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thistlechaserI'm paused in the middle of ep #63 (Naruto) because... Ever get that feeling that there's a massively important thought, some connection you've never made before, just out of your mental reach? You can brush it with the tips of your fingers, but you can only feel the shape of this new idea, you can't get a hold of it. Something like that is happening.
Throughout this series I kept saying "this is just so messed up!" about various social, familial, and inter-personal interactions. Characters' deaths, choices, decisions, actions, while they weren't unrealistic, were so foreign. Not just "foreign" as in from another culture, almost as foreign as if they were from some other species.
But it all fits, really. I can't get a firm hold on this image/thought, but I can sense how modern day Japanese culture evolved from these things -- and in some cases, I can see these same exact sort of choices still being made today.
Anime offers lots of things (utterly new and unique stories, characterization you'd never find in our everyday TV and movies, etc), but it's these glimpses into another culture which I think I enjoy the most. Japanese people aren't foreign to Americans in the same way Germans or French or British people are, and so it's especially wonderful and interesting to get these glimpses of how deep the differences are.
Imagine, watching a "cartoon" with an anthropological eye...
(Ep 63: Neji's defeat and backstory. His sad homelife.)
Throughout this series I kept saying "this is just so messed up!" about various social, familial, and inter-personal interactions. Characters' deaths, choices, decisions, actions, while they weren't unrealistic, were so foreign. Not just "foreign" as in from another culture, almost as foreign as if they were from some other species.
But it all fits, really. I can't get a firm hold on this image/thought, but I can sense how modern day Japanese culture evolved from these things -- and in some cases, I can see these same exact sort of choices still being made today.
Anime offers lots of things (utterly new and unique stories, characterization you'd never find in our everyday TV and movies, etc), but it's these glimpses into another culture which I think I enjoy the most. Japanese people aren't foreign to Americans in the same way Germans or French or British people are, and so it's especially wonderful and interesting to get these glimpses of how deep the differences are.
Imagine, watching a "cartoon" with an anthropological eye...
(Ep 63: Neji's defeat and backstory. His sad homelife.)
