Anime? Nah, who’s that?

And we’re back with another instalment of ‘Lily exposed to a style of film she has never watched before’.

This week in class we watched the 1988 classic Anime film: Akira. As you have already assumed, I had never watched anime until this morning. The only anime I ever knew of was Pokemon, if that is even considered anime (Excuse my uncultured upbringing). I knew that anime was a Japanese type of cartoon, however it was never something I even considered watching – and as you can imagine, my lack of culture exposure in the past did not help me in attempting to make sense of this film.

With no pre conceived ideas on anime, I kind of created my own context for the film, hoping I would be able to follow the storyline easier. I may not have seen anime before, however I did watch my far share of cartoons growing up: Rugrats, the Simpsons, the Powerpuff girls, fairly odd parents, Spongebob… Ya girl was a big nickelodeon fan

Again, these are all American cartoons with western context and American accents, which I have become accustomed to, so when Chris had dubbed Akira with American accents, my mind was at ease… Until the film actually started and they began speaking. I didn’t realise how much a simple accent can effect the overall consumption of a film. All of the action scenes and Japanese contextual backgrounds dubbed with American voices made me cringe.

This brought to light that not all films are meant to be westernized and they should just be left ALONE.

I couldn’t keep up with the majority of the film, there was just SO much going on. I put my head down for a second to retweet something and BAM he’s fighting giant stuffed teddy bears like okay. – however this did remind me of toy story somehow. Using Ellis’s autoethnography method in assisting me to structure my approach to making sense of something foreign.This reflected how i used elements of my childhood to recognise something unfamiliar to me.

I always wanted superpowers when I was younger though, but the kind that would turn me into a mermaid on command.

og H20 is still a BIG mood.

However towards the end of the film, I managed to piece together what was happening, through my experience with Avatar: The Last Air Bender (another Nikelodeon smash hit). This draws upon Ellis’s overview of Autoethnography; when she talks about ethnography through participant observers in culture. This mirrors the way i immerse myself in another culture by watching these films. I am able to take notes on cultural happenings and make my own sense of them.

The scene where he puts on the cape, stops the bomb from killing him, and the broadcast on live TV with civilians surrounded in the street inspire almost EVERY superhero movie I’ve ever seen. This movie is the original domain for other movies to mould their storyline of off.

Even though I use humour to mask the fact that I still can’t seem to grasp the concepts and morals that these movies are trying to portray, I feel as though the more I am exposed to these types of films, the more I am able to draw on my own experiences in order to make sense of them.

p.s can someone teach me how to upload GIF’s into a blog post.. I’ve forgotten over the break xx