Slashdot Mirror
A Glimpse Into the World of Japanese Animation
Pixelgroove writes "CGNetworks sports a story by Justin Leach (Softimage Special Projects Division), who had a unique chance to work at Production I.G in Japan on Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Prior to leaving Japan, he interviewed the Production I.G computer graphics animation team about their thoughts and perspectives on Japanese Animation (anime)."
I still wanna know why yahoo yanked broadcast.com's huge array of movies. Lots of good anime in there. check archive.org if you dont believe me.
Like Sweepstakes? Try out my service @ http://www.yourpowersweeps.com -- Free 21 day trial, no cc needed.
I could have written then thing myself.
His key influences are "from [my childhood] era"??? C'mon!!!! May the interviewer learn to dig deeper.
I know it can be hard to get any information from a Japanese person. They depend so heavily on the assumption that you already know everything that you learn almost nothing. So you have to be a little more artful and sometimes much more exact when you ask a question, or series of questions. And since the interviewer was not Japanese or even asian, he could pull off a lot more by playing the role of the ignorant and rude gaijin and asking ever more direct questions often repeatedly.
I hardly consider this to be a glimpse at all... not even a cursory blink. I didn't expect to hate that one so much.
I am so sorry, Michael-san, but I think that this interview is a load of crap. It may be about anime but as an interview and background about some decidedly good anime it just won't do. For instance: "This is a promiscuous story of a lonesome "ghost" of a man, who nevertheless seeks to retain humanity. Innocence... That's what life is." about Ghost in the shell:2. What the hell is a promiscuous story? One that screws around? What do you mean "that's what life is"? Life is not about being artificial and trying to retain humanity. This kind of pseudo-intellectualism really irritates me. It tells me nothing about the movie, its background or why it should be interesting. And this: "What are your goals for the future? My goal is to establish CG in a unique 'Production I.G' style, and introduce it to the world. Because of this, I like to learn about everything earnestly. I want to live and work with pride, respect people, treasure the nature and cherish my country." He definitely seems like a nice guy, respecting Nature and all that, but what does he want to do with CG? What's so unique about the style? Does he also want to learn about quantum mechanics earnestly then? Et cetera, et cetera. Vapid. Enough ranting, but please, let's have some more interesting stuff on slashdot, shall we?
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Honestly. They went out of their way to get it across fast, what, with the September 17th theatrical release date for the US being only six months or so behind Japan. Why do you have to be a cock and violate the copyright on it like that?
Wow!!! You own an aircraft capable of sustained supersonic flight?
I'm jealous.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Is 2D animation dead?
GREAT way to start an interview. "Hi, is your career worthless?"
"Uh, no. There are over 400 animation studios in Japan. That's why we own your animation market too."
"You don't need to learn how to draw to become a 3D creator, that's the biggest reason."
Genius. Spectacular insight, and it neatly wraps up the 3D vs 2D hype comparison.
Anime is doing to the animation market here exactly what import cars did to the automobile market in the 70s. Japanese studios are making enormous amounts of money in a market which has been abandoned by Disney, et al., because U.S. companies only believe "you get what you pay for" if they are setting the price. Disney just got through taking a giant shit on their own animation studios which had been drawing on some EIGHTY YEARS of expertise. These people had devoted their entire careers to their craft, but Disney just couldn't stop whining that they weren't getting a 40000% return on the sequel of the week.
Anime is probably just about to pass the $5 billion mark annually, and manga is now at $100 million, and we're early in the third inning. The competition is over. Anime is the animation market.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I am very thankful for such a wonderful cultural export from Japan. The article discussions Western animation and how the interviewees feel about it. While we (Americans) produce popular, and beautifully animated, CG work, I do not think it even compares to Japanese anime (either hand-drawn or CG).
I watch American animated movies by Pixar, Dreamworks, and the like, when I need to watch something light and uplifting. Afterwords I think to myself "Okay, that was fun", then never think about the movie again. There aren't many movies geered towards adult audiences. With Japanese anime, I'm touched at a deeper level and often left amazed at the storylines. Of course, I'm not talking about the comedy or under 13 series. I still think about series that I've watched years ago, trying to figure out the meaning behind them. Even movies/series coming out now in America from Japan have plots that I believe only the Japanese are capable of creating. After watching a series, I continue to think about its meaning and am left with a wonderful satisfying feeling. That's missing from the American movies (and definately not even close with any cartoon series).
It is the cultural aspect of anime that makes it so appealing, and I'll continue to go purchase anime DVD's, which is now far larger than my American collection.
This is a very interesting response, especially considering how heavily the work of Production IG is identified with popular anime, when it's a very different animal. In essence, IG's work has been built from collecting style and method, spending years experimenting with computer-assisted cel and true 3D modeling animation. The work they produce might as well be considered experiments performed in the course of learning the art. They have graduated to distinguished player in their field.
Mizutani's answer is a wee bit wrong due to a culturally interior viewpoint: Ghost in the Shell addresses universal themes from a very Japanese perspective, striking to an international audience and a source of great appeal. These movies need not be cute and brightly colored to prove their appeal. Production IG has no need to prove that they are Japanese. Perhaps Mizutani is more expressing the continuing evolution of the Japanese cultural identity in the face of internationalism?
