I feel I've given my fair share of time to both anime pieces as well as "traditional" animations, at least in the way that I will use it (Animations that just aren't anime, more Westernized), despite my bias against most forms of anime. I don't mean bias with any negative connotations, I merely am not a huge fan of the style. Despite my preconceptions, there is still a nice host of anime films that i enjoy and suggest to other cinema-goers, though this number is much less than the amount of traditional animations I've seen and support. Realizing this trend in my own opinion and tastes, I decided to delve more into the world of animation and see why it is as popular as it is, and why this just doesn't click with me on a large scales, be it because of mostly cultural differences or something else.
The first aspect of Japanese culture in the realm of art and literature that I noticed was the interconnection between anime and manga. For those who don't know, and this included myself for a period of time, manga is the graphic novel equivalent, and anime is simply an animated series or feature. The United States does have both a graphic novel and an animation industry like Japan, but they exist mostly independent of each other. Comics often make the transition to screen, but many films or comics exist without even a taste of another medium. This can be because of the authors choice, but can due to the difficulties in making the actual transitition. Both media are art in their own right, with different techniques, styles, and timings which keep them separate, but the right creative minds cooperating, graphic novel heros can make the jump to cinema.
In Japan, on the other hand, manga and anime are two industries that do not, and most likely could not, exist independently of each other. 'Akira', one of the first big animes to hit the states, was adapted from a mammoth manga almost 2000 pages long. The manga was published in the early to late 1980's, and, like the its filmed successor, was one of the first of its kind to be translated to English and sold in the States. The film was undoubtedly and understandingly shortened, but still remained a fine relationship between the anime and manga subcultures.
The most obvious difference between the Japanese and Western styles is the style itself; the character models and the visual presentation. While traditional animations use the "squash and stretch", arcs, and wholly rounded exaggerations, animes use sharper lines, and quicker more jarring movements and cuts. The lines of Japanese animations seem to be more focused on, flickering during scenes of tension. Japanese animations are also a lot simpler than the work of some prominent Western filmmakers, like Disney for a quick and easy one. Anime is very cheap to produced, like its written counterpart, as frames will show only slight movement and limited animation with short bursts of quick action. Some anime can be a bit jarring visually, but Japanese television in general is lightening paced and all over the place. American viewers aren't as accustomed to that, so anime is not nearly as popular in the US as it is overseas in its birthplace.
I commented on Brittany Alberry's and James Scutari's blogs.
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