Post 5: Is Anime overly Violent?

Ever since I was little, I have been exposed to different kinds of anime: Romance, Slice of Life, Shoujo (anime for girls), Shounen (anime for boys), Sentai (i.e. Power Rangers, Masked Rider) and many more. But the genre I just cant seem to handle is an anime jam-packed with action, violence and gore. The bloody scenes was relatively too much for a little girl to handle and most of all easily imitated.

Makoto, being stabbed to death in School Days

By definition of AniRecs, Action is by far one of the most common genres out there and the name basically explains it all. On the other hand, Gore or Graphic violence is the realistic depiction of serious physical injuries involving blood, flesh, bone and internal organs. An example of this is the anime, School Days, innocent title as it may, School Days proves that anime isn't just for small little children. School Days is disgusting. It starts off cute, and then just gets gross, and then morbid.


The real question is does violence and gore in Anime themes beget the audience to do the same as the characters do?

Tom and Jerry, regular slapstick cartoon violence

Because of questions like this, anime is ridiculed by parents-specifically in America- and they basically rip off that all anime genres are the same. This leads to the distinction of anime and western cartoons. Against the light, visual-slapstick comedy that cartoons give children, Anime is enormously different. According to Yumeka's Violence in the media and anime, this might be due to the 9/11 incident, in which American society opted to let children know of the safe sanctity of entertainment. But as the years go by, we still see that America continues to play it safe.




Then we look at Anime in Japan which is as I said, jam-packed with action, violence and gore at times. But this does not relatively mean that because Japanese media inhibits such genres that it reflects onto real life violence and murder in Japan. No absolutely not. Except for certain incidents in Japan -as do most countries have. Japan is known for its low crime rate and peaceful society. This is to the fact that Japan has a lack to bear arms in which we realize how easy it is to possess a gun in America.

No matter how fantastical anime violence and gore maybe, it is not shall we say, a mirror to real life. These themes are to express one's struggles in life. Yumeka says that: 

"Violence is a part of life and since we’re not allowed to be violent in real society, violence in the media is a great outlet for that emotion."

In my opinion, Japan serializes such shows to open the eyes of the children that whatever life throws at them, they have to deal with it. While America continues to shelter their children to false truths about the world, sugar coating facts to save them from the suffering of knowing what reality is. In my defense, I'd prefer cold hearted reality than to sugar coated fantasies, just because a few people don't know how to differentiate fantasy from reality doesn't entirely mean that Anime is an outlet for children to imitate the actions they will see. It is just a mild preparation for them to face the world head on and to expect the unexpected. Life is not just handed unto you on a silver platter, its more complicated than that.