Musings...

On this page I let my thoughts wander, and record my babblings here. If you don't like to read, you probably won't find it very interesting. ^^ If you do enjoy reading, then please, step into my mind. ^^

2-8-03: Those Who Hate Anime

Have you ever met one? They are much harder to find these days, buy they still exist. That annoying, grating, bigoted person who refuses to open their mind and thus belongs to the group I call, "Those Who Hate Anime." To me, the reasons behind their staunch "Anime is horrid, meaningless drivel!" are absolutely fascinating and rooted in the legacy of American animation.

So you know, I am writing this Musing with certain people in mind. I was an animation student for two years, and I have been in and around the animation-appreciating community all my life. I am writing this strictly from an American viewpoint, and from one who lives in the South at that. The observations I express here will likely not apply for Western animation fans in Europe or elsewhere in the world, so understand that I am in no way saying that THIS is how everyone who loves or hates animation, Disney or otherwise, actually is. This musing is like all my others: strictly my own opinion.

To understand the basis behind the beliefs of Those Who Hate Anime in America, we must first take a tour through history. History shapes our viewpoints and opinions, whether we acknowledge it or not. Rest assured, I'm not going to bore you with dates and bibliographic sources and everything. I will do my best to be accurate and yet not give a heady lecture. ^^

Now, the development of animation way back in the very beginning--like it or not--was vastly influenced by the American studios. Animation was not invented in the US, but America certainly progressed it as an art form in the early years of the 10s, 20s, and 30s more than any other country in the world. Including Japan. For you to make it through what I say here, you must be willing to admit that not everything animated in Japan is wonderful perfection, and that everything from the US is not mindless sappy nonsense. And vice-versa, of course. Keep an open mind, ne?

Early animation in the 20th century was created for one reason: to get laughs. In the days before after-school TV programming and the Cartoon Network, animated "cartoons" were only shown in theatres, usually before or in between regular movies. Animation directors quickly found that comedy was easier to make and sell than drama, and they capitalized on it. Those earliest animated characters like Oswald, Bosko, and Betty Boop were all about the laughs. Of course, with any art form, the more you do it, the better you get. The artists slowly grew in talent, and the subject matter slowly evolved from what was essentially animated vaudeville routines to actual storylines. But comedy was the key. Make 'em laugh, and they'll want to see more.

Enter Walt Disney. Whether you consider him to be a genius or the devil incarnate, this man and his studio have forever affected the face of animation. Disney learned the value of the animated song in 1933, thanks to his cartoon "The Three Little Pigs" whose theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" went platinum and earned the studio millions. Also in this time, he learned the value of catering to families. An entire family with all the kids along buy more tickets than just the parents alone, right? He saw audiences respond to full stories and developed characters that they wanted to see again and again. Snow White proved that people around the world would watch an animated movie about people instead of the usual animals (like Mickey Mouse and Pluto), and if World War II hadn't hit, who knows what works of art the studio would have created??

Yes, World War II. Europe was Disney's profit region, and when the war began, it was taken away. In the audiences that were left, people did not want to go see art films or thought-provoking drama; they wanted to forget reality and war for an hour and a half. They wanted entertainment, and Disney learned through the profit losses of his studio's greatest artistic masterpieces: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, that people like animation to be sweet, innocent, and lighthearted. When Disney finally admitted this and went back to making full-length animated movies, he stopped trying to create the magnificent works of art and went straight to movies that would generate profit: fairy tales. Cinderella, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and on and on and on.

The other studios in this time were not nearly as concerned with animation as an art form, but with animation for pure profit. Tex Avery and Chuck Jones perfected animated humor, right down to ignoring the rules of sanity with falling anvils and characters "sliding" off the film as they chase each other. The works they created for Warner Brothers were huge hits, launching the careers of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and all the rest of the Warner cast. To be fair, these cartoons were written by adults for adults, and you will certainly not see a signifigant portion of the more raunchy epsidoes on Saturday morning. But kids still enjoyed them. They might not know WHY it was funny to see the cannon go limp after it shot off one round, or why the wolf went nuts and whistled and slammed his head on the table whenever Red Hot Riding Hood did her sultry dance routine, but they laughed anyway. Again, comedy proved that it could triumph in the box office, so it was comedy they made.

