This week in New Asian Cinema, we watched a film called Millennium Actress. It’s an anime movie. I used to watch a lot (seriously, a lot) of anime, but lately I barely watch any at all. For the first few minutes I was still getting readjusted to the medium, but after that I really enjoyed the movie. It was a lot better than I was really expecting; it was one of those movies that just really made a strong connection with me, and it was pretty deep and artistic. I’d seen Perfect Blue before, which is another anime movie directed by the same person, but Perfect Blue is really serious and pretty disturbing, where as Millennium Actress is basically the opposite. I can appreciate and enjoy the range of emotions explored by the more disturbing, but Millennium Actress is more the kind of movie that I really enjoy watching.
Yesterday there was a guest lecture that I had to go to for New Asian Cinema. The lecturer’s name was Susan Napier, and she lectured about anime. It was pretty interesting. She had some intriguing ideas, and beyond that it was just pretty cool to hear someone speaking about anime on a relatively scholarly level.
One thing that really struck me, though, is that she’s essentially coming at it from the point of view of an outsider; though she might watch and enjoy anime regularly, she was a scholar before that. Because of that, there were some small errors in details that a really dedicated fan would not have made. These kinds of errors don’t really bother me, but I think once it comes to the point where the people doing the scholarly research on the subject are the people who were significantly interested in the subject prior to their research, things could get much more interesting. I suppose it’ll just take time for more fans to grow up and become adults.
Ok, that got really nerdy. I apologize. It won’t happen again. (actually, it probably will.)
| Posted November 10, 2007
2 Comments
1. Nicki! | November 19th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Satoshi Kon, right? The director. I actually haven’t seen Perfect Blue, or Millennium Actress, but I really liked Paranoia Agent. In September I saw his newer one, Paprika, and it was pretty good, although not as disturbing as I’d have hoped (I’m afraid David Lynch has spoiled me).
But yeah, ditto on the not-watching-anime thing. All I watch now is One Piece (and that’s few and far between) and Sailor Moon (and you hush, I only had one more season to finish!). :B
2. Random dude | June 5th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Yeah, she never really seemed like an insider on anime. I took her class when she was teaching in Texas and it was pretty interesting, but it was obvious that she got most of her stuff from her students. I swear one of my papers for her class appeared as a one-liner in her revised anime book. It felt cool that my paper might have inspired her!
But I sort of lost respect of her when I heard that she dumped her grad students from TX when she moved to Tufts, which I think is a no no in academia, and that she purchased a condo in Ropponki (the most expensive place in Tokyo!) off of her anime book sales. If you’re rich and famous, I guess you can get away with anything.
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