One thing that has hindered the Japanese message in America is that many people see all anime as being "cartoons" or made for children. This is not so. In looking at the highly developed characters and the level of content, most high-quality anime are clearly aimed for the teen to adult audience. Children would get scared watching some of the things that unravel in anime plotlines, and probably wouldn't be able to understand them. For example, in the anime "Martian Successor Nadesico," when the crew of a spaceship deals with a large worldview crisis, the adults and teens in the audience would be contemplating along with the crew, while the children would just watch for the cool battles and giant robots. If Americans could look past their stereotypes and let the anime speak to them, they could learn just what the Japanese want them to.
Anime can help Americans understand ways to overcome personal differences and achieve peace amongst ourselves. In fact, this is a common theme prevalent in the medium. Many series focus on war, its causes and effects, and its resolutions. One in particular, "Martian Successor Nadesico," is a series about a band of civilians hired to commandeer a space battleship. As they fulfill their missions, they begin to learn a little more about their opponents and they discover a problem. The aliens that had come to be known as the "Jovian lizards" were in fact not lizards at all, but humans who had been stranded on a space station in Jupiter's orbit and had sought revenge on the Earth for leaving them. The crew of the Nadesico and the Jovians were able to find a common ground and almost work out a peace settlement between the two of them. The Earth however, chose instead to continue fighting, knowing that if everyone found out the truth, a great rebellion would spring up among the population. The crew of the Nadesico got trapped in the middle, the Earth wanting to kill them for trying to expose the Jovians, and the Jovians wanting to kill them because they were from Earth (Martian Successor Nadesico). The point of the series is that one's enemies aren't that different from him when one can break through his own hatred and be willing to truly get to know them.
As long as Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech is quoted because it is still applicable and not yet merely historical, this problem still exists in this country. The speech speaks that America "will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed� that all men are created equal" (King par. 17). This equality is something that still eludes us, and if we could only realize that by grasping onto the lessons that the Japanese have to teach us, we could progress greatly as a nation. Even though the civil rights movement was thirty years ago, in a way, it is still continuing to this day, with people from different backgrounds and different lifestyles still jockeying for position in society and having to face the prejudices of others for their differences.
Another anime series, "Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket," deals with this same issue. A boy in a space colony run by the Federation (the good guys) befriends an enemy pilot on a secret mission in his colony. The young boy never realizes which side is the bad side and which is the good because of this friendship. Even when his friends at school ridicule him for drawing his friend's giant enemy robot, he doesn't believe what they're telling him (Gundam 0080). This story shows that even if you are enemies with someone, that doesn't mean that they are a bad person. This series also proposes that the good guys and bad guys aren't determined by their position on a matter, but by the methods used to back them up. When "gay-haters" beat homosexuals to death and homosexuals stage peaceful parades, no matter what view on homosexuality someone holds, it should be clear who is acting in the wrong.
Also, even though most of the enemy is evil, there are still those fighting for them who are good people. This could be paralleled not only to our country, but in the battles our country fought overseas in Iraq over the course of summer 2003. Before battle even broke out, the U.S. military broadcasted messages and dropped fliers telling Iraqi soldiers to surrender because the U.S. was sure that most of them were fighting out of fear of what Saddam Hussein would do to them if they didn't. It seems that the U.S. military has learned this concept, but has the general populace grasped it? It doesn't seem that too many people have when, after 9/11, hate crimes against Arabs rose dramatically. They have certainly calmed down by now, but when the next attack comes, who will bear the brunt of the anger of the American people?
Another theme that finds itself repeated in anime is a balance in life. In some cases, like the movie "Princess Mononoke," this is the balance between man and nature. A young warrior whose arm is cursed by a boar god-turned-demon has to discover the cause of the boar's transformation if he is to be healed. He comes upon Irontown, a walled city making guns and other forms of iron for trade with other cities. In order to obtain iron ore, they have to cut down the forest around them. This upsets the animal gods and causes them to attack, and after they are shot with iron bullets, if they are consumed with hate, they are eaten alive by worms that turn them into demons and send them on rampages across the land. The woman that leads the town is also after the head of the forest spirit, a giant being who is a deer-like creature by day and a gelatinous blob by night. He controls life and death in the forest, and if he were dead, the animals would stop being able to fight against the humans (Princess Mononoke). As the environment is being sacrificed for human advancement, the question arises of where the line is drawn between these two causes. This anime, although quite specific in its message, can still be applied to day-to-day life. On to page 2