in article cv4jqn$l57$1@bgsv5647.tk.mesh.ad.jp, kuri at cc@dotmel.cam wrote
on 2/18/05 8:33 PM:

> 
> "Ernest Schaal" <eschaal@max.hi-ho.ne.jp> wrote in message
> 
>> What I was going to expand on is comments on anime, especially the non-porn
>> type. I don't hate anime, I just think that it is a genre that hasn't
>> produced as good cinema
> 
> It has not produced any cinema at all as it's a different thing.

Anime appears in both film and television. The film part is definitely a
film genre, like the Western, or the samurai flicks, or film noir detective
movies.

>> Over the years, I have seen a lot of anime, more so when I was away from
>> Japan. Much of the anime seems to be television based, with the movies being
>> simply longer versions of the television series that have been around for
>> years. Often, the films are not as good as the series upon which they were
>> based.
> 
> That doesn't make people that appreciate animes otaku or childish. The
> Japanese anime amateurs I know are not otakus. By definition otakus don't go
> out so I have no idea what they watch and probably we'd be surprised.

Anime does seem to be targeting those two demographic groups: the otaku and
the children.

> At the local shotengai, when they show animes, I see families (parents +
> kids, grand-parents + kids, parents without the kids, grown-up kids in
> couples, small groups of OLs, etc...), very few people on their own. As a
> gaigin, when I visit people's houses I do what nihonjins do when they visit
> my place, I indiscretly check all the objects/books/videos that are in their
> living-room. In Osaka, many families have a number of animes, and they watch
> that in family, that means often without kids. These people are not
> particularly fan of the morning brats.
>
> In France, in this season, they are doing the Japanese anime festivals and
> the audience is also hard to put in one category, the 3 unrelated persons
> that mailed me about it this year are people in their 50's that went the
> first time with pre-teen kids and now go on their own. They are people that
> are very sensitive to the easthetic and atmoshpere of anime, even of
> relatively plain ones.

France thought that Jerry Lewis was a film genius. Go figure.
 
> Now about the *porn* comment. I imagine (and I'm not interesting in
> checking) that there exist very specialised *adult anime* sold more or less
> openly. We are not talking about that.
>
> There are more or less *familial* ones, but a symbolic rape by a plant or
> Nobita-kun having fantasies don't make a mainstream anime obscene. I have
> not grown up in a puritan society that tries to hide nudity and the
> existence of erotism and sex to children, so I don't see the necessity for
> that. And I think in addition it's impossible to really cut that aspect of
> life from fiction, and children need to hear about it. You've read the
> psychanalistic works about traditional "kiddie" litterature (Bettleheim,
> etc) ?  That was written in your time, I think.
>
> I don't think the people that refuse the presence of that aspect of life and
> the unreasonable fantasies in fiction can like movies, litterature or even
> graphical art. Do you put your hand on your eyes to avoid seeing "crass
> porn" when you visit your ukyo-e expositions ?
> 
> Certainly everything is not good for everybody. But in Japanese context, you
> get more risks to feel ill at ease with *officially good* litterature (like
> Kawabata's Sleeping beauties) than with your average anime.

My problem with the porn anime is not that it is erotica, but that it tends
to be poor erotica.

> People that like that don't come to tell me opera is a porn-otaku-childish
> thing... I don't understand your attack on anime's audience. Unless that was
> a joke.

Again, I was talking about the target demographics.

There is some anime that I like, like there are some Disney films that I
like. In both cases, some of the films are good enough to cross over into
adult audiences.