Amy & Aron's

The island nation of Japan has long been a source of pop culture phenomena that tend to spread around the globe! It may be the ancient and unique arts and culture grown in relative isolation on its island fastness that gives their exports such a unique richness, or the Japanese artist's unwavering dedication to quality coupled with a vivid, almost otherworldly imagination, nobody knows for sure, but all things Japanese have an allure that is strangely addictive, from the food, to the style, to the entertainment, if it's big in Japan it's practically guaranteed to be mega-ultra-huge everywhere else! Case in point- Japanese anime!

Anime is a Japanese gairaigo, or "word borrowed from a foreign language" that has been adapted to the Japanese tongue. In this case, the word was animation. Inspired by the fantastic animated film triumphs of studios like Disney, Lantz, and Warner Bros, the Japanese took the technique and made it into something very much their own! It took some time for the rest of the world to notice, but when it did anime soared into the limelight, inspiring all manner of products from unique anime hoodies to Halloween costumes, you can find anime-inspired merchandise everywhere!

To get a taste of what anime is all about, let's take a look at just a couple of the Japanese favorites that have joined the likes of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Batman in our cultural consciousness.

Speed Racer - Any child of the '60s and '70s will tell you it was one of their favorite cartoons growing up. The show had a catchy jazz tune intro and featured the adventures of an aspiring young race car driver, not very creatively dubbed 'Speed Racer', his actual name in the English translation of the show. In Japan, the title was Mach Go Go Go. The title came from the word match for the speed of sound, and go from the Japanese word for the number five, also signifying that the car was the fifth of its make, which together formed the name of Speed's race car, the Mach 5. The word "go" is also Speed's first name in the Japanese version where it is culturally common to name a male child after a significant lucky number. Of course, go means GO! In English, and go it did, right into the hearts and minds of youth all over the world!

My Neighbour Totoro - The next anime to really shake the Western world was a kind of modern fairy tale, the story of a young family who moves to the bucolic Japanese countryside so their mother can recover from a serious illness in peace and quiet, and their university professor father can work on his studies while he takes care of his two young daughters, Satsuki, age 10, and Mei, age 4. The girls explore the beautiful natural world around them and discover that an ancient forest spirit and his children are living in a gigantic camphor tree on the edge of their property, which is considered to be a holy place by the local farmers. The spirit, furry, funny Totoro befriends the girls, and heartwarming adventures ensue.

And that is just a taste of the many joys of anime!