From: emru@CAM.ORG (Emru Townsend)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.animation,rec.arts.anime
Subject: Anime, and He May Not
Date: 3 Sep 92 22:33:03 GMT
Organization: Communications Accessibles Montreal, Quebec Canada

This is the aforementioned article on Japanese animation by Marc Elias.
it'll be appearing in FPS #3, which should be out in about four weeks.
Any replies I get may end up printed in the magazine's lettercol, so if
you definitely don't want your comments printed, please let me know.
 

Anime, And He May Not (or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And
Love My Big Purple Battle Suit)
 
by Marc Elias
 

Recently, I was given an assignment for this magazine, and, well,
honest-to-God, I meant to do it. I really did. I wanted to
produce the most even-handed, thoughtful and entertaining review
fps had ever printed. But I got distracted. When my editor
noticed that I was neglecting the action of the Japanese animated
video I was supposed to be critiquing in favor of turning around
and sneering at everyone else in the room, he peeked over my
shoulder at what I had scrawled, and, in the manner of a true
journalist, immediately saw a golden opportunity to annoy people.
 
Naturally, his primary impulse, like mine, was to expose some of
the more embarrassing, irritating and regressive aspects of
anime, an art form for which we have enough respect and love to
want to criticize it in a healthy, constructive way... But mostly
he wanted to annoy people, which often has the same effect, and
is a lot more fun. So, with his blessing, I have a few points to
make--maybe a few bones to pick--about the world of Japanese
animation. Let's run a few up the flagpole and see who jumps into
the head of a twenty-storey robot (that they don't know how to
drive) and righteously tries to attack them.
 
Japanese animation is not the seamless, perfect artifact that its
most ardent fans make it out to be. It has infuriating problems.
In fact, to the more moderate animation enthusiast, the human
cost of these problems is not as evident in the medium itself as
it is in its most visible disciples, the anime fanatics. I feel
that the blindest among them, either with good intentions or with
malice aforethought, tend to make what is admirable about anime
very tacky, and what is unfortunate about anime downright
unpleasant. Theirs is the crime, or the curse, of being
selectively diplomatic, which often boils down to accepting and
defending a volume of really bad ideas on the strength of the far
fewer number of good ones.
 
The fanatic both helps and hinders whatever he or she is
fanatical about. That goes for religions, or hockey teams, or
identity politics, or forms of art. In the case of anime, slavish
devotion to the product and what it represents means, in the
simplest terms, that someone will keep making the stuff, which is
good for everyone, because when anime is good, it is very good.
But what the stereotypical extremist (read: big fan) demands and
accepts (one would like to say `condones') determines both the
intention, the content and the ultimate effect of what is
produced. There are a lot of bad ideas in anime, and most of its
true partisans don't do anything about it. The occasional
maverick genius will always do what he or she wants to, and it
will be so full of good ideas that it becomes an excuse for a
torrent of subsequent mediocrity and regressiveness from the rest
of the genre.
 
This is true of every form of expression. But in anime, I find
the mediocrity easier to spot, because it doesn't seem to aspire
to more, and consequently, neither do its fans. The fanatic, with
his or her strength and influence, is missing out on the chance
to make the style they love truly a world leader within its
mandate, instead of the unstable, borderline silly set of
commercials that too much of it is today.
 
But let me say this now, for the record: I like Japanese
animation. I do. Like my friend and editor Emru, I like the
respect with which an entire culture accords animation, an art
form that I love; an art form that, on the whole, my culture
treats very roughly. In North America, most people refuse to
understand what you're talking about until you say "cartoon", and
then they proceed to get the wrong idea at a furious pace, with
an intensity that leaves the animation lover spent, and primed
for a good long lie-down. The fact that we market the stuff
mostly for children is not a problem; children used to have a
whole lot of imagination, and the secret was safe with them. But
now those children have grown up, or are successfully faking it,
and are feeling the need for the kind of freedom of imagination
that animation gave them as children. It's a relentlessly happy
form of art, and a genuine one, as most desultory television
watchers would gladly like to announce to those responsible for
90% of our animation. The bottom line about the art form is its
freedom; the freedom to add movement and timing to drawings, the
freedom to make absolutely anything you can force your hands to
draw come alive, the freedom to make things that aren't real feel
real, and the freedom to make things that can't possibly be real
feel more real than everything else you see every day.
 
It is a powerful way to show people things they might never see
otherwise. Americans like Disney, Bluth, Bakshi, Avery and Jones
have set lofty standards for their countrymen that are
unfortunately rarely equalled. The Japanese animators, on the
other hand, have made putting work and style into their animation
almost a national pastime. The Japanese have the best timing, the
best draughtsmen, the best scope and the best support system in
the world of animation. The North Americans may be funnier, the
Eastern Europeans may be more socially conscious, the Italians
may be more authentically lascivious. The Japanese are definitely
the loudest, and the brightest, and in the big picture, they take
what they do very seriously indeed, which in and of itself, is
not only necessary, but good.
 
