Tad, the Lost Explorer a temple to mediocrity

Movie: Tad, the Lost Explorer
Director: Enrique Gato
Starring: Kerry Shale, Ariel Winter, Cheech Marin

Verdict:
Tad, the Lost Explorer is a little known 3d nugget lobbed all the way from the Iberian Peninsula, and though the main lead brims with a certain charm and the action can genuinely thrill at some points, the predictable plot, choppy choreography, and less than stellar animation leaves this animated flick stuck digging fruitlessly for a gem to raise it above a callow mediocrity.

In depth:
We here in the States often forget that a wide open film world exists beyond our borders, one full of both quality live-action flicks and enough 3d morsels to satisfy beyond the usual Disney/Pixar and DreamWorks banquets. Among these (though not, admittedly, holding a particularly celebrated position) is the character of Tadeo Jones, a hapless bricklayer and Indian Jones parody created by Spanish director and animator Enrique Gato way back in 2004. After starring in a number of animated shorts and comics, Tadeo gets his feature film debut in Las Aventuras de Tadeo Jones, staring our daydreaming construction worker as he gets swept up in the adventure he has always longed for, trekking through Inca ruins and doing battle with pirates for a coveted lost treasure. The film got overdubbed in English as Tad, the Lost Explorer, and it eventually caught my eye; the world of overseas animation overflows with works of rich creative energy just waiting to be explored. But alas, like a cursed mummy’s tomb, Tad is a “treasure” better left unearthed, for though not without its charms, it fails to fulfill even the moderate aspirations of a bog-standard adventure flick, to say nothing of reaching anywhere close to the footrest of the Disney-Pixar juggernaut.

Voiced by Kerry Shale, Tadeo Jones (now Tad Stones for likely copyright reasons) is a humble young construction worker in Chicago with big dreams of becoming a world famous archeologist. But years spent sifting through work sites for treasure have only turned up beer bottle knock-offs, tourist junk, and a series of pink slips from exasperated employers. His only encouragement through all this comes from his archeologist friend Dr. Humbert (voiced by Mac McDonald). One day, Dr. Humbert receives a mysterious package from a colleague in South America containing a very special artifact: half of the key to an Inca lost city harboring a mystical treasure. Unfortunately, Tad’s shenanigans while escorting the good professor to the airport ends with the unfortunate scholar undergoing a stomach pump in the hospital, leaving Tad with responsibility over the priceless item. Now in Peru, Tad dons the identity of “Dr. Tad Stones,” adventurer archaeologist, and together with Sara Lavrof -  the daughter of Humbert’s fellow bone-digger played by the lovely Ariel Winter - and his pet dog Jeff, he seeks out the fabled ruins, all while dodging the attention of Odysseus, a group of treasure pirates hoping to beat them to the punch.

Tad attempts to blend comedy, heart, and a serious go at action, but ends up with a cocktail too flat to satisfy and too uneven to roll into a smooth, narrative elixir. Though I believe a film should aspire to a diversity of heights if capable, these lofty goals prove difficult when locked into narrow groves of select, plot-driven genres - and fall out of reach completely should the minds behind the movie show themselves incapable of pulling the trick off. About the one thing the creators did well consistently concerns our titular boy: Tad is, thankfully, a friendly and very likeable sort, with a good mix of flaws and balancing strong points. I’ve suffered through far too many films, animated or not, that reduce the wide-eyed dreamer to a partially brain-dead lug with no redeeming attributes. Tad, though dense and more than a little reliant on luck, comes off as rather friendly and pleasant right from the start, and the movie’s course reveals a depth of resourcefulness that largely makes up for his minor bumbling.

