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Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines? (atlasobscura.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Why are there so many shots of power lines in Japanese anime cartoons? The Tumblr Power Lines in Anime is dedicated to appreciating the truly lovely and surprisingly ubiquitous depictions of mundane power lines that appear in a large number of Japanese animation series. The blog is run by Tumblr user whitequark, who first started to notice the trend while watching a romantic comedy anime. Anime series can cover any number of genres, including sports, high fantasy, office life, and, of course, science fiction, but no matter what it's about, it seems that if the story is set on modern-day Earth, it will contain some amazingly detailed images of power lines, telephone poles, and other wired infrastructure. While a number of anime series (and cartoons in general), opt for a style of hyper-detailed backgrounds before which relatively simpler characters can interact, power lines stand out for the detail and complexity required to illustrate them.
With flooding the feed with irrelevant stories?
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SEL is a 1998 anime. It is full of power line shots. I'd estimate that around 2-5 percent of the series consist of power lines. It would be interesting whether this was the start of the trend. Can someone please categorize this Tumblr thing into pre and post 1998, please?
Before WWII, outside Tokyo - rural Japan didn't have as many power lines as western countries.
With culture going back centuries... japanese perceived power lines as western encroachment and the loss of the authentic Japanese self.
And since nearly all power lines come from and go to "someplace else", they are by definition "invasive" to the local world.
And since power utilities are authoritative entities... they represent invasive authority.
The artists picked a visual style to convey the esthetic impact they are trying to achieve and use it in their drawn backgrounds. Apparently this includes power lines.
Where I get where this basic artistic concept might be lost on a lot of folks reading Slashdot because we tend to be thinking about the technical nature of things, it's not that hard to understand.
BONUS: They pick the music in the background to drive an emotional impact of a movie, not just the visual images used. Try not to get lost in the enormity of the thought..
Double Bonus: Annime is NOT reality, regardless of how much you think it so. It's an animated cartoon and the stories are not real life.
Yes, this post should be read to be dripping with sarcasm.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If you've ever been to Japan, especially iconic locations like Tokyo, you'd pretty quickly realize that, for how otherwise clean and tidy the Japanese are, the rats nests of power lines depicted in anime are basically true to life. Ubiquitous powerlines (even the type seemingly haphazardly strung between buildings like neglected spider webs) are a normal sight there, so when mirroring or representing reality, it isn't a surprising detail to include to give just that little extra grounding. For those on the outside looking in, it could seem exaggerated, but it is hardly the case.
Back in the documentary "Crumb", on underground commix icon Robert Crumb, R.C. demonstrated how he took a lot of photos and drew scenes from them rather from memory, because it's easy to mentally tune-out a lot of very big, annoying things about modern life: billboards, power lines, transformers. He didn't want to miss them when he drew, so he took photos to force himself to acknowledge them with photos.
Sure enough, once he pointed it out, I realized that was one of the things that made his work both very solid/real and also very gritty. When there's no panels with large swaths of empty, blue sky, it really forces you to acknowledge everything we've put in the way.
In anime, it could be similarly an attempt at heightened awareness/realism, or a form of social commentary, or a subtle nod that the characters are in the Ugly Real World and not the Sparking Virtual Reality or Romantic Past.
Ever been to Japan ? - First time I went down the residential streets of Tokyo - I tought - this looks like like I'm in an anime.
Anime creators are just copying what they see outside their houses.
there are a lot of power lines in Japan you insensitive clod ! ^_^
In more modern animations, wind power turbines win out over power lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
He pulls the spitting high-tension wires down
Helpless people on subway trains
Scream, bug-eyed, as he looks in on them
Speaking of obvious ...
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
You need only look at Tokyo (capital of Japan) to see the mess of power lines that exist in real life.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
US flicks have fruit-stands as the go-to chaos focus. Nobody knows why, other than maybe "everyone else does it".
I always wanted to see a play on the concept where a massive fight breaks out around a fruit-stand, and everything else around it is flattened and smoldering, while the fruit-stand remains intact due to the acrobatic heroics of its ordinary-looking owner. Somebody fires a missile at the stand, and have it coincidentally pass through a tiny gap in stacked melons in slow motion.