And yes, I know "anime" simply means "animation" in its original usage. Consider that shifting definition evidence of our own adaptation.
I don't even want to see it. But I think I'll download it anyway... just to be an ass :)
My other car is first.
Well, first of all, I'd like to point out that the article isn't really about Japanese animation. It is about what people's attitudes are that work on Japanese animation, and how they are they perceive themselves as being different from Western animation.
One thing to note about Japanese animation itself is that they try very hard to maintain the traditional style while using new tools. Anybody that has watched anime the last couple years will note the marked improvement of visual quality (especially of TV shows) over those made 7 years ago. Interestingly, the CG style (works like Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Shrek) are not as popular in Japan as the are in America. People on the Production I.G. seem to blame that on character design issues (hard to create a look for characters that they feel is compelling).
Something that I wish would be incorporated in American animation is a wish that more of American animation said something about us. About who we are as a people, and how we view ourselves in the world. In short, say something about our culture. Production I.G. animators say they wish Japanese animation better reflected Japan. I share that wish only with respect to American animation relating to America.
What is interesting is how this matches up with outsourcing. Animation is a work of art. If we export animation to India or Korea, how do expect the animation to reflect our culture? (Of course, it might speak loads about our culture, but not in a good way). This isn't a unique thought, I was watching "The Otherside of Outsourcing" and they talked about Indians learning computer animation. They commentator noted how he thought that it was important that Indians did something about their own culture and not just pieces for other countries. Just something I thought I'd tie in.
The last suggestion for Western animation is to stop the "soft-biggotry of low expectations" towards our kids. Most CG films (like Shrek) are good at making a story that is reasonably complex and the characters seem real, with real conflicts and are not cardboard cut-outs. But, our TV shows really need some work. It might be because they are usually totally episodic, which curtails character development. But, I really think we need to show characters with depth and real conflict (emotional and otherwise). If we don't, we really aren't helping their development. So, in a sense, we are raising them quite literally on kiddie porn.
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! -Homer Simpson
But those aren't really animations ;) They're just comics. Different medium.
That said, I still enjoy many American animations, eg PowerPuff Girls (go ahead and laugh), Samurai Jack and the like. Iron Giant was a great movie, also American in origin. But they are fewer and further between than good anime.
Americans in general still treat animation as childish entertainment, so the only animation that you get with engrossing plots tends to be imported. Hell, a lot of imported anime has better plots than most recent live-action American movies, IMHO.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I recently read an interesting quote by animation historian Michael Barrier, in his recent interview with John K. (Ren and Stimpy): "It's one of animation's curses that so many people insist that there is only one way to make a cartoon-- the Disney-feature way, the Clampett way, the UPA way, or whatever-- when in fact the medium's resources are so large." Of course, he wasn't talking about anime when he said this, but he might as well have been.
I like good anime and manga a helluva lot, sure, but I also like good American and European animation. Just as I like both 2D and 3D work, as long as it's done well. All have their merits-- unfortunatly, a lot of anime's boosters can't get that simple fact through their thick skulls -_-;
What I don't get is why I'm seeing this article at all. I had disabled the Anime topic in my preferences, and it seemed to work. I havn't seen Anime stories in many many months.. but wtf, now this one shows up?
Is this a bug in slashcode?
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
One of the reasons for all the "bandwagon jumping" is because Anime has actually gotten better... a lot better... over the last ten years or so.
Last Exile is pretty much what the Star Wars prequels could have been if Lucas still had any creative energy. The vanship time-trial from that show makes the Episode I "pod race" look, well, even more boring than it looked in the first place.
Perfect Blue contained one particular scene which director Darrin Aronofsky found so compelling, that he purchased the remake rights to the entire film just so he could steal that one 20-second scene and reshoot it with Jenifer Connoly in "Requiem for a Dream."
The light, pathos-driven humor of Azumanga Diaoh is resonating with teens and college kids today in almost the exact same way that Peanuts caught on with teens and young adults of the 60s.
Cowboy Bebop was arguably the very best science fiction TV series of the 90s, a decade that was positively stuffed with science fiction television shows.
I could go on and on.
Even the ways they sometimes cut corners to make the relatively cheaper TV shows (vs. the big-budget films) can sometimes creatively turn a negative into a virtue. For example, the still-image pans which you mentioned (which I also find annoying sometimes) actually enhanced the mood for "Noir" and gave the series a strong Sergio Leone type of feel.
More often than not, a still image in anime is used to serve two purposes. One is to reduce "cell count." The other is to emphasize the emotional drama of a particular moment. It looks jarring if you are not used to seeing it, but then so did the slow-motion fighting in "Kung Fu" when audiences first saw that show back in the 70s. Now we see variable-speed fight scenes all the time without even thinking about it.
Anime has a cinematic language of its own. Just like you have to watch several Felini or Bergman films before you can just enjoy the story without being partly distracted by the non-Hollywood cinematic choices.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I've posted the same thing before on Slashdot, and I'm glad you agree: animation is a medium, not a genre, in the same way black and white or color are media. You can't compare two entirely different things on the ground they're animated, unless what you are comparing is the quality of the animation.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)