Inspirational Anime Quotes

While many people disregard anime and ignorantly categorize it as your everyday cartoon, those of us who truly know and love anime, know the type of inspiration that an intelligent anime series or movie can offer, sometimes in a single, memorable moment. Sometimes it’s not necessarily the most sophisticated of animes that causes us to be inspired or motivated, as the simple never say die approach of popular protagonists, from Monkey D. Luffy, Uzumaki Naruto, or Kurosaki Ichigo that can send shivers down our spine and pump us up. Below you will find some of our favorite Inspirational, as well as Motivational Anime Quotes. May it give you the edge you need to achieve your goals, and cope with the hardships of life, consider it a reward for sticking through our somewhat morbid Quotes About Death post.

Inspiring Anime Quotes

People are like dice, a certain Frenchman said that. You throw yourself in the direction of your own choosing. People are free because they can do that. Everyone’s circumstances are different, but no matter how small the choice, at the very least, you can throw yourself. It’s not chance or fate. It’s the choice you made.
(Black Lagoon)

Remember. You can feel it if you hold your hand against your chest. It belongs to no one. It’s our pulse, yours and mine. This is what brings us to the truth. It’s what proves that we are the very world itself. Follow your instincts. The answer is already there.(Ergo Proxy)

There is no such thing as perfect in this world. That may sound cliche, but it’s the truth. The average person admires perfection and seeks to obtain it. But what’s the point of achieving perfection? There is none. Nothing. Not a single thing. I spit on perfection! If something is perfect, then there is nothing left. There is no room for imagination. No place left for that person to gain additional knowledge or abilities. Do you know what that means? For scientists such as us, perfection only brings despair. It is our job to create things more wonderful than anything before them, but never to obtain perfection. A scientist must be a person who finds ecstasy while suffering from that antinomy.
Kurotsuchi Mayuri (Bleach)

The world’s not perfect, but it’s there for us trying the best it can. That’s what makes it so damn beautiful.
Roy Mustang (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don’t desire, but they’re inevitable, we have to face them. It’s what being human is all about.
Jet Black (Cowboy Bebop)

I always thought that life was about standing your ground, no matter how strong the current was. But going with the flow isn’t so bad after all. As long as it takes you forward.
Osaki Nana (Nana)

Everything happens for a reason. The daily tragedies and misfortunes are all meaningful events, leading toward an ideal conclusion. With that in mind, there probably isn’t really any meaningless misfortune.
Fuwa Aika (Zetsuen No Tempest)

Motivational Anime Quotes

A path is something you create as you walk it. The ground you’ve trodden hardens, and that’s what forms your path. You’re the only one who can create your own path. Walk on your own. If you haven’t given up yet, that is.
Cross Marian (D.Gray-Man)

Stand up and walk. Move on.
After all, you have perfect legs to stand on.
Edward Elric (FullMetal Alchemist)

What is important is to know fear and yet take a step forward.
Rosette Christopher (Chrono Crusade)

Let me ask you the reverse. How is it that you can give up so easily? [exaggerated sigh] I can’t understand that…attitude! “It’s bad luck! I have no choice!” People who passively accept their fate…because no one knows their future, least of all me, so I don’t dare put things off. I have to do what I can, while I can still do it, so…I’ll be kicking and screaming, ’til the very end.
Rosette Christopher (Chrono Crusade)

There are only two paths you can choose. You can sit quietly and be selected out of this world, or you can adapt and change!
Gai Tsutsugami (Guilty Crown)

If he rips my arms off, I’ll kick him to death. If he rips my legs off, I’ll bite him to death! If he rips my head off, I’ll stare him to death! And if he gouges out my eyes, I’ll curse him from beyond the grave!
Naruto (Naruto Shippuden)

Bring on the hardship. It’s preferred in a path of carnage.
Roronoa Zoro (One Piece)

I’ve set myself to become the King of the Pirates…and if I die trying…then at least I tried!
Monkey D. Luffy (One Piece)

Strength isn’t just about winning. Even if my attempts are pathetic and comical, and even if I’m covered in the mud of my defeat, if I can keep fighting and look up at the sky as I lie on the ground, that alone is proof of true strength!
Haruyuki Arita (Accel World)

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Patrick Chappatte: The power of cartoons

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Manga Making Game Coming To PlayStation Vita

Manga Making Game Coming To PlayStation Vita Since opening in 2011, Granzella is probably best known for making wacky PlayStation Home clothes, but the studio is the home for Steambot Chronicles creator Kazuma Kojo. Granzella will begin releasing software this year starting with Manga Ka Keru for PlayStation Vita. Manga Ka Keru is a game designed to make it easy for anyone to create manga. Manga Ka Keru has not been announced for the West, but Granzella has been releasing all of their PlayStation Home content internationally. Perhaps, they will localize Manga Ka Keru on their own? Read more stories about Manga Ka Keru & PlayStation Vita on Siliconera.

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Sowing His Oats: An Interview With Matthew Inman

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The Secret of the Near 30 Year Popularity of the Famous “Knights of the Zodiac”

The Secret of the Near 30 Year Popularity of the Famous “Knights of the Zodiac”

What Anime Is Hugely Popular in South America?

