Spirited Away (2001)
The Impact of Japanese Animation How Anime is molding the entertainment industry. By Conor Brown It’s Saturday morning. You’re 10 years old, waiting for your favourite show to come on. You have no mountains of schoolwork to do, no part time job and no worries about how the future will turn out. In those brief moments of time, you can enjoy something so profound that it stays with you. That precious memory is locked behind all our busy brains somewhere and remains a fond moment in time to remember. That pure, childhood joy of enjoying a Saturday morning cartoon is what inspired me to pursue a career in Film and Television at Bond University. That feeling of enjoyment is hard to replicate but remains a dream of mine to share with others. So, as I grew older, I found myself navigating towards a form of media I found that same joy from – Japanese animation.
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Film
Japanese animation (anime for short) is a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by colourful graphics, vibrant characters in action-filled plots. Often with fantastical or futuristic themes, anime has a wide range of genres including romance, sci-fi, horror, action and psychological. What makes anime so unique is the mature stories it can tell. Unlike the classic Saturday morning cartoons aimed at children, anime can include numerous plots and characters that appeal to older audiences. Therefore, I naturally found myself gravitating towards this form of media. It seemed a perfect blend of familiarity and more mature narratives that still replicated that childhood joy.
