Ask John: Why Doesn’t America Produce Japanese Style Animation?

Question:
Why is that no animated movie in U.S. history has ever come close to looking as good as an average Japanimation? Titan AE, Pocahontas, The Lion King, and even Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron all look the same. And these movies were produced and created by different studios. I’ve never seen an animated movie in the U.S that has ever come close to capturing anything like Akira or Ghost in the Shell. And Akira was released 14 years ago!

I’ve personally seen the artistic evolution of anime over the decades, for example, the original Gundam series compared to anything from today. The only evolution U.S. film has done is the inclusion of CGI and special effects. Are American artist that bad? Is there some kind of mystical drawing technique that Japanimation artists know that these guys just can’t comprehend? We’ve seen “artistic” evolution in anime films. Where’s our evolution?

Answer:
There’s actually a very simple answer to this complex question. This all boils down to cultural acceptance and expectations. American cel art animation, as you put it, “all looks the same” for a reason. That’s what sells. From the 1940s onward, mainstream American culture has been trained by Warner Bros., Disney, Don Bluth and Hanna Barbera studios to believe and expect that animation is a medium for children. Cartoon characters, Americans believe, should not look like real people, should not act like real people, and should not reflect real life. This explains the popularity of talking animals and musicals and the artistic style of American animation. Not being an animator, it’s inappropriate for me to speak on behalf of American artists, but I hazard to guess that not all American animators specifically want to draw and paint only talking mice and lions and stylized Egyptians and American Indians, but that’s what an artist has to draw in America in order to stay employed.

Relatively realistic cel animation has simply never been particularly successful in America. The original Heavy Metal movie became a cult hit, but never achieved commercial success or influence. The Batman animated movie was wonderful, but again was not successful enough in America to create imitators or spawn a revolution of dramatic, mature theatrical animation in America. Anime films like Mononoke Hime and Metropolis and Spriggan and Vampire Hunter D 2000 have toured American theaters, but have never drawn enough interest from mainstream America to demand more of the same. America continues to produce animated films like Spirit and Lilo & Stitch because that’s the kind of animation mainstream Americans pay to see in theaters. Anime and adult style animation simply doesn’t have that kind of mass market appeal or earning power in America, therefore there’s little reason for American production studios to support it.

Since the early 1960s, Japan has embraced cel animation as a form of cinema as viable as live-action. Just as American live-action film has evolved and grown more technologically advanced since the 1960s, so has Japanese animation. For as long as anime has existed, Japan has accepted cel animation as more than a children’s medium and supported the growth and evolution of cel animation into varied genres and styles. Mainstream America has never supported the maturation of cel animation or the expansion of cel animation beyond the realm of children’s film, so mainstream cel animation in America has never significantly evolved to become anything more than children’s entertainment.

For all the artistry behind anime and cel animation, the medium still exists primarily to make money. In America, children’s cartoons make money and adult animation does not. In Japan, viewers demand all kinds of cel animation and spend a great deal of time and money on mature, adult oriented animation films. In effect, cel animation in America hasn’t expanded into adult genres and styles not because of incompetence on the part of animators. Mainstream, mass market American cel animation has never significantly evolved because it’s simply counterproductive to do so. If and when a mature, dramatic cel animation film becomes a breakthrough success in American theaters, and studios believe that mainstream Americans will pay to see more animated films in a similar style, we’ll see anime style movies made in America. But until that happens, if it ever happens, we’ll continue to see the American animation industry dominated by children’s films and non-threatening, family friendly output.