Things Afoot in Japan

I recently returned from a long trip from Japan and it was an eye opener, to say the least.  I visited a friend that I hadn’t seen in a while and as I was there we went to a Japanese SciFi/Anime convention that featured several representatives from several Asian countries.  The convention opened my eyes to one main fact: the U.S. is vastly lacking in its creativity of anime and all things scifi.  There were over one million selections of anime, 500,000 comic books/manga, and had nearly 25,000 horror/scifi movies (4 of which I saw).  The direction, creativity, and all around story telling in and of itself far surpasses that of the U.S.  We have all the tools and the genius people to do it, so why don’t we.  In essence, the Asian market for anime and manga is rather large, the following larger than the one for college football here in the states.  But one thing I took away from the convention was that the next wave of anime, which will inevitably come to the states soon, is taking more of a cultural, literary and social slant (no pun intended as I’m Asian myself).  There is more action, and more storyboarding which makes for a more intricate weaving of the story, but will this be embraced in the States.  The days of Pokemon are gone and the days of Weavo, Ganjun, and Armoro are on the rise.  You undoubtedly haven’t heard of the above, but you soon will and you’ll be treated to something special.   Anime caught on pretty quickly here and it was a relatively new concept, but the new wave of anime and manga very well could cause a new social dimension here in the states replacing the old anime.  It’s doing exactly that in Japan now.  To sum it up, get ready for a cultural revolution.  Yes, anime does have the ability to do this.  It already has.