Such pleasantries, unfortunately, stick out in a film that damns itself by the faintest of praise. Tad’s costars don’t cut it either individually or as a unit; it’s hard to pay any attention to Sarah’s on screen role with the “Designated Love Interest” messages stamped broadly across her forehead, and Tad’s dog Jeff offers little but an excuse to keep the idiot plot moving. The worst of them has to be Freddy, Sarah and Dr. Lavrof’s shifty, constantly hustling Peruvian assistant who wastes Cheech Marin's vocal talents and embodies every obnoxious Latin American stereotype you can imagine.  Now, far be it from me to distort views of a film through a PC tint; any American condemnation of its supposedly “unenlightened” narrative can and should be tossed to the birds. But Freddy’s utter worthlessness draws not from any offensive stereotyping, but from the fact that he gives little to the story save terrible snake oil salesman jokes which tend to disrupt scenes in the worst ways. He’s a load in every sense of the word, and his intrusive, unfunny, and unnecessary presence is an edifice to what happens when a film shoots for “funny sidekick” and misses the mark by a light-year.
   
But this lines right up with Tad's central weakness: it aims high, but falls short of the mark in every meaningful category. Though well-paced and amusing in many places, the flick as a whole is a temple to mediocrity. The animation feels stiff for a big screen production, passable but clunky, like it had been pushed out of someone’s old Blender files with little or no embellishment. Narratively, it relies too much on unlikely coincidence and plotholes to get our heroes out of a pinch. The most ludicrous example for me rests with a “daring” temple escape which only worked because the plot forgot about the Odysseus pirates who were supposed to be guarding our leads to prevent said escape in the first place. This is tragically par for the film's course; Tad borrows extensively from other movies, but cuts corners on implementing the kernels that made those great films, well, great.

In fact, even the few areas of praise it earns come swaddled in a thick layer of directional ambivalence. As mentioned, Tad seems confused over what kind of movie it wants to be, aspiring to knee-slapping laughs and tense action with equal gusto, but lacking both the talent to pursue both directions adequately, and the focus to just pick one path and commit to it. This pops up largely in the overuse of the slow-motion action trope, which when combined with poor timing and the slightly awkward animation looks more amusing than suspenseful; and with the presence of Belzoni, Sarah’s mute, card-shark, sign-flashing pet parrot. I’ll admit, Belzoni often roused a chuckle out of me, his antics resembling something out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, but considering Jeff and every other animal (mostly) follows the normal rules of critter behavior, his strange departure raises a legitimate “why?” aimed squarely at the creators. Even allowing Belzoni on account of Rule of Funny, the other plot particles coalesce into one big “meh” for the most part. The obligatory “plot-starting lie” Tad tells Sarah - the one of him being an ace archeologist, as opposed to a lowly mason - has been done to death so much its modern appearances are practically parody, and yet Tad plays it painfully straight, if somewhat lazily. Even the big bad “reveal” could have been seen by Stevie Wonder from two miles away on an overcast day. Tad plays all the cards in the deck, but possesses almost no skill in effectively utilizing them.

I don’t want to down on the film too much, since it does have its moments, and very little is actually painful, minus Freddy superfluous presence.  But Tad as a movie accomplishes little, inspires less, and leaves the viewer with a sense of time passed, but nothing more. The scales could have tipped the other way had Gato and company bothered to enhance the story elements they borrowed so liberally, and settle on a direction to pursue with dedicated focus. As stands, though, the sort of insipid, universal mediocrity it embodies falls shot of what its heroic lead likely deserves or desires.

Grade: D+

Fan fiction Spotlight: "The Killer Rarityverse"

 

Yup, face of a real killer, this one

Ah, the bizarre, turbulent paths serendipity can take us down when on the wings of an internet Wiki walk.  One minute, I’m searching up YouTube videos in my downtime between writings; next thing I know, I’ve spent a near full day reading through the strange, dark, tragic world of fanfic writer BronyWriter’s Killer Rarityverse.  This nasty little string of bloody pearls latches around one thought: What if Rarity, the resident fashionista and gem hound of Hasbro’s demographic-smashing hit My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, had a secret life as a conflicted serial killer?

