(Un)Official TBA Movie Night thread

[rtil]

You note earlier how integral Japanese animation has been to the development of the medium, but only in recent years has anime crossed over from Japan into the western world (let alone anywhere else) whereas the Disney films of old have been crossing western and eastern borders alike since time immemorial. What fundamental characteristics of anime have crossed into western animation and helped it evolve, and at what point? I'd like to say it was the opposite, but with Japan's xenophobic and 'closed off' culture, I can't really see westernization affecting any facets of anime - but please correct me if I'm wrong

TLDR Basically I want to know how anime has influenced animation and helped it grow as a medium, as a whole, thanks

it's important to frame animation in the context of its short history compared to, say, the thousands of years of history of human art in general. consider that animation as a serious craft has only existed for a little over a century when the first animated short films began circulating during the advent of film with Winsor McCay's shorts in the 1910's. though it still took a few more decades for the animation industry to fully establish the foundations of their craft. basically, a lot of bad animation was produced trying to figure out how animation worked and what separated it from live action film. even Disney made a lot of clumsy looking animation in its early days. some of their feature films haven't aged well.

the 30's brought the rise of the cartoon. Fleischer Brothers, Terrytoons, Warner Brothers, MGM, Disney, Leon Schlesinger. by the time the 40's rolled around Disney had established its foothold as the dominant studio and the United States was the world capital of animation. the mid-20th century is considered the "golden age" of animation when you had Disney in its peak form with the Nine Old Men literally writing the rules of animation and creating some of Disney's best films for decades to come, Warner Bros working full-steam releasing new cartoons almost twice a month, including many timeless classics like "What's Opera, Doc?", "Bugsy and Mugsy" and "One Froggy Evening", often made to be shown before films all across America (something that Pixar tried to bring back and is somewhat successful with.)

American animation was so flourished and influential that when Japanese artists formed Toei their original goal was to become the "Disney of the east". When you look at Japanese animation from this era it's clear they were decades behind American schools of apprenticeship. but it didn't last very long.

unfortunately at the same time this was going on there was a perfect storm brewing that was eventually going to send American animation in a 20+year "dark age". they were as follows:

• The Red Scare and the fear of rising communism/mccarythism: many animators were accused of being communists during this time and lost their jobs. many studios folded and guilds fell apart due to fears of further collapse. the influence of animators in the entertainment industry began to whither. this led to
  
• animators no longer being in charge of production cycles. profit took priority over the love of the craft. and that led to
  
• "canned pickle" animation. this is a slightly borrowed term from animator Anne Joliffe documented in Jerry Beck's book Animation Art. Hannah Barbera had begun to mass produce cartoons in a factory-line type process known today as limited animation, a practice in what animator Anne Joliffe described fondly as akin to "bottling pickles". re-used backgrounds, walk cycles and animated sequences saved the studios a lot of money. think Flintstones or the Jetsons - how to make a cartoon as fast as possible with the least amount of money possible. by the 80's corporate interests had completely swallowed any creative spark that used to exist and most cartoons were made to sell toys or merchandise.
  
• lastly, and possibly most damaging - large parent-based lobbying groups had succeeded in bogging down the animation industry with censorship. again, Jerry Beck puts it best:

  "[the] triumph of various parent groups in their efforts to strip all of the fun from cartoons [had succeeded], essentially removing all slapstick action comic violence, injecting educational and pro-social messages into the narratives." Cartoons had been reduced to a "Saturday morning ghetto."

while the 90's saw a couple of decent Disney films and a revitalized cartoon studio environment, the scars from this era still remain. the Eisner era of Disney saw their 2D studio shuttered, and the output of cartoon studios in the United States  has never come close to recovering lost ground, and most of the animation is still outsourced to save money so the studios often don't even need animators. basically 3/4ths of the work is done overseas.

but while all this was happening Japanese animation had nowhere to go but up. by the 80's they had essentially caught up with and  in some ways even surpassed their American counterparts. Osamu Tezuka, Leiji Matsumoto, Rumiko Takahashi, Yoshiyoki Tomino, Shoji Kawamori, Hideako Anno, Hayao, Miyazaki.. these were the Walt Disney's, the Chuck Jones, the Richard Williams' of Japan, thriving in an era when American animation was essentially dying.

