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Whew...Okay, this isn't gonna be fun to write.

It's hard to talk about controversial anime without spoiling stuff, and it's a lot easier to make a blog post that's specifically about one anime, so with the topic of the portrayal controversial subjects in general, it's gonna be roundabout and really rough. Well, anyways, here goes nothing.


So, the Ore no Imouto thing is currently going on. No spoilers, but it caused quite a bit of a stir in the anime viewing community (translation: rage). I didn't think much of the first season, which is the only part of the franchise I've watched, but I found it enjoyable for what it was, so I'm sleeping soundly tonight. However, something still bothered me about the ordeal. From what I've heard from spoilers, it relates to a topic I was thinking about writing about, which is controversial subjects and the benefits anime would gain from exploring them. It would allow anime creators to experiment with the medium and test the potential of anime to portray subjects that hit close to home, as they always have always been trying to.



Controversial anime aren't like "safe" anime, the general "cliched" stuff we see all the time that people can just brush them off if they dislike them. Here, controversial anime are gonna split the fan base. Hard. In real life, these are the subjects of government, religion, sexuality, the idea of maturity, the environment, gender roles, all that tough stuff. These subjects are deeply rooted in our morals and beliefs, and I'm sure we all have some exposure to in our real lives. These are the things that we probably hate hearing about, not because we're for or against them, but because we hate having to argue or defend whatever we think. It's brought up a lot in media, and most likely our own lives, and they're heavy stuff.

Yet, I never thought about how fans would react. I would think that there would be a certain crazy crowd that would unironically enjoy and appreciate these works for existing, so that we can have stuff to talk about. Yet, there's gonna be a portion of the fan base that won't take well to them. This generalization doesn't apply to everyone, but I can see how these works can offend or outright insult people. Perhaps even disgust some. They way I see it, if an anime is dark, unforgiving, and painful to watch, it'll still succeed if it's both interesting and well-made. If it deals with an uncomfortable and controversial subject though, even if it's both interesting and well-made, it'll need to justify its own existence first, and even then, some people will still outright hate it for merely existing. And that's the tragedy of controversial anime.

This of course rules out anime that fail in delivering, since they deserve all the rage and whatnot. Still, rage without control is the same as a tantrum, so that needs addressing too.



Because of all that, I'm gonna talk about the way controversial subjects portrayed and received, but more specifically I want to get into the relationship between the two. Before anime dives any deeper into such subjects, two things gotta happen: the creators need to make sure they're doing their subjects justice, and the viewers need to learn to discern terrible controversial anime from well-made controversial anime. They both come with experience, and I'm speaking from my own narrow perspective, so bear with me. This is gonna get touchy-feely.




The Creators' Risks


On the creation side, I don't know specifically how things are done. I can imagine that, ignoring smash hit manga/light novels and stuff brought upon by big name directors, it's a long and painful process with lots of red tape and bargaining before an anime is green lit. Even more so if that anime doesn't have a the broad appeal or selling power of an action/adventure/comedy/romance/ecchi show. And even more so if that anime is trying something far different from anything in the market. And, if that anime's subject matter doesn't rely on entertainment or fun, but rather uncomfortableness and introspection, it must take a miracle or something.



Anime takes money, loads of dedicated man power between animation and marketing, and requires that other possible titles be put aside for the current project. It's a great shame when a crap anime is made, because the people who worked on them won't be receiving any praise. Because of that, I'm sure that everyone involved, both on the creation and viewing side, would want their anime to be the best they can be. If I may venture to say, anime that address controversial stuff - the stuff that hits close to home - require extreme amounts of care and planning compared to nearly everything else, if just because they're the kind of anime that have the hardest time finding success. No matter how well-made, it's gonna insult someone. It's unavoidable, so it's a huge gamble.

Lemme talk Revolutionary Girl Utena real fast. I'll try not to spoil anything, but still, heads up.




Revolutionary Girl Utena dealt with sexuality and gender roles through symbolic imagery and conversations with an immense amount of ambiguity. For example, without going into specifics, the idea of a prince is, understandably, an image applied to strictly males. Can a woman be a prince? With this question, we would need to ask what a prince does, or what a prince is. At some point, we've all taken princes to be the character that's heroic and the embodiment of everything pure and just. Are women able to become that image? Then can't they be princes? Now, discuss that visually while dueling at the ends of the world with a badass choir.


