Forum - View topicHow to convince people that anime is not only for kids?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
DavidShallcross
 Posts: 1008 |
|
||
|
It's easier to convince people that anime is not only for kids than that anime is actually worth watching. The latter really depends on the target's individual tastes in entertainment -- some people even believe that any fiction is ultimately pointless. I might recommend Moyashimon as a show that looks targeted at the college-age crowd.
But anime targeted at working-age adults can be deceptive. I believe the staff interviews for Aria -- the one set on a terraformed Mars -- talk about it being a "healing" anime suitable for salarymen to watch after a long hard day at work, even though most of the main characters of the show are teenagers. |
|||
|
|||
HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
|
||
|
|||
|
cheetahpretty
Posts: 15 |
|
||
|
As Ignatz said, you should really check out that JesuOtaku video.
If you really want to be evil, and convince them that anime's not for kids, you can always show them Grave of the Fireflies. 
|
|||
|
|||
yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
|
||
|
I generally share Eireform Continent's viewpoint that you should leave them alone. If a situation arises where you are going to watch a movie with your friends, you might suggest Princess Mononoke or Paprika. But I wouldn't force the issue. It also depends on the age of the audience, of course. Kon's Millennium Actress might be a good choice for a group of adult women.
I'm in my 60's, so for most of my friends anime is a strange hobby. I've shown the first episode of Moribito to a couple of them, and the second episode of Bartender as well. I recently became friends with an artist who mentioned having enjoyed a couple of Miyazaki films. I gave him my extra set of Moribito discs, and together we went to see the Madoka Magica films. (He enjoyed the movie but was equally enthusiastic about the cosplaying girls in the audience! The Mami was the best of the bunch.) My next offering for him is Hyouge Mono since he works in clay.
I recommend you show her Chihayafuru if she is willing to give a series a try. Or show her Princess Mononoke. Both of these have very naturalistic character models, and both of them have strong female protagonists and a hint of romance as well. Moribito also has pretty naturalistic characters. |
|||
|
|||
Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3963 Location: New York state. |
|
||
|
Showing folks anything like Kite and Mnemosyne would be a bad move since many folks also carry the preconceived notion that anime can be nothing but gratuitous violence and sex. Want anything to disprove both that notion and the "for kids" belief, go for something mature in storytelling and in the middle for questionable content (equivalent to a PG-13/ TV-14 rating) like Cowboy Bebop or Trigun. Obviously, this won't convince everyone since they are too used to the stigma of animation being for kids or anything raunchy for adults. But for those open-minded enough, seeing the mentioned titles should be convincing enough for them to reconsider their thoughts on the matter.
|
|||
|
|||
Yttrbio
 Posts: 3670 |
|
||
|
No one is going to conclude "not for kids!" from the first episodes of Trigun.
|
|||
|
|||
Vylash
 Posts: 44 |
|
||
|
Show them Precure
|
|||
|
|||
|
HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
|
||
What, you mean it isn't? Only a matter of degree, really. Oh, excuse me I suppose there is the possibility of romance creeping in there which can also be looked at as highbrow sex. Likewise, magic is just a form of highbrow violence. And I am in the camp that there it is really no use to proselytize anime anyway. Unless it is your job to do it, I suspect anyone of spending that kind of effort is simply looking for validation. That is simply not where your head should be if you want to be a well adjusted adult. |
|||
|
|||
Arkov
 Posts: 120 |
|
||
This'd be a good one. |
|||
|
|||
Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
|
||
Yeah, I'm trying to get my best friend (who even is into anime quite a lot) to watch the show for several months now. She is just so off put by the incredible silliness in the beginning. I know she would love it a few more episodes into the show, but what can you do. I saw Sword of the Stranger recently and thought it made a nice Hollywood-esque feature film anime introduction for people. It follows familiar blockbuster storytelling and character development paths and is accessible enough for people who might be weirded out by things too "eastern" or too "artsy". It has a lot of thrilling (and quite bloody) action sequences, and I also think a movie makes for a better introduction than a series. Jin-Roh could also work for people who like Sci-Fi and don't need an action scene every five minutes to not loose attention. Or, as mentioned before, be cruel and invite them over for a nice evening with Grave of the Fireflies. |
|||
|
|||
|
Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
|
||
|
you may not believe this, i got couple female friends into anime with k-on.