fast forward to today and things haven't changed a whole lot. while the anime industry has many problems of its own, an average of 30 anime are produced every season a year and animation in tv and film is produced for and sells bd's/tickets across all age groups in Japan. if you look at the sales charts on amazon or the box office numbers in Japan, there is always an anime series or anime film at or near the top.

compare that to America where there are maybe around a dozen series running simultaneously that are either 1. not produced for the purpose of selling a toy or game (Pokemon, BeyBlade, etc) or 2. not for toddlers/babies. most of them have been running for a very long time (Family Guy, American Dad, Simpsons, etc) and follow the same basic formula and simple style. new series are far and few between, and most are aimed at children. only recently have a few shows squeaked by with the intent of targeting a slightly older audience but only for a specific audience (Steven Universe). besides your alloted 1 Disney/Pixar film a year you have your scattered Wacky Talking Animal picture starring some celebrity along with the occasional Blue Sky or Dreamworks flick, most of which are forgettable.

even then, like i said before, if you are an aspiring animator living in the US, your hope of working at an animation studio that produces original animation is slim to none. we have no film board, we have no country-wide animator or even artists union, and oligarchical capitalism and a "think of the children" mentality has reduced the American animation industry into a shell of its former self.

you have studios like Pixar, Dreamworks and BlueSky, and they're great, but you only see a movie come out of them once every other year if even that. i think the closest thing to what represents a classic American studio like the one you are thinking is Laika, and their films often go unappreciated and take even longer to produce.

anyway i think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that Disney films have been crossing borders since "time immemorial" when it's really more like 80 years. and while Disney is still hugely popular in Japan and the Japanese animation industry spawned off the inspiration of American animation, "kawaii culture" and anime is very prominent in American art now. anime has most definitely influenced the style and stories of many cartoons, even the genres themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDoWhMt2_gs

the premise of this entire cartoon series is a love letter to the anime genre of magical girl, especially Sailor Moon, which many American girls grew up watching in the 90's. ironically it's produced by Disney.

anime-influenced cartoon series have been popping up for over a decade now, including but not limited to Teen Titans, Avatar The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, HiHi Puffy AmiYumi (which was about a Jpop group), Megas XLR and Code Lyoko.

Disney is even making movies specifically targeted at having appeal to Japanese audiences (Frozen, Big Hero Six).

it's getting to the point now where western animators are attempting to replicate the sakuga style of Japanese animators because the art has almost completely been lost in the era of Adventure Time-y, noodle-limbed pose-to-pose animation that ignores the principles of animation and anatomy in general.

it's basically a 100% role reversal from the 1950's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DTPi0q15-M

you'd be hard-pressed to find any animation of this quality coming out of the states. and these types of videos are compiled on a monthly basis by animation enthusiasts.

some other countries like France and the UK are bastions for animation but i don't think any other country comes close to Japan's output right now (although France is all about quality over quantity) and i'd say it's been that way for a good 20-30 years.

Japan certainly has America to thank for that initial spark, but they took it and ran with it and never looked back. meanwhile we're still trying to pick up the pieces from last century.

[d-floe]

Wow that was super informative

[rtil]

there's a lot more to the story than that but i tried to keep it as short as possible. there's entire books on certain eras of animation, mostly the golden age. American animation history is pretty well documented. i'm not so sure about Japanese animation though. their knowledge is mostly passed down through apprenticeship, something that doesn't really exist anymore here.

[slack]

i did not know nearly all of that, thanks for the information

at the risk of pushing this thread even further off-topic, i've really only seen one anime, and i quite enjoyed it (Cowboy Bebop), and i'm not sure where to go from there

[michaell]

also on a serious note i cant name a single reason why animation or art is important, from an utilitarian point of view at least

the only aspect of life where i could say that art may be quite crucial would be probably emotional/psychological, and that's still not necessarily the case

because drawing, writing or something may for example be a way to vent certain emotions, especially the negative ones. as to why i made stories and drew, well i was never good at it but i enjoyed it and making something worthwhile was quite satisfactory, at least in my book, because all i make - i make for myself, nobody else, unless they share some odd interests i have. so to summarise, i could label this as self fulfillment.

still, it pales when compared to other things

my real life friend who is studying quantative economics (while im doing finance and accounting), well i asked him if he was good at drawing. he said "i dont know, because drawing is so trivial i never bothered to try" - i dont agree with him, because my feeble ability to draw is something i always perceived as an asset, but thats just the emotional point of view. if it means nothing to him, my views are untenable because its all subjective

its like economics, there are consumer preferences

its subjectively liking, preferring or detesting something - the "objective" or nominal value would be the price but that does not have to correspond our tastes

so whats the objective value of art?

i see none

[Bamyasi]

so whats the objective value of art?

i see none

Yeah there isn't any which is why you and rtil can have this discussion in the first place.

