In discussions about anime age is often brought up indirectly. We talk about the similarities between shows from specific eras, or how fans of newer shows might refine their opinions once “the hype wears off”. These are all valid conversations to have, but in this essay I would like to talk about something we see less often: how we can value anime differently based on age or recency.
Recency Bias
The term “recency bias” floats around a lot in the anime community. It comes up during contests as an explanation for why newer shows will often beat older ones (arguably regardless of quality). There are quite a few reasons why the hype for a recent series is likely to be stronger: the fact that each new show will inevitably pull some fans into the medium, the prevalence of seasonal watching habits in the anime community, and the relative freshness in the memories of viewers, etc... I want to talk about one of the causes for recency bias that often flies under the radar, but is helpful to understanding why we like the anime we like: effectiveness of communication.
An anime will never be more effective at communicating with the viewer than it is the day it comes out. We often forget about cultural context when we’re attempting to analyze an anime on its own merits, but no art is created in a vacuum. Kill la Kill serves as a striking example of this. Chocked full of references, in particular to the Gainax shows that inspired it (Evangelion and Gurren Lagann, for example), part of the joy of watching Kill la Kill is being in on these references. You don’t need to be “in on it” to enjoy Kill la Kill, but as the show ages fewer and fewer people will be, which cuts them off from a piece of the show’s intended experience.
A highly referential show like Kill la Kill serves to easily highlight this, but something similar happens to every anime. Consider Akira, a movie made when there was still a strong tradition in Japanese film of allegory to the atomic bomb. Though that tradition has carried over to more recent years, its prevalence is far less, and a viewer today would be forgiven for missing the connection. It is possible, even, that the writers of anime that include major disasters that reek of bomb allegory today are paying homage to Akira and shows like it rather than referencing the event itself. It’s been three quarters of a century since 1945. With each passing year World War II becomes less and less of a looming specter in our history. In twenty-five more years there may be no one left alive who remembers the days when the bombs were dropped. The cultural context that plays into the emotional core of Akira will, at some point, only be relevant to the viewers who put in the extra effort to understand what influenced anime in the ‘80s.
This happens to every anime, but not equally. You need comparatively little context to “get” a show like Legend of the Galactic Heroes or Hunter x Hunter. The former’s context is real world history, the latter’s setting has little to connect it to the real world, and can easily be enjoyed without genre context. Though they will likely lose relevance at a much slower rate, they are still are inevitably products of the time they were made.
For the sake of argument, go ahead and imagine the anime with the most timeless story you can. Even if that show’s plot would still hold up a thousand years from now, language will have changed by then to the point where that show will be difficult (at best) to understand. Anime isn’t old enough to have dramatic examples of that effect, but you can already hear the difference in the voice acting between a show like Akage no Anne and basically anything that came out this year. Time will always create a divide between what the show was intended to communicate to its audience and what it communicates in practice.
So, does this means that anime get worse as they age?
Short answer: no.
Age Value
If you ask a hardcore anime fan what their favorite anime is, odds are you’ll get an answer at least a decade old. Berserk (‘97), Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Aria, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note, and Princess Mononoke are all answers you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear. My favorite anime, Millennium Actress, was first shown in 2001. It is often argued that the good stuff filters through. So much anime comes out each year most of us haven’t had the chance to watch what we’ll one day consider 2018’s classics. I think this perspective often hits the nail on the head, but while we’re discussing how anime age there’s one more important point to be made: obscurity can be a good thing.
At first, it seems counter-intuitive that an anime could gain value by being ‘worse’ at communicating its meaning to the viewer, but when you really think about the way people enjoy and experience media it starts to make sense. I can think of no better example for this than Akira. Ask an Akira fan to list the reasons why they love the film so much, and I can almost guarantee you that they will eventually use the word “influential”. Akira was pivotal in shaping what anime would become today, and to an extent film in general. One might argue that this isn’t really a quality of Akira, and therefore invalid in criticism, but on that point I would have to disagree. Anime isn’t made in a vacuum, and it certainly isn’t experienced in a vacuum. Part of your experience of Akira might be seeing the traces it left behind in other shows.
While Akira loses its effectiveness in communicating its themes over time, it gains a place in a larger narrative and conversation between creators. I would argue that this is a big piece of the divide between ‘elitists’ and ‘casuals’. Elitists tend to be individuals who are steeped in the medium, people who have done the legwork to understand what an anime meant to its audience at the time it came out, and also understand its place among anime that came out afterwards. A newer, or infrequent watcher of anime hasn’t had the chance to pick up on that context, and will therefore be more likely to appreciate a new show that was written to appeal to them.
In conclusion, there are ways that shows gain value over time, and our experience with them can be better just by virtue of them being older. This process is a double edged sword, however, as the increase in overall relevance is coupled with a decrease in accessibility. There aren’t many people these days who enjoy reading Shakespeare’s plays in their original form, but those people probably love Shakespeare. Age and cultural context are just qualities that a show can have. There’s nothing wrong with avoiding these old shows because they’re inaccessible, and there’s nothing wrong with loving them because there’s a lot of outside context that you get. Thinking about how a show is affected by its age can help individuals who love older anime and those who feel alienated by them to better understand one another’s viewpoints.
Big thanks to u/ABoredCompSciStudent for putting the effort into editing this and suggesting some important improvements to my argument.
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Submitted February 03, 2019 at 10:00PM by 7TeenWriters http://bit.ly/2WFMbsY
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