Of course, not everything animated in the early years of animation was so cutesy, innocent, or existing only for laughs, but it was comedy and family-safe entertaiment that earned the money and made it BIG. Every kid knew that if something was animated, they could watch it. Parents learned to trust cartoons and animation, and Disney in particular.

The grand tradition of animation as family-safe entertainment continued through the 50s and 60s and blossomed on tv. More and more shortcuts to creating cheaper and easier-to-produce animaton were discovered, and the kids would watch it. Why spend $100,000 to have full movement of your characters, when a mere $10,000 would satisfy the kiddies just fine? Why spend weeks developing complicated, successive plots and deep characters when you can so some funny, quick antics or short adventures that stand alone, and can be played in any order with no one the wiser? And then in the 80s, the great toy tie-in began and generated the money. Question: which came first, He-Man the cartoon, or He-Man the action figure?? Answer: neither. They were created hand-in-hand simulateously. The cartoon to promote the toy sales, the toy sales to make kids watch the cartoon and see more toy commercials.

Even while Western television animation became an artisic wasteland, Disney continued to create those magical family movies. Their later films from the 60s and 70s, such as 101 Dalmations, the Jungle Book, and the Rescuers were family hits. Disney himself had died in 1966, but his studio continued to make movies in the grand, proven tradition. The studio hit a slump in the 80s, but were saved by the colossal hit of the Little Mermaid in 1989. Subsequent hits of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King spurred other studios to try their hands. Suddenly, animation was hot property again! Other attempts by other studios quickly followed. A Troll in Central Park! Anastasia! Balto! The King and I! The Prince of Egypt! The Iron Giant! Some were flops, some were sucesses, but all...all were family films.

Animation has remained stolidly in the family category in the US for one simple reason: it generates money. There are offshoots of decidedly non-family hits, of course. Beavis and Butt-head and South Park are the two big ones. But look at all the "controversy" these shows have created. The conservative masses were in an uproar during each show's height in populariy. Why? Because THIS animation wasn't safe. It was controversial because it was animated profanity, sexual references, cursing, and other things good religious mommies didn't want their beloved babies to see. Do you honestly think Beavis and Butt-head and South Park would have been such hits if those were real, living actors speaking those lines??? Nope. Not in a minute.

North American audiences are facinated with deviation from the sanitized family entertainment we were raised with. I distinctly remember the first time three of my friends ever witnessed animation created for a non-American audience. We were all in our mid to late teens, and the anime was my tape of Blue Seed volume 1, subtitled. The reactions, "That's BLOOD!" "Her panties are showing!" "Oh my god, that plant thing KILLED those people! "And the conclusion, "That was AWESOME! Do you have more???" No, it wasn't the story or characters that wowed my friends, it was the sight of animated violence. It was different, and therefore, it was interesting.

So why is anime subject-matter so different from American animation? The answer is simple: anime was the natural growth of manga in Japan. So often even now, if a manga series is popular enough, it is turned into an anime. The vast majority of anime were successful manga titles before being animated, and it is rare for an anime to be original and not based on a published, already popular fiction work. And of course, manga (Japanese comics, for those who do not know the term) covers all sorts of subject matter. Detective stories, westerns, romances, the joys of schoolgirl life, historic sagas, rock stars, rock star wannabes, and of course the comic standards of outer space adventures and super heroes. Japan's comic industry was not limited by the censure laws laid down in the US, and it was already much more respected and widespread to begin with. When you have manga created for all audiences and ages, naturally, anime for all audiences and ages will follow.

These anime shows based on manga stories already had established storylines and characters to follow and have fun with, and of course they did. You can't compress 20,000 pages of manga into one half hour episode, so a continuous, congruous tv series was needed to tell the story. Thus, the slow development and deep stories you find in anime, which are so appealing to audiences around the world.

Now, let's place content aside and focus on the actual art. Just about anyone can look at a picture drawn in the traditional Disney style, and a picture drawn in the traditional anime style, and can tell which is which. But what makes them so different? These reasons go back once more to the beginning of animation, and once more with Disney.