Do you know the property that has sold 34.4 million units, and has a television anime that has been broadcast in 80 countries? It is “Knights of the Zodiac”. “Knights of the Zodiac”, which does not only have a huge following in Japan and other countries, is particularly popular in South American countries like Brazil, Mexico and Peru. As for why it is popular in South America, we receive analysis from the professor of psychology Yoshihito Naito who himself loves reading “Knight of the Zodiac”.

＞＞Movie "Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary" special feature

“In South America, the Inca Empire and the Andean and Mayan civilizations once flourished. Additionally, in those civilizations curses and mystical powers were appreciated. They placed importance on the movement of the sun and believed they were descended from the stars. Modern South Americans also know this, and it could be said that “Knights of the Zodiac”, with its theme of the power of mystical constellations, took root in fertile soil.”

The world view of“Knights of the Zodiac” was in a easily acceptable climate, but are there any other reasons for the spread of its popularity?

“There are the three big festivals of South America, the Rio Carnival in Brazil, Inti Raymi in Peru and the Carnival of Oruro in Bolivia. In these festivals, it is so lively that the blood tingles. For people who like that kind of festival there is a comparative analysis that they like fist fighting. In the battles of ‘Knights of the Zodiac’, they don’t use weapons, they fight using their fists. That hand-to-hand fighting can be thought of as a reason for its strong popularity in South America.”

The themes of constellations and space drew in South American readers, and then the battles that took place without using weapons got that Latin blood moving. The result Professor Naito’s analysis is that is why it gained extreme popularity in South America,.

If I were to add one more thing, it is the popularity of Japan in South America. The reason is the Japanese immigrants that crossed the sea to South America won the hearts of the South American people by being nice, industrious and courteous. The trust in those Japanese people is extremely high, and the image of Japan is also very good. There is a halo effect, by which people believe that Japanese people are wonderful and Japan is wonderful, so things from Japan must be wonderful, and thus Japanese subcultures are easily accepted. “Knights of the Zodiac” could be considered a part of this chain and was favorably received.

The halo effect is a psychological effect where a single good point is found and because of that other points are thought to be good. In other words, what Professor Naito thinks is the thought that Japanese people long ago did good things led to the thought that their descendants must be creating good things, so things from Japan are easily accepted.

The Mexican and Peruvian foreign reporters in the Culturezine editorial department also told us that “Knights of the Zodiac” was popular. And with the new movie coming out, it will likely be becoming more and more popular.

■About “Knights of the Zodiac”
“Knights of the Zodiac” was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1985 until 1990. With a fantasy setting based on Greek mythology and constellation themed “cloths” (sacred armor), the television anime started airing nine months after the serialization of the manga which was uncommonly early at the time and captured the hearts of boys and girls. The work has had a strong following since the late 80s due to its charming characters and the various finishing moves of the knights.

■About “Knights of the Zodiac: LEGEND of SANCTUARY”
In 2014, the long-awaited theatrical version of “Knights of the Zodiac”, which the whole world has been waiting for, returns to the screen after ten years. Among the various storylines, Keiichi Sato, the director of “Tiger & Bunny” and “Black Butler” will bring the most popular storyline, the 12 Zodiac Temples, to the screen. The original creator Masami Kurumada is taking part as an executive producer.
In Theaters Nationwide 21 June 2014 (Sat)
Original Creator/ Executive Producer: Masami Kurumada
Director: Keiichi Sato
Voice Talent: Kaito Ishikawa, Kenji Akabane, Kensho Ono, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Kenji Nojima etc.

(C) 2014 車田正美／「聖闘士星矢 LEGEND of SANCTUARY」製作委員会

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What is Boy’s Love Manga (BL)?

“What is BL?” A question I ask fujoshi who I meet here and there.

“Schmex,” is always the immediate answer that often comes with an almost mischievous laugh.

“Boy’s Love and everything that comes in between” is the most straightforward answer.

“Is that the same as yaoi,” another would ask.

“That’s the girly stuff, isn’t it?” One girl would comment which often sparks a discussion on what really makes Boys’ Love.

Boys’ Love is a term many fujoshi* are familiar with yet one that easily confounds them. At times, I wonder, if it’s something we fujoshi have taken for granted. Simply because nothing is as clear as Boys’ Love manga. But at the same time, it’s a term that non-Japanese fans haven’t warmed up to.

* Fujoshi = Japanese term, literally "rotten girl," referring to female fans of BL (Boy's Love). 

Most of us still use yaoi and we often use the two interchangeably. Yaoi is to BL. BL is to yaoi. That fact that the English wikipedia redirects Boy’s Love to their yaoi page is telling how, outside of Japan, yaoi has better recall. And honestly, I thought for the longest time that this was the case at least until I’ve started reading some essays on BL only to find its parallels and differences.

It seems that there’s more to BL than just yaoi. And yaoi is a different animal compared to BL.

Did we miss a point? Not really.

