Postby Bobtheduck » Thu Oct 16, 2003 3:59 pm
The style that is overwhelmingly common in anime is Large eyes, small noses, and more (than most american animation) realistic human figures.
Detailed scenery is only a few anime, and then there are things like Lain which is very undetailed on purpose (except for Lain's room, which is to provide a contrast)
Oh, yeah, that's right, the animeisms:
Blush
Sweatdrops
Um, don't know what their called, but the quickly
moving splatterpaint like backgrounds to
display emotions.
The blueface (for severe shock/anger/fear)
Veins on the face
Chibbi (small, refering to SD or characters with
large heads and small bodies, no hands or feet
usually, like the power puff girls only more...
Japanese) characters (for comedic moments)
And of course visible auras, though those can be serious too...
These iconic things are much like the eyes bulging or something in american cartoons and they are not in every anime... Also, they are not limited to kid's anime, and many kids anime don't even do that... Most theatrical anime doesn't (unless it comes from a TV anime or something, like the Sailormoon movies) because those things are often "shortcuts" to show something that may be hard to animate.
One commonality that wasn't brought up yet is the shifting camera angles... The reason this is done is to make them seem more like live action... It's very easy to animate simple angles, but anime often goes for complex and varied angles, which you almost never see in american television animation. Some anime would be considered excelent direction if they were live action, because they treated it with as much in not more respect as they would a live action show/movie.
Also, the point that's hard to get across to new people about anime is that "wide audience" doesn't mean that everyone can watch such and such anime, it means that for this person there is anime a, and for this person, there's anime q, and for this person over there, there's anime ç and for this person, there's anime ß. Some anime are made for adults (this doesn't just mean porn, it means anime that get very serious or have thematic elements that are not appropriate for kids or are just too nostalgic for a kid to truely appreciate) many anime are made for teens (much like the majority of entertainment in the US is targeted to teens) and much of this teen targeted anime is R-rated by nature, JUST LIKE IN THE US **coughamericanpiecough**... Then of course, much of the Adult oriented stuff is PG or PG-13 rated by nature.
Anime in Japan is all animation, including american cartoons like buggs and mickey... In the Us it refers to Japanese animation only. It is a shortening of "Animeshon" which was imported from our word "Animation" (and did NOT come from the french word of the same spelling because "animeshon" existed long before the term "Anime" was used in Japan)
Manga Is the paperback origins of anime in most cases... Actually, I believe that manga in Japan refers to all picture books, including encyclopedias (could be wrong) and specifically comics. In the US, it refers to Japanese comics only. Even our terminology for it (comics) is a very good example of overall american ignorance and stereotyping on the subject... In the US, very few comic books are funny. In Japan, however, the manga industry did not need to take such a rebelious and pendulum swinging stance because (in the early days of it) there was no objection to them. They were not looked down on in society there like they were and are here.
That changed when the Otaku (fanatic) Murders happened... For a while, anime and manga could have disappeared forever because extreme fanatics of these forms of art, specifically of hentai (pornographic) variety, lost their social lives entirely, and did nothing but watch anime and read manga all day long, and one in particular commited several murders. The police found his appartment filled with pictures of anime girls, and lots of tapes, and just in a big mess, and the anime was associated with his mental problems (sound familliar D&D fans?)... The imagery that was shown on the news almost destroyed anime and manga in Japan, but it mostly recovered that tradgedy, though the word otaku still conjurs horrible images in many Japanese. Manga has lost much of it's solid place in Japanese society, but anime is flourishing more now than ever, so that proves that the damage done to anime by that otaku guy wasn't long term.
In any case, manga is even more varied than anime, and hundreds of manga are released all the time... Like anime, but unlike american comics, they are often released in very short lifes and when they end, they end. They are written to be a story that has a beginning and an end, not a cash cow to be milked (some exceptions: Dragonball, Pokemon, etc...) wheras most american comics (specifically the big names like Batman, superman, x-men, spiderman, etc...) go on forever because they were never meant to end, and often change authors and artists through thier runs... That is very rare in manga. Most manga have only one author through their entire runs. Most of the time, as well, the author and artist are one in the same.
Like anime, manga often follow patterns that are recognizable and consistant throughout many different manga. Many contain the same styles as many anime, but in Manga it is often possible to get much more detailed because you only have to draw one picture... That doesn't always happen, but it does quite a lot. You'll see some inked pictures in manga that look way too real to have been drawn with just ink and tones. Manga has a feel wholly different from anime, and can be a wholly different experience that is positive separate from anime, even if you've seen the anime first (or vice versa) Some manga have direct translations into anime, some are radically changed, most manga never make it to anime.
Manga are not just fiction. Many manga are true stories, many more than you will find in anime, as well as training books, sometimes textbooks, how to books... Manga requires much less money to put out, so more people can make them. There have even been famous novels from other countries that have been turned into manga, one of which is "Suikoden" the water margin, as well as outside people releasing their own manga for one reason or another (there have been bible stories in Manga form, as well as evangelistic manga...) Most of these alternate type of manga will never see a stateside release because they are just not specific enough and our culture doesn't hold as much respect (in other words, very little at all) for "comics" and only the stuff that's more anime like will make it here... I should say, more like the anime we have here.
As for Oekaki, I don't use it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evcNPfZlrZs Watch this movie なう。 It's legal, free... And it's more than its premise. It's not saying Fast Food is good food. Just watch it.
Legend of Crying Bronies: Twilight's a Princess