Mewwwwwww you know Digimon :DDD Lord, I wish I had the time and energy to really devote to those arcs. Fifty shows a season and they shift paradigms drastically throughout. It's a pity the US dubs get killed by whomever's distributing or syndicating them, because wow, they deal with everything you figure Japanese kids shows don't deal with. And directly. And at times painfully. Anyway, I could go on all night...
I can't really speak to the Japanese monster phenomenon, specifically, but I'll take a shot. The giant monster stuff could come directly from the sentiment following the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Language of rebuilding. "We can build something out of war, and it might be positive." The futility / sorrow / need for war is a recurring theme. The classic giant mecha shows are on that too. And Gamera ruled :D Ooh, found a link: http://www.japan-101.com/culture/godzilla_japanese_movie_monster.htm
Monsters as pets ... there's a cute little problem in Digimon in that the kids have to hide these monsters. Most of the urban kids would be living in apartments, and I think it's only been recently with more childless couples that those rules have loosened regarding pets. Could be wrong, though.
In the earliest Digimon seasons, there's a sense that these are familiars, in way... reflections of a self. The season after that (Tamers) the show was hinting at a parallel world metaphor, and directly dealing with "are these fighting machines? pets? friends? how do we treat other living beings?" And by last season they threw out the metaphor and made the kids become the digimon... take on the spirit directly. Mascot/spirit animal, I guess.
Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are a bit different in that they are, after all, trying to sell you something. (Digimon too, but after a while the creative weight shifted to the show production.) That means more monsters, a greater variety of creatures. More about the power-ups and the characters than "gee, should an eleven year old be wandering the countryside battling for monsters?" Nice entertainment, then you leave the TV and trade cards / play video games with all your friends. Even then there's still a relationship between a certain monster/pet, ranging from intimate (Pikachu) to ... well, like a treasured sword (the dragons in Yu-Gi-Oh!).
Interestingly enough, there is actually a Digimon episode where the metaphysics (for those seasons, anyway) is explained, in that people traditionally believed that inanimate objects could be possessed. Giving life (spirit) to the non-living. And Digimon was just data that got imbued, in the same way 100-year-old items would be imbued. Digimon's great for mixing SF themes of artificial intelligence with some very old Japanese ideas. And having real kids in.
And why does Tokyo always get destroyed? (Not to mention the climactic Tokyo Tower scene, a cliche which even happens away from Earth.) It struck me when I was reading up on Samurai Troopers, regarding Tokyo scenes with empty streets: it said that all these scenes would be really eerie because there is always a crowd in those areas. It's like New York emptied of people. Space is at such a premium, there's something subversive and thrilling about a monster tearing down all these high rises. Also why golf is so huge in Japan... the open air is a luxury. It's amazing how much that is Japanese comes out from that economy of space.
Go Dexter's Lab! :D The Cartoon Network as a producer and distributor is amazingly respectful of Japanese anime; there was also a Powerpuff Girls episode that also had a giant monster, and giant mecha, and destroyed Townsville. (Unfortunately, the old-school Warner Bros cadre are not so informed; there are productions which take all the cultural Japanese stuff and misuse them. Ick.)
Anyway, I'm just another anime fan, so I can't speak with a lot of authority *g* That sounds like a fun evening! One day I'll actually catch up and see all this stuff ^^;;;
babble!
Here are two nice articles I found in the course of my researching... they're great overviews of the Japanese supernatural scene.
http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/
http://www.mangajin.com/mangajin/samplemj/ghosts/ghosts.htm
Hope that helps ^_^ That Buddhist/Shinto thing going is in there too.
I can't really speak to the Japanese monster phenomenon, specifically, but I'll take a shot. The giant monster stuff could come directly from the sentiment following the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Language of rebuilding. "We can build something out of war, and it might be positive." The futility / sorrow / need for war is a recurring theme. The classic giant mecha shows are on that too. And Gamera ruled :D
Ooh, found a link: http://www.japan-101.com/culture/godzilla_japanese_movie_monster.htm
Monsters as pets ... there's a cute little problem in Digimon in that the kids have to hide these monsters. Most of the urban kids would be living in apartments, and I think it's only been recently with more childless couples that those rules have loosened regarding pets. Could be wrong, though.
In the earliest Digimon seasons, there's a sense that these are familiars, in way... reflections of a self. The season after that (Tamers) the show was hinting at a parallel world metaphor, and directly dealing with "are these fighting machines? pets? friends? how do we treat other living beings?" And by last season they threw out the metaphor and made the kids become the digimon... take on the spirit directly. Mascot/spirit animal, I guess.
Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are a bit different in that they are, after all, trying to sell you something. (Digimon too, but after a while the creative weight shifted to the show production.) That means more monsters, a greater variety of creatures. More about the power-ups and the characters than "gee, should an eleven year old be wandering the countryside battling for monsters?" Nice entertainment, then you leave the TV and trade cards / play video games with all your friends. Even then there's still a relationship between a certain monster/pet, ranging from intimate (Pikachu) to ... well, like a treasured sword (the dragons in Yu-Gi-Oh!).
Interestingly enough, there is actually a Digimon episode where the metaphysics (for those seasons, anyway) is explained, in that people traditionally believed that inanimate objects could be possessed. Giving life (spirit) to the non-living. And Digimon was just data that got imbued, in the same way 100-year-old items would be imbued. Digimon's great for mixing SF themes of artificial intelligence with some very old Japanese ideas. And having real kids in.
And why does Tokyo always get destroyed? (Not to mention the climactic Tokyo Tower scene, a cliche which even happens away from Earth.) It struck me when I was reading up on Samurai Troopers, regarding Tokyo scenes with empty streets: it said that all these scenes would be really eerie because there is always a crowd in those areas. It's like New York emptied of people. Space is at such a premium, there's something subversive and thrilling about a monster tearing down all these high rises. Also why golf is so huge in Japan... the open air is a luxury. It's amazing how much that is Japanese comes out from that economy of space.
Go Dexter's Lab! :D The Cartoon Network as a producer and distributor is amazingly respectful of Japanese anime; there was also a Powerpuff Girls episode that also had a giant monster, and giant mecha, and destroyed Townsville. (Unfortunately, the old-school Warner Bros cadre are not so informed; there are productions which take all the cultural Japanese stuff and misuse them. Ick.)
Anyway, I'm just another anime fan, so I can't speak with a lot of authority *g* That sounds like a fun evening! One day I'll actually catch up and see all this stuff ^^;;;