to see all anime as being this way. However, the reason this is the predominant type of anime in America to this point is simply because that is what is popular. American culture raises their kids to enjoy this type of anime, and then when the kids enjoy the anime like this, people seem to blame it for being the cause. In reality, there are just as many series in Japan that focus on real life, using drama to drive the story rather than action, but American TV never sees these anime because there is simply not a large enough market for it. Kids in America demand action out of their entertainment, and shows like "To Heart," a great anime which simply focus around the lives of a normal group of high-school students (well if you exclude the fact that two of them are maid-bots), just don't interest them. This kind of culture is not brought about by the media, but by society as a whole. If society changes, the media will change to reflect it.

In a related vein, violence in the media was recently the topic of a Surgeon General's report. However, contrary to the popular belief of practically every newspaper story since the Columbine incident, the Surgeon General reports that violence in the media really has no link to the cause of adolescent violence, and only a minor link to early-onset violence, far behind other things such as bad parenting and natural aggressive tendencies. Finally, there is vindication for those of us who have been saying all along that the media has been overplaying violence in the media. Of course, it should be that way. Fighting is merely an outspring of conflict that manifests itself in a physical form. The only thing that makes entertainment interesting is conflict, whether it be drama, or action, or comedy, entertainment is driven by conflict, simply because things aren't uniform, things are different, and conflict is natural.

In a lot of anime, fighting occurs because there is genuine conflict there, there isn't just fighting for the sake of fighting. For example, one of the series mentioned in the article above is Cardcaptors, the American version of Card Captor Sakura. In the series, two children, Sakura and Li, are trying to recapture all of the Clow Cards which have escaped. Mei Ling tries to help her cousin Li whom she really likes, but she is fighting one of the cards when she is thrown against a wall. The author cites this as an example of excessive violence, but really the episode centers around Mei Ling's inability to fight well against the magical cards when she has no magic of her own. The conflict in the fight drives the plot of the episode, as is often the case. There is no excessive violence here, unless one considers any violence excessive. Anime is much wider in scope than just violence, but that violence which is there is usually there for a reason. Even extremely violent anime, such as Kite, have a reason for their violence. The story that they try to tell reflects on human nature and society, and those things include violence. Anime will always have its roots in real life, and the situations in anime reflect situations found in real life. Whether the content of those situations is violent all depends on society, and society seems to have no intent on becoming any less violent in its roots in the near future. P.S. A copy of the Surgeon General's report on youth violence can be found online at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/sgreport/

Otanoshimi ni!