Kids’ <i> Anime </i> Hits Critical Mass

Ready or not, here come more monster battles. Anime --the trademark style of animation from Japan that is characterized as much by its action-filled, saga-like storytelling and reliance on complex mythologies as by its distinctive graphic style--is continuing to dominate the schedules of kids’ networks this season, with such new Japanese-originated shows as “Yu-Gi-Oh!” for WB, and “Medabots” and “Transformers: Robots in Disguise” both for Fox, joining the likes of “Pokemon,” “Digimon: Digital Monsters,” “Cardcaptors” and “Dragonball Z.”

Although the individual networks are naturally hoping for more mega-hits, some kids’ programmers also feel that this season will define just how many more anime shows the U.S. airwaves can take before its phenomenon status goes into remission.

“This is going to be a very pivotal year in the world of anime ,” says Joel Andryc, executive vice president of kids’ programming and development for Fox Family Channel and Fox Kids Network, the latter of which airs the hit series “Digimon.”

“We’ve seen a lot of growth in this arena over the past couple of years, but there hasn’t really been a breakout since ‘Digimon’ came on the scene, right after ‘Pokemon,”’ Andryc saud. “[This season] is going to be the telltale sign on whether you’re going to be seeing a lot more anime in years to come, or whether this whole trend is going to cool off.”

Donna Friedman, executive vice president of Kids WB!, which premiered “Pokemon” in 1999, is less eager to use the T word. “I’m not a big believer in trends,” she said. “What ‘Pokemon’ did was open everyone’s eyes to the fact that there is a wealth of talent and creativity, and richness of story, that comes out of Japan ... that the door has now been opened, and I think it’s going to stay opened.”

Although “Pokemon” was hardly the first anime show aired in the U.S.--”Astro Boy,” “The Eighth Man” and cult favorite “Speed Racer” all beat it by more than 30 years; “Dragonball Z,” now found on Cartoon Network, gained an early following in syndication in 1996--it was the show that thrust Japanese animation to the top of the American mainstream. The ongoing adventures of Ash Ketchum, a young Pokemon trainer who guides the vast array of strange “pocket monsters” through battle after competitive battle, also managed to crack a perennial kids’ TV nut: how to present action without violence. It’s the stylized, whimsical little monsters that do all the fighting, not the humans.

Among this year’s premieres, “Yu-Gi-Oh!” is based on a popular manga (Japanese comic book) series--as is much of anime in general--and concerns a high school student named Yugi who acquires a superheroic alter ego, Game King. “Medabots” and “Transformers: Robots in Disguise,” meanwhile, both feature casts of battling robots, with the stakes in “Medabots” being championships; the Transformers (the latest incarnation of the 1980s kid hit) duke it out for control of the Earth.

No matter how many such shows ultimately end up on U.S. television, though, it will only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the sheer volume of animated shows produced in Japan. “There’s a huge amount of anime that never gets here,” Andryc said. “It’s like a needle in a haystack, trying to find the next one we believe will be a big hit here.”

But for every “Pokemon” or “Digimon,” there have been many more shows that made the leap, only to land here with a deafening thud. Clearly, just having characters with large, liquid eyes and spiky hair engage in a lot of action isn’t enough to pull down an audience. One of the keys to success, according to Al Kahn, chairman and chief executive of 4Kids Entertainment, which produces the American versions of “Pokemon” and “Yu-Gi-Oh!,” is the translation from the Japanese originals--not simply in the dialogue, but in every aspect of a series.

“We spend a fortune on localization,” Kahn says. “[Episodes] are not just dubs, we rewrite them, re-score them, re-storyline them. We want to be sure that it’s exactly going to be something that American kids understand and like. We may spend another 50% of what we pay for them [in rights] just to localize them.”

Such localization might include removing everything from cultural images that would not be understood by a 6-to 11-year-old American boy, to religious messages or images that are deemed inappropriate, to mild sexual references, which occasionally turn up even in “Pokemon.” Charting a show’s performance in ancillary markets in Japan is also a prime factor, according to Kahn. “We’re trying to get a sense of something in total, not just whether it’s a good show, but what it’s doing in retail,” he says.

Unlike America, where even the best animation is so much marketing fodder for toy stores and fast-food restaurants, Japan produces animation for all audiences and maturity levels. The anime purists in America, therefore, tend to dismiss the youth-related shows as not being real anime . For them, the only true examples of the medium are the adult-oriented animated films that also proliferate in Japan, some of which feature hand-drawn action, sex and violence that are clearly adult in nature.

This desire to appeal to that core audience of fans is why Cartoon Network, whose Toonami block has traditionally offered slightly stronger-proof anime , such as “Tenchi Muyo!” and “Gundam Wing,” as well as full-strength brew, such as the 1988 feature film “Akira,” avoids Americanization whenever possible.

“We’re desperately trying not to do that,” says Dea Perez, Cartoon Network’s vice president of programming. “We may tweak a couple of things for American audiences, but we don’t want to Americanize the shows at all. I don’t want to change this block to be like a toy block. I want it to be respectable.”’

This fan audience, although smaller than the mainstream, 6-to-11 crowd, is also probably the only one that completely understands what anime is and where it comes from. “I don’t think the kids that are enjoying ‘Pokemon’ know it’s anime ,” offers Kahn.

“Kids don’t watch shows because of the style of animation,” added Friedman. “It’s not based at all on what the genre is. We picked up ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ because it was a good show.”

Andryc, on the other hand, thinks that anime’s distinctive style of design and animation has branded itself in the consciousness of the core kids audience: young boys. “If you’d asked that question three or four years ago, I’d say they probably wouldn’t know the difference,” he said. “But the boys today are very savvy.”

Regardless of the level of consciousness on the viewer’s part, it seems clear that “Pokemon” and “Digimon,” at least, are not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. As for the other anime series, time will tell whether young audiences gotta catch ‘em all or not.