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Japanese Animation Series Sail To Success By Robert Everett-Green The Globe and Mail August 1996 It's an ordinary day in the late 20th century and evil is afoot everywhere. Who is going to protect decent citizens: A robotic warrior, an ancient goddess or a team of schoolgirls in sailor suits? Fans of Japanese "anime," or animation, know the correct answer is all of the above. And the fans seem to be multiplying as quickly as the bionic mionsters in an episode of Bubblegum Crisis. YTV broadcasts two anime (pronounced ah-nee-meh) series across Canada: Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, which is dubbed into English in Toronto and has a daily viewing audience of about 200,000. (Sailor Moon can also be seen this fall on Global.) Disney recently signed a deal to begin distributing films by director-animator Hayao Miyazaki, whose anime feature about a magic raccoon grossed more than $37 million in Japan in 1994. Video presence Many urban video stores now have a shelf or even a whole section reserved for titles such as Oh! My Goddess!, 3x3 Eyes and Legend of the Overfiend. Many more circulate only in fan-dubbed versions within clubs for anime and manga, the comic books from which much anime arises. On the Internet, otaku (obsessive fans) have created hundreds of anime sites, including "shrines" for favorite characters, data bases crammed with trivia and collections of "fanfics," or fan-written screenplays for serialized shows. The emergence of anime on this continent has been prepared by the success of TV series such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, both of which show Japanese influence. Animation boom It has also been helped by a broader boom in animation that spans traditional animated films such as Disney's Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and digital animations within live-action features, such as the Jim Carrey film The Mask. The imports come with a built-in degree of familiarity since many of them rely on formulas developed in North America. Sailor Moon, for instance, is a standard super-hero comedy with a gang of Tokyo schoolgirls standing in for Clark Kent. Oh! My Goddess!, one of several anime series in which a socially inept boy becomes attached to a girl with super-natural powers, is a Japanese version of the '60s TV series Bewitched and I Dream of Genie. There are many anime that feature knock-offs of creatures and scenes from such films as Alien, The Terminator and Blade Runner, and others that adapt characters from European literature. But anime is not just more of what we already have. It is a distinct form with its own rules and esthetic. It's hard to imagine, for instance, a North American cartoon in which each episode ends with earnest tips on how to help others, as in YTV's Sailor Moon. More naive Anime are both more naive and more raunchy than the western equivalent. They are popular with Japanese children, but are also part of the main-stream adult culture, with a history that dates back to l9th-century wood-block prints and to the bawdy creation myths of ancient Japan. Anime's generally fantastic nature, and its broad contact with the culture, make it an ideal sketchbook for working out the fears and obsessions of a traditionally reticent society. Western curiosity about all things Japanese has made highbrow explications of anime a growth industry. Now for George's comments. The author gets it wrong thinking the Sailor Says is part of the anime tradition. It is a Western invention to placate parents groups. You've probably seen the idea used before on shows like G.I. Joe or Power Rangers where the heroes have an uplifting message at the end of the show.