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Neo-Tokyo Is About To Explode:
The Fine Art of Animé
David Allen Wade
December 2002
As the medium of animation grows, its worldwide recognition
and independence as a Fine Art form is continually validated.
Throughout areas of the world (Canada, England, Eastern
Europe, etc.), animation is recognized as a unique part
of each culture's heritage. Even in the United States,
one can easily trace the lineage of animation masters
back in time from Walt Disney to Winsor McKay. However,
a discrepancy exists in this "worldly view."
The Perception of Animé
Japanese animation since the 1970's has,
at least in the American Fine Arts forum, been met with
the same ridicule as a Walt Disney Company animation.
That is, Japanese animation, or animé (from the
French word for animation), has attained an undue aura
of mediocrity in the eyes of the American masses. While
a counter-culture following of animé has persisted,
its popularity has not expanded in previous decades
beyond its sub- pop culture status. One could easily
find public references to animé as adolescent-targeted,
limited animation. One could even go so far as to discount
animé from the Fine Art realm on the basis of
its commerciality, citing that as a point of compromise.
This perception could be largely attributed to the commercialization
of many Japanese works, as well as the general shift
of a Post-World War II Japanese culture towards consumerism.
The American perception of animé
as generally "something less than artful"
could also be a result of its first somewhat successful
introduction to the U.S. public. "Robotech,"
a 1970's Japanese television series directed by Ishiguro
Noboru, was introduced to the U.S. in the early 1980's.
It was, however, severely compromised in its visual
aesthetics and dialogue when adapted for American television.
These compromises erupted when Carl Macek (working for
the international distributor Harmony Gold) rescripted
the collective episodes for English dialogue and re-edited
them to accommodate Broadcast Standards and Practices
regulations at NBC. As Maureen Furniss explains:
The reason violence seems to receive
more emphasis in the dubbed episodes, despite the
fact that extremely violent actions were removed,
is perhaps that 'balancing' content also was largely
cut from the adaptive work… The series were linked
together as an action adventure, so relatively violent
activities dominate the adapted storyline.1
With a re-edited storyline that emphasized
violence and eliminated "extraneous" material,
the introduction of "Robotech," and Japanese
animation, to the U. S. could be seen as nothing less
than skewed. While Robotech's introduction of Japanese
television to America was not entirely successful (running
for just over a year), Japanese animated television
programming continues to be adapted for the American
market, even in recent times.
The modern American animé consumer
has a wide variety of media to choose from. Japanese
animation is available on television, VHS and DVD, in
the cinema, on console and arcade games, and even on
the internet. While much of what is marketed to the
American (and Japanese) public is toy-based, children's
morning television programming (specifically Pokémon,
Power Rangers, et al), there does exist a portion of
animé that is evolved, developed, well constructed,
and significant. Unfortunately, this significant, or
"artful," animé is overwhelmed by an
overexposed mountain of mediocre "cartoons"
that only stand to promote the misconception that animation
is only for children.
For the purposes of this analysis, a review
of artful animé in the cinematic realm could
provide an accurate reflection of the potential of animé
as a whole. "Jin-Roh," "Princess Mononoke,"
"Ghost in the Shell," and "Akira"
are a few cinematic works that combine a mastery of
narrative and metaphor with a visual sophistication
and beauty. Through an examination of some of these
films and television series, one could conclude that
Japanese animation has been misrepresented in the American
culture, contains its own visual language and metaphorical
symbolism, and parallels the Fine Art work of animation
in other cultures as well as work in the cinematic realm.
The History of Animé
As previously mentioned, "Robotech"
was the first notably successful animé series
exposed to the American public. The series, created
in the late 1970's, first ran in syndication in 1985
with its pilot airing in 1984. This, by no means, was
the start of animé in Japan or America. Japanese
animation, in large part, is based off of its printed
counterpart, manga (or comic books). Manga follows a
tradition of Japanese illustrative aesthetic that dates
back to the Edo period of Japanese history (1576 to
1868), when illustrations and caricatures were more
utilitarian and educational.
