My Relationship With Animation

Personally, have no relationship with anime. Okay that statement is true and not true at the same time. I had never watched any sort of anime before the start of this semester, and honestly didn’t really know what it was when I signed up for the course, but I have friends at home who do watch it and talked about it with me. When I told them I was taking this class they were very excited to me and wanted to see the syllabus to look at the shows we were watching to know if they had seen any. The conversations they have about anime that never really interested me because I didn’t understand what they were talking about and couldn’t actually talk about it. Kinda random but its my other connection to anime, I own an anime sweatshirt, I think I got it when I was goodwill one time, but im not sure. I didn’t even know it was anime, I just thought it looked cool. Even though I’ve been around people who watch it, I’ve never had the interest to watch it.  And I’m not entirely sure why, but my best guess is that its because growing up I wasn’t really allowed to watch TV or use technology.  Yeah, my parents where the kind of people to tell me to read a book or go play outside, and when I did the the opportunity to watch it was limited, and as a result I don’t really watch shows and movies that often now. So my perspective on animation is limited, but I’m going to try and talk about it because growing up in the age of technology there are definitely moments that define how I view animation.  

As I’ve already said, my parents weren’t huge into letting us have screen time, but when we did, it was always a family activity.  We would watch movies or cartoons in the family room all together with my dogs, and for some reason when I think back on these memories its always winter, and during the movie my Dad has to go outside to get more wood for our wood stove. Him opening the door and letting the cold air to blow in causes me and my brothers to yell about it as he pull the blank were under over our head. As we got older, these occurrences of watching movies with the family lessened due to school, sports, friends, all aspects of life and growing up, and I think that’s why it feels more special when it occasionally happens now.  When I go home on break it might happen once the entire time I’m home, but it reminds me of happy times so it feels good.  So even thought I don’t have a personal relationship with animation, like having a favorite show, the relationship I have formed with animation steams from the moments of pure happiness with my family.  

One of the best memories I have is with my The Smurfs, my family loved watching the original smurf cartoons. We would always be allowed to watch it on Sundays after church if we behaved, and my dad said recently he would make us watch them because it was his favorite cartoon as a child, and seeing us watch it and laugh when Garamel would eventually mess up and smurfs would be free would make him happy. Plus my dad is still a kid a heart, or maybe still a kid because my moms eyes she has 5 children, me, my three brothers plus my dad. It makes everything come full circle, my Dad would watch it as a kid and we did too, just makes laughing at a cartoon on Sunday after church more special.  Even the other day my parents sent me a care package with some snacks, coffee and a papa smurf action figure. Just shows how much one cartoon has brought my family together, oh and he is currently sitting on my desk.

Another animation that was prevalent in my years as a child was Peep in the Big Wide World, this was a show about Peep, who is a chick, and his two friends Quack, who is a duck, and Chirp, who is a robin, and they explore everyday life.  I did have to do some googling for this one because I haven’t seen this show since I was maybe six years old.  So very long ago. But this show was my favorite as a child, I’m not sure why, I just really liked it.  I even called my Mom about this assignment, and she said they I would always ask to watch Peep.  The episodes were only 10 minuets long and always ended in some sort of life lesson, probably why it was on the list of acceptable shows for me to watch. I actually watched one before writing this, just to remember it, and its your typical children’s show, but I guess it had a big impact on me as a youngling. 

When I started this assignment, I thought it was going to be hard because I didn’t watch a lot of animation growing up, or now, so I believed that animation didn’t have a part of my life, but when I stated to think about it, I realized it had a lot more of an impact on me than I thought.  Being a happy memory with my family, or teaching me life lessons about perspective, it changed my view on animation. 

Links to photos: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peep_and_the_Big_Wide_World

https://www.wired.com/2011/04/psychology-of-cartoons-part-2-sociology-of-the-smurfs/