Most people define anime as any animation produced in Japan. It has become one of the largest industries in Japan and has also had a meteoric rise in popularity throughout the globe. But why is anime so popular? Surely, there must be a good reason for millions of people to watch anime every single year. Japanese animation has been producing some amazing films and series since the 80s and they have been vastly different to the animation that was being produced in the west. In the west, animation was considered to be a medium only suitable for children, but Japanese animation producers thought otherwise. They used anime to not only produce entertainment for kids but also for adults by incorporating dark and adult themes into it. The earliest example of this I can think of is the movie called ‘Akira’ which became fairly popular in the US and is still highly rated to this day.
In recent times, anime has grown vastly has and it has a bit of something for everyone. Anime has action, romance, comedy, mystery, drama and everything in between. It is only about finding what works for you. One reason why there’s so much variety in this medium is that there are A LOT of comics just waiting to be adapted into an anime. Japan also has a huge industry of comic books which are known as ‘mangas’. This manga industry complements the anime industry really well since most anime are adapted from mangas. This means that there is always an abundance of masterfully crafted stories.
I am also of the opinion that anime production has fewer limitations than its live-action counterpart. You can essentially animate whatever you can imagine. That isn’t true for the live-action medium since you need a massive budget to make a movie like the avengers.
I wanted to keep this blog short so I haven’t gone into much detail but I hope I have convinced you to watch some anime and see if you like it. I’d love to recommend you some animes in the genres that interests you down in the comment section.
Thank you for reading!