Being born in 1979, I had the good fortune to be growing up during the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons: The 1980s. Every Saturday brought with it the promise of exciting new adventures, from the early days of He-Man to the latter days of The Pirates of Dark Water.  Lion robots would assemble into giant fighting machines, weather satellites threatened the world, and pizza was consumed in mass quantities by reptilian lifeforms.

In those days, the worlds of gaming and cartoons were very separate, very distinct things to me: cartoons were what I watched for stories, and games were what I played when I wanted to test my reflexes or flex my puzzle-solving muscles.  Even on the NES, where the games I played first started having these odd concepts of “story” and “adventure,” the stories were so under-developed that they became secondary.

When I hit 7th grade, though, a new console hit the scene that began to completely change my perception of what games were: it was the SNES.  Perhaps it was the improved graphics, perhaps it was the improved sound, but something about the SNES caused a sudden, unexpected merging of games and cartoons in my mind.  Instead of just watching the giant robots battle it out on TV, now I was in control of them.  It was me in the cockpit, firing the mega-laser and wiping out the hordes of approaching enemies.  Sprite-based gaming, by its very nature, had a cartoon kind of appeal to it, and ever-maturing game design provided richer games with richer stories.  Add to this the fact that I was getting older, and in the US, cartoons are something for kids, and games began to really gain the upper-hand in my point of view.

The game that finally blew cartoons out of the water for me was Final Fantasy 2/4.  Here was a game with an amazing story, interesting characters, all on top of beautiful art and music.  With a more “mature” story line, this was something the cartoons I had grown up with just couldn’t compete (also, games were available at times other than Saturday morning and the two hours after school…)

These games coming from Japan had a far different focus than the RPGs I’d played on the PC, which tended to concentrate far more on the minutiae of character building. Even the non-RPG games tended to have a very consistent aesthetic to them that set them apart from the “western” games I was used to.  It wasn’t until a friend in the 8th grade introduced me to the concept of Anime that it all came together.

Like most kids, I had no idea that a large number of the toys and cartoons I loved as a child had been imported from Japan and retooled for the American audience.  To me, they were all just lumped under the “cartoon” header.  While my friend started me off with some light fare like Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura, once we got up to Vampire Hunter D, I began to realize that cartoons in Japan were serious business.

The more I grew to know about anime, the more the stylistic divide between Japanese and Western games began to make sense to me.  Watching anime caused me to think about what great games they would make, and playing some games would cause me to think about what great anime they would make. The Japanese RPGs felt like the natural extension of anime; a way to take the and give them a new dimension.  On games like Chrono Trigger, with art by well-known artists like Akira Toriyama, the lines were blurred even futher.  I wasn’t just playing a game; I was playing the cartoon, imagining the fully animated scenes in my head.

As technology has improved, the two have drawn even closer together.  Games with fully animated cut scenes, making it seem exactly like you are watching a cartoon, are very commonplace.  Even 3d graphics, which early on were far less “artistic” than sprites, can now do countless styles to much better reflect an artist’s stylistic intent (play through Dragon Quest XIII and tell me you didn’t feel like you were running around in an anime). 

Story, in these cases, takes the dominant role over gameplay.  This can be wonderful if you have the right story, but if taken too far to its extremes, it can alienate the gamer.  To me, playing Persona 4 is a lot like watching an anime; the characters and stories are richly developed, not to mention the music and art.  The difference in playing P4 versus simply sitting down and watching, say, “Persona 4: The Series,” is that the game keeps me involved at every turn, always asking questions, always getting me to steer the decisions.  Take away this aspect (as some games unfortunately do), and there is little reason that the game couldn’t just be presented as a movie. I know some game designers who have said they think of themselves as movie directors, but I personally am not a huge fan of three-hour cut scenes.  I play games to be a part of the experience, not to be a passive observer. When the balance is well-struck, though, it is a glorious thing.

Of course, sometimes I do just want to be told a gripping story, without having to worry about constantly involving myself, and in those cases, there is nothing quite like sitting back on the couch with a good anime and just letting it wash over you.  And, alternatively, sometimes I don’t want all of my games to be completely fixated on story, or to ignore the minutiae of character building, and in those cases there are, fortunately, plenty of other options out there.

What it really comes down to is that cartoons have always held a special place in my heart as a window onto new adventures, but they, much like games, are too often stigmatized as kid’s stuff.  Games have had success in recent years in breaking through that stigma, but cartoons have had far less luck.  Saturdays mornings are far slimmer pickings than they used to be, and the few “western” cartoons still produced are, if not for kids, generally considered “immature.”  Perhaps as the gaming audience grows ever larger, some of them will start to look deeper into the influences that created the games they so enjoy, and perhaps their eyes will open to the world of anime.  It may happen, it may not. 

All I know is that someday, I’ll make sure my kids are up early on Saturdays, and, even if there is not a single cartoon on anymore, I’ll pull something out of my collection for them to watch, or play, or both. 

Don’t worry, I’ll make sure they get outside after lunch.