JAPANAMERICA reader Fintan, 17, on his generation's wild love of anime and manga

Hello everyone, I’m Fintan. I’m a high schooler in NYC and Roland was nice enough to let me make a contribution to the blog! This is a big topic and will take more than one posting, so I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts in future posts.

Anime and Manga have become increasingly popular in recent years, predominantly outside of Japan. From the perspective of an American teenager, I want to write about what I think it is that makes the medium so widely consumed. 

To me, the vast majority of American media feels generic and lacks depth. The movies we see in theaters follow the same plot, as our standards for cinema hardly change. These movies seem to always lack the confidence to go outside of the invisible box they’re all made in. 

It’s been a while since a movie came out that I genuinely considered a 10/10, and the most recent one I can think of is Parasite, which originates from Korea, from filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. It addressed the social pyramid in an entirely new way, with every shot of the movie having some meaning. It used visual effects to show the class divisions, putting a rich family literally on the top of a mountain and a poor family living near the sewers. With comedy throughout and a totally unseen plot twist at the end, it was a breath of fresh air for cinema. 

I think Anime and Manga are so popular because they explore a wide variety of unique themes and break norms constantly. They tell stories about people relating to each other in the face of great challenges, sometimes with supernatural elements, sometimes not, but always exploring the human condition. 

Mangaka produce stories that have much more developed plot points. Anime and Manga don't shy away from violence. It can seem cathartic, almost over-the-top. They aren’t afraid to take “side trips” from the original storyline. They don’t worry about losing the viewer’s/reader’s attention.

The first Anime I ever watched was Hunter x Hunter, a seemingly lighthearted show about a little boy setting off on a hero’s journey to find his father. As it progressed, the underlying themes of predator and prey and despair and domination became more apparent, turning the show into something completely different than what I thought it was going to be originally. Not only was the transition from a wholesome adventure to a dark conclusion flawless, but the character development and parallels I noticed were like nothing I’d ever seen in media from the States. 

Another great example of a unique protagonist and story is Thorfinn from Vinland Saga. What separates Thorfinn from other characters is how he lets revenge shape his life. At a young age, his father is killed in front of him, so he decides he will continue to get stronger until he kills the man responsible for his father’s death.

When that man dies at the hands of someone else, Thorfinn’s years of built up fury have nowhere to go, and he feels morally lost, like his life no longer serves any purpose. He falls into a depression, becoming a farm worker for the next years of his life. As he spends more time on the farm, the friends he makes help him decide that he will devote his life to pacifism, intending to create a nation free of violence. Rather than let revenge be his driving force as another character would, Thorfinn devotes his life to seeking out peace, leaving the life of violence and his past demons behind him.