Geek Syndicate Issue 5 | Page 11

Geek Syndicate Image © Studio Ghibli like Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbour Totoro (and pretty much everything else they make) to technothrillers, to horror and yes, pornography. I knew it! I’m very pleased for you. There is also an attraction to the exoticism of anime. If you watch enough of it, you’ll quickly see that it has its archetypes and cliches as much as western outputs, but they’re different archetypes and cliches, often rooted in a Japanese history and culture that goes back thousands of years in different directions to our own. And of course these get fused with western influences coming back across the Pacific, just as anime has influenced western animation in return. Has it? It totally has. For example, every time you see a robot or tank or plane firing 10 missiles when it could be firing one, that’s an anime influence. Animation giant Pixar acknowledges the Japanese influence in interviews all the time. It may have come over to the west as a cult-following, but now it’s pretty mainstream, as any time watching kids TV will tell you, because there is still a lot of it about, and I’m not just talking Pokemon. So, I’m sold. Where do we start? Well a lot of the more popular anime available today is longrunning adaptations of Manga series like Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist and Naruto. There is a lot of them, and they’re very involved. Further back there are more complete limited run series - Space Opera series Cowboy Bebop is rightly hailed as one of the classics of the form, following a bunch of down-on-their luck bounty hunters jobbing around the solar system. On the Mecha (Giant Robots controlled by pilots) front, probably the most influential is Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is so popular even my spell-check recognised it without prompting. It’s wordy, and riddled with teenage angst from its space-mecha-flying protagonists, and a lot of other Mecha series like (for example) Martian Successor Nadesico end up being in part a commentary and part homage to it. And of course there is the wildly variable Macross series, part of which formed one of the series of Robotech. Right. But not very diverse? Image © Destination Films, 2012 Not yet. Anything by Studio Ghibli is worth a look; I’ve mentioned My Neighbour Totoro but there is also the delightful Spirited Away available with a high-quality english dub, and the traumatic and disturbing eco-fable Princess Mononoke. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is a twenty-six part cyberpunk television series that deals with Artificial Intelligence, Cyber-Terrorism and Transhumanity. Tokyo Godfathers is an animated remake of the John Wayne western Three Godfathers featuring homeless Toyko bums. Love Hina is a teenaged rom-com set in a Traditional Bathhouse. The only thing they have in common is the animation style. Diverse enough for you? You missed off the tentacle monsters again. Sigh... Matt Farr 11