Japanimation (Laws of Japanese Animation) – Part 1

22 July 2004 // Featured

Skwigly

Animation Magazine

The Japanese animation concepts can be defined as not academic. Their rules discard completely the real models of gravity, sound, matter and society. If you are an animation student, you will certainly love this article.

Before we start, lets understand the difference between anime and manga. The word anime is used to define Japanese cartoons, or with characteristics of Japanese animation. The word manga, means involuntary drawing and can refer to any kind of illustrated story. Probably, they call manga to anime due to the press Manga Entertainment, who had great successes, with their animations and cartoons.

We see that, in Japan, the art of telling histories by drawings started in the 12th century and took the current form of cartoons with illustrations and texts in balloons, only at the end of the 19th century, with the influence of American magazines. Then, the American style was adapted to the Japanese style, which kept the design and characteristics of characters. The great pioneer of this adaptation was Osamu Tezuka who united, after Second World War, mangas with animation techniques and cinematic framing. In his first history, “The Island of the New Treasure”, from 1947, Osamu used lots of pictures and pages to show the actions and characters expressions, which in another moment would have been exposed in only one picture. The result was a sale record of 400 thousand copies. Today, the Japanese market sells about 2 billion mangas of different styles.

The numbers certainly impress. There are more than 270 titles produced for several ages and tastes that are divided into 5 great categories: shonen, shojo, seinen, redisu, seijin (erotic). The mangas are generally cheap and printed in black and white. It can be weekly, monthly, bimonthly, half-yearly or annual. The themes include ecology, religion, fiction, sports, government tactical, pornographic and mostly of the everyday Japanese life.

Before start an anime project you have to know the cost involved. A standard production always uses 24 frames per second and twice colours used by Disney, for animation and backgrounds. That seems to be a high price for 2D drawings in acetate, but it certainly will be cheapened with computational 3D models. For the time being, the price is still very high, however the productions do not stop growing. Actually, the market keeps live because the commerce of the manga impels the animation industry whenever a story does success. Just after, the anime does success, the industry starts to produce toys, cloakrooms, games and etc.

Only for comparison effect, the company Sunrise, who produce animes and products, had an annual revenue, three times superior to the Walt Disney Pictures with just five anime. That makes us think about the importance of the toys industry for cartoons and animations market.

Lets go back to concepts and describe initially 13 of the 32 rules that anime or manga should contain:

1. The laws of the physics are not applicable.
2. Objects and characters can be attracted by different forces of gravity and this force can be different at any time.
3. The acceleration can overcome the human body resistance, going from 0 to 100 Gravities and vice-versa in less than 1 second.
4. The sounds in the space are higher. I know that the sound depends on the air, but in anime the air muddles the propagation of sounds and, because of it, in the space the explosions are higher.
5. The bigger the vehicle, the fastest it moves. Even though it weighs 100 tons, the power will always be rewarding.
6. Time is not constant. The time always stops when a hero accomplishes an important action. The time decreases when the scene has love and increases when there are fights.
7. Both the villain and hero die.
8. The villains take too long to die. When they die, they take too long to believe that they are dead.
9. Scene with great actions are divided into several static frames with black backgrounds and shining white lights.
10. Important scenes are seen at least 3 times in different angles.
11. Everything explodes. Before the explosion, some protuberances arise in the surface of the object.
12. In large cities or places with lots of people, there is a higher probability of explosion.
13. Everything emits light and, whenever a great wound occurs a new light emerges from it.

These concepts were based on Laws of Japanese Animation compiled by Ryan Shellito and Darrin Bright. As we can see, the rules and concepts follow the first rule of Walt Disney, in other words, always exaggerate. The results are animations with strong emotions and impressive images.

In the next article, we will continue with the rules of anime, describing new points of this rich market. We will also describe the concepts and themes that influenced the industry of games and films, such as Matrix.

PART 2 – https://www.skwigly.co.uk/japanimation-laws-of-japanese-animation-part-2/