Japanese Television
Japanese Television Shows Are Growing In Popularity
Many television watchers in the United States and other parts of the western world are growing bored of American Television and are looking for something a little different. Several TV stations in the U.S. are catching on to that trend and airing Japanese Television over the public airwaves. Japanese television shows are known for their zany humor, character-based plots, and strange mix of absurdity and self-consciousness, much like British Television, yet Japanese television is entirely its own animal.
There are many different types of Japanese television series. You have the game shows, in which contestants are asked to do increasingly absurd or humiliating things for a chance to win money, you have the talk shows, which are often punctuated by hilarious interactions between the hosts and the audience, and, of course, you have the wide variety of anime, or Japanese animation.
Anime in particular is an interesting phenomenon. It caught on among children in the United States with child-focused shows like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z in the 1990s, but as kids grew up, they wanted increasingly mature animated programming. In the States, we assume that cartoons are just for kids, but as a brief study watching Japanese televisions shows, there are animes geared toward people of all ages, from babies to bikers, from teenage girls to elderly couples. American kids that grew up on the anime as kids watching Japanese public television want a similar variety of more mature programming, hence the increasing popularity of Japanese anime television shows for all ages.
If the western Satellite Television companies don’t get on the ball and show the sort of Japanese television show you’re looking for, you can definitely find a lot of Japanese television online. On Youtube, Hulu, or other independent sources, you can find fan translations of all your favorite Japanese television shows, whether they’re animated teen romances like One Piece or zany game shows like Human Tetris which demand contestants to put their dignity on the line.
The Japanese culture has always been fascinating, alluring and confusing to the American psyche, and Japanese television is no different. I expect Japanese television shows will only continue to grow in popularity as more and more children watch the Japanese cartoons already so widespread on American networks.
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