"Mad Men" and Slice Of Life Anime

Even since returning from Anime Boston last month, I have been on a streak of watching anime. I usually go through patterns of this along with movie watching or TV season finishing so it only makes sense to end up on this pattern again. So far I have watched "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" (which I could definitely write a full analysis of), "The World God Only Knows" (kind of a throw away but I liked the demon girl), and "Haibane Renmei" which might have somewhat provoked this entry.

As you might have noticed from other things I've written, I view anime like I view movies and quality television: I analyze it to the ends of the Earth. And speaking of quality television, let me talk about the only show I currently regularly watch on TV: "Mad Men."

"Mad Men" is the best show on television and has been for a while. Don't get me wrong, there are some really enjoyable shows out there (I personally like "True Blood", "Doctor Who" and "Dexter") and there are some other shows that I am told also have a lot of the same weighty writing as "Mad Men" ("Breaking Bad" is a frequent example I get from people) but there is something "Mad Men" has that other shows don't. Everything about "Mad Men" from the acting to the writing to the set and costume design is made to fit together into a perfect, unchangeable entity that is often so brilliantly subtle that it is lost on a lot of people.

The only compliant I ever hear from people about "Mad Men" is that "nothing ever happens" which must sound like a comment directly in opposition to what I just said about the actual quality of the show. How can a show where nothing happens be quality? Well, first of all, it is untrue to say that nothing happens in "Mad Men" but I can understand why some might say that. "Mad Men" is a show that is very strict about staying in the realm of reality. Character development and interactions hold the same subtly as real life. One of the most shocking things to ever happen on the show was a British guy getting his foot run over by a lawnmower (long story).  In fact, I think I found the first episode most shocking but only because the early 60s attitudes were so unfamiliar to me. I couldn't understand how a doctor could threaten to take away birth control pills from a patient if she "misuses them" but how all the men on the show could have affairs so casually.

"Mad Men" is all about themes and subtly in displaying those themes, making the show very realistic. The main theme of "Mad Men" is defined as "change and how people react to it" which is why it is set in the 60s, a decade stuck between the wholesome 50s and the liberal 70s but there are also themes in character development and individual episodes as well as plenty of 60s nostalgia to go around.

The thing is, a lot of people don't look to television for themes and subtly and something to make them use their thinking head lump thing. Movies, books, and music as mediums for which this sort of thing are more acceptable but television is often seen as something to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It is to entertain and provide the viewer with a little escapism and even though "Mad Men" takes place in the 60s, it really doesn't have the escapism element as everything is presented through a sort of pessimistic realism that is mostly unappealing to live in. This might be why "Mad Men" still struggles a bit to stay on the air in spite of its critical acclaim.

Now let me talk about anime or more specifically the genre of "slice of life anime." Slice of life anime is probably exactly what it sounds like: shows that portray real life as it is without much embellishment. Also, as you can imagine, the negative remarks about slice of life anime are the same as those of "Mad Men": "nothing ever happens." I would also like to point out that these remarks come mostly from Western viewers.

Now slice of life anime has to be taken on a case by case basis but most of the slice of life anime I was initially exposed to was lacking in the same subtly and themes as "Mad Men" and often was focused on the lives of high school girls. Take, for example, "K-On!", a popular slice of life anime. The premise of "K-On!" can be summed up as simply, "Four high school girls form a band" and every episode can be explained just as simply: "the one where the girls get jobs to buy Yui's guitar", "the one where they perform at the school festival", "the one where they get a rhythm guitarist". The characters are static and cutesy and if I didn't know better, I would think it was a kid's show or at least a show meant to appeal to kids under 13.

I personally didn't get the appeal so I wondered who exactly was making this show popular. Was it boys who thought the girls were cute and liked the slight lesbian undertones? Was it little girls who get escapism from the idea of growing up to do the things they did? Was it anime fans who would literally watch anything? Either way, I didn't see much in the way of escapist entertainment in the show and certainly couldn't see how it would appeal to guys or girls in the 13-30 age range so I had another idea. In Japan, there are a lot of ideas surrounding "shojo" (girl) culture and one such idea is that of the appeal of shojo to older men. Now, you are probably thinking about the schoolgirl fetish aspect which is a time-honored tradition in many countries including Japan but that isn't what I'm talking about. There is a psychological idea that Japanese businessmen often feel very stuck in their roles. They are expected to devote themselves to their company as a means of supporting their family. There are expectations that they will get to this point by getting into a good college, a good high school, a good middle school. The pressure is constant and they are stuck on this path that repeats and repeats until death. To these men, the ultimate example of freedom is the shojo. She is already in high school and doesn't have to go to college if she doesn't want to. She doesn't have to get a job. She isn't even thinking about the future because no one is pressuring her. She can do what she wants: talk about manga all day, go shopping, join a band, anything! This feeling towards the shojo creates a fascination in older men with shojo culture making things like "K-On!" a window into a world they could never be a part of.

However, not all slice of life anime lack the themes that "Mad Men" does. "Haibane Renmei" for example manages to infuse the slice of life genre with a bit of a mystical element that is actually very theme heavy. The premise of "Haibane Renmei" is that there is an isolated town full of humans and "haibane" who are not allowed to leave. "Haibane" are human-looking beings that have wings and halos who are hatched from eggs that just appear in the town. All "haibane" have some sort of former life they don't remember but must instead become accustomed to the town and its rules regarding them. The show starts in the same simple episode fashion ("Rakka grows her wings", "Rakka goes to work with Nemu to see if she might want to work in a library") but it eventually focuses more on subtle character development and theme as it goes on keeping the mystical elements on the back-burner the whole time so you can focus purely on the emotions that slowly bubble to the surface. This show kind of gave me hope for the slice of life genre that there might be more shows like this out there but it still did have the magic element that slice of life anime is most often without. Does this element change the validity of the themes?

Recently I watched an episode of a new anime called "Sakamichi no Apollon", a slice of life anime that actually takes place in the 60s. From one episode I can tell that while it doesn't quite have "Mad Men"'s subtly (the unfortunate effect of a first person narration), it certain has themes and the added bonus of the era.

So I wonder, could "Mad Men" spark more of this genre in the Western world? Is an accurate expression of the real world in media less exciting/purposeful/amusing than a more sensationalized or fantastical one? Does Japan have a larger preference for realism than the Western world?

No idea.

I just like comparing the Western and Eastern worlds.