It goes deeper than this, but this is what I'd assume any writer would want to pull off: something that's smart while interesting, heavy but fun, and even if you don't catch everything, the experience itself is both unique and refreshing.




Unfortunately though, I'm sure that we have all seen at least one anime that was so great until the ending, where everything setup by the show was just dropped. Thrown aside. Ignored for some...questionable ending. This is the case with controversial anime, but with a greater significance. It's here where the anime could had made a great point, declare a groundbreaking stance, or portray an issue in a smart, direct, or straightforward manner, but it fails to deliver. It's not just the disappointment in seeing something great screw itself. No, it's that the issue will be made fun of by fan base, the anime itself will get no respect, and we won't be able to have a good example to talk about the said issue until the next anime example comes along. If we're lucky.

There are a couple of things I can reason from this. Perhaps it's because of pressure to somehow end on a good note, trying to ease the drama or to tie everything up so the fans won't feel too uncomfortable. Maybe it's so the creators won't feel so uncomfortable. It could be that the anime wasn't doing very well to begin with, and being any harsher would completely murder their sales. It could be by a decision by the higher ups, to try and salvage some money from the show. It could be that the show was actually successful, and going any deeper wouldn't end well. A whole lot of things could had been the cause. It's understandable. The anime staff need food for their family and themselves.



But really, if the decision was to take on an anime with a controversial subject to begin with, were the creators truly not prepared to go all the way? I'm sure that the studios are smart enough to know when something's over their head, or if the anime community isn't ready for an issue to be tackled. Plus, the general audience might get offended and lash out, but I think we're all better off if we're taken seriously and treated as mature people who can take a harsh show. It's better for the medium to have a show that didn't shy away from fear of meeting the bottom line and explore its controversial subject in-depth. And you know what, here's the biggest problem: by pulling back at the last minute, it completely destroys everything that the anime had setup, betraying both the effort put forth as of thus far, as well as the trust of the viewers.

I've found that at least with anime, there's a certain amount of trust we viewers give to an anime to not disappoint us. It sounds obvious, but assuming we're not watching with the intention of hating something, we go into anime expecting to be treated well to an experience. If we get that trust betrayed, we get disappointed. Simple enough.

When applied to controversial stuff though, things work out harsher than usual. When watching something dealing with something serious, I'm sure that we're all expecting to be taken just as seriously. When the anime creates an easy solution, half-asses it, or pulls back from portraying its subject in full force, it's no longer taking the subject seriously, nor is it taking the viewers seriously. The anime couldn't commit fully to the subject, a presumed controversial subject that require the full respect and attention that it demands from everyone. The anime didn't treat us as mature viewers who stuck with the anime, expecting to be treated the same as we have been the whole way through.




The Viewers' Responsibilities


Now the hard part: us, the viewers.


So, here we are watching anime, hoping to find engagement or entertainment from the medium. Suddenly, an anime shows up that addresses those issues. We might not like the subject, but I think we're all smart enough to tell when something's well-made, even if we don't like what they're talking about. The problem is when we don't, or if we someone else who doesn't. For example, I'm seeing this with Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, not specifically with regards homosexuality or whatever, but with the verbal distaste and defensiveness that they result in.



It's fine when the show fails in its delivery. When they get bashed, it's hard to defend them since they deserve it. It's painful to see people lash out at the issue the failed anime bought up, but there's not much to say. I'm seeing that with Ore no Imouto, and while the case-by-case complaints can be picked apart, I can't say much about the general response besides, well, don't go overboard. Feeling upset is fine, but the rage I saw bordered on a near self-parody of the anime community. As in, I felt like I was seeing one huge joke. I wasn't sure who was actually angry and who was acting like they were angry to get a rise out of everyone else. I never expected to see such a reaction, and while it highly intrigued me, it also really worried me.