 If “My Little Dexter” sounds to you like the kind of gross, unappetizing blend your 5-year-old would cook up during one of her “experiments” in the kitchen, well, you’re not alone. I never fell into the MLP bandwagon despite my stated love for all things animated, my familiarity with it bound to a couple of episodes and its presence in every dark crevice of the internet for nearly a decade. Also, though a connoisseur of the dark and serious (“bittersweet” is basically my “happy ending”) I’ve never found “grimdark” to be up my alley. It comes not so much as an offense to my sensibilities as an offense to good writing and storycrafting; like all too many Western horror flicks, the writers get more wrapped up with blood and the myriad carved configurations one can make out of someone’s intestines than with creating meaningful violence in service to their flimsy excuse plots.  And this goes double when the grimdark eyesore trails from the keyboard of an amateur fanfic writer.

But The Killer Rarityverse, ahem, “bucks” the trend. Though filled with its fair share of blood and intestines, the stories shine a bigger light on the psychological turmoil of its characters and the fallout of what happens when one commits such an unspeakable sin. Combine that with BronyWriter’s adept penmanship, and this series morphs from just another polished, grimdark turd into a rare obsidian gen - one whose luster lingered with me far longer than I expected.

Which brings us to this article. I wouldn’t call it a “review,” per say; I don’t believe I should apply that to hardworking fan creators who publish works for free at the cost of their personal time, unless one specifically asks me to. So I’ll dole out no ratings from up high, instead just a brief description of the stories, my impressions and their impact during my reading, and if and where they fell a little short of my expectations - a “critique plus,” if you will.

 I focus on five stories from the ‘verse, starting with the canon trilogy: The Secret Life of Rarity, the original story where Rarity makes one bad decision as a child (foal? Filly?) which forever alters her life and those of everyone connected to her; The Public Life of Sweetie Belle, which follows Rarity’s titular little sister over the course of two decades as she deals with the dregs of her sister’s madness; and lastly, Broken Blossom, the tragic tale of Sweetie Belle’s daughter Joyous Blossom as she comes of age amidst the dark shade of her aunt’s infamy, her mother’s many sorrows, and her own growing darkness. In addition, BronyWriter made two alternate universe fics I’ll cover here as well: The Word is Fear, a branch to the end of Broken Blossom in which a single act of mercy spirals into a horrible tragedy; and A Shadow Hangs Overhead, where we warp way back to the beginning and ask the series’ ultimate “what if?” -  how would events have changed if Rarity was caught soon after her first murder? BronyWriter penned other stories connected to the KR-verse, though in my opinion they lack the narrative clout to be included at this time.  Several stories made by other writers also exist that take place in the ‘verse and have earned his seal of approval, but I wanted to keep focus on BronyWriter’s own works, and in either case, I have not read them (the sole exception being a nice little number called The Penance of Rarity by King of Thieves, which not only had BronyWriter backing it as an editor, but also provided a nice epilogue of sorts to the main trilogy. Give it a shot if, like me, you’re a sucker for redemption stories, even if it’s a bit heavy-handed.)

 A few disclaimers, though; there will be blood, and lots of it. This applies especially to The Secret Life, but none of the stories skimp on the violence when called for. Remember: My Little Pony meets Dexter, and if you find anything in the latter show objectionable or rage-inducing, you might want to steer clear of this, particularly the first story. Also, the Rarityverse is dark, darker than most any work I’ve encountered with far greater violence, and even the most optimistic and least brutal of the lot will frequently leave you sad and tense in anticipation of an upcoming tragedy. So tread lightly if you get easily depressed. I will try to avoid spoilers for the curious as best I can, but that may prove difficult, if not impossible. BronyWriter welds the narratives between his texts into a tight coil, with most stories beginning exactly where the last one left off. This also makes reading them in order a must, though how I listed them here can offer a guide: the canon trilogy first, of course, followed by The Word as an alternate take on its conclusion, and finally A Shadow for the ultimate twist of fate. So without further ado, let’s get started.

The Secret Life of Rarity 

Young Rarity, an 8-year-old foal, had just started a new school. That would be scary enough, but soon, a trio of bullies personally choose her as their collective stress ball. After several weeks of unwarranted abuse, she finally got them suspended...only to confront them later in her special place of solitude where she flees to find some peace. Faced with their harassment and a potential beating, something inside the young child besides fear made her snap - and that day, only she left the forest alive.  So begins her long, dark trek down the path of a serial killer, her indulgence in her dark desires marching in step with her innocent adventures with her castmates, as the walls of her sanity and her divided worlds begin to crumble.

