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Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

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Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#11

Post by ekianjo »

Because that's what Japan looks like, duh! Any place in Japan has basically power lines all over the place, even in cities like Tokyo.

And also because it's easy to draw and show for 5 seconds in every anime to save on the precious animation budget because it's super static and goes everywhere. Added bonus it can be added into any decor and you would not notice it's the same pattern imported all over again in between animes.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#12

Post by kqr »

donquichotte wrote: post #6
thriftwy wrote: post #2

I thought it's just that in Asia, they don't usually hide lines or make effort to decrease number of individual wires. That's what you have on street - that's what you get in anime.

I was told that at least in Japan, this is done because it's easier to rebuild after an earthquake than digging up and reburying broken power and communication lines.

Huh, cool. That's a great illustration of the two general ways to achieve reliability. Either you make it rather hard to break in the first place (bury powerlines underground, write software with strong type systems) or embrace the fact that either way, it will break eventually, so maybe it's just better to focus on making it easy to fix (powerlines in the air, write Erlang-style software that reboots quickly in the face of error.)

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#14

Post by ableal »

xefer wrote: post #7

In that great documentary "Crumb" cartoonist Robert Crumb shows his notebooks in which he keeps pictures of all sorts of mundane infrastructure that he incorporates into his drawings. It's really effective in this sequence "A Short History of America": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IFVUHg_tUc That one always gets me...

Comments there mention three later 'alternate futures' panels. They can be found through this page: https://boingboing.net/2009/08/07/r-crumbs-short-histo.html

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#15

Post by vinceguidry »

I propose a more prosaic explanation. Anime artists probably spend a lot of time looking out their windows. Unless they're doing very well for themselves, they probably see a lot of power lines.

So the one thing they look at and study the most, is very likely to be power lines.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#16

Post by sevensor »

exelius wrote: post #4

Lol... I was going to say this exactly. Evangelion and Lain were pretty popular even in the US around the year 2000, so I imagine they were near ubiquitous in Japan. Both were well-animated and the power lines a symbol that was returned to again and again. Anime/manga also loves to meme/trope things like this because animation studios are cheap and love 30s tracking shots across 2 hand-drawn panel with nothing more t…

Serial Experiments Lain remains a point of reference for me. Whenever the modern world seems especially surreal, I hear it in my head: "present day, present time!" followed by the mad cackle of laughter. It also deepened my appreciation for the electrical infrastructure when I first visited East Asia.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#17

Post by PeachPlum »

xefer wrote: post #7

In that great documentary "Crumb" cartoonist Robert Crumb shows his notebooks in which he keeps pictures of all sorts of mundane infrastructure that he incorporates into his drawings. It's really effective in this sequence "A Short History of America": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IFVUHg_tUc That one always gets me...

Crumb's "A Short History of America" in one

http://i.imgur.com/h1D5Qo3.jpg

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#18

Post by Symbiote »

thriftwy wrote: post #2

I thought it's just that in Asia, they don't usually hide lines or make effort to decrease number of individual wires. That's what you have on street - that's what you get in anime.

I thought that when I visited America. Streets in many towns look like this [0].

In much of Europe, you'd need to be in a very rural area for the power lines to be above ground. It's a bit more common for telephone lines to be above ground, but that's still something seen in villages rather than towns.

[0] https://i0.wp.com/brokensidewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016... or https://ak9.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/2544149/thumb/1.jp...

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#19

Post by ljf »

ekianjo wrote: post #11

Because that's what Japan looks like, duh! Any place in Japan has basically power lines all over the place, even in cities like Tokyo. And also because it's easy to draw and show for 5 seconds in every anime to save on the precious animation budget because it's super static and goes everywhere. Added bonus it can be added into any decor and you would not notice it's the same pattern imported all over again in between…

This - my brother lives in Tokyo and for a time lived on a street that had pylons running down the middle with a little park running underneath them - it was considered a pretty nice place to live due to the park and green space that it had - even though you were bang next to a pylon.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#20

Post by vorotato »

exelius wrote: post #4

Lol... I was going to say this exactly. Evangelion and Lain were pretty popular even in the US around the year 2000, so I imagine they were near ubiquitous in Japan. Both were well-animated and the power lines a symbol that was returned to again and again. Anime/manga also loves to meme/trope things like this because animation studios are cheap and love 30s tracking shots across 2 hand-drawn panel with nothing more t…

In Lain it was a motif which represented the interconnectedness of modern society. Notice how they called the internet "The Wired". Idk enough about evangelion to comment.
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