Japan's first animated series was Osamu
Tezuka's "Astro Boy," which began airing on
Japanese television in 1963 and made a brief appearance
on American television in 1964. Adapted from a popular
manga, "Astro Boy" was based as children's
programming and introduced audiences to the notion of
a humanistic android living within a "normal"
world. Both "Astro Boy" and "Kimba the
White Lion" were not marketed as Japanese animations
to American audiences when initially introduced, as
it was not considered a selling point.2
"Kimba the White Lion," also
under the heading of children's programming, premiered
in Japan in 1964 and later in America in 1966. This
creation of Tezuka, who publicly admired Disney animations,
is thought to be the conscious or subconscious basis
for the 1994 Disney Co. animation "The Lion King."
Shifting to the 1970's, around the same
time as "Robotech" there appeared a popular
animé television series entitled "Space
Battleship Yamato" or "Star Blazers"
as it appeared in America in the 1980's. Created by
Matsumoto Leiji, the series revolved around a post-apocalyptic
spaceship that was built from a resurrected battleship,
referring to the World War II battleship Yamato. In
Japan, this series peaked with the highly anticipated
cinematic adaptation in 1973.
The next notable Japanese animation culminated
in 1988. Otomo Katsuhiro's "Akira," appearing
outside of Japan in 1990, quickly became the "poster-child"
for excellence in animé, growing in popularity
in Japan and globally.3 A technical
achievement in its time, "Akira" was also
based off of a long-running manga series. The film could
best be encapsulated as:
… [It] became both a critical and
cult hit and in many ways can be seen as the film
that started the animé boom in the West. The
films adult themes of dystopia and apocalypse and
its superbly detailed, viscerally exciting animated
style amazed Western audiences.4
In 1995, the breakthrough film directed
by Mamaru Oshii, "Ghost in the Shell," was
released in Japanese cinema. While not as popular in
Japan as "Akira," "Princess Mononoke,"
and other contemporary Japanese animations, it combines
a philosophically sophisticated storyline with technically
sophisticated computer animation that makes it a cult
classic in the U.S. Oshii, a relatively young director
at the time, based the film off of a manga of a similar
title.
In 1997, "Princess Mononoke,"
directed by animé veteran Hayao Miyazaki, was
a conglomerate of style and concept. Incorporating the
traditional cel animation and mixed media backgrounds
with computer graphics animation effects, this zenith
of Miyazki's career is a narrative of "industry
versus nature" set in feudal Japan. The film confronts
spiritual loss, cultural dissonance, and environmental
apocalypse that calls into question a traditional, historical
Japanese identity.5
Now that a brief history of animé
work has been established, it should be noted exactly
how important Japanese animation is to its culture.
This consideration is paramount to understanding the
works themselves and is an important element in establishing
associations between the culture and the works. In the
late 1980's around forty percent of the feature length
films produced in Japan were animated. In the 1990's
that number rose to over fifty percent. One year after
the release of "Akira," the movie surpassed
"Return of the Jedi" to become the highest
grossing film in Japan. Later, following the release
of "Princess Mononoke," that film broke previous
records to become the highest grossing, only to eventually
be overtaken by "Titanic." As the statistics
suggest, animé films are as culturally significant
(if not more significant) than their live-action counterparts
in Japan. This phenomenon could be explained through
a breakdown of the established visual language of contemporary
Japanese animation.
The Symbolism of Animé
The levels of symbolism and metaphor within
animé are vast. As with work in the general cinematic
realm, animé often references archetypical situations
or emotions, and displays them in simplified and iconic
terms. For example, in the popular children television
program "Sailor Moon," one could find the
main character, Serena, in a compromising situation
in which one would typically feel embarrassed or nervous.
