Second, audiences have grown tired and suspicious of Hollywood’s neat resolutions.
第二個因素,觀眾已經對好萊塢的完美結局感到厭倦和懷疑。
As Susan Napier, a professor at Tufts University and expert on anime, explains, “Technology hasn’t brought us the utopia we thought it would, and the post-cold-war world has become more dangerous than we imagined,” which makes happily-ever-after endings implausible.
正如塔夫茨大學教授、動漫專家蘇珊·內皮爾所解釋的,“技術并沒有給我們帶來想象中的烏托邦,冷戰后的世界變得比我們想象的更加危險”,這使得從此幸福快樂的結局變得無法令人相信。
Anime is willing to have heroes killed off and characters suffer huge loss.
動漫愿意讓英雄死去,讓角色遭受巨大損失。
At the same time, the protagonists are often cute and relatable.
同時,主角們通常是可愛的,可以讓人產生共鳴。
“It’s a dark world out there,” Ms Napier says, so audiences “want that fluffy cuteness”.
“外面的世界很黑暗,”內皮爾說,所以觀眾“想要那種毛茸茸的可愛”。
Anime’s global growth has been made possible by its own evolution.
動漫在全球范圍內的發展也得益于其自身的演變。
Japanese comic books and graphic novels, collectively known as “manga”, have long provided the source material for anime.
日本漫畫書和圖像小說被統稱為“漫畫”,長期以來一直為動漫提供素材。
Unlike comic books in Britain and America, manga are not primarily or even mostly for children.
與英國和美國的漫畫書不同,漫畫主要,甚至大部分漫畫,都不是為兒童創作的。
Thousands of new manga are published every year, on virtually every subject imaginable, from pornography to reflections on war, which gives anime an inexhaustible range of sources.
每年都有成千上萬部新漫畫出版,內容幾乎涵蓋了所有能想象到的主題,從色情到對戰爭的反思,這為動漫提供了取之不盡的素材來源。
About 30 years ago, studios started producing more anime aimed at girls, such as “Sailor Moon”, which was less focused on fighting and robots and more on storylines and magic.
大約30年前,工作室開始制作更多針對女孩的動漫,例如《美少女戰士》,這部動漫較少關注戰斗和機器人,而更多地關注故事情節和魔法。
And as the fan base got older, creators began making more sophisticated works, often with more adult themes.
隨著粉絲群體年齡的增長,創作者開始制作更復雜的作品,通常帶有更多的成人主題。
Mr Miyazaki won an Oscar in 2003 for “Spirited Away”, a baroque, fantastical story about a girl who rescues her parents.
宮崎駿于2003年憑借《千與千尋》獲得奧斯卡獎,講述了一個女孩拯救父母的巴洛克式奇幻故事。
Around that time “Dragon Ball” and “Pokémon” were engaging a new generation of fans.
大約在那個時候,《龍珠》和《寶可夢》吸引了新一代的粉絲。
Japan’s government noticed and eventually took action: in 2013 it launched an initiative called “Cool Japan”, in which it invested some ?90bn to propel Japan’s creative industries abroad.
日本政府注意到了,并最終采取了行動:2013年,日本政府發起了一項名為“酷日本”的倡議,投資約900億日元,以推動日本創意產業走向海外。
It was a flop, because of poorly chosen investments, but that has not stopped the government from trying again: it wants to quadruple the value of Japan’s content industry overseas by 2033.
當時失敗了,因為投資選擇不當,但這并沒有阻止政府再次嘗試:政府希望到2033年將日本內容產業在海外的價值翻兩番。
The painstaking nature of hand-drawn, two-dimensional animation is providing inspiration for creators outside Japan.
手繪二維動畫制作起來很辛苦,這正在為日本以外的創作者提供靈感。
Earlier this year, Usman Riaz, a Pakistani director, released a 2D feature film with an anime-inspired aesthetic called “The Glassworker”, animated entirely in Pakistan and originally voiced in Urdu.
今年早些時候,巴基斯坦導演烏斯曼·里亞茲發布了一部具有動漫美學風格的2D故事片《玻璃工人》,完全在巴基斯坦制作,最初使用烏爾都語配音。
And the forthcoming “Lord of the Rings” film, “The War of the Rohirrim”, to be released in December, is in that same style.
即將在12月上映的《指環王》電影《洛汗之戰》也有類似的風格。
It is directed by Kamiyama Kenji, who has spent his career working on anime.
這部電影由神山健治執導,他的職業生涯一直致力于動漫制作。
Other creators are taking that aesthetic in new directions.
其他創作者正在將這種美學帶向新的方向。
Netflix’s superb “Blue Eye Samurai”, about a revenge-seeking young woman in Edo-period Japan, won an Emmy for animation and was among the service’s ten most popular shows in 50 countries following its premiere last year.
網飛的精彩劇集《藍眼武士》講述了江戶時代一位年輕女子復仇的故事,該劇獲得了艾美獎動畫獎,并在去年首播后成為網飛在50個國家中最受歡迎的十大影視劇之一。
Created by a Japanese-American woman and her white American husband, its lavish aesthetic and gore pay homage to directors such as Quentin Tarantino.
這部動漫由一位日裔美國女性和她的白人美國丈夫創作,其華麗的美學和血腥場面致敬了昆汀·塔倫蒂諾等導演。
Yet appealing to anime fans need not entail animation: last year Netflix launched a live-action show, “One Piece”, based on the popular manga of the same name (the original show, launched in 1999, was one of anime’s most popular brands ever, with over 1,100 episodes and 500m copies of the manga books sold).
然而,吸引動漫迷并不一定需要動畫:去年,網飛推出了真人版《海賊王》,該劇改編自同名熱門漫畫(原版動漫于1999年推出,是有史以來最受歡迎的動漫品牌之一,集數超過1100集,漫畫書銷量超過5億冊)。
But for all the experimentation, traditional anime shows no signs of flagging.
盡管進行了所有這些實驗,傳統動漫仍未顯示出衰落的跡象。
“People are aware of a world that’s more amorphous and more dangerous, [and have] less ability to believe in the happily ever after,” Ms Napier of Tufts suggests.
“人們意識到世界更加變動不居、更加危險,(并且)越來越難以相信從此幸福美好的結局。”塔夫茨大學的內皮爾表示。
Bad news for the world, but good for Japanese animators.
這對世界來說是壞消息,但對日本動漫創作者來說是好事。