Anime is NOT a Genre
“Anime is not a genre!” — I’m quoting the point made by Gilles Poitres in his Anime Companion some years ago, one I feel needs expansion. While Poitras provides a brief rant on the matter, there is insufficient space to go into the exact whys and wherefores of the matter, which is what I hope to cover here.
In layman’s terms, the word “genre” is often applied to things the word does not, or at least should not cover. “Medium” is one such definition rarely differentiated. To be clear on what I mean: Anime is a medium, not a genre.
The reason is simple. A genre applies by definition to such things as “comedy”, “action”, and “drama”. In fact if we are to take things as they really are and — excepting conflation — break it all down, everything in film falls into these three categories. Only abstract pieces such as Un chien andalou might fall outside these categories. Even then, they could broadly be gathered as part of “drama”, if we wish to stretch the category.
The application of subcategory, medium, and style as category has been the general cause of confusion on the part of the layperson. “Science Fiction” is not truly a category, but may function as both subcategory and style if need be. Implicitly we know Alien is an action film with a science-fiction subcategory and a horror style applied. Its medium thereafter is a live-action film, and so this satisfies the final component of categorisation.
Now, is this all necessary? No. Therefore we simply label it an action or, less accurately a “science fiction” film and be done with it. But this does not help us when it comes to animation. Animation is strictly a medium, and we must at least be troubled with this distinction so as to avoid unnecessary confusion. After all, we do not mistake a 3D movie for a 2D one, nor live action for animation, and certainly not television for big-budget cinema. Medium is important, even if we don’t actively use the word!
Medium has two broad categories. One is presentation, the other is media. Examples of presentation include cartoon, 3D, live-action, puppetry, etc. Media on the other hand is more simply television, direct-to-video/DVD, or movie proper. We are more concerned with making the difference where presentation is concerned.
Succinctly, anime is a presentation medium, not a genre. Confusing the two is an unnecessary mistake and should have been pushed out of the vernacular some years ago. Partly because it’s annoying, but mostly because it’s indicative of the general public’s ignorance to visual media. Any illumination to the modern vocabulary would be a Godsend, and here’s as good a place to start as any.
Therefore, anime = medium, not genre.
Loading ...
waista said,
July 17, 2007 @ 5:06 am
The first Alien was not an action movie. And if you state what something is a `genre of…’ then I think the term can be used more loosely. Anime is not a medium. Cell animimation is. CG animimation is. Animation is not strickly a medium either, where medium is usually meant to refer to the physical materials it’s created in, eg. painting-mediums: oil, arcylic, gouche etc. CG virtualizes this relationship but it’s still there (as pixels if you want to be strict). Anyway, Anime is more specific than a medium. It refers to _japanese_ animation. So I think it’s correct to say that anime is a genre of animation (a very broad genre). It’s just not a storytelling genre, eg. drama, comedy etc. The same old lesson is that languages are dynamic. Don’t get too upset about how people use them.
Hidoshi said,
July 17, 2007 @ 5:19 am
I fail to see how the first Alien was not an action movie. While not strictly action, the presence of a monster, the setting, and the frequent use of artillery in a very direct manner (and not merely as a backdrop) separates it from being a drama. Drama would be a stretch at best, even if applicable here and there. It certainly isn’t a comedy.
Granted, anime is not a medium proper. Nonetheless, I am referring to cartoons as a whole. In hierarchy, we would say anime is the top-set medium, broken down further into cartoon, cel or CG animation, etc etc etc.
I do not accept ‘genre’ as an applicable tag here. Anime shares tropes with Disney animation, Heidi is clearly adapted from a Western story, etc. There are so many arguments against it as genre and very few for. Animation is definitely a medium, broken down further into semantics of itself. By extension, anime is a medium, one which I do not consider distinct from cartoons btw, save in vernacular usage.
waista said,
July 17, 2007 @ 5:41 am
Alien was a thriller. It was marketed as such and even IMDB calls it that. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/
You can’t use anime to refer to cartoons as a whole. It refers to japanese cartoons. Cartoons are a sub-set of animation (cartoon = drawn animation). Another sub-set of animation would be claymation. How do you fit cartoons in the same category as CG and cell? How did you make cartoon a sub-set of anime?
