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Interview: Enter The Anime Director Alex Burunova

Were you nervous about how this would be received by anime fans?

We always knew that die-hard fans may not be as impressed with the doc, and might get upset because a lot of what we touch on is common knowledge to them and might feel basic. But since our target audience is those who are fresh to the genre, people who might have never seen it, we tried to make it simple and general while still keeping it entertaining.

Tanteikingdomkey wrote:

I think zac did as well as could be hoped for, in terms of holding her and the other people working on the production responsible for the problems in the documentary while not being unreasonably mean spirited, or coming across as attacking her and the rest of the staff for not doing the best job on the work they did.

I sort of don't, though.

Was the format of the interview such that there wasn't any opportunity to respond to a response? Like, "You say that, but how do you square that with this moment in the documentary?"

Were these questions just emailed to the director, and their responses were emailed back? Was it not verbal at all? Was it a time constraint?

It's not just this interview, it's not just ANN, but I feel like discussion, journalism, whatever, in general just... doesn't ask or answer questions directly enough to get anything out of things.

Maybe it's because everything has to be short nowadays...

But it is possible to ask more questions, or more direct questions, without attacking. It's possible to ask for more time to do an interview without attacking, and if they take it as automatically an attack, that should be documented.

Anyway, I wish people would emphasize that anime is the only place nowadays to get entertainment that isn't "edgy" or "hardcore". Things like BL and bishounen music anime just... don't exist anywhere else. Those are the truly unique things about anime, since Western media is all just loud, obnoxious Marvel stuff nowadays. Anime has things that are more sophisticated and softer, like StarMyu and Touken Ranbu.

I'm pretty sure 99% of the anime community has settled on the notion that inside Japan anime is any kind of animation - as that's their word for animation - while outside Japan, anime means animation done in or closely associated with Japan, very much like chai means any tea inside India, but outside it means black spicy tea - which originated in India. Since the documentary clearly wasn't made with the japanese public in mind, this non-answer was an evasive as one could get.

I still get the felling that the director don't really get how diverse Anime really is. Yes, she knows that are anime that is relaxing, but the focus on "edgy and dark" anime that represents only a small part of all anime made is something expected from someone that just come in contact with anime.

To be fair, that's the only anime America really cares about. Battle shounen and action shows do amazing while everything else is just kind of there. And to the average American cartoon viewer something like Dragonball Z and My Hero Academia are "edgy and dark" with how violent they are and stuff. Sure, we know better, but the average viewer only cares about those kinds of shows. There's a reason Netflix made Castlevania the way it is and marketed it as anime. It's what most of the anime fanbase, especially the more casual not-too-into-anime fanbase would gravitate to.

To be fair, that's the only anime America really cares about. Battle shounen and action shows do amazing while everything else is just kind of there. And to the average American cartoon viewer something like Dragonball Z and My Hero Academia are "edgy and dark" with how violent they are and stuff. Sure, we know better, but the average viewer only cares about those kinds of shows. There's a reason Netflix made Castlevania the way it is and marketed it as anime. It's what most of the anime fanbase, especially the more casual not-too-into-anime fanbase would gravitate to.