Anime, Manga, & Duplication (not always the same thing)

As animators and animation staffs, the Japanese Southeast Asian animation staffs and manga-ka are bigger on stylistic copying, duplication, and replication of form and geometric or proportional perspective, anatomy, drapery, and design, than they ever have been on actual innovation and originality. They’re really all just ripping themselves (the culture of artistic borrowing, i.e. the doujin market) and the rest of the world off, visually speaking (see Tezuka and Disney), and through that imitative Eastern technique manifests into eventual originality over time, years, decades, and centuries, leading all the way back to the days of Osamu Tezuka. Each film or TV show is a duplication of and an improvement upon the last one or specific genre in Japan. This is a Japanese specialty. (which is normal for artists. Most good artists got good by copying other artists) The fans and otaku glorify anything and everything Japanese as super detailed and super original, even when a decent amount of it is clearly not (It’s “cute” or “sexy” instead. not naming specific titles of course). Americans, from what I’ve seen of myself and other artists I know, want to create something truly innovative and new. Some might say too much so. In America, we actually want to see more Jhonen’s and Aaron McGruders and Dave Sims and Todd McFarlane and Genndy Tartakovsky’s and George Lucases: Regardless of how expensive it is or how much work it takes: Innovation at any cost, damn the odds of rejection. Something groundbreaking and inventive, that no one’s ever seen before. That’s the nature of American and French animation. And it’s the reason we glorify anime the genre so much, because that’s what the most influential animation critics and fans and artists see in the best anime: Originality and detail and action and cinema and invention. Because compared to what a lot of what we American Westerners and gaijin have produced recently, when you compare the two by surface, it does seem better. But is that even a fair assessment, to judge everything through the lens of young adult audiences, thirsty for rebellion and violence, on the surface? Yes and no. There’s always exceptions.