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Slice of Life Anime

Summary:

Yo.
Today’s assignment is simple.
Choose something you care about in some way and give an argument about why it is great. Give two examples of instances where what you say is proved right and one example of why your argument proves that that instance is bad.
Your paper can be about anything; sports, music, clothes,….ramen flavors. Honestly whatever you think you can make an argument for.
Oh, and make sure you actually are interested because if you’re not interested most likely it will be boring and I do not feel thrilled to read a class worth’s amount of boring essays.
Oops, my hand slipped.
Anyway, good luck and remember how I feel about “being late” on assignments.
---

Tenten
Kakashi Sensei
English 249
January 2016
The internet purports a number of statistics concerning the average life expectancy of a human being in today’s world. That number is approximately 79 years when narrowing it down to the males and females of the United States. That roughly translates into only 692,900 hours. Those waiting routinely for the dubbing or subbing of anime do not want to waste time on slice of life story lines that fall short of expectations.

Notes:

"We lose ourselves in stories,
We find ourselves there too."

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Tenten
Kakashi Sensei
English 249
January 2016

Slice of Life Anime

The internet purports a number of statistics concerning the average life expectancy of a human being in today’s world. According to the Geoba.se database that number is approximately 79 years when narrowing it down to the males and females of the United States. That roughly translates into only 692,900 hours. Those waiting routinely for the dubbing or subbing of anime do not want to waste time on slice of life story lines that fall short of expectations. The expectations are fairly cut and dry, and they are the criteria that will be utilized to evaluate three television shows within the selected micro genre. The three television shows selected for evaluation are cartoons, each within the anime genre, narrowed down by some sort of slice of life theme.

A slice of life genre is defined in the Cambridge dictionary as “a film, piece of literature, or play that describes or shows ordinary details of real life." The shows are Anohana the Flower We Saw That Day, Barakamon, and Mayo Chiki. The first criteria utilized for evaluation is character development. Are characters represented to be multi-dimensional? Next is whether or not the theme of the show contains a valuable lesson. Finally, the shows need to contain a well thought out female character that can be identified in a positive manner.

All forms of storytelling contain a single element, and television anime is not an exception. A person, animal, or inanimate object made lifelike is how viewers, listeners, or readers become interested, continue watching, and get vested in the story. The following quote is taken from Scott McCloud’s book, Understanding Comics. “We humans are a self-centered race. We see ourselves in everything. We assign identities and emotions where none exist, and we make the world over in our image." This book is kind of like a field guide to learning how to create comics that people will want to read, and character development is high on his priority list. Since good characters are necessary to have a good story, it is imperative to define what is meant by good characters. Like real people, good characters need to be well-rounded or even complex.

Part of character development is to get people “hooked,” and this is more effectively accomplished when viewers can connect emotionally. This is easier as the characters move closer in resemblance to real people or real people qualities. It allows a connection to take place between themselves or others who remind them of the characters. This character connection is even more important in a slice of life story because their themes center around real people living their ordinary lives and dealing with everyday events and activities like cooking or going to school. The multi-dimensional nature of the characters has to compensate for the lack of extraordinary events and astounding scenes that often occur in other genres. Thus, the first criteria to be evaluated in the three selections is character development.

In anohana, The Flower We Saw that Day, characters possess a wide range of personalities. The author demonstrated grief from the loss of a loved one from various points of view. One character, Jintan became deeply depressed and felt as though he might be going crazy resulting in giving up many of the important things in his life like friends and school. He was referred to as a “hikikomori,” a youth who lives as a modern day recluse (Nagai). Yakiatsu, a friend to both Jintan and Menma, the girl who died, went in a near opposite direction compared to Jintan by making new friends and becoming more involved in activities at school. The show portrayed these, among other’s reactions, with a spectrum of emotions and sentiments. The viewer could almost feel the pain that the characters felt. This is the type of interaction that helps the audience relate to the character.