Rather than explicitly conveying these feelings to the
viewer through dialogue, or deviating from a limited
animation format with complex, fluid facial expressions,
the emotions are conveyed through an icon; the drop
of sweat. By simply showing the universal symbol of
a bead of sweat on the character's forehead (often in
the shape of a blue water droplet), the viewer can quickly
identify an individual's reaction to a situation, even
on a childlike level. Another symbol in television animé
is the bulging vein. Simplified to a series of three
or four symmetrically placed curves on the forehead,
the bulging vein is a common denominator for frustration
or aggression. The sweat drop, bulging vein, and other
simple icons create a visual language in animé
that references archetyped biological reactions and
their associated emotive states; icons whose universality
resonate down to the level of a child.
These universal symbols are only the surface
level of referencing in animé. On the next level,
one could find the popular referencing of elements from
a more global culture. In the series "Excel Saga,"
recently airing on TV Tokyo, there are constant references
to other popular works in the animé culture as
well as U.S. pop culture films (Star Wars, Rambo: First
Blood Part II, and Fight Club to name a few).6
"Excel Saga" incorporates references to these
seemingly unrelated works by presenting a humorously
disjointed and often surreal and frenetic situational
comedy; going so far as to alternate illustrative techniques
from scene to scene.7 This referencing
on a global cultural scale suggests a universal quality
within the particular work itself, although this commonality
is limited only to the multiple cultures it references.
Susan Napier, a professor of Japanese culture at the
University of Texas, surmises:
For most Japanese consumers of animé,
their culture is no longer a purely Japanese one (and
indeed it probably hasn't been for over a century
and a half). At least in terms of entertainment, they
are as equally interested in and influenced by Western
cultural influences as they are by specifically Japanese
ones.8
In addition to this level of symbolism
that involves cross-cultural referencing, there is still
another, deeper level of symbolism in Japanese animation.
This is a level of metaphor and innuendo, a defining
characteristic of animé.
"Ranma ½" is an animated
television series that aired in Japan in the late 1980's
and early 1990's, and was based off of a popular manga,
or comic book, by artist Rumiko Takahashi. The main
character, Ranma, is an adolescent boy who humorously
struggles with uncontrollable gender metamorphosis in
an attempt to regain normality. In "Ranma ½,"
the adolescent issue of sexual identity is comically
paralleled visually by an unmanageable transformation
from male to female and back again. By switching the
gender of the main character within a "normal"
world, the supporting characters become unsettlingly
aware of a destabilized heterosexual social hierarchy.
"Ranma ½" operates
on two levels: the issue of constructing gender identity
on the individual level and the public level of society's
expectations for gender norms, both of which are played
out in the series through a range of imaginative visual
tropes and action sequences that consistently work
to destabilize the "normal."9
In this way, "Ranma ½"
provides an excellent example of a visual metaphor within
Japanese animation. In this instance, the adolescent
struggle with sexual identity is analogous to the visual
interchangeability between genders of the main characters.
This metaphorical element could be found on a more significant
level within the cinematic realm.
"Jin-Roh" (translated as "The
Wolf Brigade") is an animé feature film
written by Mamoru Oshii (director of "Ghost in
the Shell," 1995) in which the main character,
Kazuki Fuse, is contrasted with his "love interest,"
Kei Amemiya. In an interview with Oshii, he describes
the interaction between the two characters as "the
story of a human and a beast."10
The "beast" being Kazuki Fuse, the perennial
soldier in the "wolf brigade" that is cold
and unresponsive to his emotions. "Jin-Roh"
is set in an "imagined" post-war alternate
past that parallels post-World War II Japan. It is in
this "alternate past" that Oshii creates his
metaphors within the film. The main character, Fuse,
is the last of a group of nationalistic soldiers known
as the "wolf brigade" which reject non-Japanese
influences; a parallel to the Japanese Anpo, a nationalistic
group of the 1960's which carried a similarly cold and
unemotive creed of "means justifying an end."11
The "wolf spirit" of Fuse is also a metaphorical
reference to the history of the Japanese species of
wolf. This was a species considered abundant in the
1960's, but is now extinct- much in the manner that
the Anpo, or nationalism in general, is extinct in modern
Japan.
