With Anime Boston just around the corner, it seemed appropriate to discuss anime for this post – it’s just good timing. To be honest, when I was reading the article “It’s the Libidinal Economy, Stupid: The X-Files and the Politics of Postmodern Desire” my mind kept connecting the concepts in the articles to the various Japanese animated programs that I am so fond of. Just for the record – anime is not cartoons.
I’m just going to pull a random anime out of my collection and see how it connects to the article. Ouran High School Host Club – a most interesting title, though not one that would be directly thought of as having supernatural themes, at least, not at the surface level. The only overtly supernatural element of the series is the school’s Black Magic Club, whose members are highly stereotypical. This can be taken as an attempt to parody other animes that are based out of schools that are outlandishly fantasy and out of the ordinary.
For example, the president of the Black Magic Club, Umehito Nekozawa, carries around a puppet that his family has worshipped as an image of a cat god. Nekozawa himself is commentary on the stereotypical vampire – he is allergic to light, sunlight especially is poisonous to him. For these reasons, he wears a long hooded black cloak over his school uniform – he even wears a black wig to cover his blonde hair. Though this is a postmodern look at the vampire, for the most part, vampires in animes don’t behave like Nekozawa (for example, Alucard and Seras Victoria from Hellsing).
Another group parodying another anime genre is the football club. In a school that is for the children of wealthy elitists, the football club seems out of place. Other than the various martial arts clubs, the football club is the only sports club we see in Ouran. They have an immense rivalry with the Host Club (more specifically, neither group understands why the other exists). This is typical of animes that revolve around a sports team – members of the team can never see beyond the boundaries of their own group, and they love to hate other teams (usually belonging to another school).
Ouran, like Twin Peaks and the X-Files has deep elements rooted in postmodernism. So don’t tell me ‘it’s just some cartoon’.
I’m just going to pull a random anime out of my collection and see how it connects to the article. Ouran High School Host Club – a most interesting title, though not one that would be directly thought of as having supernatural themes, at least, not at the surface level. The only overtly supernatural element of the series is the school’s Black Magic Club, whose members are highly stereotypical. This can be taken as an attempt to parody other animes that are based out of schools that are outlandishly fantasy and out of the ordinary.
For example, the president of the Black Magic Club, Umehito Nekozawa, carries around a puppet that his family has worshipped as an image of a cat god. Nekozawa himself is commentary on the stereotypical vampire – he is allergic to light, sunlight especially is poisonous to him. For these reasons, he wears a long hooded black cloak over his school uniform – he even wears a black wig to cover his blonde hair. Though this is a postmodern look at the vampire, for the most part, vampires in animes don’t behave like Nekozawa (for example, Alucard and Seras Victoria from Hellsing).
Another group parodying another anime genre is the football club. In a school that is for the children of wealthy elitists, the football club seems out of place. Other than the various martial arts clubs, the football club is the only sports club we see in Ouran. They have an immense rivalry with the Host Club (more specifically, neither group understands why the other exists). This is typical of animes that revolve around a sports team – members of the team can never see beyond the boundaries of their own group, and they love to hate other teams (usually belonging to another school).
Ouran, like Twin Peaks and the X-Files has deep elements rooted in postmodernism. So don’t tell me ‘it’s just some cartoon’.
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