Archetypical Anime: The Birth of a New Series

            Archetype: Definition – a pattern or model from which copies are made (Oxford English Dictionary). 

            In any storytelling medium or tradition, there are character archetypes.  Sometimes, they overlap from one tradition to the next.  Sometimes they diverge greatly.  Cross culturally, they sometimes are misconstrued.  In this series, I will be focusing on the story telling tradition of Japanese Animation (I know, its not a very long tradition, but bear with me), and exploring the differing characters across various genres.   

            Archetypes in Anime have developed in a variety of contexts and time periods across Japanese history.  Take the “emotionless clone” archetype, for example.  The first one that we see is often credited to the imagination of Hideaki Anno and takes the form of an actual clone named Rei Ayanami.  Later versions of this archetype tend to not be true clones, but have very similar characterization to Ms. Ayanami.

 On the other end of the historical spectrum, we have a character type that started in Japan with Momotaro, the “chip-on-his-shoulder-hero”.  This one also pops up in other cultures around the world.  He’s the hero who might not have a happy ending, but also doesn’t seem to know when to die. 

            There are also cases where certain archetypes merge, or certain stereotypes are broken.  This tends to happen more frequently in long-established archetypes than newer ones, but certain blended characters show up very soon after their basis is first witnessed. 

            If you have any suggestions for archetypes, or questions, please post them in the comments.  This will be an ongoing series here on From Tingri to Tokyo, so have fun with it, and keep the discussion going.