Are Original Anime More Creative?

A recent “Ask John” column at Animenation.net posed the question whether “original” anime–meaning anime that isn’t based on a previously published manga, novel, or light novel–is inherently better. John answered in the negative, and I have to agree. Storytelling skill is storytelling skill, no matter where it comes from or whether it’s borrowed from somewhere else. But it does bring up some interesting issues about the creative process which are worth thinking about.

I do think there’s something to be said for favoring shows that are not necessarily “original” anime, but shows that are the product of a single vision and imagination. The great anime auteurs are examples: the works of Miyazaki, Makoto Shinkai, and Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion are instantly recognizable, true expressions of their creative character, and high quality. Most recently, Dennou Coil, a longtime labor of love for creator and director Mitsuo Itou, also showed singular vision, consistency, and originality. And, contra John, I think Onegai Teacher is actually also a good example of taking an inherently hackneyed genre and breathing some life, emotional heft, and consistency into it–and it was conceived and scripted by a single person.

Of course, most anime are based on manga and, increasingly, light novels. Manga and novels are necessarily created by a single person usually, and the trouble often comes when the anime producers decide to deviate in some ways from the manga–the creative decisions that go into such changes are often tricky. (We saw the outrage that occurred when the director of the Bokurano anime revealed his dislike of the manga and his intention of changing the story accordingly.) The visual arts of film and TV are generally collaborative and, at least in Hollywood, scripts will go through endless revisions before it actually sees film. It’s often easy to tell in less good works whether something was produced by committee and what was a single person’s failed vision. (The bad Oliver Stone movies are still recognizably Oliver Stone movies.) In either case the number of people who work on something is not as important as whether the story works as a story, period. Why having consistent and singular creative vision might be important is that typically they take more creative chances, are sometimes more likely to break out of the increasingly rigid genre conventions in the anime world.

My own perspective on this is skewed by the fact that my background is in prose fiction writing, which is very much a solitary art. I always tend to be suspicious of committee work and when I watch film I tend to go for the ones done by well-known writer-directors. But when I look for interesting anime, aside from a few names which I will always pay attention to (mostly the ones I mentioned above), I decide to pick it up based on whether the storyline looks interesting and appealing to my tastes, not how many people helped to create it.

As they say, a tree is judged by its fruits, and I have seen many a show with singular vision grow stale and awry–ahem, Hayate no Gotoku. You gotta bake it right before I can eat it right.

Author: gendomike

Michael lives in the Los Angeles area, and has been into anime since he saw Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1999. Some of his favorite shows include Full Metal Alchemist, Honey and Clover, and Welcome to the NHK!. Since 2003 he has gone to at least one anime convention every year. A public radio junkie, which naturally led to podcasting, he now holds a seminary degree and is looking to become Dr. Rev. Otaku Bible Man any day now. Michael can be reached at mike.huang@animediet.net. You can also find his Twitter account at @gendomike.

4 thoughts on “Are Original Anime More Creative?

  1. I think there’s a lot to be said about what you’re saying and what John is not saying.

    Still you pretty much got it: an anime is a much more complex thing compared to a story written in prose or even in a normal comic book format. With increased complexity, there’s many more ways for an anime production to screw up. And most of us do not judge anime merely on the same criteria as we do a book or a comic book, simply because that just isn’t the work on the whole.

    But I believe what is left unsaid is a more empirical take in terms of how well original productions fare with other adaptations given some of the same restraints. I mean, it’s apples and oranges to compare Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell with the latest Pokemon movie, but both are original in terms of “they’re not really adaptations.” I can’t help but to roll my eyes when people start to compare Ghost in the Shell with, say, Dragon Ball Z. You might as well compare Denno Coil with Star Wars Episode 1.

  2. So many category mistakes would be avoided if people would remember that anime is a medium, not a genre, omo. And yes, having worked on film sets, even short visual media take an awful, awful lot of work to put together, so they are collaborative mostly by necessity. The reason why we have a few recognizable individual names in anime is because they’re exceptional, ie, rare. Which is why they’re often interesting and exciting even when (in my opinion) folks like Oshii and Anno go waaaay too far in indulging their personal interests. It’s a fault even Miyazaki started to fall into in the way he changed around Howl’s Moving Castle.

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