MovieChat Forums > Kokuriko-zaka kara (2011) Discussion > is there just one cartoonist for all of ...

is there just one cartoonist for all of these films?


It seems like everyone of these animated Japanese family films has the exact same animator. Eyes that vibrate when the character is scared or angry, distorted mouths when they yell, and simple facial features. It's been like this since G-Force back in the 80s.

"Leeches suck!"

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My heartfelt suggestions for you is to avoid all forms of anime for the rest of your life. This will 100% cure you of your annoyance and dislike for them. I'm not trying to be rude, just saying you should avoid anime completely to resolve your question.

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it's a simple question. There's a particular form of anime: Kieko's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle, et al: really big blank pupils, simple mouths that become weirdly distorted when yelling, surprised or angry, etc.

is there just one animator, or is it animators with no originality copying the original?

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Those films were made at the same studio, under the same director (though they were produced many years apart). Does that answer your question?

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yes. I was wondering why they all look alike, but this style goes back to the 80s

"Leeches suck!"

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I'm really sorry I missed this trolling when you originally posted it.

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... he works so fast!

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I was wondering the same thing from a different angle. With the exception of 'The Cat Returns,' 'My Neighbors The Yamadas' and some stylistic aspects of 'Ponyo,' the animation for Ghibli films is pretty uniform in my opinion.

While it 'is' Takahata's and Miyazaki Sr.'s brainchild (along with the other producers, animators etc from back then), they don't seem to allow for a lot of creativity and individualism like other studios. In other words they conforming to a style and not being flexible as the times move on and possibly at the expense of the younger members. 'Whisper of the Heart,' 'Arrietty' etc were not helmed specifically by the elders, and while they were fantastic, it would be great to see how newer animators would like to take the lead in chosing how to tell their story visually.

There are a number of reasons why this might be the case, uniformity establishes a style, trademark or continuity. Or that the staff are trained in a specific style that is overseen by the executives. Ghibli is often compared to Disney, but at Disney's prime they were extremely experimental and varied a great deal in styles over the time between 'Snow White' and 'Sleeping Beauty.' It is very true that those films had much higher budgets than average Japanese animation, these Ghibli films are exception. Disney himself had an ongoing correspondence with Dali, and they even planned on making a surrealist film together.

And that leads me to answer your question otter68 about 'vibrating eyes' and the like is that the animation was done on much lower budgets. Instead of being able to animated entire frames, the animators would have to chose less cost intensive methods of getting their point across. This is why there are a lot of static images in Japanese animation while our mainstream works over here are much more fluid and can push towards more realistic emotive techniques.

i.e. showing vibrating eyes costs less than animating full body movements showcasing fear or anger.

It is true that budgets have gotten much higher for Japanese animation over the years, but those practical choices have no doubt led to stylistic trademarks that make the genre what it is. So those types of techniques of getting expression across will not go away because without them the style would become less defined.

There are tons of exceptions, and the Japanese avant-garde has more influence recently than in the past, but I don't think little but important touches like that are going to go away.

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This is a very good post!

I try to explain these things to new anime watchers all the time.

Most of the visual conventions of anime stem from the lower budgets that early anime animators had to contend with, but so became trademarks of the style that they remained even as anime budgets grew.

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disney is bad compared to ghibli. ghibli makes masterpieces, disney makes crude, hypersexualized badly designed , unoriginal snoozefsts

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Ghibli has a style and if you look at the different animes, you'll find differences between them. I've been watching Anime since the 60s and they differ quite a bit. Most anime or most animation for that matter is stylized and simplified for both artistic and production reasons.

American animation tends to rely on the same styles, devices and gags to a degree.

I've actually relied on Anime for it's depth of story. Even as adulterated and edited as Macross was, it was leaps and bounds over what I was used to. Starblazers, too.

I found the Usavich videos on youtube a while ago and find it's very original with a lot of unique stuff happening. I thought cartoon rabbits had been done to death but it's surprising!

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The amount of different styles is huge, but you have to watch a lot of diverse series to discover it. Sure there are a lot of what seems like stock characters, but if you look closer, you might just discover how amazingly different animations can be.
Look at some stuff made by Satoshi Kon, Mononoke (the series, not the film), Makoto Shinkai... They might not be to your taste, but at least you can see diversity in animation.

In the beginning there was nothing, and it exploded.

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Every Animation studio has visual trademarks like that. Have you seen DRAWN TOGETHER?

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