Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/03/magazine/anim...

Super article with cross-cultural (US and Japan) explanations I’d not encountered even as a scholar and student of American popular culture and Twentieth Century Literature. For example, Joshua Hunt makes connections between Rap (e.g. RZA from Wu Tang) and anime with some speculation about why Black Americans might more easily identify with anime than some White Americans.

The last paragraph is particularly interesting and heartening as someone who very interested in individualistic artistic expression over corporate aesthetic cooptation (while acknowledging cinematic art cannot always be neatly categorized as on or the other).

I was heartened and intrigued by the last paragraph (excerpted):

> Above all, though, anime may be saved by its sheer madness.[…] Anime is the realm of the underdog and the weirdo, whose fantastically bizarre imaginations have created a medium defined by its difficulty. And if there’s one thing Hollywood doesn’t seem up for right now, it’s a challenge.

Great article, the visuals were excellent as well.