The Secret Life hits the ground running, bringing to bear BronyWriter’s strengths of characterization and a keen instinct for tension. The first seven or so chapters were a bit of a slog, to be honest, if only that they served mainly to introduce the premise and be a funhouse mirror to events which occurred during the show; how would Gilda the Griffin, The Great and Powerful Trixie, and other one-of antagonists survive the wrath of a homicidal Rarity for their hurtful but relatively innocuous offenses? (Spoiler alert: They don’t). It’s only as one and eventually more people she cares for uncover her secrets that the plot really launches, and BronyWriter shows his mettle.  Even if he did use Dexter as a close guide (and honestly, there’s no proof, and enough differences not to warrant the charge) the conflicts he spins bow solely to his own skill, and he strings together Rarity’s mental destruction with expert analysis of her character and motives while avoiding either explaining too much, or falling back on melodrama or deus ex machina. I can forgive some of the slip-ups in his writing at the beginning - or Rarity’s put-upon tendency to talk to herself -  as they did little to take from a tense, emotional saga. Still, I feel like I had encountered this story many times before - maybe because I have. If I could put a finger on one flaw for this Dexter-meets-MLP, it’s...well, that it’s Dexter-meets-MLP.  Though blessed with BronyWriter’s own signature style, The Secret Life retreads territory Dexter and similar shows have covered before, and better (I’m not knocking BronyWriter in any way - just pointing out that he’s one fan creator vs. a team of experienced professional screenwriters). Also, I think this tale requires the greatest familiarity with the show, since most of its edge and nearly all of its black humor stem from the blacklight it casts on known events from the series, which may leave non-fans drawn to the story’s intricacies (like me) a bit in the dark. Still, this roller-coaster rocked me to the core, and reached a poignant and satisfying conclusion. 

The Public Life of Sweetie Belle 

Sweetie Belle, Rarity’s 8-year-old sister, is left to wander the remainder of her childhood and the rest of her life in her sister’s murderous shadow.  As friends turn their backs on her and Rarity’s own circle collapses under the weight of her atrocities, Sweetie Belle feels put on the spotlight, dealing with a hostile town still grieving Rarity’s senseless butchery. As the years pass, Sweetie Belle endures this trial as best she can, but an altercation with an irate, drunken stallion lands her in therapy, where secrets long suppressed may blow her world wide open.

The Public Life is unquestionably my favorite story in the main trilogy and of the ‘verse as a whole. Sweetie Belle is a much more sympathetic character than her sister, and while much of The Secret Life consists of the dark romps of its villain protagonist in parallel to the show’s run, The Public Life features a original setting for BronyWriter to play with. And he doesn’t disappoint; while most fanfic writers fall short when forced to deviate from the source for an extended time, BronyWriter rises magnificently to the challenge, and delivers a well-paced, engrossing narrative without its predecessor’s reliance on gory suspense. But what really made this story for me was how it dealt with the fallout of Rarity’s acts - not just among her victims, but also her family and friends. Both Sweetie Belle and the other main characters are left with the difficult question shouldered by many surviving loved ones of some of history’s great monsters: how do you reconcile memories of someone you’ve come to cherish with the fact that they'd committed horrible atrocities? This burden falls on all the characters and in different ways, but it strikes Sweetie Belle the hardest since “loving sister” and “murderous monster” coexist uneasily in her mind for many years before she learns to accept the paradox and let it go. BronyWriter doesn’t offer easy answers to difficult questions, and he trusts his readers to accept that as well. I honestly wasn’t as fond of the ending, from the introduction of Joyous Blossom to the story’s conclusion. It all smacked a bit of an extended diabolus ex machina rather than a natural narrative outgrowth, but I appreciated BronyWriter’s tact with handling it all the same.  

