Japan: A Kingdom of Characters

The exhibit is open from  July 7 to August 20 2011
at the Metroplitan Museum in Manila.
image courtesy of cathsdee.com

Yesterday marked yet another spur-of-the-moment trips with my friends. Only this time, we decided to rekindle our cultured minds which have been slowly becoming dusty and rotting on the shelf, with a sudden trip at the Metropolitan Museum. Last month, the Japanese Foundation announced that it will hold an exhibit called Japan: Kingdom of Characters which will showcase prominent anime and manga characters we have all grown to love while giving highlight to a discussion on their social and historical significance with the Japanese culture. The exhibit promises to be quite a treat. Cartoon characters and social discourse, you can definitely count me in. The exhibit will run from July 7 until August 20. Naturally excited, I decided to inform my friends about it knowing that, like me, they will have a blast seeing it. We were set to go on one of the weekends last month, but in between sick babies, hectic work schedules, balikbayan barkadas, our supposed trip got cancelled in the last minute. So yesterday, after a night-out, we decided to finally cross it out from our to-do list.

We arrived at the Metropolitan Museum a few minutes after lunch. Since it was a sunny Friday afternoon, we were the only people in the exhibit, say except for the construction workers renovating the second floor (the MET Museum is being renovated and the upper galleries are closed to public viewing). The anime exhibit is located in the Tall Galleries, only a few short walks from the main entrance. With a big pink wall announcing its title in striking letters, it certainly catches attention. Sure enough when we got inside, a lifesize statue of Ultraman and Gundam gave us the feeling of being transported back to our youth. The exhibit is divided into three main sections. The first one shows a historical timeline of the many anime and manga characters that have emerged from different decades from the 1950’s to the year 2000. The next is a visual representation of a Japanese girl’s room overly adorned with Hello Kitty’s and many other kawaii (cute) characters showcasing how deeply they have penetrated the everyday life of the typical Japanese. The last part of the exhibit discusses the future of the anime culture with some audio-visual clips of the new generation anime made with new emerging techniques and media.

The Good:

The concept of the exhibit in its own is a treat. Not too often do we see characters from the shows that we love  put up in display and given such importance in an art show. No matter how we look at it, people young and old alike, will naturally go see it because of the familiarity it brings. It will certainly bring a sense of nostalgia to the old generation who grew up watching Ultraman, Masked Rider, Mazinger Z on their small, black-and white TV’s. The twenty-something yuppies certainly know who Doraemon and Hello Kitty are. And kids can definitely identify with the Pokemon fan craze and can see other, older Japanese anime they might have missed the chance of seeing.  Not too many art exhibits can spark such interest on the general populace.

Sento-kun,
cute and disturbing at the same time
image courtesy of idleidol.net

An interesting note is how the exhibit gave importance on how these characters have become such an integral part of the Japanese day-to-day life. They were shown not only as commercialized entities that found their way key to chains and toys but also as social mascots of different Japanese prefectures, government agencies and social celebrations. Life-size, fluffy and sometimes not-so-cute mascots are not just for display to attract people but they also show historical and social connection to the cause or concept they symbolize. More often, they assume bigger identities than what they represent. An intriguing piece of information that as a moderate anime fan, I find very fascinating. The show definitely provided a deeper understanding of the Japanese animation and the effect it brings to people.

The Bad:

While the intellectual take on the prevalence of anime and manga characters and their repercussions to society is very enthralling, I can’t help but notice that the exhibit is very lacking.  Immediately after entering the gallery, one can see how few and limited the visual representations are.  Granted that there were interesting lifesize pieces of Mazinger Z and Ultraman and genuine collector action figures of Tenjou Tenge characters that can attract the attention of an otaku, after a less-than-thirty-minute tour of the whole exhibit (or a good hour, if you’re like me who stopped to read every write-up of every piece), you can’t help but want more.

What, no Goku?
image courtesy of www.maiken2051.com

Knowing that Japan has produced an immense universe of unforgettable characters, some of which have even been embedded with our own pop culture, it was very disappointing to see that the exhibit has forgotten to showcase other notable icons. One can’t mention the super robot genre without the giants of Daimos and Voltes V, which were unfortunately absent in the art show. Also, the exhibit forgot to highlight the sentai movement which has become so famous in Japan and worldwide. Sentai heroes like Maskman, Bioman, Fiveman and the other “-mans” of the series were also not seen nor mentioned. Also, it would have been nice if they cited examples of anime in mainstream movies like the genius of Studio Ghibli or their effect in music with artists like L'Arc-en-Ciel incorporating anime elements to their musical style. Since they are on the process of showing media characters anyway (like Tamagotchi and Pokemon), they could have also mentioned other notable characters from the video game subculture like Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy and others from Konami and Nintendo, to cite a few.  Where is Sailor Moon with its cosmic theme and Rorouni Kenshin with its historical references? And seriously, an anime exhibit without even a mention of the giant franchise that is Dragon Ball Z? For some people, Goku is the very definition of anime.

Also, the exhibit’s historical timeline which showed the prominent anime characters stopped on the year 2000. We are already in 2011 and more than a decade has passed which certainly gave rise to more contemporary and recent anime developments. I’m sure that the emergence of high-tech animation techniques and new anime characters has effected and shaped the Japanese cultural landscape once more. They could have added more recent pieces to the show. The exhibit would certainly attract more audience, especially younger ones, if they showcase newer anime characters like Naruto, Death Note and the likes which are very familiar to current generation.

Lastly, aside from visual representation of a typical Japanese girl’s room adorned with Hello Kitty, the exhibit relied a great deal on the write-ups and the narratives to convey the message it wants to get across to its spectators. This should not be the case since this is an art exhibit, to say the least. Honestly speaking, I was only able to appreciate the anime exhibit more when I read the supplementary pamphlet that came with it. And speaking of the write-ups, some of them were heavily worded and very verbose for the public to comprehend in a single reading. With some instances of run-on sentences and use of archaic English, it takes a good minute or two to absorb their gists. Write-ups should only act as auxiliary explanations, not the main pieces. And they should be easy to understand, since not all who will see the exhibit are going to be art connoisseurs.  They looked like direct English transliterations of Nihongo text which were also given Filipino versions but even the Tagalog texts were very deep and heavily worded. As a friend of mine put it, the exhibit should have been more dynamic and visual instead of relying more on the textual means.

The Verdict:

All in all, Japan: Kingdom of Characters did a good job of showing a usually commercial concept such as anime and manga, in a more socially-relevant way. It certainly gives the audience a fresh perspective on how to look at their favourite anime characters and where their inspirations came from which will give them a sense of appreciation of the animation culture they have grown to love. However, the few art items leave the audience in a state of wanting more. Although it is impossible to fit the massive universe of anime characters into a single gallery, the absence of other prominent, well-known favourites can certainly disappoint the target audience, which is the typical anime fan. The Japan Foundation could’ve certainly done better with this art exhibit. And I certainly expected more.