In preparation for the upcoming anime convention that me and Eric are doing this weekend I have been doing a lot of thinking and researching about all of this japanamation stuff and have come to a conclusion.
W. Edwards Deming.
He is the cause of it all. All of it. From “Big O” to “Hello Kitty” to giant robots that combine with other giant robots to the stuff with tentacles and school girls it is all Mr. W. Edwards Deming’s fault.
Sure the man was a great statistician and a brilliant professor, one of the finest and most influential Wyoming has ever produced, but it is his fault that we have to wait through fifteen episodes of talking about and then five episodes of powering up before Goku finally becomes a Level Two Super Sayan and come back to life to save everyone.
See here is the deal: Most Americans think that the Japanese are strange. Heck, most Japanese people have to think that most of this stuff is strange, what with the giant swords and bizarre spiky hair and huge eyes and all. Good grief, any society that came up with “Speed Racer” is just a bit different.
And most people, at least people in America, wanna know why. And so I must venture forth an opinion.
Now I guess we could just chalk it up to good old cultural differences and realize that a lot of things that seem strange to one group of people makes perfect sense to another. But we’ve all seen Pokemon and there just has to be some sort for reason for that.
The usual reasons that are given have to do with the end of World War II and the subsequent impact on Japanese culture. That and the horrifying mutations brought about by the radiation from two atomic bombs. But I digress.
Most “serious” inquisitors into the subject would claim that issues in national identity arose after the defeat in 1945 and ensuing dependence on America to survive. This led a once proud nation to become childlike or directionless or self-indulgent or whatever claptrap that the person writing wants to throw out there. Sometimes people even blame the good old USofA for the Japanese deciding that cartoon characters could have blue hair was okay because of the introduction of American pop culture into Japan. But as true as it is that it is all America’s fault, that is all poppycock.
The real reason is W. Edwards Deming.
Deming came to Japan in 1950 to help in the process of reconstructing the industrial capacity of Japan and by 1951 had been honored with a national award in his name to encourage Japanese businesses to . Deming had developed a philosophy of total quality improvement that the Japanese would claim was a key component to their ability to rebuild their economy quickly and shake their prewar reputation for terrible products. Japanese business embraced Deming’s ideas and became a front runner in all manner of innovation and production that even American companies envy.
And I would dare say, even innovation in animation. Just as Japanese manufacturers took the idea of ever improving excellence and quality into their fields Japanese anime guys took that idea of always improving their material and ran with it, moving the field of Japanese pop culture farther, faster, than any other popular culture had been taken before. Sure, for them it didn’t mean building transistor radios but rather learning how to animate ridiculously long costume changing dance sequences, and the results have been both amusingly strange and horrifyingly disturbing, as “Mewmew Power” exemplifies, but they have followed the precepts of their teacher.  A teacher who was an American and who, because he was an American, must have been right.

-Bob

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Tags: anime, convention, Japan, w edwards deming, why are the japanese so weird

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