 Broken Blossom  

Joyous Blossom, Sweetie Belle’s young daughter, gets put into the custody of the princess/goddess sisters, Celestia and Luna, following the tragic events of the last volume which separated her from her mother. Feeling alone and trapped while a vengeful parent cries out for her blood, the child already has a dark secret of her own hovering over her head, and as her life slips out of control, Blossom confronts one terrifying question: just how deeply does the legacy of her murderous aunt run?

Broken Blossom rounds out the canon trilogy, though I can’t say to my full satisfaction. The writing quality stayed strong, of course; BronyWriter has a knack for conveying even plotlines I care little for with clarity and emotional impact. The grief of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon - minor antagonists to Sweetie Belle and her friends in the show, which gets carried over to this series and through adulthood - follows the tragic deaths of their children in the previous volume, and it strikes with a visceral fury, providing most of the emotional torque for the early parts. The main problem for me lies with Blossom herself; I couldn't form a connection with the character, either from The Public Life, or here. And you can’t just chalk it up to a case of “Fanfic Other Character Syndrome” with me; I’m not a fan of the show, so Rarity is only somewhat known to me, while Sweetie Belle might as well be a blank - and I imagine neither character remains close to their series counterparts. Blossom felt too far removed from the source of everyone’s misery, even if she also fell victim to it, and though I enjoyed the arc where she reconnects with a long lost relative, it felt too fleeting.  Afterwards, the story played up the “in the blood” trope I tend to find so unpleasant, seeing Blossom hallucinate her aunt, who pushes her to kill. It smacked of a narrative trick just to extend her suffering, though to be fair, I can’t say he wrote it poorly. In all, it’s not a bad story by any stretch, and even if the esoteric happy ending left me a little unsatisfied, I still enjoyed the end of the ride.           

The Word is Fear 

The series’ first alternate universe, it forks from the main storyline close to the end of Broken Blossom, after the young mare’s past crimes and present deterioration have been exposed.  Her family convinces her to give life a second chance, and with Celestia’s approval, she enters an extensive therapy program designed to quiet her troubled mind. However, as the system fails her and Rarity’s hallucinations turn more frequent and insistent, Blossom fears sliding into the same shade of monstrosity as her aunt and dragging the rest of Equestria into her own personal hell.

So one word can describe this story: tense. The Word is Fear keeps you on a live wire through the entire read, unsure of how this tragedy will turn out in the end, and keeps you more nervous than even anything from The Secret Life. I appreciate how BronyWriter cuts Blossom’s madness from a different cloth than her aunt's, which went a long way towards making her a more interesting and pitiable character in my eyes, even if I tend to find her particular flavor of crazy undesirable in most works. The story takes a step back from the centerpiece of character psychology and examines how Blossom’s actions impact the wider world and whips everyone affected into a heightened state of agitation. That said, though I liked this one somewhat better than Broken Blossom, that’s not by much; it still carries some of the issues I had with that story, and a few of the plot developments stretched beyond even my generous suspension of disbelief. As heroes fail and become near villains themselves, it got hard to stay invested even with my greater sympathy for Blossom. This is the only story in the series that got me close to uttering those eight deadly words (you know the ones) and I finished it more out of a sense of completion than anything else, despite the tight writing and tension and more interesting ending than the previous story.

A Shadow Hangs Overhead 

 Our last story breaks cleanly from the established canon, and dials back all the way to the very beginning. Young Rarity’s actions on that fateful day follow the same toxic course as in The Secret Life: a confrontation with her tormentors in the woods, which leads to a tragic act of fatal violence. But this time, one of them got away, which makes all the difference. As the authorities swarm in and take stock of what happened, little Rarity is about to head down another long, arduous path - very different from the one in the first story, but fraught with its own terrors and landmines set to blow her fragile recovery to pieces.

