Anime is a medium of entertainment that has been involved in many people’s lives with shows such as Doraemon or movies by Studio Ghibli that are heartwarming and can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Today, anime and TV shows have become much more accessible due to the emergence of many streaming platforms such as Netflix and Youtube. Such forms of entertainment are more relevant now with the pandemic since many people are stuck at home and therefore are looking for shows to watch. From our analysis of the data, we hope that this would more or less help readers with choosing their preferred anime. In addition to this, we have found interesting insight about how anime reveals to us more about the issues within Japan’s culture that are much more serious than one thinks.
1. Relationship between number of genres and rating
The mosaic display above shows the relationship between the number of genres per anime and the rating of the anime. We observed that anime with more than 3 genres tend to have ratings that are above 7.185. On the other hand, anime with less than 1.5 genres tend to have ratings below 5.895. If the reader wants to find a show that is good to watch, it is better to select shows that include more genres. When watching a show, people tend to be more interested in the show when it includes many genres and varieties.
2.Relationship between type of anime and rating
From the sieve diagram above, we observe the different types of anime in terms of the platform they are shown on for example television/streaming sites or in movie theatres. We have decided to focus on TV and Movie anime as these are the top most accessible sources for everyone. For other sources of Anime, there are concerns with the licensing and some require people to actively go out and buy them in the form of BD or DVD disks.
We can see that for movies, there is a high concentration of ones that are rated less than 5.885, with the second highest concentration for ones that are rated more than 7.185. On the other hand with TV anime, the ratings are concentrated to have a rating above 7.185. This is because anime movies can be categorized into two groups. The first are ones that are created based on already existing TV anime and the second are original movie anime. With TV based anime movies, a lot of factors that were part of the TV anime get changed such as the tone or theme of the anime. People that like the original TV anime may not like the change in the tone and therefore give these anime movies a low rating. Also, there are not as many highly rated anime movies as there are only a few companies that make good movies such as Studio Ghibli (Li, 2016).
3.TOP 15 popular genres
Other than the relationship between the type of anime and the rating, we also looked at the number of anime under specific genres in order to see which genre is the most popular. For the above, we see that the genre of comedy has the highest number of anime. This would suggest that comedy is the most popular genre in the sense that so many animes have contained the genre.
This may then suggest that many people in Japan like comedy anime. The reason for this may be that since many people in Japan feel that Japanese work life is harsh, therefore affecting their mental health negatively. According to a news report by Asahi Shimbun, it took only 6 days from the onset of depression for 235 Japanese workers to commit suicide, showing how severe the stress from work is (The Asahi Shimbun, 2021).
As a result, comedy anime may be an outlet for them to relax. Furthermore, studies show that having a sense of humor acts as a shield against negative feelings, which could prevent one from falling in a depressive episode (Davis, 2019). This shows how necessary comedy and having a sense of humor is to life. In addition, we see that the top five genres are Comedy, Action, Adventure, Fantasy and Drama. This reflects that many prefer to watch anime that are not involved with things such as work as these japanese people associate negative feelings with work. This is proven further with the japanese term called ‘Karoshi’, which means to die from overwork and is a phenomenon that is common in Japan (Hunt, 2021). By watching fantasy anime or adventure anime, this acts as a form of distraction or escape from their harsh reality.
4.Relationship between comedy and other genre
From the 2nd graph of the scatter plot, we have seen that comedy is the most popular genre of anime. Then we proceed to look at the other genres of anime and their association with comedy. Originally, we expected that genres such as shounen would have a higher correlation with comedy since when people think of comedy anime, many think of Naruto, Gintama and My Hero Academia, which are all shounen anime. However, the data above shows us that there are other categories that a more strongly associated with comedy, which are:
- Adventure
- Supernatural
- Drama
- Fantasy
- Slice of Life
- Sci-Fi
- School
- Kids
- Action
- Romance
- Mystery
- Hentai
- Sports
- Seinen
- Shoujo
A possible reason for this unexpected result is that the most popular shounens have elements of comedy in it, which causes them to be popular. This is proven further when we look back at the second graph of the scatter plot that comedy is the most popular genre of anime. Comedy is popular as it has a larger base in terms of the audience as people of any age and gender can enjoy comedy.
This then led to the misconception that all or most shounen anime have comedy in it, when in reality, most shounen anime are actually associated with other categories such as supernatural and action but get overlooked as these categories are not as popular as comedy. In this case, the data therefore makes sense that shounen is less correlated with comedy than the other genres listed above such as action, drama, fantasy. For example, other famous shounen anime such as Attack on Titan, The Promised Neverland, Death Note and Demon Slayer do not have comedy in it.
On the other hand, It is not a surprise that romance is associated with comedy, as even with live action TV shows, the category of romance-comedy is huge with famous shows such as Crazy Rich Asians.
5.DEMENTIA versus PSYCHOLOGICAL
The above bar chart shows the number of anime that are under the category of dementia and psychological. Both genres of anime are associated with psychology but in different ways. Psychological anime is more focused on trying to use the plot of the show in order to engage the audience’s mind with dark topics and is usually shown from a third person perspective. On the other hand, Dementia anime shows the mind of the main character within a show and the degeneration of their mental health. This means that the audience is able to connect more with the character and relate to their problems. In addition, Dementia anime is a subset of psychological anime.
From the above bar, we can see that there are more anime under the category of Dementia than psychological. At first glance, one may be confused why there is more anime for dementia and dementia is a subset of psychological anime, however when we learn more about japanese culture and the problems with work and mental health among japanese people, this outcome makes sense.
For example, a Dementia anime called Neon genesis evangelion shows problems in Japan’s conformist society and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. The main character is forced to pilot a robot in order to save the lives of many people, however, doing this puts him at the risk of death. Even though he does not want to do it, he is judged negatively by other characters in the show and is forced to do it to benefit society. This reflects that Japanese culture views that each person has a role in society that they have to follow, even if they want to or not. If they do not follow the role they have been assigned to, they are selfish and useless to society (Moriarty, 2019).
This mindset of forcing yourself to do the things you do not want to do to benefit society is proven further by the term “to endure”. In Japanese culture, when something tragic happens to a person’s personal life, such as the death of a loved one, people are expected “to endure” and force themselves to keep working to serve their company. This means that people do not take care of their mental health when they should as they are pressured by society to keep going (Moriarty, 2019).
Furthermore, not only does anime specifically about dementia hint at problems within Japan’s work culture, but family friendly anime such as Spirited Away by Studio Ghibli also show this. The main character, Chihiro, works hard to the point where she almost forgets who she truly is. This reflects that in Japanese culture, people work extremely hard that they forget to take care of themselves and enjoy life to the point that they lose sight of who they really are (Morebyus, 2020).
In conclusion, from the analysis of data on Anime, we have discovered the tricks one can use in order to find the most enjoyable shows to watch. Furthermore, by digging deeper into the genres of anime, we learn the dark side of japanese work culture and the problems with mental health in Japan. Lastly, this shows us that anime may be a creative outlet for the people who feel criticized by Japanese society to show how stressful life as a Japanese person can be.
