Japanese existentialism: An undeniable insight into the "B-side" of a society that is sentimentally repressed
Japan, a country behind inventions that have made it immensely simpler, and therefore, better than it should be? What do I mean? Well, the ability of an entire society to be at the top of the world in a myriad of qualities... However, in reality, not everything we can perceive, or receive, through the media about a country is necessarily an accurate representation of what happens in existence. We can appreciate this most capably and notoriously in the most widely consumed cultural product on the planet: anime... How, why, what do I mean, exactly? I will answer all these logical questions below.
It is undeniable that at the core of every anime there is a strong component of existential essence in every story we can see. Always, the characters in the stories we consume in the West have deep ties to themselves and are totally reflective. As if it were impossible for them to act from a more simplistic or impulsive point of view. Every action, it would seem, is linked to an inevitable, unpostponable consequence; and as with almost everything in life, there are clear examples of what I argue here: Evangelion, or Cowboy Bebop are works that are rooted in manga, another very Japanese type of art, but which only find logic within critical thinking.
These characters are shown as an extension of the artist. Resulting in that channel where concepts such as culture, drawing and sociology; in consonance with philosophy intermingle. Put much more simply, as audience, consumers or mere users of this type of entertainment, we are active witnesses (or not) of the true human essence, perhaps a little misunderstood of a part of the world that does not keep too many similarities with our concepts of aesthetics, beauty, success, power, equality, tolerance, love, hate, friendship, etc?
Being able to clearly differentiate these concepts is absolutely key to understanding the context in which anime, as a genre of human artistic expression, emerges and develops. For proof, a small button: doesn't it happen to you that when you were younger you could watch a certain anime (whichever you prefer, I won't be specific) and then when time has passed, and therefore so has our way of perceiving the world, we simply don't see with the same eyes something that we are supposed to have already consumed? And, as a lover of this Japanese art, this happens to me a lot.
Sailor Moon is a classic example in my case. Although it is a group of friends who live adventures and solve small mysteries loaded with high doses of romanticism, idealisation and extreme femininity, it is no less true that what really inspired its creator was the cruel reality of having had to grow up, live and develop in a society where nobody cared to see her completely alone and without friends. In other words, a total antithesis of what we see in the world that this woman created for her characters. And if we extrapolate this simple principle, we will find a key element that is repeated in an infinite number of cases.
"What do I mean?" Anime is the means to manifest, openly, what one wants, longs for, needs, loves, and so on and so forth? That's why the characters, their stories and a lot of scenarios of these, take place within the inner thoughts of these characters. They are a mere instrument of their creators; who, not being able to express openly what they feel, had to build from scratch a "world" where this would be possible without "falling apart" in a model of society that offers less and less for how much it demands and consumes from them, from us...
The "B" side of Japan, of its society; what you and I cannot perceive, what explains the social isolation, or the very low rate of births and retirements in the country of the Rising Sun, is what philosophically and culturally does not really let thousands of millions of people be. Trapped" by an anguishing perfectionist stress, they desperately look for a "way out" of this reality. To lose themselves in the fantasy of friendship, of kind and requited love; of fidelity and understanding; or of the most altruistic of all courage. I'm sure they do, and I know you won't go back to watching anime the way you used to.