Random Flavors of Pocky #19: Anime Influences on “Normal” American Culture
It used to be that finding anime-influenced art on non-anime things was fairly rare. You might spot a bootleg anime picture on a bootleg product, but that was likely to be it. But these days, it’s become fairly common to find anime-influenced artwork in everyday items.
Case in point, I was at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, and as I stood in line, I took a look at the “quick sale” racks, and noticed a couple of karaoke CDs that looked a bit unusual.
Upon inspection, the ‘Western Hits of the 90s’ karaoke CD had a distinctly cute anime girl on the cover (and without a cowboy hat or any kind of identifying ‘western’ apparel).I thought to myself, “This has to be a joke.” Then I looked around, and spotted a couple more CDs with similar covers. At first I wondered why they would be trying to sell karaoke CDs like that to kids, then I realized that the ‘kids’ I was thinking of were now in college most likely.
Since then, I’ve noticed anime style art on a variety of items, from clothing labels to snack packages (and again, not branded-items) to a bunch of other things. But still, the thing that struck me as the strangest was the karaoke CD.
So what kinds of things have you noticed in normal life that has anime-style art on it? What’s been the most unusual? The most “normal”?
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February 19th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Wow, now that you mention it, anime has had a lot of influence on stuff lately, I can’t seem to read a webcomic without some anime influence, people are using anime for marketing (because apparently, it’s the “hip new thing”), the scary thing is that had you not pointed it out, I never would have noticed, another scary thing is that this comment has been one long run-on sentence.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
To some people it may seem obvious, but a good number of people have either not noticed it, either. A few friends I mentioned it to felt that “maybe it was going too mainstream”. An anime influence has been around in pop culture for a while, but actual direct anime style art in things that aren’t anime related at all seems to be relatively (maybe 5 or so years?) new.
As for run-on sentences, well, they happen to everyone, as I can attest, with my ability to keep on rambling, no matter, what, and you know, I’m not immune to it, as some will readily tell you.
Heh.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
If you think about it, really, it’s even more devious than that. American animation has not so much drifted closer to anime style art than it has run full tilt at the perceived income. Now even plain old American cartoon shows look nearly like they could be from the edges of th3 anime industry.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
I wouldn’t go that far, most of the cartoons I watch don’t have particularly strong anime influences (outside of a couple characters and the occasional alternate universe), but my cartoons aren’t very mainstream either, so I guess you can’t really call Homestar Runner, Deep Fried Live, or anything by Don Hertzfeldt “plain old American cartoon shows”.