Comments on: Ask John: Why Are Japanese Otaku More Conscious of Animation Quality than Americans? https://www.animenation.net/blog/ask-john-why-are-japanese-otaku-more-conscious-of-animation-quality-than-americans/ Anime News & More! Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:58:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.5 By: seanny https://www.animenation.net/blog/ask-john-why-are-japanese-otaku-more-conscious-of-animation-quality-than-americans/comment-page-1/#comment-11829 Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:58:17 +0000 https://www.animenation.net/blog/?p=22940#comment-11829 I think Japanese animation as a whole lends itself better to a fascination with animators. In an American cartoon (like a Disney feature) I think, animators are designated to a character, and (ironically) individualism is not emphasized because the objective of the animation is to create the “illusion of life”, as opposed to drawing attention to the spectacle of 2D animation.

In Japan, animators are given “cuts” (akin to “shots” in a film) to animate, which usually includes everything on the screen except for the backgrounds of course. Sometimes they are given entire scenes, and on rare occasion an animator is given an entire episode to animate single-handedly– Honey & Clover ep7 is a favorite example of mine, a lavishly and brilliantly animated piece that really stands out.

Skill and individualism is prized in the industry, and animators who are (say) good at kinetic fights, mecha, special effects, comic/surreal animation, or realist animation are often brought in for key moments in key episodes. For many otaku, this is part of the draw of watching anime. You always recognize, even unconsciously, when the animation suddenly becomes unusually lavish for a key moment. That’s always undeniably exciting to see, especially if you’ve slogged through a few visually mediocre episodes prior to it.

I feel like that’s part of the expected rhythm of anime– waiting for that big moment where they bring in a specialist to dish out the production value. There’s a moment in Animation Runner Kuromi (a funny and educational anime about an animation studio) where the characters seek out a specialist to do a key action scene.

Basically I’m saying that Japanese animation, which is a “limited animation” tradition driven by individualistic animators who are given cuts & scenes rather than characters to animate, better lends itself to fandoms around particular animators. It’s hard to identify by intuition who did what when you watch The Lion King because it all has the same silky smooth “illusion of life” animation. There’s nothing in it to hype up your interest in the people behind the animation drawings.

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