However, anime fanatics tend to take things too seriously. And as
a consequence, some anime producers are offered the leisure of
taking things less seriously than they should. For example,
anime, and the manga comic style that inspired it, has a network
of intricate templates, traditions and rules that are adhered to
more or less faithfully by every animator in Japan who isn't
working for an American producer, and most of those who are. Some
of these are tremendous ideas that can be adapted again and
again. Some of these are good ideas that have been used again and
again, until you are led to wonder what was so good about them
anyway. Some of them are just plain shoddy judgement, and insults
to the imagination, especially when judged against the best of
the genre. Again, this is true of every way of life that relies
on imagination to touch human emotions. But anime has a habit of
allowing some of its weakest notions to become its standard
bearers all over the world, largely because the genre's consumers
don't put enough thought into what they accept, and consequently
the producers only have to work half as hard to satisfy their
demands.
 
Even newcomers will recognize the most obvious characteristics of
anime. A simplified action and fewer re-drawings, coupled with an
impeccable timing, results in faster-paced but potentially crude
movement. At its best, it is nothing less than thrilling. This
stuff can make twelve cels a second look like Disney. At its
worst, it looks unconvincing and cheap. A uniform character
design anthropomorphizes people into a bizarre pseudo-humanity in
which individuality is replaced with big eyes, perky noses, long
legs, small waists, big breasts, strong jaws and heart-shaped
faces, depending on whether the character is man-boy or
woman-girl. As a design trick, it was once an inspired
stylization, but it is getting tired, very tired. As it shows no
sign of becoming extinct, it looks like we will just have to
accept it, and move on.
 
Another anime staple is the incredibly complicated machine. One
could go on for pages about why the Japanese excel at drawing,
almost drafting machinery, but suffice it to say here that no
culture does it better. Regardless of whether the devices are of
this world or of another, Japanese animators don't even flinch at
putting them through the most amazing stunts, perspectives and
explosions. The results are often astounding. And yet, as we have
seen, they refuse to individualize the acting of their
characters, and character animation by definition is nothing less
than acting. The Japanese are no less human than North Americans,
in some cases, probably more so; why won't they breathe life into
the majority of their people?
 
An example of a high-visibility anime product that seems to have
had little or no big-picture thought given to it is a series
called BUBBLEGUM CRISIS. As outlined in the first issue of this
'zine (by the outrageously diplomatic Emru Townsend), BGC takes
place in Mega-Tokyo during the first half of the 21st Century. It
follows the adventures of the Knight Sabers, four adorable but
dangerous vigilante women, in their quest to work out their
dysfunctional childhoods on anyone in Mega-Tokyo who misbehaves.
By day, Priss is a nightclub singer. Celia runs a lingerie shop.
Nene is an officer in the AD Police, Mega-Tokyo's Keystone Kops.
Linna would like to be a nightclub singer, but she can't sing.
Still, she remains the cheerful one. When danger strikes, they
all put on big robot battle suits and fight like well-trained,
bloodthirsty mercenaries. This, in the world of anime, is a
perfectly reasonable concept.
 
Perhaps the work doesn't deserve such a facetious reading,
especially for people who haven't seen it. But I've seen it. That
was the review that this article was supposed to be. The only
meaningful conclusions I could come up with about BUBBLEGUM
CRISIS was that it was bursting at the seams with bad ideas, all
seen through to their logical, inevitable conclusions. I would
argue with those who call it stylish, because I've seen that
style before, and it didn't do much for me the first time around.
Style as substance requires the hand of a master. The master
stylist must instinctively know which aspects of the style he or
she is relating are the most important, the most meaningful, and
exploit them. Not, as in BUBBLEGUM CRISIS, occasionally sneak one
in during a downtime in the preposterousness. What style there is
in BUBBLEGUM CRISIS is vastly overshadowed by cheap, exploitative
writing. Very sad. But what made the series this way?
 
Stereotypes abound in every art form that relies in any way on
storytelling. They save time and effort. If, for example, you
want to tell a story about two brothers, rivals since birth, who
eventually work things out, you don't want to waste the time you
have to put into solving the problem into setting the problem up.
A few time-honored (time-worn?) tricks, and the audience is
ready. Use established ideas to set up your original ones. That's
the idea. But anime has a desperate relationship to stereotypes
that gives interested observers plenty of sources from which to
track the growth of inexcusably bad ideas.
 
