Analysis Of The Global Markets For Anime By Rayna Denison

In the chapter “The Global Markets For Anime” in Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, Rayna Denison begins by talking about the history of anime. Anime began to consume popular culture in the 1960’s but it wasn’t until the 1980’s that the “second wave of anime films [...] brought a new dystopic future vision to the world.” (Denison, 308) Stemming from this “boom” the most popular and consumed anime’s all revolve around dystopian, magical and/or science fiction worlds. Denison then goes on to explain that while there are many essays about anime, these think pieces tend to “understand the globalisation of anime as its Americanisation [where Denison] intends rather to think of anime as global in the sense that John Tomlinson proposes, that globalisation in culture relates to ‘how our sense of cultural belonging – of being “at home” – may be subtly transfigured by the penetration of globalizing media into our everyday lives.” (308) The author then goes on two state that there are three markets in which anime does the best in; Japan,
These markets are all in different parts of the world, and are all parts of a larger industry. To begin, in regards to Japan, the national identity of the main character Chihiro is a main reason why the film was successful. One of the “most significant [aspects of the film] is that in [Spirited Away] it is fantasy elements which are most obviously Japanese.” (311) This is prevalent throughout the film, and while yes the adventures of the main character take place in a fiction fantasy world - they resemble architecture styles and places that Japanese audiences recognise and then mirror into their own lives. Yet, Denison goes on to say “the characters most closely associated with an ‘Oriental’ or Japanese identity are presented as conflicted in Spirited Away (2001)” (312). This proves that while this could be deemed as a children's film, there is an underlying message about