The second selection is Barakamon. The creator does an excellent job accounting for the age differences by depicting their reactions to the same situations in true age-appropriate fashion. A viewer can practically guess the age of the children by the reactions that are portrayed. This is seen very clearly when a sensei has to discipline a group of children aging from six to eighteen for behaving in a reckless manner. The small children begin to cry, the middle school kids begin giggling, and the high school kids get defensive and argue with him. He eventually breaks down and cries, and the kids realize how they have made him feel and demonstrate both sympathy and understanding. Rachel Ballon states in Character Emotions and Psyche: How They Shape you and your Character, “Emotions are the lifeblood of characters and of stories. Without emotional characters, you are just writing events, but you're not drawing your audience into your story." The creator does this so realistically in this story that the audience may not be able to avoid crying with the sensei.

Mayo Chiki characters are underdeveloped and verge on being one-dimensional. This is obvious because several of the characters can be summed up with a few descriptive adjectives. Kinjirō Sakamachi, who also known as Jiro, is nervous and apathetic which, contradicts itself. He gets beat up constantly throughout the show, in what is supposed to be a comedic manner, and his reactions are either mildly disgruntled acceptance or full out panics. It is inconsistent writing that is only used for plot convenience instead of what Jiro would realistically do. Subaru Konoe is loyal Suzutsuki and incredibly shy. She will literally do anything Suzutsuki asks whether it be murder or sexual acts with others she will comply. Kanade Suzutsuki is classic “perfect rich girl” with a secret sadistic side. Suzutsuki is seen throughout the show tormenting the other characters, especially Jiro and Konoe by making them touch intimately with each other even when they both show discomfort. Kureha Sakamachi is over-the-top aggressive while maintaining a bubbly persona. Kureha is Jiro’s younger sister who is shown mostly beating up her brother by testing her “new moves” on him. Regardless if this singular personality development is done intentionally, the lack of complexity takes away from the show. As much as generalities and categorization exist in this society, individuals do not like to be narrowed into a simple, especially if not complimentary, classification. It is difficult to relate to that type of character.

Accomplishing the task of complex, relatable characters is certainly part of the process of developing a good slice of life anime, but nearly as important is developing a female character that possesses these traits. Since it is important for the creator to consider the audience when developing characters, and since the male/female ratio is nearly 50/50, it would come to reason that the creator should make a reasonable effort to create strong (not necessarily in the physical sense) female characters. With a couple of exceptions like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind or Sarah Conner in Terminator, strong characters that are female (intentionally not referred to as “strong female characters” which often appear without flaw) have been underrepresented in media as a whole. Historically, many female characters have gotten overly-sexualized (Leeloo in The Fifth Element, Harley Quinn of DC Comics), and University of Southern Indiana Professor Steven Williams shares some of his insights into how and why this has been so.

After discussing a brief evolution of television, Dr. Williams settled in on the 1960’s and 1970’s:
During the time that followed WWII, the drastic difference between sexes started to gain focus and was popularized. One tell give away in television was the re-occurring perspective known as the “male gaze.” The male gaze only follows what a “straight” man wants to see. A male character can be seen in nothing but a towel while the camera barely glances at him. Meanwhile, the female character wearing a short skirt and low cut top will have the camera move in slow motion and zoom into the body for a closer look.

This is not portraying the female character equally, nor does it do anything to create the perspective of a “strong” character that is female. The times have certainly changed, are changing, and hopefully continue to change to further remedy this disservice to the lady viewers. The evaluation of the three selections will identify a few of the necessary traits of strong characters that are female.

In the article “Write Strong Female Characters without Being Cliché,” the Writer’s Relief staff gave some excellent examples that female characters should possess in order to pass muster. Imperfections was first on the list. Female characters need to have some flaws or everyday challenges and problems that other females could equate themselves to. Physical features need to be diverse and imperfect as the stereotypical “Barbie” build and appearance needs to be avoided. It is also beneficial when the female character is not “perfect” at the onset. She needs to be able to “grow” through experiences and failures. These, of course, need to be accompanied by those previous traits that make for a good character, regardless of gender.

