Ask John: Is CG a Threat to Anime?

Question:
Is CG a threat to anime? Outside of Spirited Away, most of the nominees and winners for American awards for animation tend to be animated in CG. I’m not a total elitist. I just hate the format when it stands out (such as in Blue Sub), but appreciate it when it’s successfully incorporated into a film (such as in Macross Plus, Magnetic Rose, or even the new Appleseed). But I feel that the anime industry’s still going through the “style-over-substance” phase. I mean look at Gonzo. Their anime continues to sell, but no one likes it. Before, CG used to be something anime studios would use with consideration. But now, I feel that it’s a gimmick. Anyway, can we expect more anime shows to look like Reboot in the future?

Answer:
I really think that this is a question that should be ideally answered by an actual professional animator rather than myself, an outside observer. In my position, I can’t guess for certain how much further computer generated imagery will intrude into or usurp traditional Japanese animation, but I can provide some theoretical analysis. To first briefly discuss the American market, it should come as no surprise that full CG rendered films like The Incredibles and Robots and Shark Tale and Shrek overshadow traditional 2D animated features. I think there are a number of reasons for this situation.

Since at least the 1940s, if not earlier, America has perceived 2D animation as children’s cartoons. The serious lack of mainstream American 2D animated films that are targeted at mature viewers should adequately prove this. Certainly there are exceptions, but they are, in fact, exceptions, not the standard. Full CG animation is a revolution in cinema. It’s something new that American society can approach with a fresh approach and response. The Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie may not have been a commercial success, but I suspect that it did contribute to the American perception that CG animation is more mature type of film, more worthy of respect as serious cinema than 2D animation. Furthermore, CG simply looks more realistic and believable to mainstream American viewers than 2D animation. No matter how fantastic or otherworldly the film, CG animation still has a visual depth and tactile texture that more closely resembles reality than two dimensional animation. Certainly the characters of Perfect Blue may look more like proportional, realistic human beings than the characters of The Incredibles, but The Incredibles has a sense of three dimensions and physical substance that instinctively feels familiar to viewers. So in that sense, even the non-human characters of Shrek or Robots still seem more substantial and realistic to average American viewers than two dimensional drawings in motion. The massive American commercial success of films like Shrek 2 and The Incredibles relative to the American box office failure of Ghost in the Shell 2 and the 2004 Yu-Gi-Oh movie clearly prove that the future of theatrical animation in America is CG, not 2D animation.

I’ve personally heard Japanese directors including Mizushima Tsutomu and Koji Masunari state that Japan’s animation industry considers computer generated animation a useful tool, and an appealing novelty, but not a replacement for traditional hand drawn 2D animation. Japan has created several full CG animation features including M@lice Doll, Blue Remains, Alice, and the Appleseed movie, but only the Appleseed movie, which is designed to emulate 2D animation in 3D, has been a significant success in Japan. As director Koji Masunari has said in interview, contemporary Japanese audiences seem to enjoy seeing fully CG rendered mecha and robots, but still prefer that characters look like traditional painted anime.

In some instances CG can be effective and even preferable in anime. For example, Initial D and eX-Driver are both anime about variations of automobile racing. Initial D uses fully computer rendered automobiles while eX-Driver uses traditional hand drawn cars. Initial D undeniably conveys a more effective sense of speed and momentum than does eX-Driver because computer animation is better able to depict physics than hand drawn animation. Setting my personal preferences aside, in cases such as this computer animation is better suited to the task at hand. I’ll probably offend certain readers with my next point, but I believe that it’s a viable fact. With the size of Japan’s animation industry workforce decreasing and the average career lifespan for Japanese animators decreasing there are fewer skilled animators working in Japan’s animation industry. I’ve heard it said that anime characters in contemporary anime often jump or leap during physical attacks because many contemporary animators aren’t skilled in drawing walking or running feet. Just as CG rendered objects in anime can have novelty appeal, and can frequently be a time and money saving shortcut, I suspect that CG is also sometimes a cover for animators that are new to the industry, who don’t have the technical skill to hand draw an object from multiple angles. I don’t want to imply any disrespect to the work that animators do, or their skill, but I do suspect that CG is sometimes employed in contemporary anime out of necessity more than choice.

But while 2D animation seems to be quickly approaching extinction in America, Japan’s animation industry continues to produce a massively greater percentage of 2D animation than 3D animation. Japanese society has evolved along side 2D animation, and I don’t think Japanese society is prepared to abandon it in favor of exclusively 3D animation. Digital animation and coloring seem to have replaced cel painting in Japan’s anime industry, but I don’t see a significant effort to replace 2D animation with full 3D. While full 3D may be more appealing to American audiences, I think that Japanese viewers recognize that 3D animation isn’t capable of expressing the same distinct appealing visual qualities of animated paintings. While it wouldn’t surprise me to see full 3D animation almost totally replace two dimensional animation in America within the next few years, I believe that Japanese society values the look and feel of traditional animation and will insist that such animation remain the dominant style of Japanese animation. In fact, American and Japanese societies seem to be exact opposites in this respect. I think that America will continue to produce full CG films like Shark Tale and The Incredibles with occasional exceptions like the Spongebob Squarepants movie. Japan will continue to be just the opposite, creating 2D animated films like Steamboy and Innocence and Naruto with occasional exceptions like the fully CG Appleseed movie.