Japanese anime and American cartoons
Famous anime like Dragon Ball Z, mecha anime like the Gundam series, Macross 7, Bleach, Naruto. In America the opposite can be found in Rugrats and Spongebob Squarepants.
There are people out there that like one better than other and that is fine, but to me I like to flip both sides of the coin.
Anime is really popular, they even have a class all about the history of anime and manga at Irvine Valley College.
Cartoons are really popular as well, but most cartoons are being watched by children these days. Like I mentioned in the beginning, most students watch cartoons like Spongebob.
Speaking of Spongebob, there was an article on MSNBC when kids who watched a cartoon of Spongebob had worse attention spans than those who watched a PBS cartoon for the same amount of time.
Animes however are enjoyed by different varieties of demographics around the world, because there are shows that specifically target an audience. There are fans of anime who do not like being compared to cartoons here in America, it annoys them to no end.
In short, American animation is mainly aimed at children, promoting views that there is a “good” side and a “bad” side, with one “right” answer in the end.
It is episodic so that children will never have to worry about missing the odd episode, and won’t have to follow a complex storyline or character development usually present in series’.
It is designed to be an escape from the harsh world of reality, from which we all want to protect our children. There are times when even us students at Saddleback and IVC watch cartoons or anime to get away from the problems and dramas that happen at home, even me.
On the other hand, Japanese animation is somewhat different. Often referred to as anime , it is a form of mass media that has an audience of all ages.
There are sometimes people out there that call people that like anime and cartoons geeks or dorks. I am in the anime club here at Saddleback and I am always on my laptop all the time, so I am sorry to say that I am indeed a geek and I do not care what other people say about me..
It is thanks to my older brother Patrick that I was able to get into anime in the first place. When I first started watching Naruto and Spiderman. I thought that the animation that they had done was amazing, and that it would be awesome to have the abilities possible to be able to draw characters like that.
Unfortunately I do not have that ability, but it does not matter, because in the end I still get to watch my favorite animes and cartoons.
Hopefully people will be able to understand both Japanese and American culture and that it can diverse when comes to their animation.
Most of the facts for this article about the differences between anime and cartoons is courtesy of the website, http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editorial/1998-07-09.