[crackers]

yeah that was really insightful - there's always the illusion that companies like pixar and the like are much bigger than they actually are, just due to the sheer pressure they exert on the animation world. i just looked up now how many people they actually staff as animators, and it's surprisingly low!

thank you for that

[rtil]

also on a serious note i cant name a single reason why animation or art is important, from an utilitarian point of view at least

the only aspect of life where i could say that art may be quite crucial would be probably emotional/psychological, and that's still not necessarily the case

from a utilitarian point of view there are many things humans create or spend their time with that would be considered trivial. but what does that have to do with anything? humanity isn't robotic, people crave experiences beyond the biologically routine. art has existed before a known spoken or written language. a work of art is always at least one thing - a unique and universally understood form of human expression. it transcends language, borders and time - from prehistoric cave paintings to the marble and stone monuments of the ancients, hellish triptychs of the middle ages, the peak of the masters of the renaissance all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum with the abandonment of tradition in the modern art movement.

every culture and civilization has its own rich history of art and every epoch speaks to the era it belongs to. would you say that humanity has learned nothing of value from the works of art it has left behind? i don't see how art doesn't speak to humanity on multiple levels because it is inherently human.

perhaps its importance is less apparent to us now that we live in the era of mass production and the unending expanse of digital technology where anyone with access to a computer has unlimited canvas and color to work with. there is more value and care in the work on a canvas, something that can never be reproduced again. it's part of why i think it's important for artists to learn to work with traditional mediums first. more or less, every mark you make is permanent, so it helps to instill discipline in value with every stroke you make. digital artists are spoiled by the "magic" of undo. but i'm starting to get off topic.

because drawing, writing or something may for example be a way to vent certain emotions, especially the negative ones. as to why i made stories and drew, well i was never good at it but i enjoyed it and making something worthwhile was quite satisfactory, at least in my book, because all i make - i make for myself, nobody else, unless they share some odd interests i have. so to summarise, i could label this as self fulfillment.

i personally believe that every artist should first and foremost be working for themselves. because art is a craft and a labor, if you don't enjoy doing it, why continue down that path? so in this respect it is justified to be selfish. but you can also want to tell a story, get some kind of emotional reaction from people or feel validated. we want other people to see our work for many reasons. in some way it is announcing that you exist and that you created something. in the same way a manufacturer would want someone to use their product or a coder would want someone to use their software, i don't see art very differently.

my real life friend who is studying quantative economics (while im doing finance and accounting), well i asked him if he was good at drawing. he said "i dont know, because drawing is so trivial i never bothered to try" - i dont agree with him, because my feeble ability to draw is something i always perceived as an asset, but thats just the emotional point of view. if it means nothing to him, my views are untenable because its all subjective

its like economics, there are consumer preferences

its subjectively liking, preferring or detesting something - the "objective" or nominal value would be the price but that does not have to correspond our tastes

so whats the objective value of art?

i see none

it depends on what you mean by value. in terms of price, the objective value of art is what one person paid for it. if someone paid $50 million asking for a splotch of paint on a canvas, that is what it is worth. if someone said it was the best painting ever made and another said it was the worst, they are both objectively wrong, because the individual value of a work of art is subjective. on the other hand, if someone says something they created is art then it is art, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. so the question "what is art?" is not really up for debate.

but the historical, societal and cultural importance of art is objectively valuable. remove it from human history and we are no longer human. art is a cornerstone of what it is to be human. the clothes we wear, the architecture and design of the buildings we live and work in, the monuments we build and carve or paint into them, the motifs and patterns that we attach to everyday things. this is a big part of what separates and identifies cultures. whether someone finds it trivial or not doesn't change the significance these types of artistic expression have. you can live your life blissfully ignorant of the art that surrounds you everyday, but it's still a part of your world and is part of a collective marker bigger than most individual people will leave behind.