After the fight ends, the owner starts to wheel the stand away from the quiet-but-smoldering mess, but stumbles on a road reflector bump, and the entire stand finally crashes down in glorious fruit spray.
When movie memes get too entrenched, it's time to mock them.
Similarly, a Japanese flick could have a monster fight that repeatedly ends up landing in power lines, but nothing happens with the lines: they bend a bit and then bend back to normal without drama. Have the antagonist get frustrated in that throwing his victim into them results in nothing. Finally he grabs a line, tears it in half, gets ready to zap his opponent, but just then his crime partner a few blocks away smashes another opponent into the power station, cutting off power to the line, rendering his zapping tool (torn cables) useless.
Table-ized A.I.
I know this is supposed to be kinda tongue in cheek, but most animes have specific background artists that will be asked to portray some scenery as faithfully as possible, including stuff like worn down buildings, crusty old signs, overgrown lawns, faded out street signaling, corroded paintjobs... and yes, power lines.
There are lots of titles that are specifically tied to a city, or even a specific neighborhoods... well, much like several TV series and movies.
But picking half a dozen titles stretched over 2 decades or more that have power lines in them and saying it's an "obsession" has to be a joke right? Do people even realize hundreds of titles are released every year?
In any case, it's not an obsession by any means... apart from Lain because it's thematic (it symbolizes how everything is connected), for the vast majority of titles it is just a staple of urban environments. It's part of the scenery. From another perspective, obsessive behaviour would be trying to hide them when they are quite obviously there.
I would think power lines are a good sign of the time the story is based. Where it is to represent the present.
The near future normally would be wireless urban setting.
The past 100 years or so, we wouldn't have power-lines, as most lights were still gas in an urban environment.
Out of all other things, they can be drown without much animation.
Also power lines don't date quickly. So a scene with with them will look as reliant for 2017 as it would for 1967 so such shows wont date as quickly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The C4 that lines the inside of the Enterprise bridge consoles is essential for correct functioning.
Exactly... I used to wonder why there were so many images of vending machines in Anime, they are everywhere... it is not unusual to see scenes entirely lit by vending machines even in residential (non big city) scenes there would be vending machines everywhere... is it some kind of symbolism? I don't have vending machines on my suburban street.
Then I went to japan and realized that vending machines were actually everywhere, even in small towns and residential neighborhoods.... its just part of every day life there.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Literally networks of power, whose center is somewhere else.
Modernity and (in their proliferation and sagging) the collapse/end/postscript/decay of modernity.
Consumerism, consumer technology, technological encroachment.
Utopian ideals (energy, artificial light) and their mundane failures to transform human life for the better.
The loss (as you point out) of the rural in the face of the urban.
Environmental destruction.
Utilitarianism and rational-instrumentalism at the expense of beauty.
Clutter and the "wreckage of history" that Walter Benjamin famously described.
Setting out to aspire to highs, inevitably sagging back down to lows.
The ravages of time.
Technological debt.
etc.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Japan has a MUCH bigger problem with earthquakes & tsunamis than hurricanes (Tokyo & northward is about the same climate as the Northeastern US & maritime Canada). Tsunamis bring saltwater inland (very, very bad for underground power lines). Earthquakes shear underground power lines apart (or stretch them & cause subtle, harder-to-troubleshoot flakiness).
Supposedly, their power transmission system is based on some sort of high-energy plasma being piped throughout the ship, and every piece of technology they have can be made more or less effective by simply funneling more power into it, even if you have to steal that power from things like lighting or life support. (For example, the computer calculates more quickly, shields become firmer, sensors extend their range and resolution, etc.)
So -- bearing in mind that "pipe more high-energy plasma from one part of the ship to a completely unrelated part" is default behavior in any crisis -- that in mind, it's amazing things don't blow up constantly.
It is probably a future iteration of the same thing Apple was doing when the throttled all the iPhones with old batteries. The equipment is designed to work only when fed the power from the whole ship, then gets throttled when it detects it has less than that amount of power.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Really? Have you been to London or Paris?
Burying cables is a political and an economic decision.
Seat restraints also interfere with ship operations.
Pro-tip: Your ship's matter-antimatter reactor should be reinforced with explodium for maximum efficiency.
~X~
What a silly question.
It's because that's how power lines are in Japan. They are not put systematically underground like in the US.