We English-speaking fans know yaoi because at the time when the internet was brand new (and this was in the mid to late 90s), yaoi was the catch term English-speaking fans used to describe the m/m fan fiction they were writing based on characters from anime series. Early on they disassociated themselves from slash fiction and god knows who they got the idea from, but I can only imagine that it was possibly learned from exchange students in Japan who might have lifted it from the Japanese and made the distinction early on. And it wasn’t a wrong distinction.

Fans in Japan associate yaoi not only for its humorous meaning but also for its contributions in relation to fan work. The concept of ‘yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi,’ strengthened their ploy to do whatever they want when they pair two of their favorite male characters from a series together. Yaoi, to the early doujinshika, would be what we refer to in fandom as PWP, ‘Plot? What plot?’ where the writers are not obligated to justify or establish a reason because at the end of it all, these two have too much UST (unresolved sexual tension) that they just need to get laid. Sometimes, it’s really just crack. As such, this reckless homosexual fantasy became yaoi. And as I’ve seen it then, anything that pertains to this unabashed sexuality in anime fanfiction was also referred to as yaoi.

Back then, it was all right. Fansites would emblazon loose definitions of yaoi to entice curious girls (like me) to the magic of m/m fan fiction (with all the sparkles and ky). And they even ‘understood’ the nuances between yaoi and shounen ai. Yaoi would mean that there was hard, full-on, sex scenes while shounen ai tackled the feels with some hints of intimacy.

And that made sense. To a degree, it’s even correct.

November Gymnasium by Hagio Moto

Of course, what’s missing is the historical and contextual nuance of shounen ai. They were correct in saying that shounen ai were stories of boys falling in love through a rich plot that engages their emotions. These were characteristics found in early m/m stories in shoujo manga written by the Magnificent 24. Because of the emotions entailed, and maybe even the sexual naivete that were found in those comics, added with the rosy illustrations as drawn by the women, early English-speaking fans associated shounen ai to a more naive expression of yaoi. Some were probably familiar with its shoujo manga associations and would even go as far in saying that shounen ai is a ‘safer’ version of yaoi.

Yaoi and shounen-ai became terms that English-speaking fans used to distinguish the degrees of m/m fan fiction in relation to anime. And by extension, anime and manga with the same characteristics were also categorized in the same breadth. The earliest of yaoi OAVs were Bronze, Kizuna, and Fish in the Trap. Kaze to Ki no Uta was the shounen ai anime, which was perfectly correct. At the same time, Banana Fish also grew a reputation as shounen ai.

And you couldn’t blame English-speaking fans back then because at that time, there was no word to describe the growing genre that was happening in Japan. As with many things, the English-speaking fandom is late in translation. But even Japan couldn’t find a word for it. Even Google brings up a different thing when you type BL.

How Japan sees BL

In Eureka’s Fujoshi Compendium, Tomoko Yamada notes how any m/m manga before before the 1990s was called the pre-yaoi/boy’s love time1. For BL and yaoi to happen, there were a couple of components that some critics said were necessary. These were the presence of shounen ai in shoujo manga and the presence of anime parody doujinshi. The anime parody (aniparo) doujinshi eventually gave birth to yaoi doujinshi. The popularity of homosexual depictions in yaoi doujinshi of popular anime made yaoi a common term among fans. It eventually became the term to describe any boy’s love story, both doujin and commercially published story.

Publishers took advantage of these elements and decided to publish comics that catches these interests. As such, it wasn’t surprising that the earliest BL titles were actually written by then famous doujinshikas like Yoshinaga Fumi and Kazuma Kodaka. With the industry’s support, they were free to explore titles, themes, and circumstances. Back then they had no established rules on what kind of couples worked. As such you would have titles like Love Mode who would encompass three or four couples with different relationships. At the same time, by realizing itself as a genre, Boy’s Love manga made itself distinct from Gay manga, prioritizing its main audience as women.
Eventually, based on their readers tastes, they began to publish special anthologies catering to special themes like salarymen, youth, megane and so on. Shotacon, for example, was born in the 90s as a response to then popular genre lolicon.

By the mid90s, they also began to release BL novels, some anime, and drama CDs. By the 2000s, even games had BL components in it. Eventually this grew into a full blown industry where by the mid-2000s, it eventually claimed a road for itself, Otome Road. Its followers were also labeled fujoshi.

As such, in Japan at least, Boy’s Love is the appropriate term for the genre and an industry that involves boys falling in love with each other. As such, it encapsulates not just BL manga but other forms of media that contains stories of boys or men falling in love. While its history goes past 40 years, it seems that Boy’s Love as a genre has only been around for 20.

It’s a term that encompasses both the hardcore, softcore, and even the fluffiest of boy’s love stories. Nothing of it is lesser or greater than yaoi or shounen ai. It is both mature and sophisticated as some are more inclined to think of Boy’s Love manga, but at the same time, it also contains the madness mostly associated with yaoi. If anything, it’s but the natural evolution of its predecessors. Much like them, Boy’s Love is a genre that continues to challenge and shift female fantasies and interests. It continues to be a genre that transforms how we enjoy our comics.

http://www.punkednoodle.com/champloo/2013/08/01/801-mmf-what-is-boys-love-manga-bl/

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Inspirational speech by doctor turned manga creator

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