Challenges or Opportunities? The invasion of Japanese animation to Western Culture.
Ponyo, the latest Japanese hand drawn animation produced by the animation artist Hayao Miyazaki is now hitting the theatre. In 2002, this famous Japanese animators won the academic award for best animated picture by his master piece Spirited Away. Since then, many people started to realise that Japanese Animation is forging its way into Western Popular culture. Actually, the Japanese animation has already invaded the western culture since 1960s. The first invasion was seen to be Astro Boy in 1963. Since then, many animations for instance Dragon Ball and Pokemon have created big hits in the America. Many people may think the Japanese animations are now challenging the western animation industry. However, in my own point of view, the Japanese animations have created opportunities for the western children to get in touch with the Japanese culture. They can be trained up to be more broad-minded and tolerant. Moreover, I believe that those high quality hand-drawn Japanese animations like Ponyo could encourage the production of traditional animation as 2d animations are under threat from computer generated animations.
A recent interview of Ponyo creator Hayao Miyazaki can be seen here.
Below is the trailer of Ponyo, enjoy!
References
Coady, M. M. 2009, Opinions Editor. Animation Invasion, The Forress State Torch, accessed 8 October2009, <http://www.ferris.edu/torch/2009/08/26/opinions/animation-invasion/>