And now we come to my second (or third; I waiver between this and the original) favorite story in the series. BronyWriter takes the premise from The Secret Life and cleverly inverts it: instead of Rarity being a public face with a dark, murderous secret, she now clutches for some level of normalcy in her private life, while the rest of the world sees her as a killer. Why this works, besides BronyWriter’s skill, comes down to how he revisits difficult questions and emotions - in this case, grief, repentance, and when and how to move on from a terrible tragedy. One scene in particular cements this little gem in my heart - not only because it represents a wonderful piece of dialogue writing by any standard, but through the words of two of Rarity’s therapists, it makes explicit arguably the central question in this whole series: what makes a killer?  Are some people born wicked, or does it merely take a little pressure, a big helping of fear, and one really bad day to turn a face in the herd into a monster of God?  As typical, BronyWriter offers no easy answer to this, and we readers are left to decide on our own. Unfortunately, it probably has my least favorite conclusion in the series, largely the result of ending fatigue and a sense of rushing, but considering the wide gaps between the start and finish of the story, it makes sense.   

If this seems like an awful lot to write about for a fanfiction in a fandom I don't follow, well, I’m just as surprised as you are. But we shouldn’t dismiss a good story on account of any strange or unfamiliar form it takes. BronyWriter clearly stands out as a highly capable author, even in the stories I felt less than fond of, and I view the day or two this occupied my thoughts as time very well spent. Coming from a non-fan with only a tangential understanding of the source franchise, what better complement could I give?

Anime: A Meditation on Appeal

The Appeal of Anime

Look back to the early 90s, and you'll find anime - that special brand of animation from the Land of the Rising Sun - a niche entity, with a small yet devoted following among a few bands of dedicated geeks. Fast forward to the present, and that once niche outcrop standing lonely in the West is now a towering mountain of popularity, sheltering a huge, multi-million dollar industry across both sides of the Pacific. For those on the outside, the luster of this Japanese juggernaut seems way beyond us. What’s the big deal, we ask, about a bunch of cartoons?  

Well, a lot, apparently - enough to merit an examination of all the myriad ways anime has touched its faithful devoted - and why it might fall flat with others.

Cowboy Bebop

But first, the brass tacks: anime is not a genre. It is a medium, and that makes a big difference in this discussion. Too often, people toss around careless statements, like “I don’t like anime” or “Anime is the best,” like you're declaring a love for comedies or action films. Any snap judgment about anime centered on a few select tropes is bound to fizzle since it's basically the equivalent of saying you love or hate "movies" in the very broadest sense. Anime as a category is too vast for any kind of all-encompassing opinion to make a lick of sense, since series like Cowboy Bebop and Sailor Moon have next to nothing in common - any more than Friends and 24 can be counted as the same because they’re both live action shows from America.  

So with that in mind, let’s take a stab at why this broad medium reigns in the hearts of many millions of people worldwide.

 For the Love of Animation

Quite simply, you can’t appreciate anime if you don’t appreciate animation as a medium of entertainment. While there are quite a few self-declared anime fans who thumb their noses at anything they construe derisively as a “cartoon,” their enmity is more a rejection of the cultural baggage dredged up by those other, mostly American forms. Anime forges a connection with those who spurn the idea that they are too old/mature/masculine/whatever to “waste time on cartoons.” Personally, I’ve always held a great love for creative media, whether in text, graphic or animation form, and never miss an opportunity to pass time with a good animated flick or series, no matter where it comes from. Animation is an art form, one capable of  breathtaking beauty and wondrous enchantment, and for cultures reared on the Disney formula, stepping out of the "for kids only" cartoon ghetto can be quite liberating.

Hajime no Ippo

With that in mind, anime stands out as a unique animation vehicle, with a number of distinctions that sets the hearts of its fans ablaze. You can generally divide these traits into two camps: extrinsic factors of the medium itself - i.e. its diversity and aesthetics; and intrinsic factors bound up with what the viewers bring to the table, particularly how they concern subculture identification.

