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Recently there were a few Twitter posts - just screen-caps of the text of arguments made by American animation writers on why they dislike Japanese animation. One of the writers was Amid Amidi, publisher of "Animation Blast". There's no indication as to when or where these were originally published, which is something I dislike about Twitter, you want to follow these sources back and you can't.
Anyway the arguments are the typical technical "lack of complexity in the character animation" complaints. Sometimes the arguments get completely pretentious, as in the sentence "In Miyazaki's films it suffers from Japanese animation's endemic reticence where the illumination of personality is concerned", which is a sentence that betrays the author's lack of familiarity with Japanese animation beyond two or three films from one studio, while highlighting the author's possession of a thesaurus.
The attitude is that animation should always be flippety-floppy exaggerated caricatures of human movement. Things should stretch and squash. Evil character should look evil and good characters should have halos. Ducks should be daffy and bunnies should be buggy. In short, if it wasn't Disney or Warner Brothers during a very short period that ended seventy years ago, or if it isn't doing its damndest to ape that period, it is trash.
Now I grew up watching Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons, just like everybody else with a television in the Western hemisphere. I like 'em fine. But are they the Platonic ideal of animation that all other animated films should strive towards? And more importantly, if they ARE the pinnacle of animated achievement that anybody with two eyeballs would prefer, the worldwide popularity of Japanese animation for the past sixty years becomes a lot less explicable.
You can argue about stretch and squash and frame rates all you like, and if that's your yardstick, then fine. But that's not the yardstick the rest of Planet Earth uses. Their metric is called "entertainment". And the Disney/Warner Brothers/Full Animation/Princess school of animation has been shooting blanks for the past sixty years, trying to cram a 1940 ideal down the throats of 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, et cetera. And guess what? We've seen those cartoons. They don't go away. Red Hot Riding Hood and Fantasia haven't vanished forever. They're right there. We're good. We don't need any more of them. What we DO want and need and spend entertainment dollars on are films that aren't seven-minute gag reels or 90 minute fairy tales dosed with pop culture references.
What did people want to watch instead of the pap being churned out by Hollywood's animation geniuses, circa 1978-1988? Galaxy Express 999. Arrivederci Yamato. Be Forever Yamato. Final Yamato. Phoenix 2772. Mobile Suit Gundam I, II, III. Crusher Joe. Harmageddon. Dagger Of Kamui. Nausicaa. Laputa. Lupin III. Lupin III Castle Of Cagliostro. Aim For The Ace. Cyborg 009 Legend Of The Super Galaxy. Tomorrow's Joe. Towards The Terra. Space Adventure Cobra. Queen Millenia. Arcadia Of My Youth. Golgo 13. Urusei Yatsura Only You. Urusei Yatsura Beautiful Dreamer. Urusei Yatsura Remember My Love. Urusei Yatsura Lum The Forever. Macross Do You Remember Love. Megazone 23. Night On The Galactic Railroad. Vampire Hunter D. Arion. Dirty Pair Project Eden. Fist Of The North Star. Project A-Ko. Robot Carnival. Wings Of Honneamise. Wicked City. Grave Of The Fireflies. My Neighbor Totoro. Akira.
These are all Japanese animated feature films produced in a ten year period. Not only are these all films American studios didn't make - these are films they COULD NOT make. Period. They didn't have the vision, they didn't have the skills, they didn't have the concept of making animated films for anyone other than (the parents of) six year olds.
If this animation is so terrible and ugly, then why is there so much of it? Why was it so successful? And yes, it was successful, at a time in which their precious American animation industry was coughing up blood.
Could it be that most people are perfectly fine with animation that doesn't fit some pretentious, nostalgic, failed-animator ideal? That maybe people would rather watch a film with well designed characters, action and adventure and a script written for people who already graduated elementary school? I think it is.
Things aren't this way any more. The American animation industry is filled with talented, visionary artists who grew up watching both Looney Tunes and Robotech, and they bring their influences to the small and large screens. Money finally came back to the field after a long dry spell and now studios are once again throwing millions at insipid, forgettable children's films, and even direct-to-video adaptations of popular comics (I wonder where they learned THAT from). To see people bitching about Japanese animation as if it's 1985 and they caught a glimpse of Robotech in the convention video room is really appalling, and it betrays a lack of imagination that is fatal to any visual artist.
