Marvel and DC have branched out from simply arriving weekly in the comic book stores to being standard staples on both television and movie theaters. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been insanely successful, with the recent Avengers: Endgame breaking records all over the place. With these successes, one anime artist believes that anime in general has a thing or two to learn from these two comic book juggernauts.
Keiko Moritsugu is an artist involved with two of the biggest animes currently making the rounds. While a student, she contributed as a CG artist for the anime Doraemon and even made a number of character designs for the Pokemon animated franchise. Recently though, Keiko went to Twitter to air her grievances with how anime itself could mimic Marvel and DC storytelling. Keiko had this to say:
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“The quality of Disney and Marvel movies get better and better every year, and the reason why is because they work issues that society is grappling with into their scripts. Japanese animation has become unable to do that. The methodology for making anime is ‘As long as we put some sexy stuff in, we can trick otaku into buying it, right?’”
ディズニーやマーベルの映画が、毎年のようにクオリティを更新出来るのは、実際の社会の中で争点になっている事をきちんと脚本に織り込んでいくからなんだよ。日本のアニメはもうそれが出来ないのよ。「エロを混ぜればオタクを騙せるんでしょ？」という方法論で作ってるから。
— Moritsugu Keiko 森次慶子 (@W_Fei_hung) April 25, 2019
Moritsugu may be disappointed with the storytelling of anime currently, though it certainly isn’t a slouch sales wise in comparison to Marvel and DC. While the movies for these superheroes have made a significant amount, anime and manga sales will often make more than their comic book counterparts when it comes to overall revenues. Keiko had some additional notes to add about the cultural differences between the two artistic mediums:
“These days, if you made a movie like Zootopia in Japan, I think people would get all worked up about it online, and say things like ‘Kill the feminists!’ and ‘Wait, this movie was only made to please minorities.’ But there’s nothing wrong with that happening. That shows that a movie has social relevance.”
Certainly, these are some controversial tweets. Whether or not Animation Studios that specialize in anime will look at the wild success of Marvel and DC movies in the United States and the world is yet to be seen. Will studios begin changing the presentation of anime in general to mimic that of their Western cousins with comic books? Have we seen the opposite happen where Marvel and DC take a page from manga and anime adaptations that have been wildly successful?
What do you think of Moritsugu Keiko’s comments? Do you agree? Let us know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime.
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