Anime studies should be offered in American high schools

The first video is Urusei Yatsura, an early mainstream anime sitcom. It's dopey and harmless, and more typical than the stereotype of endless fighting. The series makes many references to Japanese customs and mythology. http://www.youtube.com...The second video is the first episode of Rurouni Kenshin. It's a prime example ofanime worth studying. The first few episodes of an anime are usually devoted to developing the characters, before the real story begins. Notice how elements of humor, drama, action, slice-of-life, and romance are integrated. In the animation, care is given to making artistic backgrounds as well as to the characters. Scenes have clues to the season, time-of-day, and the weather; hair is moved by the wind. http://www.youtube.com...My caseI was worried that con would systematically attack each of my contentions by claiming the claimed benefit could be better achieved within the framework of more traditional courses. He might have pointed to classic literature in which similar themes were developed, and argued that the classics did them better. He might argue that an anime course is not going to help students get into college. Fortunately, he didn't do any of that and left all my contentions unchallenged. If he doesn't contest my contentions in the next round, he'll miss his chance, so I hope he doesn't jump on it.Does anime promote violence?If anime promotes violence, then Japan, the country most saturated with anime ought to be a violent place. In fact, if we compare crime rates, Japan is one of the least violent places in the world. The average murder rate for South America is 21 per 100,000 of population. The average for the world is 6.9. for the U.S. it is 5.0. and for Japan it is 0.40. http://en.wikipedia.org... Only Iceland and Monaco are less violent, and that's because everyone in Iceland is hiding from the cold, and no one with gumption lives in Monaco.Japan also has violent manga and violent television with samurai epics. I think the reason none of it promotes violence has to do with whether the violence is portrayed as just or unjust. In anime, violence is pursued to obtain justice, and the use of violence is pondered explicitly. In Rurouni Kenshin the hero is a one-time assassin who has sworn off killing. He is patted against evil doers with no such reservations, and Kenshin must figure out how to defeat the bad guys without killing them. Some commit suicide after Kenshin beats the whiz out of them with the dull edge of his sword. The story line is about preserving pacifist ideals in times that demand violence. Saito is the dramatic foil to Kenshin's endless pondering. Bad guys face merciless death from Saito, in the style of Dirty Harry, and Americans can relate to that. But Kenshin is the hero, not Saito.Violent media of any type does not cause violence. Studies that claim to prove the relationship show that there is desensitization to violence right after viewing violent media. This is tantamount to proving that exciting media induce excitement. that effect lasts an hour or two. Long term studies find no relationship between violent media and later violence in life. The collective literature was reviewed, and similar conclusion reached, by Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D., in an invited address at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association http://www.calstatela.edu... "The importance of the question of external validity, i.e., valid generalizations to the real world, is monumental when it comes to taking lab results about acquisition of violent attitudes, values or behaviors or about desensitization to sexually violent behavior and predicting real world behavior. It is especially important when the results of such research are used as the basis for advocating or passing socially restrictive government legislation. ... And, endless assertions in the survey literature notwithstanding, the fact that rapists and murderers prefer to watch films compatible with their appetites is no indication of a causal connection, any more than the fact that golfers like to watch golf games proves that watching golf games cultivated their interest in golf." In sum, lab experiments showing short-term desensitization do not establish negative effects on society, and correlation does not establish causation.Anime is not extremely violent overallAnime is unjustly tagged with being excessively violent. When anime was first exported, there was a fascination with animation having showing bizarre sex and violence. The tentacle-raping monsters in Urotsukidoji grabbed attention. But that type has never been typical. Urusei Yatsura is one of the longest running anime series of all time (1978 -1987) was http://en.wikipedia.org.... The story is a sitcom of an average family coping with alien visitors, including the inevitable cute magical girl. That type is far more more typical. (Urusei Yatsuri's author, Rumiko Takihashi, was the best-selling female author in the world until overtaken by J.K. Rowling with Harry Potter.)It is true that anime has more mature themes than was typical of Disney-era animation. That ultimately sparked Pixar and The Simpsons. It makes anime well-suited to high school students. In anime, teachers have drinking problems, boys lust after girls, and children are hurt by divorce. The virtue is that mature themes are handled in a mature way. The themes are usually moralistic beneath an action veneer.Anime features many female action heroes. Up until about the 70s, different anime themes were used to appeal to boys than those used to appeal to girls. Then someone made a discovery: girls liked to watch girls being empowered and boys lked to watch cute girls doing almost anything, but especially things with action. Literature is violent, tooNot all anime is worth studying, just as not all literature is worth studying. I object to the strong morbid theme in much of the classic literature selected for study. No one needs 300 pages of poor Tess meeting her ultimate demise. There are mountains of trash novels and films we don't study. We get to choose what is worthwhile. My argument is that the best of anime is thought-provoking, unique, and a valuable experience.