Fatal.
Anyway the arguments are the typical technical "lack of complexity in the character animation" complaints. Sometimes the arguments get completely pretentious, as in the sentence "In Miyazaki's films it suffers from Japanese animation's endemic reticence where the illumination of personality is concerned", which is a sentence that betrays the author's lack of familiarity with Japanese animation beyond two or three films from one studio, while highlighting the author's possession of a thesaurus.
The attitude is that animation should always be flippety-floppy exaggerated caricatures of human movement. Things should stretch and squash. Evil character should look evil and good characters should have halos. Ducks should be daffy and bunnies should be buggy. In short, if it wasn't Disney or Warner Brothers during a very short period that ended seventy years ago, or if it isn't doing its damndest to ape that period, it is trash.
Now I grew up watching Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons, just like everybody else with a television in the Western hemisphere. I like 'em fine. But are they the Platonic ideal of animation that all other animated films should strive towards? And more importantly, if they ARE the pinnacle of animated achievement that anybody with two eyeballs would prefer, the worldwide popularity of Japanese animation for the past sixty years becomes a lot less explicable.
You can argue about stretch and squash and frame rates all you like, and if that's your yardstick, then fine. But that's not the yardstick the rest of Planet Earth uses. Their metric is called "entertainment". And the Disney/Warner Brothers/Full Animation/Princess school of animation has been shooting blanks for the past sixty years, trying to cram a 1940 ideal down the throats of 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, et cetera. And guess what? We've seen those cartoons. They don't go away. Red Hot Riding Hood and Fantasia haven't vanished forever. They're right there. We're good. We don't need any more of them. What we DO want and need and spend entertainment dollars on are films that aren't seven-minute gag reels or 90 minute fairy tales dosed with pop culture references.
What did people want to watch instead of the pap being churned out by Hollywood's animation geniuses, circa 1978-1988? Galaxy Express 999. Arrivederci Yamato. Be Forever Yamato. Final Yamato. Phoenix 2772. Mobile Suit Gundam I, II, III. Crusher Joe. Harmageddon. Dagger Of Kamui. Nausicaa. Laputa. Lupin III. Lupin III Castle Of Cagliostro. Aim For The Ace. Cyborg 009 Legend Of The Super Galaxy. Tomorrow's Joe. Towards The Terra. Space Adventure Cobra. Queen Millenia. Arcadia Of My Youth. Golgo 13. Urusei Yatsura Only You. Urusei Yatsura Beautiful Dreamer. Urusei Yatsura Remember My Love. Urusei Yatsura Lum The Forever. Macross Do You Remember Love. Megazone 23. Night On The Galactic Railroad. Vampire Hunter D. Arion. Dirty Pair Project Eden. Fist Of The North Star. Project A-Ko. Robot Carnival. Wings Of Honneamise. Wicked City. Grave Of The Fireflies. My Neighbor Totoro. Akira.
These are all Japanese animated feature films produced in a ten year period. Not only are these all films American studios didn't make - these are films they COULD NOT make. Period. They didn't have the vision, they didn't have the skills, they didn't have the concept of making animated films for anyone other than (the parents of) six year olds.
If this animation is so terrible and ugly, then why is there so much of it? Why was it so successful? And yes, it was successful, at a time in which their precious American animation industry was coughing up blood.
Could it be that most people are perfectly fine with animation that doesn't fit some pretentious, nostalgic, failed-animator ideal? That maybe people would rather watch a film with well designed characters, action and adventure and a script written for people who already graduated elementary school? I think it is.
Things aren't this way any more. The American animation industry is filled with talented, visionary artists who grew up watching both Looney Tunes and Robotech, and they bring their influences to the small and large screens. Money finally came back to the field after a long dry spell and now studios are once again throwing millions at insipid, forgettable children's films, and even direct-to-video adaptations of popular comics (I wonder where they learned THAT from). To see people bitching about Japanese animation as if it's 1985 and they caught a glimpse of Robotech in the convention video room is really appalling, and it betrays a lack of imagination that is fatal to any visual artist.
Fatal.