A Wide, Wide World

I know I keep beating that "it's a medium, not a genre!" shtick like a red-headed dead horse, but it's needed. We in the West are often blind to animation's potential through our maddeningly opaque set of Disney goggles, and even as the scales slowly fall from our eyes with the advent of more “adult” cartoons, it'll be a long time before we see anything close to the stunning diversity found in Japan’s best studios. Many of the same genres that grace the big screen in Western box offices, like heavy action flicks, stylized sci-fi and the like, are equally abundant in anime, and without the constraints of special effects budgets or real world physics. But there are rarer beasts lurking as well: a plethora of teen musical dramas, goofball comedies, gritty didactic fiction, and other genres that are practically unicorns in American entertainment.  Sports dramas, for example, are an endangered species on film, and virtually extinct in series format; but they thrive in anime with popular shows like Hajime no Ippo and Haikyuu!! The infamous “harem” genre, featuring an average joe or jane dating or even marrying multiple men and/or women, is a no-man's land in the States, but common as dirt in anime. And some of the flat-out bizarre comedy madhouses like FLCL and Excel Saga have few if any analogs anywhere in the West - animated or not. The freedom inherent to the medium means that all sorts of scenarios you couldn't imagine playing out in real life find a comfortable home under its umbrella.

That Certain (Aesthetic) Touch

Still, anime's tremendous diversity doesn't keep its manifold manifestations from sharing certain traits that split off from most Western media in culturally specified ways. Anime encompasses a great swath of genres, from the dark and gritty to the bright and shimmering, but on the whole it leans towards an idealized aesthetic. At the risk of generalizing, youth and energy are prevalent dressing on the backdrops of many anime properties, and in Japanese multimedia as a whole. This is at the heart of the “big-eyed” and cute appearance of many anime characters, especially those targeted at younger demographics, and even in less optimistic settings, fair looks and colorful clothes are not out of place. Not only that, but anime characters are largely more expressive and emotional than their Western counterpoints, often exaggerating facial features to get a particular mood across. For its

Akira

devotees, these traits lend anime a relatability that's harder to find in the more subdued or stiff styles typical to the West, and the expressiveness in particular can heighten the emotional charge, for comedic or dramatic purposes, in very potent ways. However, this bend towards the bright, the colorful, and the expressive slips between the ire of many anime “haters,” especially those who equate seriousness with the dark, gritty, or even the grotesque. But besides being superficial to the point of causing headaches, this line of thinking falls flat against the medium’s diversity.  You don't waltz into a Pixar film and complain about the lack of violence or dark realism; likewise, don't stumble into an anime with bright colors and characters who look like they fell out of a rummage sale truck bin if you want to satisfy those same urges.  There's a big enough pie out there to feed anyone's tastes.   

A Marker of Identity

But besides the visual feasts and wide selection offered, many fans in the West latch onto anime as a counterculture identification. Anime has often been a magnet for many who, either by their own reckoning or others', fall outside of the mainstream: the freaks and geeks, the shy and socially awkward, the derided and the untouchable. There has always been a certain unity in geekdom, tying cartoon, anime and manga fans together with fantasy fanatics, sci-fi nerds, and, to a lesser extent, trading card and video gamers. This knot was a bit tighter way back in the early- and mid-90s, when a stream of new wave anime like Akira and Ghost in the Shell swept through theaters as JRPG imports like the Final Fantasy juggernaut dominated console gaming; but even today, there is enough shared ground to bring all of these diverse fandoms together at massive, city-wide pop culture conventions. Some fans gather to dissect their animes for peeks into Japanese culture; some use it as a badge of difference, a line in the sand separating their hobbies from those of the “other” kids. And still others simply enjoy sharing interests with like-minded people, even as they take a secret pride in knowing said interests are terra incognito to the wider culture and makes their inner circle seem all the more exclusive. The need to belong is a universal human instinct, and anime is no different from any other trend, past or present, that accepts the perennial social misfits into its sphere.  This is all broad generalization, of course, and with the expanded popularity of anime in recent years, it's not uncommon to see the so-called "cool kids" making a fuss over the latest Dragon Ball Super or My Hero Academia episode.  But as long as the mark of stigma in any way clings to the medium in the West, it will always serve to shelter those looking for a subculture to belong to.

I know the arguments above might still leave the perplexed scratching their heads in incredulity. To them, I simply recommend asking an anime watcher in their lives (there's bound to be at least one, especially if children are afoot) and ask them about what they watch and why.  They’re likely to drop a few names and recommendations, so why not give it a shot?  There’s something for just about everyone, and I'll guarantee you'll find something worth watching.