Anime interests a lot of the kids (we can see its influence in their illustrations for stories and reports), so this lesson should be a no-brainer. However, what if there are kiddos in our class who don't know what anime is? It's entirely possible as they all have varied personal interests.
I try thinking about the anime with which I am familiar, and my mind starts flashing through the years. Aha! I've got it: Speed Racer!
Speed Racer was a Japanese anime import cartoon from the late 1960's, the first cartoon we ever realized that the dialogue didn't even remotely match the mouths of the characters. Sometimes the characters were speaking, and their faces didn't move at all. We start researching the show and come up with the first episode. Perhaps we will show the students some clips of the cartoon on the largely-useless ENO board.
My co-teacher, the expert and author of the article, notes that Astro Boy was actually the first Japanese anime import, appearing in the states around 1963. Back then, anime was ground-breaking and just a teeny bit disturbing, and, because that's how we sometimes feel in our jobs (ground-breaking and disturbed), we decide to do a little digging.
In no time at all, we have queued up the first episode of Astro Boy. This will be our visual aid to get the class rolling on anime. If we have time, we'll play the theme song from Speed Racer, complete with the entire anime opening intro where he runs (without truly bending his knees, of course) across the tarmac.
It's going to be awesome, and, if we're lucky, we might even earn some cool points for growing up with something the kiddos thought they ushered into pop culture.