Also you say live action is a medium. It’s not. Film, video are mediums. You can do live-action stopmotion animation right?
Hidoshi said,
July 17, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
I think you missed the above categorisation. While I know what Alien was marketed as, that is not what I’m concerned with. By the same token, Nintendo markets Zelda as an RPG — it’s not. It’s an adventure game, and if reduced further, an action game. It has no defining substance as an RPG, but Nintendo insists it somehow fits this category.
Nonetheless, the above post distills things into ‘action’, ‘comedy’, and ‘drama’. Alien fits the first category. If you want to go by marketing titles, then yes, it is a “thriller” — though that title has virtually no meaning. Alien is marketed as a thriller at my local video store, but so is The Fugitive. What does that even mean?
On the topic of mediums, I highly disagree. You’re using medium in the context of craft and art. Art here means the application of a thing like paint, or alternately, clay. The use above is applied to the method of delivery — which still counts as a medium. As I said, subcategories exist — I didn’t feel the need to deal with them in much detail. You can construct a diagram in minutia if you want. Let’s say, Chicken Run:
Genre: Comedy
Media: Theatrical Film
Cultural Style: British/English
Medium: Animation
Sub-Medium: Stop-Motion
Craft Medium: Clay
Therein, we have an appropriate hierarchy. Nonetheless, the top-set medium is “animation”. Only when we break things down further into minutia do we need to address the actual craft.
As to classification of cartoons — I did not say that cartoon as a whole are “anime”. Rather, anime is a part of general cartooning. In that, it is a cultural style, yes. It is also a medium. Why? Because despite often being under the ideas of a cultural style, occasionally it escapes into something less national. It would be remarkably difficult to call Transformers G1 “anime” because it was designed to be Western. Nonetheless, it was made in Japan. Therefore while its medium is undoubtedly “anime”, its cultural style is “North American”.
The distinction on the point of “live action” is a bit of a dilemma. But here I think it is implicit that “live action” refers to human actors on screen, while “animation” refers to representations of humans — not humans themselves. Even in the case that someone were to use paper cut-outs of people (or a similar device to replicate real people), these would still only count as representations. The same would be true where humans themselves are incorporated as plot devices, but are not the central theme of the show. Thus stop-motion animation remains animation by general category.
Senna said,
July 17, 2007 @ 6:15 pm
Good post, and on a topic that I wish more people understood. The “anime =/= genre” argument automatically voids the “anime = porn” and “anime = kiddie stuff” misconceptions (which have mostly died, but still pop up now and then). If more people recognized anime as a medium, I wouldn’t have to explain so often that “Anime is no different from videos in a rental store — there will be porn, there will be kiddie stuff, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that.” (Overly simplified, maybe, but it usually gets my point across.)
Hidoshi said,
July 17, 2007 @ 6:29 pm
That’s actually a proof I hadn’t quite come across, Senna. The fact is, anime includes pornography. Do we then classify it as a “genre” of pornography? It’s kind of ridiculous that way. “Hentai” is basically an animated version of pornography and in a genre all its own.
That’s Not Kanon » Anime is all the same. said,
December 2, 2007 @ 5:05 am
[...] is all the same”. Well, we’ve had the “anime is not a genre” debate before. Here however there is not only the idea that anime is a genre, but it is further compounded by the [...]
Back to the war (don’t be a tourist) « Claiming Ground said,
February 19, 2008 @ 10:16 am
[...] a narrower field than music, but at the same time its pretty damn diverse. Well clearly it isn’t a genre , its more an organisational term for a bunch of TV/film within a tradition (like Hollywood). Its a [...]