A Lesson that Ought to be Learned by American Animators

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2000)

Don't get me wrong, I did really enjoy this film, but it is also a good example of why I think American animation is far inferior to Japanese animation. And I am talking solely about the animation (i.e., character design, movement, and scenery), not the story complexity. There is no doubt that the stories of Japanese animated films are more complex than those of American animated films. The Iron Giant's story is basically taken straight from E.T.
Anyhow, watch how mannered the designs of the characters' faces are in this film. Check out how large Hogarth's ears are. And check out how exaggerated the characters' movements are. This becomes staggeringly unrealistic very quickly. It begins to look, well, just plain goofy. People don't really look like this. They don't make these sorts of expressions.
People always complain about the eye size of Japanese anime characters. Their eyes are big for a simple reason which was stated in ancient Rome by the neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus: the eyes are the windows of the soul. The sculptors of the later Roman Empire always made the eyes on statues enormous, just like the Japanese animators do. Most human expression comes from the eyes, so Japanese animators made the eyes on their characters bigger.
What most critics of the Japanese anime eye-size have failed to notice is how large the American animators have made the eyes on their characters. The Americans are obviously learning something from the Japanese. Disney animators have said that there is not a work day that goes by where they do not watch parts of films by Hayao Miyazaki. These films have influenced them greatly. But what American animators have missed in the Japanese animation is that the other pieces of their characters' faces are extremely downplayed. Their mouths, ears, and nose are all very small. Humans express much less in these areas of their faces than the characters of American animated films. This over-exaggeration has occurred in all Disney movies after The Little Mermaid, The Iron Giant, The Road to El Dorado, and I can even see that this is a problem in the upcoming animated flick Titan A.E. It is a big problem, and it must be solved.
As for the film itself, after I got around those technicalities, I was quite touched. I liked the anti-violence theme a lot. I think it is a very good film for children. I give it an 8/10.