Readings: Otomo, Akira (on reserve in the library); Napier, “Akira and Ranma ½: The
Monstrous Adolescent”; Ruh, “The Robots from Takkun’s Head: Cyborg Adolescence in FLCL”
Our immersion into the alien world of Japanese anime brought Walter Benjamin and his Kunstwollen to mind. Kunstwollen is the idea that popular culture – of particular societies, ethnic groups and so on – is the artistic projection of a collective intention. Stated more broadly, this theory posits that a society’s art and popular culture is the best reflection of its nature, conflicts and desires. Akira and the other anime in this week’s deliberations is a simplistically interesting window into a very traditional and alien culture with some very obvious fault lines. It should be no surprise that the storm and stress of adolescence should be particularly noteworthy in a culture that stifles individualism and rewards conformity – or that simple-theme art, like anime, should result from the inevitable clash.
Otomo’s Akira is an animated Japanese film from 1988 that set the stage for many to follow. Without having to go into the plot, such that it is, in any great depth, Akira is about a group of family-less adolescents in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo ruled by evil and cynical grown-ups. Our hero, Tetsuo, is immature and angry and is transformed into an all-powerful source of energy and destruction. The parents are absent and the politicians and military are corrupt and the world has been spoiled by grownups. What’s a young juvenile delinquent to do? The article also addresses a show, Ranma ½, a show about an adolescent who turns back and forth between a boy and girl while struggling to define his/her identity. The last article goes into depth about a show FLCL that plays with ideas of the human identity combining with technology to form a type of human cyborg. All of these anime enterprises of course wrestle with questions of identity and where our characters fit in the modern world of rapid technological and cultural change.
Japan is a very closed society where the youth are under a great deal of educational pressure to succeed and societal pressure to conform. The genesis of this particular brand of Japanese Kunstwollen is of course this particularly rarefied form of moving in between childhood and adulthood. Any self-respecting adolescent would feel neglected and angry with this process, and our characters are extreme examples of individuals wrestling with this very difficult transition. It reminds me of Rebel Without a Cause without any good acting or reality of any kind. Of course, James Dean’s character from the 1950’s was frustrated as well, but one can only imagine what he would have done in the Japanese environment. No doubt, scream a lot and turn into a destructive force of world crushing energy.
It’s the simplemindedness of all anime that strikes me as so juvenile and alien. Does this really speak to the American version of adolescence, given the difference between our cultures? Akiro exploded in popularity in Japan because it spoke to the frustrations of that culture, but it only really works as a tangential freak show from the American perspective. Every emotion is distilled; every evil is distorted to the extreme. The immaturity of Tetsuo leaves us at a distance, and could even be seen as a judgment by the mainstream culture against the rebelliousness of youth. Things are out of control and in flux in much of this anime messiness, thank goodness the uniformed/establishment culture of traditional Japan awaits to calm these crazy kids down (read sarcasm here). This culture thinks in stereotypes and so I guess it should be no surprise that it’s pop culture anime output should obsess over and eventually embrace a categorical world.
Relative to our class, anime is a representation of a particular form of youth culture in our global economy. Yes, adolescence must be a tough experience in a racist, insecure, imperial, orderly nation like Japan and the movies that resonate and generate from this bizarre mix are likely to turn out just like the silliness we find in Akira, Ranma ½ and FLCL. But this is not my culture, and it is not my children’s culture. It only echoes as an extreme reflection of a typically difficult age in the human transition from child to adult. Happily, globalization has not yet made the experience of adolescence a shared universal. Kunstwollen remains relevant to specific, distinguishable groups of humanity. I’m thrilled not to have a lot in common with the Japanese adolescent, and am convinced that my thirteen-year-old sons would share my sense of alienation from this alienating material.
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