WEEK 5 Anime 1

What is the ‘Shojo’ and how does it often function in anime?

Traditionally, ‘Shojo’ means ‘little female’ aged 12 or 13 who is passive and powerless character in Japan. However, in contrast to Japanese conventional female character, In Japanese anime, ‘Shojo’ is created active, independent, powerful, courageous and inquisitive conforming conventional feature such as wide eyes, lipless mouths, stylized in his anime. This also depicts one of the world contemporary issue femininity like gender relationships and roles. Even, some female characters are described as the leader of the group or village like Lady Eboshi, for example, in Princess Monoke. In addition, many Japanese males are fascinated by this ‘Shojo’ characters and this results Japanese men are large portion of audiences with women and children in the anime world.

Looking at Naipier and Cavallaro (2006), discuss how anime is culturally ‘located’ in the East or West, or somewhere else?

Anime is Japanese cartoons which are nowadays very popular in Japan and other countries including the West as well. Anime is made from children’s cartoons, fantasy, SF, Thrillers to sex and samurai sagas unlike American animation which has been dominated the World animation markets for the last century. Anime’s target audiences are not only children but also adults. Anime was regarded as popular or mass culture in Japan and sub culture in America. However, In terms of its popularity, this has been changing through the last decay. First of all, anime has been regarded as an intellectually challenging art form and popular cultural form which is not only stands on the Japanese high cultural tradition but also worldwide artistic traditions of twentieth century cinema and photography. In addition, this achieves high cultural literature exploring current issues such as related to ecosystem, genders, races, class and technologies. In addition, because of its popularity, anime affects diverse audiences with current issues or phenomenon. Therefore, anime achieves success both sociologically and aesthetically.

References.

Cavallaro, D. (2006). The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki. London: McFarland & Company.