In The Flower We Saw that Day, the three main female characters certainly meet the physical features qualifier. The girls are friends and each has a different hair style and different hair color. Their body shapes are all different with Menma having a rectangular shaped body that is nearly flat in each direction. She is both skinnier and shorter than the other two girls. Anaru is reasonably closer to the stereotypical attractive body, but her flaws are more recognizable in her attempts to imitate others and her considerable concern about what others think of her. As the story moves forward, she begins to accept herself as she is which indicates meaningful growth. Tsuruko has what is commonly referred to as a pear-shaped figure. Her hips and waist are wider than her shoulders, and she dresses in a way that accentuates her body as it is. They rely on each other as they attempt to navigate through a variety of challenges until Menma’s untimely death (Sullivan).

Barakamon’s female characters are presented in such a way that regardless of age, they exhibit levels of intelligence and capability. The writer, Satsuki Yoshino did not try to create them equally in intellect, but rather in age appropriate intellect. The younger characters do not possess the wisdom of some of the older females, but they do exhibit knowledge and understanding that matches their experiences. When their sensei is struggling emotionally, the younger female characters crawl onto his lap and hug him while the older characters offer consolation and conversation. The creator also offers that the characters are athletic, but not only athletic or portrayed as a masculine female character that that is her only identifier. They are also good in some school subjects, but not all of them. This helps them be well-rounded female characters.

Mayo Chiki pretty much hits the bulls eye in writing female characters in a poor light. In the essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, examples are provided for writing female characters in “two dimensional” form. The creator typically gives the character a single prominent trait such as “frivolous,” “stupid,” or “sexual.” These traits are then attached to the other dimension which is most commonly an extremely physically attractive body. Each of the main female characters in this series is written this way with one of the characters having extremely large breasts that are always emphasized when she enters a room.

The final criteria for establishing a good slice of life anime is the theme or lesson to be realized from the show. According to Essentials of Children’s Literature, it is often best to “convey a moral message from a theme that is subtle” (Short 30). It further states that the theme or lesson should not be the dominant part of the work as the story line is what keeps the audience’s attention. Generally, the moral of a story is to try to teach the audience how to be better people, and in two of the three works, this is done quite well.

In Anohana, The Flower We Saw that Day, the moral is peppered throughout the story line. A number of characters, for a number of different reasons, learn to forgive others and occasionally themselves. It is a common theme in numerous episodes. Someone gets wronged, someone suffers, forgiveness is attained, and relationships are made stronger. It is summed up quite well in episode 11 when Menma says, “Even after this, I’ll always be cheering you on from somewhere” (Nagai).

Sometimes a show or series can have more than a single theme, lesson, or moral. Barakamon is one of those. Throughout the episodes though, one of the more common lessons that was routinely promoted through a variety of quotes was centered around determination and will power. For example, sensei says “The future is always blank. Only your willpower can leave footsteps.” He routinely reminds his students, “Being able to work hard is the best talent of all." His lessons are not subtle, but they are usually motivational and well-received.

Mayo Chiki once again fails this criterion. If the creator was intending on having a moral or lesson from the show, it was hidden so deeply that the typical audience member would probably miss it. Although the show is reasonably entertaining, its purpose appears to be to fill time with humorous one-liners, parade around one and two dimensional characters, and sexualize anything it can. The show even occasionally rewards the wrongdoer. Although this sometimes happens in real life, it certainly doesn’t fit the expectation of making the audience better people.

Not all television is created equally and slice of life anime is no exception. In the website review The Best Slice of Life Anime, the author states, “When it comes to anime, sometimes it is nice to take a break from the craziness of fighting and watch something that is a little more like everyday life. That is what good slice of life does.". The television shows selected were clearly a break from that violence, but the evaluation of the three shows, Anohana the Flower We Saw that Day, Barakamon, and Mayo Chiki identified some very clear weaknesses in one of the shows. Mayo Chiki did not have complex character development. It did not have strong characters that were female. It did not have a valuable lesson conveyed. It failed all three criteria while the other two shows mentioned succeeded graciously at meeting them in their entirety. Hence, it is easy to conclude that two of the shows, Anohana the Flower we Saw that Day and Barakamon are good representations of slice of life anime, whereas Mayo Chiki is not.

Notes:

"You want weapons?
We're in a library!
BOOKS!
The best weapons in the world!"

-Doctor Who

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