"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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

Kuri