A review of a Japanese film festival in St. Petersburg—that’s Russia, not Florida—points out that “there’s something fundamentally unsettling about Japanese anime,” and it’s not what you think (sex, violence, fan service). It’s that anime and manga use a childlike medium to confront the Big Questions of Life.
With childlike curiosity, using simple lines and exaggerated expressions, anime and manga have presented people copulating and fighting, destroying then creating, defying yet crying, seething but dreaming. And beside the action, reflected in the large tea-cup eyes of the main hero or heroine, there has often flickered the thought: In this animated world, why does this action make sense?
Adopting a child’s persona, animators have challenged audiences to provide a better answer than: “Well, it’s all kinda complicated…”
