Two years ago, I’ve asked a Japanese classmate why most protagonists in popular anime series are teenagers. The famous Japanese anime artist Hayao Miyazaki for one, has a penchant for youthful characters. The heros and heroines in his animated films are either children or teenagers, trying to save the world often from ill-intentioned grown-ups.
I was trying to resolve a nudging doubt that seems to have evolved into a hypothesis over the last two years. The young represent not only our future, but also the promise of change. They may be idealistic, but the idealism also fuels the courage to challenge the establishment.
In Miyazaki’s world, the world of establishment is flawed by self-interests – greed often provides the motivation for ill-doing.
Although this may not be a pretty picture, the popularity of his creations arguably speaks aloud of how the virtual appears to transpose well into the real.
We are now seeing how the world is paying for the greed of human civilisation. Deep down in our grown up minds, we lament the wrong decisions and lost time in our lives. Most of us probably harbour a secret yearning to want to turn back the clock and re-write the history.
With no time machine on hand, we can only look to the young, counting on them to change the world. But we fret and worry about the untested and unknown.
The mass media turn out to be the best instrument to manifest these hopes without the fears of repercussions in the real life.
The only question that begs an answer now is how far will these mediated representations appease our fears of change. Are we sufficiently prepared to accept a brave young new world that is no longer based on the fundamentals of our current one?