|
|||
|
|||
EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
|
||
I remember the days when Carl Macek wanted to tell the world "Japanimation (sic) isn't just for kids!" by showing well-meaning, curious college-theater audiences Fist of the North Star. Ummnnn, yeah. Thanks to your hard work, Carl, "Japanimation", unquote, was stuck with a freaks-and-geeks image for most of the late 80's and early 90's, and anime had a stereotype of being weird, blood-spurting and impenetrably artsy, if it wasn't about robots. I remember once asking a friend if he'd seen Castle of Cagliostro, and he said he hadn't seen it, but he'd never show his kids THAT stuff. (More specifically to the Streamline point, I remember when fans kept trying to get the early Streamline theatricals into our annual SF film fest, back in the 90's days when almost literally no one in the mainstream had heard of it. Have you ever been in a tough-crowd first-timer audience trying to make head or tail of Rintaro's "Neo Tokyo"? Well, HAVE you? Take a guess why, after a while, anyone who kept asking usually got beat up.) I've lived the experience: If you're going in as Fanboy Warrior and saying "Hammer 'em with End of Evangelion!"....UH-UH. Tried that. Don't work. The trick is to show how reasonable it can be, by playing by the rules in any number of genres, like romantic comedy, or action, or historical epic. Would someone think it was "for kids" if they saw Nodame Cantabile? Or Maison Ikkoku? Or Sword Art Online? Maybe not "cool, shocking R-rated" pieces like Kite, or "totally tragic" like Grave/Fireflies, but still goes down well with wine and cheese. And that's just taking one definition. When Spirited Away and Kiki took a lot of white grownups by surprise, it was because they were still "made for kids", but anyone who still used that expression had cynically conditioned themselves to expect that anything "made for kids" would be loud, obnoxiously cute and overbearingly marketed. Suc-kerrrrs.....
|
|||
|
|||
Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
|
||
Uhhhh.... A world composed entirely of plot holes featuring teenagers trapped in a video game? Not sure if best choice. If some told me, “Anime? Isn't that just cartoons for kids?”, I'd respond, “Actually, these days it's more for horny teenagers, but the medium itself spans all age groups and nearly every genre,” and leave it at that. Generally speaking, proselytizing is bad and telling people what to think normally fails. If some one is curious, by all means introduce them, but don't try to force feed them if they aren't that interested. Their approval or disapproval of your hobbies should have no effect on yourself. Unless they're your parents, but in that case you can us the “Son, I am Disappoint” meme non-ironically, so you have that going for you. That being said, the most accessible anime to a western audience would be Black Lagoon. That's where I would start with introducing someone new to anime. Looking at my shelves, I'd probably follow with Project A-Ko, then something a bit more esoteric, like Tsukikage Ran or something. |
|||
|
|||
thenix
 Posts: 265 |
|
||
|
You can't convince someone if they want to be ignorant. You can show someone one of many anime that is not child friendly to convince them but most people that would say that wouldn't take the time to watch something. Usually if someone says that to me I either ignore them because I don't know them so it doesn't matter, or it's one of my friends that won't watch anime. OR I will offer to show them something to convince them otherwise.
Usually my friends that are movie "critics" feel that they are above anime but I've gotten them to watch Spirited Away because it won an Oscar. So that might be a good way to get someone to try |
|||
|
|||
naninanino
 Posts: 680 |
|
||
|
There is a difference between "getting people into anime" and "convincing people that anime is not only for kids". Most folks, including us here, didn't get into anime in order to get some ego boost from things they do for entertainment. I also believe that many here had more or less similar starter anime. Trying to get others started on marginal stuff is pointless, since they're both limited and false in terms of presenting what makes anime really worth watching. And that would be core genres like battle shows, mecha, magical girls, shoujo romance etc. and all the tropes that come with them. It's not about how anime had proven that it can be "just as good" as the stuff we watched before it, but how it offered us different kinds of stories that we couldn't experience anywhere else.
|
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group