Japanese animation?s crude and corny beginnings strengthened it
IT WASN?T too long ago when TV animation audiences, accustomed only to American emphasis on characterization, viewed animé (Japanese animation) as synonymous with ?crude and corny.?

The animé typical design had big hair, large eyes and elongated limbs that acts with choppy movements and uses limited facial expressions, with 2-3 types of mouth opening for dialogues. The limitations gave the impression of stiff dialogue scenes and awkward drama. It was the opposite of what America at that time in the ?60s and ?70s was doing.

Animé then was already telling more ambitious stories than what their animation experience and budget could justify. By doing so they rose to the challenge of showing just enough animation to move the story along, of thinking imaginative ways of staging complicated scenes.

It all started in 1963, when Osamu Tezuka, a very successful manga (Japanese comic book) artist, wanted to use his popular manga character Mighty Atom, aka ?Astroboy,? to make the first Japanese animated TV series. To achieve this he had to compromise quality because it had to be done fast and cheap. Despite being a fan of Disney animation, he was forced to do shortcuts. He compensated the few drawings and less movement with interesting layouts and camera movements.

Lasting contribution

Tezuka?s most lasting contribution was in applying the cinematic approach: He started in his manga panels and carried them over to animé.

From ?Astroboy? and ?Gigantor? of the ?60s came the ?Mecha? robot animation fad in the ?70s that popularized ?Mazinger Z? and ?Mobile Suit Gundam? and a whole gallery of robots. They followed the trail blazed by Tezuka in style as well as approach, doing animation cheap and fast. An animated TV series was, after all, a means for manufacturers to sell toy merchandise.

Only Team Takahata and Miyazaki, later to form Ghibli Studio, tried to buck the system by doing better-quality TV series of Western classics such as ?Heidi, Girl of the Alps,? and ?Anne of Green Gables.? When all the other ?70s TV series had faded into obscurity, those Takahata-Miyazaki TV series remain watchable today because of the care that went into them.

The West started to take notice with Katsuhiro Otomo?s sci-fi film ?Akira? (1988). Worldwide acceptance finally came with Mamoru Oshii?s ?Ghost in the Shell? (1995), a futuristic adult film that boldly showed the world the strength of animé. And of course, there was Hayao Miyazaki?s series of beautiful feature animations.

It took Japanese animation around 30 years to be what it is today.

Most important factors

There are two most important factors that have helped animé develop into what it is today.

First, there?s the strong manga (comic book) industry whose stories cater to different categories of readers?male, female, kids, teens and adults. Manga covered a whole range of genre: children, drama, love stories, detective, crime, horror, supernatural, sci-fi, weird, erotic. It proved a powerful training ground for many animation writers, artists and designers. Manga is still the source of many successful animé TV series, direct-to-video and theatrical feature adaptations.

Second, animé has the ability to absorb world stories and repackage them as its own. The Japanese didn?t shove animé culture down the world?s throat by creating only very Japanese subject matter.

Besides creating original stories for his manga, Tezuka was influenced by western literature and told his own version of western stories such as ?Treasure Island? or Fritz Lang?s film, ?Metropolis.?

The younger Hayao Miyazaki, who is also a manga artist, would do the same. While at Toie Studio, he worked on the feature animé version of Robert Louis Stevenson?s ?Treasure Island.? Later he would re-imagine a similar story blended with a floating island from Jonathan Swift?s novel, ?Gulliver?s Travels,? to create ?Laputa: Castle in the Sky.?

The settings of Miyazaki?s stories are mostly influenced by European locations. His magical animals, Totoro and the Catbus, could easily be his versions of the Cheshire cat.

By not being tied down by telling only local stories and folklore, and by borrowing and adapting from world stories, which became a process of assimilating world culture, combining them with individual and local preoccupations, animé finally found itself accepted and assimilated by the world. For what is World Literature anyway but good stories that have found worldwide acceptance through time? And good stories know no borders.

S.B. Zulueta is lecturer-technologist of the Animation Department, School of Design and Media, Institute of Technical Education, College Central, Singapore.