A few months back, I applied for a position writing articles for a popular website (if you recognize the style, you've probably applied to). What follows is the written part of the application, an example of my writing skills on the given topic. As many of you may have noticed by the utter lack of them, How To's are not my favorite style, thus it was kind of odd for me to write one. Let me know what you think.
-Sara
So, you’ve caught up on all the animes you currently watch, seen every episode of the Dragon Ball meta-series ten times, and you’re tired of Gundam and Sentai rehashes. What do you do? Well, if you’re anything like me, you start looking for something new.
Easier said than done right? You’ve plowed your way through classics like Astro Boy or Ranma ½. You’ve kept up with the new school trends like Naruto and Bleach. It just doesn’t seem like there’s anything more, right?
I know. I’ve been there.
What follows is a simple how to with suggestions of titles you might like to check out in the near future.
Time Required: Varies based on personal viewing of Anime
1. Ask yourself what your favorite anime is. I know it sounds a little obvious, but bear with me. From your favorite anime though, you can most easily get the idea of where to start in your search. My favorite is One Piece (currently viewable on Hulu and Funimation with new episodes weekly), a story about a young pirate, Monkey D. Luffy, and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, quest for the greatest treasure in the world.
2. Find out the genre of the anime you chose. Anime very often is separated into common themes, just like most other forms of media. The most common division is for what gender the anime is targeted to. This is called Shojo (or shoujo, depending on spelling), roughly translating into girl, and Shonen (or shounen), which again, roughly translates to boy (there are also classifications for more mature audiences along the same lines with Josei, meaning young woman, and Seinen, meaning young man). The most common difference between these two are, much like American film, that films for men seem to be more of an action adventure title, while for women, they seem to ones of a great sweeping romance. That said, I think it becomes quickly obvious that an anime about a young male pirate would most likely be considered shonen.
However, that’s only one part of the anime classifications that make up each one’s genre. Setting also plays a part. Whether it’s in a realm of magic, a fictionalized historical setting, some scientific future, or present day, each of these set a part of the genre. Returning to my example of One Piece, it’s a high seas tale that kind of split’s the difference of all four, allowing for the odd and uncanny, like cyborgs to be running around with necromantic skeletons, or mech-suit pirate ships.
The final part of an anime genre is what elements does it incorporate. What are the characters? Are they thieves? Warriors? Regular people getting swept up into grander events? A regular anime cast will most likely have some representation of all of these, in some way or another, however, what is the most predominate of them?
Once more returning to my example of One Piece, Luffy is a boy pirate who wants to be the best, thus, the story of the anime has to do with Pirates. Pirates also have the association of thieves, warriors, the sea, and, most importantly, treasure.
Luffy also has the ability to stretch his body like rubber, making the story a fantasy. Add also the other elements, like cyborg ship builders and skeletal musicians, and you have the common elements of a science fiction fantasy rivaling both of the DC and Marvel comic multi-verses in only one story. This garners the title a smattering of other subgenres, like mechas, magic, robots, martial arts (though it oft seems redundant in anime), supernatural, demons, and swords, just to name a few.
Since we’re talking about genre’s though, now would be a good place to talk about hentai. Hentai translates quite perfectly into pervert in English. As such, it is the common term put in place for a story involving sex, that those of western birth would refer to as porn. This is suggested for only a more mature audience, however, if you enjoy it, it also has all of these themes within it, with just the addition of sex on display rather than hinted at, or maybe teased slightly.
That said, you should ask yourself these questions and find out exactly where your anime lies in the classification of the medium. If you already know the genre of your anime well, you can skip much of the work in this step.
3. Pick a similar anime. This seems like a no brainer after finding a genre, but start looking at animes with common themes. Anime News Network (www.animenewsnetwork.com) has a comprehensive encyclopedia of most animes, and many more are added all the time. They have an encyclopedia search that is a wonderful resource in finding similar animes (www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/search/genre), which allows you to search by common themes, elements, and genre’s. This is the fastest way to find a new anime, however, it doesn’t always work. But what if you couldn’t find one there.
4. Researching the author. Well, have no fear, there are ways around that. The first is to learn more about your anime. If you put in the classifications that you thought were well suited to it, and you garnered too many results to search through well, research the anime and see if there’s more that you might’ve missed. If you gained too few, you might want to think about reducing some of the elements you added in your search.
If that doesn’t work, you might should learn more about the author or authors of the series. Maybe he worked on another series that you might like, or maybe, he has a line of animes that yours is a part of, though you simply didn’t know it. Such is a common occurrence in more animes of a shojo nature than of a shonen, however, it can happen for both.
The author may have also worked with someone before, or on their project. Crossovers aren’t common in animes that have no relationship to one another save the authors felt like writing a one off about the two’s characters meeting. This is also happens as hommages to certain other series. Maybe a one time character from another anime will appear in your favorite series that is from a series that the author appreciates.
Finally, the author may also cite their influences. More recently, it’s easier to find them, and as anime continues to grow it will get easier still, but like music or art before it, there was generally something that came first that inspired the author to write his anime. The most famous example of this is Osamu Tezuka, author of Astro Boy and commonly referred to as the God of Manga and Godfather of Anime. He often stated that he drew inspiration for his character design styles from Walt Disney’s style of design.
However, as the years passed, other authors would draw inspirations from more domestic sources, and many of the animes you enjoy may have been inspired by one previously. Researching the author can give you an insight into the more classical works out there, and might draw your attention to ones that were also inspired by them as well that you might enjoy.
Suggested Materials:
-An anime reference source, preferably online, like Anime News Network.
-The time and patience to find one that looks interesting.
Tips:
-Just because an anime doesn’t look like one you’ll like from the synopsis, check out an episode of it. There are a growing number of free to watch (and still legal) places to watch anime online. You can’t always tell from a synopsis if you’ll like it right away.
-Watch the second episode, too. Repeating a lot of what I said from watching the first episode, a pilot episode can have a lot of problems, largely in part that it’s devoted to creating a universe for the story to be set in. The story most often won’t start until the second episode.
-Every anime is different. You may see common elements that you like, but often, something can be just different enough to cause you to not like the series anywhere near as much when it’s very similar.
-Avoid filler episodes as your deciding points. Most longer animes have one as they’re generally adapted from mangas. Filler episodes, and worse, filler arcs, often go off in tangents away from the story. The worst examples of this are Bleach and Naruto which have entire seasons devoted to filler stories that have nothing to do with the story overall. Bleach, it seems, has every other season as a filler, and Naruto often does a filler sub-arc in between major story arcs, that has gone up to eighty four episodes.
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