Remember, Disney was the pioneer studio, not just in story and character development, but in animation art, principles, and technology as well. The Disney studio truly realized how to synch sound with drawn character movement, how to give animation the illusion of depth, how to show emotion with only a few lines. In the early development of Disney's cartoons back in the 20s and 30s, Disney observed that as a person draws the same shape over and over and over, his work will slowly become more rounded and circular. This is a biological fact, based on the way our shoulder and arm joints move. It was easier on his animators to design characters who were based on circles and rounded figures in the first place, rather than hard angular lines which had to remain sharp through hundreds of drawings. What would you rather draw 100 times in a row? A loose oval, or a rigid star? These rounded characters were also more appealing to the audience because they seemed more helpless and dependant, like children. Our own biological programming makes us more sympathetic to characters who look like kids, and Disney used this to his advantage. When the other studios realized this, they followed suit. Even anime does this. Just think of all those comedic chibi characters. (or "super-deformed", if you must use the term) They're drawn like little kids!

The other great artistic difference between American animation and anime is detail. Draw a cute girl in the Disney style, great, she's lovely and soft! Draw her in the anime style, and suddenly her skirt has pleats, her hair shimmers, her eyes are vivid and dewed, and her coat decorated with a fun pattern.

Remember, traditional animation is created by hand. An animator sits at their desk with pencil and paper, scribbling lines to make the characters move. Amercian theatrical animation like Disney and Dreamworks are fully animated, which means the characters never stay still for more than 2 seconds at a time. It was a documented rule of thumb at the Disney studio that a character HAD to move every 2 seconds, or else they would look "flat" and the illusion of life was lost. Disney continues this tradition today. The characters guesture, they shift their weight, they cross their arms, they tuck a strand of hair behind their ear. Constant, accurate movement is the key to the fullness of American theatrical animation. Every time that character moves, they must be redrawn. Every fold in their clothing, every dangling earring, every line of hair. The animator must be paid for their time. And if takes them two hours to draw Belle laughing and skipping rope, or two days to draw Belldandy doing the exact same thing, which is more economical? To ask the question from a different angle....what would you rather pay for on a tight budget? 100 drawings of a loose oval that are finished in an hour, or 100 drawings of a perfect star finished in a day? Simple characters are faster to draw, therefore more effient, and more economical.

Now, take anime. The vast majority of anime is made for television, and they just do not have the budget to pay all those animators to draw all that detail for full animation. The next time you watch your favorite show, notice how often the characters stand there, only their mouths moving as they talk. They stand in the breeze, their hair and clothing moving in a dramatic, continuous loop. They leap forward and their single cel image slides over the background to show the move in for the kick. Their foot bursts through the wooden barrier and time slows, allowing only the wood chips to slide so dramatically across the scene.

Anime movies have bigger budgets, which means more money can be spent on making those lovely detailed characters gesture, shift their weight, cross their arms, and tuck a strand of hair behind their ear. But alas, anime movies are few and far between. In fact, if you think about it, anime movies from the famous anime studios like Ghibli and Madhouse are created at pretty much the same production rate as the American animated films: an average of one movie for every 1.25 years. Heh. ^^ And of all the anime studios, which one has the fullest animation?? Ghibli. And what style of animation do Ghibli characters most resemble?? Well, there's a reason Ghibli characters move so fluidly.... (Blasphemy! But you can see it for yourself!)

Lecture complete. Now, we draw conclusions. ^^

In my honest opinion, Those Who Hate Anime resent the use of animation to depict violence, sex, bloodshed, or death for one simple reason: they see it as a perversion. For so many decades, animation and family entertainment have gone hand-in-hand in North America, more so here than in any other country. Those Who Hate Anime see a grand tradition that animation is always meant for families to enjoy together. They believe that animation should never be used to create anything but innocent entertainment, and to try to say something serious or otherwise deviate from the accepted form is WRONG. Even if they can forgive the anime storylines, Those Who Hate Anime cannot accept the detailed character designs, and the limited animation style that is the direct result. They state as examples for their dislike the strangely colored hair (what about Marge Simpson?) or the sharp angles, huge eyes, tiny noses, and sexual overtones (um...do they mean Betty Boop???) They see anime as different, as threatening, and not concerning appropriate things. Therefore, they refuse to give it a chance. Their loss.

Matta ne,

Sailor Two Moons :)

Musings from the past:

2-8-03