It's not just a mommy-thing
I just spent a long weekend with my daughter at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. An annual event, next year will be its 20th anniversary, but this was the first time we had attended. She told me when we got home that it was probably the happiest four days of her life. She is a cosplayer [I bet that word is in the Wikipedia if you need help with it], and she found more like-minded people her age in that one place than she probably will in her entire time in high school. If it was the happiest four days of her life, then by extension, it was a pretty good time for me too.
But I have my own love affair with anime, apart from just seeing it through the eyes of my kids. Anime stories are often the truest, most detailed depictions of human gestures, actions, and relationships. I’m a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki, and my favorite film of his making is ‘My Neighbor Totoro.’ Wikipedia describes his work this way-
Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Reflecting Miyazaki's feminism, the protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women…
But I didn’t see any Miyazaki films this weekend. Instead I wandered into a showing of an episode opening a new saga of ‘Gundam’-Gundam has been a huge hit through novels and anime in Japan for thirty years, I since learned. And while I was doing my homework I came across a subtitled trailer for the episode I had seen dubbed-and loved-and from the trailer I gleaned this amazing quote-
Humanity alone possesses a God.
The power to transcend the now…
The inner God called “possibility.”
That pretty much sums up my view of the universe. I’ve never heard it stated so eloquently. That’s what I love about anime.
But I have my own love affair with anime, apart from just seeing it through the eyes of my kids. Anime stories are often the truest, most detailed depictions of human gestures, actions, and relationships. I’m a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki, and my favorite film of his making is ‘My Neighbor Totoro.’ Wikipedia describes his work this way-
Miyazaki's films often incorporate recurrent themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Reflecting Miyazaki's feminism, the protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women…
But I didn’t see any Miyazaki films this weekend. Instead I wandered into a showing of an episode opening a new saga of ‘Gundam’-Gundam has been a huge hit through novels and anime in Japan for thirty years, I since learned. And while I was doing my homework I came across a subtitled trailer for the episode I had seen dubbed-and loved-and from the trailer I gleaned this amazing quote-
Humanity alone possesses a God.
The power to transcend the now…
The inner God called “possibility.”
That pretty much sums up my view of the universe. I’ve never heard it stated so eloquently. That’s what I love about anime.