as far as animation goes, like i said before it's a relatively new form of artistic expression in the scale of human history, but it has already had a significant impact on humanity. while we traditionally think of cartoons and animated films as escapist forms of entertainment designed to make us forget about our troubles and laugh (which is valuable in its own right), there are so many other animated pieces that challenge this notion and use their craft to tell much more important and complex stories.

i've always held the belief that animation is the most powerful form of visual medium because it begins with nothing and ends where the human imagination has its limits. it doesn't have the constraints of reality or the physical. its limitations are arbitrary and must be imposed by the creator. and it (usually) requires the talents of many and humans tend to excel when they work together on something rather than alone. rarely is this taken advantage of, but when it is the results are pushing the boundaries of human artistic expression. films like Paprika, The Triplets of Belleville and Spirited Away would be good examples.

[rtil]

yeah that was really insightful - there's always the illusion that companies like pixar and the like are much bigger than they actually are, just due to the sheer pressure they exert on the animation world. i just looked up now how many people they actually staff as animators, and it's surprisingly low!

thank you for that

there's a lot of Pixar staff that don't even work on the movies (marketing, finance, catering, models, etc). and yeah it's kind of startling to see how few people work on animated films in comparison to live action ones, it's even smaller in Japan. to top it off your average animator is working 10-12 hour days on salary with pretty insane deadlines. during Disney's 2D days people didn't mind because they got paid time and a half to do so. nowadays the hours have stayed but the pay hasn't really scaled with cost of living.

a big reason why is because the more animators you bring on the harder it is to keep things stylistically consistent. even for feature films it's a bit of a nightmare because you had around a dozen "key animators" who were the ones drawing the main poses for certain scenes, then the animators beneath them would be trained to clean up their frames and do the grunt work. but there were little nuances between the key animators on the overall style of the film.

in 3D  films it's not as bad but sometimes quality of animation and animation style can change. sometimes you might notice a really well animated scene followed by a kinda bad one.

[Gladius]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc

bampin with a rather gewd vid

[Bamyasi]

It's not like a disagree with the guy in the video but he unsurprisingly failed to answer the question.

Most modern art is bad exclusively to piss off petty bourgeois blowhards like him. As long as the establishment keeps getting outraged at it, entrepreneurs are going to keep making it, and the rich will keep buying it.

[Bamyasi]

So is this happening again.

[Binary_2]

Can we watch the first Macross movie?

[Bamyasi]

I'm willing to host the next one if Proto picks the movies for the poll.

[soup]

I'll turn up if the film is starship troopers. I will not turn up if the film is starship troopers 2 (hero of the federation), starship troopers 3 (marauder) however the starship troopers inspired anime looks pretty decent

[crackers]

my favourite starship troopers film was actually number 2. Shed no tear for me, my glory lives on forever.

[ProtoChaud]

I'm willing to host the next one if Proto picks the movies for the poll.

Looks like the only serious suggestions were:

Starship Troopers
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Redline (you'll have to hard bake the subs in)

add on Escape From New York and we're good.

[Bamyasi]

There was also Jin-Roh, Ip Man, Big Trouble in Little China, Chinatown, Shaolin Soccer, and Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love.

To align with your rule we could poll between Starship Troopers, Fear and Loathing, Big Trouble in Little China/Chinatown (depending on if crackers was serious), and Escape from New York and save the Asian ones for next time. Does that seem fair?

If you delete the original poll you can add a new one without having to start a new thread.

[ProtoChaud]

There was also Jin-Roh, Ip Man, Big Trouble in Little China, Chinatown, Shaolin Soccer, and Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love.

To align with your rule we could poll between Starship Troopers, Fear and Loathing, Big Trouble in Little China/Chinatown (depending on if crackers was serious), and Escape from New York and save the Asian ones for next time. Does that seem fair?

If you delete the original poll you can add a new one without having to start a new thread.

Ah, nice. And yeah I'll save the Asian ones for next time.

[SrsSam77]

I've never seen fear and loathing (tho I've read the book) but I knew in my heart shaolin soccer was the right choice.

Make chinese comedies great again