Anime brings style and creativity to the screen

One of Asia’s most notable influences on American culture, anime is a Japanese style of animation that often focuses on high style and heavy over dramatization.

Generally, anime is defined as an animated piece that originates from Japan. 

Anime often focuses on art style and detail in order to make up for the lack of time spent on movement. Sometimes, anime makes it feel like more of a filmed show with zooming, distance shots, and panning.

The plots are often drawn from the Japanese comics which are called Manga. Characters in anime are often heavily stylized, usually with some sort of feature that seems distorted such as big eyes or spiky hair. It depends very heavily on the style of the show.

Many anime are also fairly expressive, and their characters often have exaggerated emotional expressions. Anime has many different genres from kid friendly shows such as Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, FullMetal Alchemist, Naurto, My Hero Academia, Spirited Away, Pokemon, and much more. Adult anime can be  very graphic and violent. While some of them may look extremely cute on the outside, it’s important to check the ratings before you watch anything that you don’t know anything about.

Anime is  well known in the western world. Due to the many translation dubs of several anime, Americans experiencing anime is far from new. The first anime broadcast in America was in the 1960s with Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Gigantor. The global anime market is 24.23 billion, and it is growing.  Cosplay, art, fan clubs, and a lot more have arisen from Western anime exposure, and it isn’t hard to find some anime influence in real life.

Many Western shows have even tried to mimic the anime style. Recently a lot of shows have been leaning towards the more stylized aspects. Some of the most notable are the original Teen Titans, Voltron: The Legendary Defender, and Samurai Jack. These shows are often praised for having an incredible art style, and very often they have incredible fight scenes such as Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Monkie Kid.

No matter what the reception for these shows is, anime is often beautiful.

On top of that, the Rooster Teeth show known as RWBY, is generally seen as a Western anime. It has many styles of anime such as big eyes, over the top weaponry, but still with many western influences, such as a more 3d animation style. It has also been praised for its spectacular fight scenes which are certainly very creative. This may be the only show where you see a food fight this epic.