American Cartooooooooons

The majority of cartoons on tv these days are American, and unlike Anime, they don't really have a fixed style; there are SO many cartoons, but they vary a LOT, from cartoon styles like 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' to Disney's 'Pocahontas'. =]

Like I was talking about in the Japenese Anime post, most American kids cartoons don't really deal with too important issues.. There are not many based on the fight between good and evil unless you count Batman or whatever-and not many have strong morals behind them. American cartoons tend to contain a lot more characters that the kids can't relate to. A lot of main characters are confident and don't show much struggle throughout the shows.

But then again a lot of cartoons showing like Cartoon Networks 'Ed, Edd, and Eddy'^, are based from kids points of view and the everyday struggles they face. But the struggles they tend to face are things like wars against the 'nerds' in their class; not self-accepting, emotional struggles we see in a lot of Anime cartoons.

It's weird the way that the cartoons seem to be reflecting the people of the country's attitude- the Americans are appearing to be much more confident and self-assured. =] 

Of course i'm not goina say all American cartoons are like this, of course they all aren't. It's just it seems much more common in American cartoons than in Anime to have confident superheroes as the main character.

As you can see from the picture of Ed, Edd and Eddy, the clothing is very much westernized.. The typical American cartoons shown on tv show that are set in a town, feature all western buildings such as sky scrapers and big houses, in contrast to the japanese building style shown in the Spirited Away trailer.

The most popular American cartoon character has been voted to be Homer Simpson from the show ''The Simpsons''. The show is based on what is supposed to be a normal small American town, [with a few obvious differences, i don't think there's that many mothers out there with 3 foot high blue hair =D]. It follows the family through their many adventures, but it's supposed to be based on an typical American family. Homer works in a job he hates in a power plant,  loves fast food, is exceptionally thick, and is an all around couch potato. 

The Simpsons really is an all around American cartoon, it's set in America, and made by Americans. =] 

The trailer for The Simpsons Movie

As you can see from the video, the clothing is really westernized and so are the buildings and the surroundings, and also in the clip you can see Bart in a church, going back to what i was saying about the religious influences in cartoons-> Christianity is one of the main religions in America, so naturally Bart would be in a Christian church. =]

So while there are way too many American cartoons out there for me to stereotype them all to the one group, a LOT of the cartoons are greatly influenced-even without the creators even noticing-by where they are made. 

Japenese Anime :D

I was actually COMPLETELY taken back my the amount of information i could find about Anime; there's lots of stuff to go through, so lets mosey on =]


Japanese Anime [it used to be known as Japanimation - WHAT a funky word..] is the most popular type of film watched in Japan, instead of actually live, real people movies, because of Japan's really limited options in real-life movie making-> they couldn't shoot movies based in Europe or America because of the lack of Western-looking actors/surroundings. Yet in anime, the story-writers could write about absolutely anything, so it's popularity grew and grew...


A Brief History Of Anime :D

Disney's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' is said to have influenced many early Japenese animators, especially one man called Osamu Tezuka-> who has been dubbed 'God of Anime' by Anime fans. :] Osamu copied and simplified down many of Walt Disney's animation techniques, and his work has been said to "inspired characteristics and genres that are fundamental elements of anime today''.

Style

Anime has a very distinctive style. Osuma Tezuka started drawing his characters with ENORMOUS eyes on slightly overly-large heads. He did this so his characters could more easily express emotion- you can tell straight away what mood anime characters are in by their eyes.

And for some reason, evil characters and villians in Anime always tend to have really REALLY small or sharp eyes, and the good characters tend to have more wide eyes, making them look more innocent.
<-Itachi Uchiha, a

villian from 'Naruto' .

Anime storylines differ a LOT from those of American cartoons. In Anime cartoons, the hero of the story is usually innocent and reluctant heros. They are ususally shy and in the cartoons the story follows them as they struggle to come to turns with some revelantion or deal with a problem at hand. Emotional and physical battles in anime cartoons usually consist of Good against Evil. American cartoons however, have confident and ambitious main characters, who's main difficulty isn't dealing with forces of good or evil but with protective parents and having fights with friends.. And no, i don't really call the Powerpuff girls battle against an deeply-voiced monkey a battle between good and evil. =]

American characters very rarely show weaknesses at all, but in Anime, characters always seem to be battling with their emotions.. People are able to relate more to Anime characters, they seem more real then the American's Batman.

I found all this really interesting, so i looked into it more, and i found this article saying that there was a survey taken in 1983, it showed that Japenese students had much less confidence and self-belief than American students; people think the difference in attitude of the people of the two cultures really influences the characters in the cartoons.

So anime really shows the Japenese influence through the characters' personalities and the situations they deal with in the show. =]

The Japenese Trailer for ''Spirited Away''

Spirited Away is one of the most well known anime films.

^You can see from the trailer how Japenese culture has influenced it, in the style of the buildings and the clothing worn, and it shows some of the characters and creatures the animators could create. =] Religion influnces the cartoons slightly too, in America the main religion would be Christianity, so in cartoons we can sometimes see stuff like Christmas included in the cartoons. But in Japan, Buddhism and a religion called Shinto are the main religions, and so in anime you often see Buddist temples and practising in the towns.

The food eaten in many anime movies, is mainly eastern foods, the characters tend to eat sushi crossed legged on the floor, instead of the american cartoons that contain characters eating in burger joints or whatever.



So basically, Anime is greatly influnced by the Japenese culture. =]

My main source of information I used in this blog was called That Anime Project - check it out, it's a brilliant website =] http://www.umich.edu/~anime/index.html

What I Want to Find Out..

In this blog, i want to try and find out the reasons why different parts of the world have different styles of Cartoons and Animation. I would like to see how country and culture influences the artist's works, and how it sets them apart from cartoons from other countries.

The World Famous 'Pokemon' which was originally called 'Poketto Monsutā'is an example of Japanese Anime.

Introduction.. =]

Hullos..
This is my blog on the Geography of Cartoons, i'm going to go through the different cartoons around the world and talk about where they're all from, and how this influences the style and storylines, why they're all different and what makes them different.
Basically.. =]
So yup.. Hope you enjoy!
Lisaaa.