I've written a bit about anime aesthetics in these past articles: "The Japanese Apocalyptic Vision" and "Old Japanese Aesthetics Meet New".  Now here's one that's all about the struggle to penetrate the sheer weirdness of anime... in two parts!  All at once!

Part 1: aesthetic language
    If the purpose of art is to manipulate something as abstract as emotion, how do artists go about achieving that with consistency?  The answer is they develop a common language with the audience.
    Michael Moschen, made popular by his "contact juggling", explains in a recent lecture, "What I do as a creative artist is I develop vocabularies or languages of moving objects. [...] How would you define a 'moment'?  As a juggler, what I wanted to do is create something that's representational of a moment."
    Moschen proceeds to define a 'moment' into a can that rattles as he juggles it back and fourth.  "Well obviously there's something in here, and you can all have a guess as to what it is.  There's a mystery-- a mystery in the moment."
    Moschen provides an example of how artists define abstract ideas and emotions into tangible elements, and how they further manipulate those elements to create new meanings.  Hollywood does this too.  You've probably heard the old Film 101 adage-- If you show a man who has never seen a motion picture before something like Lord of the Rings, he would have absolutely no idea how to interpret the sudden jumps in perspective (camera cuts & angles), lapses in time (eliptical editing), and he wouldn't have the right expectations for its type of story.  He wouldn't be able to "read" the film because he doesn't know the language, so he would be lost, confused, and unable to get anything out of it emotionally.  Understanding Lord of the Rings however is second nature for the rest of us because we've been learning the sophisticated visual language of Hollywood cinema since birth.


    Anime, however, is a different story.  Even though Hollywood-based "language" shares many of the same fundamentals, the aesthetics of anime are derived from Japanese comics which took an entirely different evolutionary path.  If you're like me, you might remember your initial culture shock:
    1. Why is everyone's hair a different color?  How do those spikes stay up like that?
    2. Don't Japanese people have smaller eyeballs?
    3. Can somebody please explain the bulging tits and tight costumes on these 14-year-olds?
    The list goes on and on, and I'm still not finished checking off my personal list to satisfaction... but eventually I learned how to interpret the oddball character designs.  I slowly understand what the eyes, the hair, and even the tits say about a character, and then become able to recognize how the language is used, abused, and subverted in both overt and subtle ways.  The more aesthetic language I pick up, the more anime I can watch.
    Back when I just finished Akira, Honneamise, Ghost in the Shell and other gritty sci-fi fare, I fought through a session of the Saber Marionette R OAV (not to be confused with J!), a bewildering juxtaposition of bubbly cute characters and extreme violence and sexuality.  My reaction back then was predictably, "This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen."
    At the time, I lacked the necessary awareness of Japan's culture of cute and denpa-kei aesthetics to truly appreciate the deliberate fucked up-ness of Saber Marionette R.  Since then, I've also been able to appreciate works like Alien Nine and (to some degree) Higurashi, both of which subvert the aesthetics of cute and moé for the purposes of horror.


    Evangelion, everyone's favorite crash course into the aesthetics of anime, is always something I end up thinking back on every time I learn something new.  Like much Gainax anime, Evangelion plays with all the aesthetic history and baggage associated with its genre.  It subverts and reverses many of the conventions of superhero robot anime, while both "servicing" and criticizing its nerdy fanbase.  It even criticizes common anime archetypes-- Shinji the "hero" never truly gains his orientation and conviction, Asuka the "tsunderé" never transitions into the deré phase, and Rei the artificial human only grows more detached and alien as the series draws to a close, emphasizing the hollowness and inadequacy of those archetypes when dealing with sophisticated characterization.
    As you can see, the aesthetics of anime not only cover visual design, but also themes, stories, and character archetypes.  Something that Japan has been very "good" at is imbreeding niche genres into excessive convolution.  On a small scale, you can look at the modern Metal Gear Solid games, the convoluted gameplay of which hasn't advanced since 1990.  On a larger scale, you can look at Japanese CRPGs that, while based on the foundations of old western CRPGs, remain as disjointed and abstract as ever in their gameplay.  Contrast that to more holistic simulations like that of Oblivion.  Similar trends can be seen in Japanese fighting games, shoot-em-ups, visual novels and so on.
    Anime genres have followed similar evolutionary paths.  Each genre has its own set of expectations and conventions.  One set of aesthetics in particular has gained significant prominence in the past decade, and that is-- moé, the king of convolution.  Moé is a blanket categorization for an array of aesthetics related to bishoujo and bishounen (attractive/fetishized characters), drawn from decades of anime, comics and visual novels.  In its more 'hardcore' forms, moé anime hearkens back to classic Japanese aesthetics, such as those found in The Tale of Genji. (for more reading by me, see "Old Japanese aesthetics meet new.")  Moé is a very dense category covering everything from general character archetypes to highly specific fetish objects like eyeglasses and cat ears.  The Poyoyon Rock character design above provides an extreme example of object/costume fetishization.  Ouran Host Club on the right is an anime that parodies moé in the girl fandom.
    Moé is now so integrated into the core of contemporary anime, it's almost impossible to be an anime fan without having some basic level of familiarity with it.  It permeates mainstream productions like Code Geass-- see how the enigmatic character C.C. is often paradoxally depicted with a plush doll and a slice of pizza (on top of CLAMP's typically fetish-heavy costume designs).  Let's not even get into the protagonist's pseudo-wife or the "Knights of Rounds" ensemble. Last year's big anime hit, Suzumiya Haruhi, was an undeniable smorgasbord of moé and a million other anime genre aesthetics.


