Anime versus American Animation

Thesis Statement

This is my thesis statement -- while American animation and Japanese animation
both have their virtues, the style of American animation, in general, has
a significant amount of higher quality.

Where to Begin? Where to be Going?

To begin with, one of the major problems that has hindered American animation
is budget and time constraints. On the other hand, in Japan, anime has been
allowed to flourish all over. When it comes to animation, it seems that Hollywood
simply does not take it seriously and would rather throw its millions into
"live action" films and TV shows. There is only one company in Hollywood
which devotes a significant amount of its resources to advancing our heritage
in animation, and that's Disney. Comparatively, its Japanese cousin has hundreds.
This is a real shame considering that animation itself was originally pioneered
by us. The American form of animation has not had its techniques advanced
through as many stages or been perfected as much as Japanese anime has. This
would lead some to the conclusion that Japanese animation is inherently better
than American animation; a false conclusion that I will dissect piece by
piece as we go on. Still, there are some examples where the quality of American
animation really shines through for what it was meant to be. Take another
perspective, and you'll see that the cut-throat constraints which American
animation producers face can actually help the quality of their animation,
because they are always forced to work under the constant threat of being
"canned". Any animation project cannot be a flop or else (as in showbiz terms)
so-and-so "will never work in this town again!" Compare this to all that
garbage floating around in Japan. However, to gain the popularity and respect
that the form deserves, we need to make some big changes. Fortunately, it
seems that some of the big-shots up there have finally started to take notice
of what has caused the likes of Disney to become very successful and make
billions of dollars for years. Of course, it will be a while before animators
are given the freedom and creativity that have made the Japanese successful
for the last decade. But we cannot simply play catch-up by copying their
inferior anime style (even though that's what they did to us a long time
ago). Then we would be giving away our pride -- selling out one of the few
proud things that we can say was made in America. No, we must do things our
own way!

A Little History

Few people, including those obsessed anime fans, have a clear understanding
of how Japanese animation came to be or how it relates to the American form
of animation. So, let's take a little look at its history. First, let's figure
out what element of Japan's society has caused the proliferation of anime.
Well, in Japan there is a distinctive connection between the animation industry
and the comic book (called "manga") industry. In fact, many animes are based
off of manga. The actual word "manga" was coined in 1814 and roughly translates
into "humorous pictures", but cartoonish art had existed in Japanese culture
for centuries prior to that. The crude drawings were used by the Japanese
leaders and social elite, usually for political purposes. One of the earliest
known collections of these drawings were drawn by a Buddhist monk named Toba
in the 12th century. The need for these drawings was probably brought about
by a certain trait in Japanese culture, which modern-day psychologists might
call an "attention deficit disorder". The solution for this was to entice
their people with certain visual stimuli. This became a useful tool for those
in power, since they could use it to leverage control over the public. The
effect could be described similarly to the "media saturation" which has plagued
America in recent times. Flash forward to 1989 -- only 12% of published material
in Japan were books, whereas the majority (38%) were manga! If this does
not show anything about Japanese society and literacy, then I don't know
what does.

All of this may suggest that the Japanese had a unique style of their own
long before the Americans came along, but the truth is that today's anime
and manga does not really bare any resemblance to the prehistoric art form
of the ancient Japanese. After World War II, Japan went through an identity
crisis; they began stealing stuff like mad from our Western civilization
-- which still continues to this day. It seems that they have become the
"United States wanna-be". This is fantasized through their animes where they
often show Japan as a culturally diversified nation where everyone accepts
each other. In reality however, Japan is almost entirely populated with ethnic
Japanese. They seem to find fun by taking things from our culture and playing
around with it -- perhaps, pretending that if they were a large country like
the US, and not a small little island country, they could run things better
than we are.

Dr. Osamu Tezuka is considered to be the real father of the anime-style and
gave birth to the commercial industry of anime and manga as we know it today.
Some people call him the Disney of Japan, which is sort of ironic because
he copied many ideas from Disney and other American animators of the time.
The classic "big eyes" which many people associate with anime were actually
popular at one time in American animation and were used a lot by the Max
Fleischer studio. Tezuka himself said:

"My career as an animator began when at the age of four. I copied a picture
of Popeye. My house was full of comics when I was a schoolboy. Because we
were able to obtain a projector and several films, I was able to see Mickey
Mouse, Felix the Cat, Chaplin, and Oswald Rabbit at home."

As you can see, it is obvious where he got his inspiration from. Tezuka's
first success was a manga called Tetsuwan Atom. Before Tezuka came along,
most manga were short humorous comic strips similar to what one finds in
the newspapers. However, Tezuka used techniques similar to those he had seen
in foreign movies when he made his manga. He simulated the fancy camera angles
seen in movies as well as giving his manga more complex storylines. The result
was a comic book series with cinematic quality. It became an instant hot
seller, mainly because it was a cheap way for common folks (who were struggling
with a bad economy) to provide entertainment for their children. The generation
of children who grew up on this would be hooked on manga and anime for life.

When did animation come to Japan? Probably when Toei Production started its
animation division in 1958. They hired Dr. Tezuka to make animated films
for them. Later, in 1962, Tezuka would leave Toei to start his own company
called Mushi Production and produce one of the first animated television
shows in Japan. Of course, both animated movies and television shows had
already been firmly in place for quite a while in the US.

