An Anime Education - Center for Emerging Media Design and Development

Teaching Science through Anime and Transmedia

Courtney Tuchman

Anime, also known as “Japanimation,” is a medium of animation that has seen a surge of popularity in the west in the past 20 years. Fans have deemed anime to be a unique form entertainment that bridges Japanese and American cultural gaps. Others who are less familiar with the medium, however, cannot seem to make much sense of anime, as Americans tend to reserve animation for children’s cartoons. When the golden age of anime began in the 1990s, those who were too old to be watching “cartoons” passed over anime hits that were just beginning to appear on the scene. A quick Google search of the phrase “Why are anime fans so” autocompletes the sentence with words like “weird,” “ugly,” and “losers” (Reyson et al., 2016). Those outside the anime community see fans as too introverted or obsessive, and therefore difficult to befriend.

"This creative project aims to create a transmedia storyworld to educate those who fall outside of the most common anime demographics. This transmedia storyworld serves the purpose of anime education—or 'animeducation'—to educate audiences on the vast number of story and entertainment possibilities in the anime realm."

Reyson and his team conducted a study to determine the average demographics of anime viewers. His findings suggested that anime fans are generally male, around 20 years old, not very religious, and politically liberal. Those who view anime negatively, then, might conclude that anime is only comprised of action-packed series aimed at appealing to a target audience of young men. The genres within anime, however, vary extensively. Just like the genres we see in American film and television, romance, mature, and even religious content have well-known series in the anime community.

Anime presents many possibilities for scholarly studies, as the medium has just started to appear in terms of academia. The more popular anime becomes in America, the more we can see an acceptance and better understanding of Japanese and Asian culture. Furthermore, those who view anime in its original Japanese with supplementary English subtitles actually see a boost in foreign language literacy (Fukunaga, 2011). Researchers can also study anime through the lenses of race, gender, and ethnicity, as several anime depict their Asian characters with Western appearances, while others draw characters with ambiguous gender characteristics (Yoshida, 2008). Even though there is a plethora of existing evidence advocating for the study and consumption of anime, there are still people who see anime consumers through negative stereotypes and disavow anime as a whole.

This creative project aims to create a transmedia storyworld to educate those who fall outside of the most common anime demographics. This transmedia storyworld serves the purpose of anime education—or “animeducation”—to educate audiences on the vast number of story and entertainment possibilities in the anime realm. In American culture, where we see the entertainment industry shoveling out remakes, reboots, and superhero movies, anime could be the savior that introduces media consumers into a new world of creative storytelling from a different culture. Additionally, bridging American and Japanese cultures has the potential to take away fears of foreign cultures and instead promote an environment of sharing.

You can access the full paper here.