Blockbuster hasn't a chance in Hell. That's the conclusion I came to after making a deal with a friend of mine to take advantage of her Netflix account's Instant Watch capabilities. The sheer volume of feature films, TV shows, and documentaries just available to stream instantly (not even counting the zillions of titles available for rental) is far more than enough to overwhelm the rental giant's modest in-store collection.

So far, Netflix has allowed me to satiate a few of my niche interests: Ken Burns documentaries, music rockumentaries, and currently... dare I say it... Anime.

For whatever reason I've always had a penchant for those cheaply made, highly stylized animated sagas. I began my foray into the genre in my youth with, don’t judge me, the Pokémon series. Yes, painful as it is to admit it, I was briefly attached to the story of Ash, Misty, Brock, and all of their little furry friends. It’s not a period of my life that I like to relive, but I contend that I was less interested in the show itself than I was brainwashed into liking it by what is still the best Game Boy game of all time, and arguably the best theme song of all time.

But it's great in any language!

http://swedishpoke.ytmnd.com/

But after I grew out of that phase, some time went by before I rediscovered Anime again, this time with the legendary Dragon Ball Z series. That show more than any other turned me on to the genre as a whole. I was wowed by the creativity of the storyline, its fusion of fantasy and reality, and the expressiveness of the animation style. At the same time though, the show was hindered by a childish tone, very short and occasionally unsubstantive episodes, and overly drawn out power-up sequences in which characters moaned and grunted for about ten minutes in preparation for giant attack sequence.

Asides from Pokémon, DBZ was arguably the first Anime show to make it big in America, and it helped launch the wave of similar shows on Cartoon Network’s original Adult Swim like Gundam Wing and Cowboy Bebop. Though I peeked in on these shows on occasion, I never got into them the same way I got into DBZ. Now in college, I was starting to become keenly aware that though some aspects of the shows were very cool, others were very childish. Not to mention that the genre seemed to have a sort of geekifying aspect to it, turning people who paid a great deal of attention to it into nerdy Japan-aholics.

Once again, though, I was able to come back to Anime, this time through a show called Samurai Champloo. “Champloo” is (apparently) a Japanese word that means a fusion between past and present, and the world of the show is utterly fascinating. It technically takes place in early 19th century Japan, when the country was still made up of rural villages, but peppered in are touches of the 20th century. My favorite example is this beatboxing baddie:

Tune to 1:35, or just wait till after the opening credits

Champloo also features some really ballin’ fight sequences. It should be noted that some of the people I know most interested in Anime are stage combatants who enjoy both the creativity of the fights and the fact that they use classic weaponry such as swords, daggers, and bow staffs not often found elsewhere.

But even Champloo suffers from some genre drawbacks. Chiefly, Anime shows have an aversion to the subtlety and pacing that is expected in Western culture. Creators adhere to a simplicity in dialogue and storyline that often devolves into a simple good vs. evil trope, or has an explicitly stated moral lesson attached to each episode. This makes the genre feel childish even as it depicts mature or even lurid content. I think this is mostly due to the divide between Eastern and Western traditions, and xenophobic as it might seem, I’d like to see the art form take on more Western characteristics, that is, put emphasis on character development, find more complexity in the plot arcs, make dialogue more realistic.

Which brings me back to Netflix. I’ve recently found that Netflix Instant Watch allows one to stream the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender series. This Anime show, which originally aired on Nickelodeon, was actually developed in America, and it keeps a Western sensibility in regards to things like plot arcs, transitions, and comedy (some of the jokes are actually quite funny for a kids show). At the same time, the world of Avatar is heavily Asian-influenced, with martial arts, Buddhist iconography, and Eastern clothing and design found throughout. Avatar is about a boy named Aang, a scion that must master the four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) in order to stop a hundred-year-old war. The premise is primal, and the fantasy world that is set up functions much like Tolkien’s Middle Earth. All in all, it’s a pretty darn good show, and a terrific kid show (it should be noted, by the way, that I first saw the show when babysitting 10-year-olds and was waaaay more into it than they were).

Though, in my opinion, Avatar takes quite a step in the development of Anime for Western audiences, it still suffers from a lack of depth, subtlety, and maturity typical of many TV shows meant for children. But thematically and in terms of setting, the show is brilliant. It represents a meeting between Western and Eastern forms of creativity, combining the expressiveness of Anime with the logistical prowess of Aristotelian writing.

In looking at Anime, there is a tendency to dismiss the genre altogether by focusing on its negative aspects (there certainly are some). Though Western culture has been exposed to the dramatic power of Anime, most notably through works by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle) and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), it has also witnessed its downside– perhaps most pronounced in what is called “hentai,” that is, pornographic and sexually perverted animation. The misogyny of this type of animation, as well as that in many movies and TV shows (the potential rape of women is an Anime trope) has, to some extent soured our culture to the art form.

But I think that the story of the 21st century will be about the joining of East and West, artistically as well as economically. We’ve already started to see some examples of this in the movie industry, most notably with Slumdog Millionaire, and as time passes, transplants from East to West and vice versa will become more numerous and better developed. I believe that Anime will play a big part in 21st century culture, and artists should open themselves up to understanding and appreciating it as a creative form.

One of my all-time favorite Anime moments. Check out the lighting and the seething anger depicted on Edward's face. Just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it can't be dramatic.