I don’t know if this has become a common thing or not, but this is the first time I’ve seen anime mentioned in one of my school books…
My cultural anthropology book(brilliantly titled Cultural Anthropology) has a good page and a half worth of info about anime in its “Anthropology and the Arts” chapter. Unfortunately we won’t have the time this semester to get to this chapter, but I found it when I was skimming through the book one day. It was exciting to see a section about anime in one of my text books…it’s even one of the chapter’s bold-face vocabulary words ^^ If you’re interested, I took pictures of the pages that contain the anime section. You can read the first part here and the second part here. As you can see, I underlined important anime terms that were used. I can’t believe the section even talks about fansubs, and words such as “otaku” and “kawaii,” and a subtle mention of the moe phenomenon as well. As far as the quality of the information, it’s pretty interesting though there were some things I think the authors should have mentioned, like Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki, and series’ that first began the anime obsession in the US such as Pokemon and Dragon BallZ. Their definition of anime could definitely use some improvement too, and Godzilla isn’t the best choice of an image to use in a section all about anime…my list of suggested revisions could go on, but hey, anime is only a tiny part of cultural anthropology(a very interesting subject by the way) so I can’t complain too much =P
The scans from your textbook are kind of blurry…it’s quite interesting that they mentioned anime that came out 1-2 years earlier (I think).
Yeah, sorry the pictures are kind of blurry. I don’t have a scanner so I had to use my digital camera and it’s not really the best thing to use when you want to get clear text. I tried to doctor it up a little to make it as readable as possible ^^
Anyway, I’m also surprised they mentioned fairly new anime series’. They really should have mentioned Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion though, especially Cowboy Bebop because of all the cultural diversity and Western themes in it.
In addition to visual works (anime, manga, and video games) affecting the Japanese population through the use of Western culture, they also should note that Americans in turn have been affected by visual works that are “purely” Japanese (such as Katamari Damacy, or arguably Azumanga Daioh) or have Japanese influences (such as mainstream series such as Inuyasha and Naruto). This in turn interests some people in Japanese culture in general, and thus contributes to the economy of both nations.
But yeah, that was a decent read. It could’ve been written better, but for the most part, you probably won’t find better material when it comes to reading stuff in a textbook. XD
Actually there was a mention of an anime in my history book of my freshman year of high school (lastyear). I was studying World History and there was a section about the Meiji Era of Japan. In that secton there was a box with a blurb about the anime/manga series Rurouni Kenshin. It excited me ^-^