In fact, the first animated film was made by James S. Blackton in 1906, only
four years after Thomas Edison had invented the movie projector. That was
many years before Tezuka was even born. But the art of animation is even
older than that. In fact, an invention called the magic lantern, which projected
animation by moving a strip back and forth, was invented in 1645 by Althanasius
Kircher. Around 1915, a technique of using celluloid sheets in animation
was established. By painting on these clear plastic cels, they could then
transpose more than one cel on a static background. This technique is still
used by some animators today. Walt Disney made several breakthroughs by making
the first animation with sound (1928) and the first animation in color (1932).
It was on December 21, 1937 that Walt made history again with "Snow White
and the Seven Dwarves" -- it was the first feature-length animation! Snow
White was the top grossing film for its time.

Those are the important details to the history of animation, although I have
not done justice in explaining the many great works created by the many very
talented animators of the time. Japanese anime seems to be this new fresh
breed of animation, even though it has its roots in American animation. It
boggles my mind how many Americans today prefer a cheap imitation over something
that is real and genuine. They say that Japanese anime is of better quality
and looks better than our own animation. In doing so, they have overlooked
a pearl that is much closer to home. The truth is that American animation
has so much more to offer, that anime simply pales in comparison.

Visual Quality

There are several elements to look at when reviewing animation. The first
I will discuss is visual quality, since this is the first which people will
usually look for. We must first realize that animation is a totally different
art form than other art forms such as drawing, painting, ect. Those are all
used to depict still pictures. The concept of animation is not about conveying
pictures; it is about conveying motion. When you examine a painting, the
actual strokes of paint are not important; it is how those strokes combine
to form their work of art. A similar concept applies to animation. Even though
animation is made of pictures, it is not the pictures which are important
but how they're used to make the animation. We must distinguish these different
art forms first and foremost and judge them separately.

This leads us to the first rule any budding animator must know. Each cel
of animation must be easily distinguishable at an eye's glimpse. This is
because the animation goes by so fast at many frames per second. You do not
want the viewer to miss an important detail because it went by too fast.
Here, I will bring up the most noticeable difference between Japanese and
American drawing styles. Japanese anime tends to use a style which has sharp
and jagged lines, whereas Americans use a style which has smooth and curvy
lines. There are benefits to both of these styles. The most obvious benefit
to using the Japanese method is that the sharp lines stand out very easily
and thus overcome the problem of having to be distinguishable to the viewer.
On the other hand, the smooth curves of American animation are more life-like
and natural. In fact, if you look in nature, you will see that anything organic
is formed with curves. Not only that, but as I will attempt to explain later,
animation itself is based on the mathematical principles of curves. The problem
of course is that it is not as easy to produce something as distinguishable
using curves as it is with sharp lines. This makes Japanese animation a lot
easier to produce than American animation. The Japanese are able to highlight
the details that are important by their usage of actual lines, whereas the
American animators must focus on the picture as a whole. To help aid themselves
with this problem, American animators often use something known as a "silhouette
test" on their drawings. The test is to see if the drawing is as easily
recognizable as if it was to be totally shaded in (like a silhouette). This
is because a person's mind must be able to register the outline of the figure
they see and associate it with the action taking place as soon as it's flashed
in front of their eyes. Japanese animation works quite differently, because
the sharp and jagged lines make it seem very unnatural. In this case, your
mind is telling you that there is something very wrong about the picture.
That causes your eyes to focus on it. It also gives this artificial-feeling
to anime that some people seem to like, but in my opinion, it designates
anime as a lesser form of animation. It should also be noted that the root
definition of the word "animation" stems from a Celtic word which means "to
be life-like". May I also note, that up until modern times, this concept
was so foreign to the Japanese that they did not even have a word for it
in their vocabulary. That is why they had to borrow the word "anime" from
the French.

Sometimes in anime you will see little lines sparked across the screen when
a character's expression changes suddenly or some form of action is taking
place. These lines are called "action lines" and are strictly prohibited
in the American school of art. The idea, once again, is that the action should
speak for itself and not need some fancy lines to guide the way for its viewers.
It should be able to grab the attention of the viewers by itself. That is
not always as easy when you're making an animation as it is when you're making
a comic book, because the animation must run at a certain pace. Fortunately,
the American animators have a bag of tricks to help their viewers stay on
course.

The number one technique used in American animation to draw a viewer's attention
to the action that's about to take place is known as anticipation. What this
does in effect, is it warns the viewer's mind before hand that a certain
action is about to take place so it can register in the viewer's mind before
it actually happens. If you watch American animation, you'll notice that
often times a character may anticipate that he's going to be hit in the face
by reacting before he's actually hit. Or he may anticipate that he's going
to break into a run by stepping backwards first. If a character is about
to become angry suddenly, his facial expression might go through stages before
it reaches the pot-boiling point. The principle can be applied to anything,
including inanimate objects. A very exaggerated case of this is when Wile
E. Coyote walks off a cliff but doesn't fall down until he realizes he's
standing on thin-air. The viewer already expects Mr. Coyote to plummet to
his doom before it happens. However, the anticipation technique is usually
very subtle when you're watching it because it blends so seamlessly and naturally
with the animation. This is because this technique is just one of the many
techniques which the American artists have mastered and perfected, but the
Japanese have not. It is also a lot more effective than "action lines". Upon
further examination of the anticipation technique, one may find that it is
really based off an exaggerated version of one of Newton's laws that states,
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Who knew that animation
could be so scientific?

There are a couple of other techniques used in American animation that I
should mention because they make animation seem more life-life and pleasurable
to the eyes, and also because there is a significant lack of such to be found
in Japanese ani