While the symbolism in animé is
evident on many levels, visual as well as metaphorical,
this is seemingly not enough precedence to place the
media within the Fine Art arena. However, there is a
precedence created within the Fine Art realm itself
that may allow future consideration of this time-based
media.
The Fine Art of Animé
Whether or not one considers animé
or any derivative of it to be within the realm of Fine
Art, it has already made its way there. Most notably,
it takes the form of painting and sculpture in the "super
flat" movement. Super flat, a term coined by artist
and curator Takashi Murakami, refers to a post-modern
Japanese theory of ultra-flatness and evenness within
an image. In Murakami's essay, "A Theory of Super
Flat Japanese Art," super flat incorporates bold,
spatially flat, and formal elements that emphasize lineal
structure with a sensibility reminiscent of Pop Art.12
In Murkami's work, specifically the 1995 "And then
and then and then and then and then," there is
an attempt to incorporate the bold strokes of traditional
Japanese painting (in particular, works from the Edo
period) with a commercialized post-Pop Art infatuation
with otaku, or the Japanese animé subculture.
Murakami has even gone so far as to copyright and publicly
market his created character "Mr. DOB," the
subject of the majority of his work.
Murakami, in a similar tradition to his
Pop Art predecessors, has taken the exploitation of
the animé subculture to its most extreme ends,
exploring the issues of hyper-sexuality and marketability,
among many others. While Murakami and the many other
artists in the super flat exhibition reference Japanese
animation and its subculture, there has yet to be any
significant worldwide movement in the gallery system
to exhibit actual Japanese animation as a formal work
of art. This may be due to the reluctance of the Fine
Art world to accept time-based media as formal work,
as well as its reluctance to accept work that references
popular culture.
In fact, one could refute the notion of
animé assuming any role in the Fine Art realm
on the context of it being a time-based medium steeped
in popular culture. That is, a conservative view of
having only traditional media (sculpture, painting,
etc.) in the gallery would reject animé on the
basis of it being outside the realm of traditional media;
a notion thoroughly outdated by post-modern artists.
Indeed, a key element of post-modern theory is the referencing
of popular culture and a language of visual symbols
that are somewhat universal to a society.
As with the introduction of previous media
to Fine Art (photography, film, and installation), it
seems only a matter of time until the acceptance of
animé, and animation in general, is evident within
the galleries.
Notes
1. Maureen Furniss, "Institutional Regulators,"
Art in Motion, Animation Aesthetics, 207.
2. Antonia Levi, Samurai from Outer Space, 6.
3. "Akira" was viewed as a "poster-child"
in the sense that the film defined the technical achievement
of the genre at the time, only to be replaced by "Ghost
in the Shell" and later by "Princess Mononoke."
The title of this paper, "Neo-Tokyo Is About To
Explode," refers to the "ultra-hip" tag
line in Akira's U.S. marketing campaign.
4. Susan J. Napier, Anime: from Akira to Princess
Mononoke, Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation,
41.
5.Napier, 176.
6. John Yung, "Excel Saga," EX: The
Online World of Anime & Manga, <http://www.ex.org/5.1/14-anime_excelsaga.html>
3 December 2002.
7. Yung.
8. Napier, 22.
9. Napier, 50.
10. Luis Reyes, "The Death of the Wolf:
Mamoru Oshii Speaks About 'Jin-Roh' as an Elegy to,
And Perhaps a Re-birth of, the Wolf Spirit," Akadot
Articles, <http://www.akadot.com/article/article-oshii1.html>
27 November 2002.
11. Rika Ishii, "Mamoru Oshii Interview,"
The Hayao Miyazaki Web, <http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/oshii_on_mt.html>
27 November 2002.
12. Cheryl Brutvan, "Takashi Murakami: Made
in Japan," Boston Museum of Fine Art- Exhibitions,
<http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/takashi.html>
2 December 2002.
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