Message Boards - Why Japan animation is better than American animation

From: spaceboi To: alt.fan.sailor-moon Subject: Re: Why US Animations is Better Than Japans Sent: 2/4/01 7:50PM > Thesis Statement > This is my thesis statement -- while American animation and Japanese animation > both have their virtues, the style of American animation, in general, has > a significant amount of higher quality. My thesis statement - American animation has its shinning moments, but it is limited in its constant portrayal of stereotypes, in its inability to go beyond the barriers and explore tougher issues. Japanese anime breaks the boundaries in language, story-telling and the overall look. > Where to Begin? Where to be Going? > To begin with, one of the major problems that has hindered American animation > is budget and time constraints. On the other hand, in Japan, anime has been > allowed to flourish all over. When it comes to animation, it seems that > Hollywood > simply does not take it seriously and would rather throw its millions into > "live action" films and TV shows. Not true. Look at how Disney films open. Look at how Dreamworks tries to do their own animated films. It's because not as many people are interested. But look at which medium of animation is growing in the United States? Digimon, Dragonball and Pokemon, all from Japan are big, because they have great animation, great story-telling (for kids), and marketable strategies. When you look at the animation on say Cartoon Network and Teletoon (which is all animation)...the superior ones are clearly the Japan ones, because the Japanse animators know how to tell a story both literally and visually. Americans, although you claim them to be the pioneers lag in animation...the animation is two dimensional and the emotion is two-dimensional. Through a wide range of conventions such as the "big-eyed expressions" or the "sweat drop coming from the side of the head" emotion is conveyed in an original and vivid manner which lacks in American animation. The great thing with American animation is that they are able to tell sweeping love stories well. The Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast was beautiful, but even Disney, as you say the main source of animation in North American, is bound and handicapped by their need to portray stereotypes...Japanese animation break those boundaries...we have homosexual characters, we have nudity...it is not only a feel good all in the family medium in Japan...it is marketable to the whole population and also to specific segments. Things such as South Park are even discouraged because parents say it's bad for kids, which is the main ideology of people in North America: if it's animated, it's aimed for kids...which is untrue in Japan. But it's not to say America has bad animation...it doesn't. We have the legendary and timeless Flinstones and we have the extremely funny The Simpsons...but it's just to say that American animation needs to push themselves further...and currently, well, Japan animation just rocks and is even setting the trend for American animation...you see its influence in the American comic book industry and its influence in American cartoon series. And as for quality and crap...if it's crap, it's crap...it's not only animators who face that challenge. If a sitcom ain't funny, no one will watch it...if an action movie is cheesy, people will not watch, if a movie is bad, critics will trash it...so I don't see what you mean by constraints...Japanese animators face a lot of pressure to produce great things to...it's that pressure and that motivation to produce something great that separates an anime from being a Sailormoon from being something ordinary...and it's the same thing Americans say, so I don't think your argument here is valid at all. And this patriotismic look of ours is what hinders nations from growing...if it just becomes, oh, they do it that way, then we're going to do it this way, then you're limiting yourself from growing. Look at the way Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon just blew North America away - because it was something different...it had the element of a North American action movie but told in an Asian perspective...every culture has something to learn from each other...and to say that you're gonna shut yourself out from one group is just well...i dont' know. i don't even know the real reason you wrote this..was it just to stir everyone up? well, i put in my two cents. spaceboi