For example, women are so poorly treated in anime that it is next
to impossible to nail down the main stereotype. Is it the moll
who, despite being the girlfriend of the lantern-jawed hero,
isn't officially part of the gang, but can karate kick like
nobody's business (once someone unties her), and whose main
function seems to be decolletage and occasionally getting
kidnapped? Or the teenager who takes a lot of showers with her
blonde or redhead but otherwise identically buxom friends at the
space boarding school, and then unleashes savage vengeance upon
people after school? Is it the spunky tomboy fighter pilot, the
zipper of her flight suit constantly under incredible strain from
her massive breasts, who is otherwise just like the guys except
she can't whip it out and stand at the urinals with them? The
killer kid sister? The killer rock singer? The lingerie-selling
vigilante leader?
 
Many other necessary story elements become stereotypes as well.
Villains gleefully stereotype one another without asking
permission, and then ritually embark on vast world-domination
schemes. Entire cultures are routinely threatened by Some
Sinister Something, forcing their best and brightest to band
together in big machines and fight for their helpless kid
sisters. Boyfriends and girlfriends are interrupted from the
day-to-day business of atomic flirting by violent death from the
skies, or maybe it's violent death on fast motorcycles. Large,
faceless corporations stocked with limitless greedheads exert
fierce control over people for the sake of doing so. Convenient
Bad Guy Syndrome. If you close your eyes for too long, maybe to,
oh, I don't know, rub them in a gesture of resignation, the
threat might suddenly change, especially if the film has no
subtitles, but I guarantee that in most cases you'll be able to
get right back into it after a quick stereotype-check.
 
Vengeance is big with anime writers, ostensibly because they need
reasons for people to suddenly start shooting at each other.
Conquering the world is big, usually to get back at someone,
though. Megalomania, repression, pride... Heroes are
well-respected, both as fighters and lovers, and they have the
best clothes and the best gadgets. And at this point, I begin to
suspect the pervasive influence of a certain Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang
Bang. The Japanese are crazy for James Bond, an affection I am
completely powerless to explain, but in any case, it seems like
they've lifted a good 90% of his plots, villains, gadgets and
spy-babes for their animated stories. Naturally, most of them
take place in space and all that, but otherwise, it's pure 007.
Any good ideas 007 might have had were better left with him,
where someone could appreciate them. BUBBLEGUM CRISIS' good
original ideas could be carried around in one of those touristy
waist-wallets. In anime, this situation seems to be endemic.
 
In fact, it seems that the same disease that has affected the
motion-picture industry has infected the world of anime. Bad
writing. Artless, brainless, flashy, water-treading formula. If
we stay within the traditional genres of anime (we're not even
going to touch anime porno. No one's been able to prove that sex
is a bad idea yet), this is the same disease that enables one of
the biggest movie studios in the States to take a superb body of
imagination called ALIEN and completely rape and disrespect it to
make a thoroughly unnecessary sequel. Or how about the screenplay
fiasco called COOL WORLD? BATMAN RETURNS? Almost every other film
in that genre for as long as we can remember?
 
These may not be highbrow films, but in theory they are not
intrinsically bad ideas. They had promise. They had the potential
to reach a slightly patronized, if not alienated audience, a
group of people with boundless imaginations, who love fantasy and
speculation, but have a tendency to accept easily understood
stereotypes in favor of true emotional experience. Having
appealed to their tastes, the vehicle can relate some enormous
and important concepts. To the rest of the world, they could have
demonstrated some stellar imagination to people with uninformed
and narrow value judgements about what can be proudly called art.
Instead, they were badly written, telling people nothing, and
were allowed to be made anyway, alienating everyone who
appreciates imagination. It seems like that's what can happen to
our good ideas, if we don't take them seriously enough.
 
In my view, it is up to the fans, the partisans, the experts, the
people who know and love anime, who spend their money on it so
that it can flourish; it is up to these people to politely ask
those with the energy and talent to produce the animation to
please, even if it costs more and takes longer, please hire
someone who can write coherent, imaginative meaningful ideas for
their animators to bring to life. It is up to the fans to support
the anime projects with genuine thought and sophistication to
them, and to openly ignore those that persist in insulting their
intelligence. If, instead of taking what they are offered and
pronouncing it good simply because it is what they've been
offered, the people who love anime ask for more, then the entire
world would be forced to recognize and respect anime as an art
form worth the fanatical pride of its fans.


===========================================================================
Emru Townsend             | Lucy: Do you think anybody ever really changes?
Fido: 1:167/133           | Linus: I've changed a lot in the last year.
emru@cam.org  BIX: switch | Lucy: I meant for the better.
===========================================================================