Part 2: getting into anime
    Square one is a bewildering place to be.  If you examine what kind of productions have gained levels of mainstream success in the US, you'll see that they take more from the language of Hollywood than the convoluted language of Japanese comics and animation, such as the highly cinematic productions of Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Studio Ghibli flicks, Satoshi Kon films and Shinichiro Watanabe anime.  Productions geared towards the American market like Afro Samurai and Dead Leaves shed much of the fandom-developed language for a simpler, more universal comic book ride.
    It may be possible in some tactical way to ease yourself into the overall weirdness of anime, but at some point you're just going to have to hunker down and watch something bizarre like Evangelion to start to get some frame of reference-- a basis of comparison to understand other anime works of its genre.  Similarly, I didn't quite understand "cute" aesthetics and its comedic language until I ran though the original 16 Di Gi Charat shorts.  Only after understanding the conventions of established genres like shonen action and magical girl, could I fully understand genre parodies like Sexy Commando and progressive genre works like Jubei-chan. (yes, I'm a Daichi fan).
    I think moé for me was the final frontier, and I don't mean Tenchi Muyo.  I'm talking about adaptations of classic-style visual novels like Kanon (pictured right) which I strapped myself down for during a very dry season of anime.  As soon as a fluffy winged girl smashed herself into the lead protagonist and uttered her catch phrase, "Uguu~", I experienced the anime newbie culture shock all over again.  What's with all these dim-witted girls and their silly catch-phrases?  Why is the lead protagonist helplessly pulled into their tragic pasts, one after another?  Why is this show such a huge deal in the anime fandom?  Kanon was conveying its emotions in an aesthetic language I couldn't latch on to.  However I withheld my judgments and pressed on.  As I charted out the archetypes and got familiar with the conventions of the genre, I found myself being able to parse some of its dense aesthetic language.  Kyoto Animation's high production values and self-parodying attitude helped a lot to make Kanon more approachable.  Now I look foward to KyoAni's adaptations.  Last season's Clannad was a laugh riot.
    The thing about the aesthetic language of moé is it provides a very streamlined way to communicate story and facilitate emotion.  One glance at a character will tell you a story of what he or she is about.  What the anime does to that character in the following episodes, and how it contrasts with that first impression, is what determines the emotional outcome.  Will the character live or die?  Does the character hide behind a facade of moé in order to hide a dark past?  Of course, this streamlining comes at the expense of realism and believability, but that's all part of what makes moé weird and interesting.


    Part of the lesson behind that example is to keep your mind open and not ghettoize (read: wall in) your tastes into genres.  There are some extreme examples of ghettoized tastes in the fandom-- people who stick to old superhero robot anime, people who reject anything with even a smidgen of moé, overly nostalgic fans who reject anything and everything made in the digital cel age (it's 2008, get with the program!).  Don't even say "I'm not into shoujo" because you might miss something like Honey & Clover which, as Kuma wrote earlier, has some of the most sophisticated character drama and side-splitting comedy you'll ever see in an anime.
    Having a lack of genre preferences is how I can state something as pompously generic as "I gravitate towards [...] production values and [...] compelling artistic visions," the end, because it's true.  High quality is high quality; There's no reason to discriminate beyond that.
    Getting your friends into anime is a somewhat difficult task.  Sometimes it's impossible if they don't really care about comic art and animation.  If they're also at square 1, they're not going to be able to handle everything you can throw at them.  Depending on how adventurous their tastes are, it may help finding something that meets anime aesthetics only "half way", giving them a light dose of something different while grounded in a more universal style.  A friend of mine always likes to show people the good old Rurou ni Kenshin OAV for instance with its comic book swordsman story and film montage style.  It also depends a lot on what they hope to get out of anime.  Do they want something to watch casually or are they hankerin' for the full-blown 'japanimay' experience?


Part 3: I fooled you, there are 3 parts.
    Another reason why it's important to become familiar with all genres is because the genres of anime have long since matured.  Nowadays we're seeing more and more "post-genre" works and hybrid stuff.  Like fans of oldschool superhero robots, if you box yourself into a certain genre, you're going to find yourself becoming less connected with the current output of anime.  Don't be one of those grumpy, closed-minded fans that other fans look down upon with pity.  Instead, enjoy the soupy, chaotic mix that makes contemporary anime.