Category: Understanding Anime

A reader posed the question that serves as the title for the article, along with several other difficult and important questions. Long-time readers know I’ve addressed anime’s portrayal of sexuality and fan service from many different angles. Anime sometimes has scenes of sexual assault, such as in Sword Art Online and, rather infamously, Goblin Slayer….

In the first part of this article, I examined the effects associated with pornography use, both child and adult, and how they encourage personality traits that can lead to sex crimes. In brief, porn use links to increased aggression, particularly if you have aggressive traits, skewed sexual perspectives, and misogyny. With pedophiles and sex offenders,…

In this article, I’ll attempt to show you an exercise I used to do when I was working on my animation undergraduate degree. The exercise has you take an animation sequence and tear it down, drawing its keyframes (main points of motion) and some of its important in-between frames. Since Marin from My Dress-Up Darling…

It used to be anime was animation from Japan. That was why in the old, pre-Internet days it was often called Japanimation. It was known for being stiff, but super detailed and naturalistic compared to the more cartoony and exaggerated American animation. Animation was, after all, for children. Then Akira and Ghost in the Shell…

“What if” questions usually fall into speculation and aren’t that helpful. What if anime wasn’t Japanese? The question likely isn’t that helpful because Japan has stamped its culture on animation as we think of it. Anime has influenced how animation is done throughout the world, perhaps even more than Disney has influenced animation in recent…