anime....

feel free to say what you'd like to about it (i personally despise it), but just to start up a discussion about it, how do the storylines compare with western storytelling methods? do you see a difference between 'us' and 'them', for lack of better terms? what about the characters? is an 'universal'/'archetypical' anime character more or less the same as you'd find in western culture, or are there noticable differences in style and attitude?

well, you're right. my intention was more about storytelling techniques and character types and attitudes between the two cultures. seeing as how it's safe to say most of us don't read japanese or chinese, at least we can look to anime for reference and hope the shows prove truer to their written word than ours often does in our culture. so, my defense of the thread centres entirely around storytelling, but i see your point, too. it's up to you. my last argument is there are a whole lot of younger authors out there writing stories based heavily on anime/manga, so from that standpoint, since it's so influential to actual writers, i think there's merit to its discussion.

ah, gotcha, p. i thought the issue was just because it was a visual form as opposed to words, which, still, you'd have a point there. this certainly shouldn't turn into a movie/t.v. show review board. i can't think of any anime that makes it to my t.v. that's *not* fantasy or sci-fi based.

about it being more one giant story arc... hm... i don't know if i'm quite onboard with that. as far as i can tell, it seems to generally be pretty episodic to me for the most part. the exception is 'inuyisha' or something like that, which is pure fantasy. but is there a governing storyline to 'pokemon', 'sailor moon' or 'speed racer'? i don't know.

japan is clearly more symbolic and metaphorically-based than we are, so does that hinder our deeper understanding of anime? it makes me think, 'what's *our* symbolism?' i honestly can't think of anything, whereas if you saw a crane (the bird) in anime, that's got a thousand years of meaning behind it and somewhat infers an instant depth to the story. what do we have that does that? nuthin'.

i think we discuss plenty of movies, no? i personally like to reference movies because it's much more likely people will have seen seen the movie than coincidentally having read one of a million books. (references to books supporting an opinion should be mentioned, of course.) i agree to a certain extent with you, fa, with the caveat that the place remain where you learn about and how to write sf/f. i don't think there's anything wrong with slipping in a comics thread, though. i mean, even if it's got somewhat tenuous relationships to actual literature, is it that wrong to have a fun thread every now and then? i think not. lol. and there's also the idea that, especially in such 'small' genres for the most part, maybe we should focus not only on literature, but storytelling in any form.

you're right, p. when i said that, i was hoping to get some examples of national symbolism. particularly in america, though, i think there's a sizable difference between the statue of liberty's symbolism, mt. rushmore's, the vietnam memorial, etc., in that those invoke much of the same kind of response or offshoots of a main symbolism, whereas japan's symbolism has that, of course, but also seems to contain much, much more symbolism pertaining to philosophy and ideas. in other words, what's symbolically sacred in our culture revolves around national pride as opposed to a bridge in the east alluding to a complexity we've got no understanding of in general. no understanding and no comparison. to look at hoover dam, it's another example of, 'hell, yeah, america kicks a ss!' it *should* have a deeper meaning, but it doesn't unless we're reminded of what that meaning is. another issue is our symbolism, shallow as it may or may not be, has a generally universal meaning for most, but not all. i think this comes from our melting pot beginnings. being so diverse may be a great thing, but it also lessens symbolism, especially when generations become more americanized.

i'd say were we having this conversation thirty years ago, the cross would have a real meaning, but as we see so many villians wearing them, it's often to tell if a new character wearing a cross is virtuous or ironic or hypocritical.

were we to symbolize the loss of innocence, what would we use? or tranquility? or old age? or a pacifist philosophy? some of those we could, but i question the longevity and depth of most of it. peace you could use the peace symbol. a thousand years down the road, will that still be there? will it be understood? unfortunately, most of our symbolism seems generally centred around national pride (statue of liberty), power (scenes of atomic usage/a war-like bald eagle repleat with weapons in its claw), stability/economy strength/ingenuity (the car), and excess (the mcdonald's logo). i think we have very few symbols representing an esoteric thought or philosophy, but i'd like to be proven wrong.