I never liked anime for a long, long time. I liked Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon and Yu Gi Oh, sure, but that’s like saying I liked McDonalds when talking about cheeseburgers. They were inescapable shows during that time. The fandoms for those franchises were too powerful to resist and the localization teams cut them to better reflect the American markets.

What I’m talking about today is about going one step beyond and watching the next tiered shows like Death Note, Cowboy Bebop, One Piece, Samurai Champloo, etc. and so on and so on. What is it about anime that makes it such a popular genre of art?

As I stated earlier, I wasn’t a fan of anime for a long period of time. The colorful character designs, the over-the-top voices, the Japanese music for the intro and outros, I made fun of it all. I assumed that the comical reactions and over the top voice acting meant that these shows were for dweebs. I judged anime at the time based on my American jock mindset. I experienced something that’s different than I was used to and so I judged them based on my own ignorance.

I don’t want to assume that anyone who doesn’t like anime is ignorant, because of course that’s ridiculous. What I want to point out is that anime offers a different experience to what American culture produces. In America, cartoons are meant for kids. We think of Yogi Bear and Superman, for instance.  Where in Japan, animation can be the highest form of media. Studio Ghibli creates beautiful, animated movies that reveal more about humanity as a live action movie could. The way we view animation is a cultural difference and could be a cultural preference to why people don’t watch.

Animation has many advantages over live media. It’s more accurate in its depiction of showing emotion, scenery, and action, and in a way that’s easier for humans to digest. It’s easier to create something that goes against genetics, budgets, and physics, when it can be drawn over having to be produced. This allows anime’s to have unique premises that can’t be done in other genres. Some of your favorite genre of movies and tv shows have an anime that reflects those concepts in a new way that could otherwise never be done.

Most people think of anime as kid shows or mind-numbing action shows. Death Note and Cowboy Bepop are great examples of that not being the case. Death Note is a supernatural detective story that plays into the Alfred Hitchcock concept of suspense. It’s premise of “what would you do if you could kill anyone in the world?” is as good as any created in Hollywood.

Cowboy Bepop is a space sci-fi that features some action, but the story really shines as a character study on the different members of the Bepop crew. Each member must come to terms with their unfortunate lives. You see cartoon characters, you see the unfamiliar aesthetic, but these people have more humanity in them than most shows.

That’s really the most compelling aspect of anime. It doesn’t shy away from telling a story. Whether it’s a sad one, an inspirational one, a comical one, a scary one, a brutal one, the list goes on and on. In fact, most of the shows challenge our moral and spiritual compass to become more well-rounded individuals. Something that I can’t say happens as often with American media.

Are there bad anime’s? Of course. They can be boring, they can be annoying, and they can be contrived. The medium isn’t perfect. Just be honest with yourself on the type of stories you like, and I know that there’s an anime out there waiting for you. One that will reinvent the way you look at art and yourself.