If a show failed, the show failed. It's fine to discuss what went wrong and where it happened. In fact, I would love to read that. It sounds like a fun rage-filled discussion that actually tries to sort things out. What I'm seeing though is the general distaste of incest being vocalized, ignoring the show itself and what actually went wrong. Even worse, I'm sure there were many people upset over the pairings and whatnot, and that's understandable, but it would be a lot better to actually talk about the pairings than to just blindly rage. No one's gonna laugh. No one's gonna sympathize. It makes everyone involved all the more uncomfortable, and if it's a group rage, then it makes the whole thing look worse to people who are uninvolved. Everyone's worse off, nothing's accomplished, the show's written off as a joke, the fans are written off as a joke, and anime's set back once more. Now it's gonna be even harder to talk about incest seriously without some wiseguy coming along and cracking jokes.

This is just about incest, but what worries me is if this happens to other controversial topics, where it becomes one big joke. I don't want that, and I don't think anyone else consciously wishes for an anime to fail so they can make fun of it. At least I hope not.



Anyways, When the anime is successful, things get trickier. It becomes the responsibility of the fans to at least understand what the anime's doing. In the case of Free!, it's treating sexuality as a joke, teasing the viewers with gender-swapped cliches that would normally be applied to two girls doing cute stuff. It's not directly implying homosexuality, yet it doesn't shy away from the possibility, the same as shows such as Yuru Yuri not directly implying that anyone's a lesbian, despite the show's name and how "friendly" everyone gets. In Yuri Yuri, it's implied that they're all childish, and thus any yuri moments would be cute and meaningless. Even if we were to take those acts seriously, the anime never acts on anything, and that seriousness would lead to nothing. The same can be said with Free!, and the reactions the show got worries me.



In any case, the point is that it's up to us, the viewers, to act accordingly to how the anime performed.

If the anime hasn't done anything wrong as far as writing, then leave it alone. Free! is fine. An anime can't be bad for what it is, but only for how it's executed. As far as I've seen, Free! hasn't done anything wrong in terms of writing for execution, and I hope it stays that way.

If the anime is good, call it good, even if it's uncomfortable. Sexuality and gender roles are subjects way above most of our heads, and Revolutionary Girl Utena did a great job in its execution. Still, it's heavy stuff that probably will offend some people, but give credit where credit's due, that's all I'm asking.

If the anime failed in delivering, bash it. Ore no Imouto failed. I'm okay with the outrage. Sure, the outrage itself could use control and direction, but I'm glad that people were angry. I'm glad that people recognized that the show didn't deliver, and responded accordingly. It's so the people making anime will know that we're not okay with this kind of half-assed stuff. I would like to think that it's because we're mature enough to accept an unpleasant ending, as long as it were justified. I know it's naive, but I'd like to put a little bit of faith in the anime community.

...I don't frequent many forums, so I haven't been exposed to the depths of the internet. I still got some faith in the anime community left.



I think as anime fans, we're smart enough to tell when a show is taking us seriously and when it's holding out on us. I have hopes that even if an anime were to address a very harsh and uncomfortable topic, if it were done in a mature, honest, and relentless way, we shouldn't have any complaints. It is what it is, and there's nothing more to it. It's necessary for anime to continue growing as a medium, and for us to continue growing as a community.




Moving Forward


Again though, we need to tell the anime creators that we don't want our anime half-assed. When something's bad, go ahead and express it. However, we also need to control ourselves with regards to controversial subjects. Know the difference between something that addresses a controversial subject with tact and something that fails at it. There's no real way to define the difference, since it comes with experience with both the medium and understanding various issues in society.

Anime is a great medium. With its expressive nature, it can portray a myriad of subjects in ways no other medium can pull off. It can also express and discuss controversial subjects in ways unique only to anime, and I believe that anime can not only grow from that, but can also gain a little more respect in the eyes of the general public. Perhaps it might even convince some people that anime can be serious through just smart execution, rather than relying on complex setups, high production values, or mature content. That's why I want to see more controversial subjects in anime, but only if they can be pulled off right. There's no easy way, but I believe in the potential of anime.







tl;dr - Anime creators need to step it up, even if it comes with a high amount of risk. If they're making an anime that addresses a controversial subject, don't half-ass it. Go all the way without holding back. Anime fans need to control themselves, even if it's understandably hard when these subjects hit close to home. Know the difference between shows that half-ass controversial subjects and shows that address them with tact.