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Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

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Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#21

Post by Jgrubb »

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…

I only went to Japan once, but I was struck by the power grid in a way that has made me notice it everywhere ever since. We went out to a ski resort in the summer (Fuji Rock) and even out in the mountains there were giant, modern pylons all over the place. A huge contrast to rural New Jersey.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#22

Post by Coding_Cat »

Symbiote wrote: post #18
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/254…

Switzerland (the geneve/lausanne area) has a lot of overhead wiring too. I must say, you never appreciate underground wiring until you no longer have it and a storm picks up. I would consistently lose power whenever there was a big storm. Hardly ever happened when I had underground wiring.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#23

Post by Kihashi »

Symbiote wrote: post #18
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/254…

That's interesting, since it seems to be the opposite in the US. I always assumed that was because it was cheaper to run lines on poles rather than doing the digging that could be dozens and dozens of miles. What makes it different, I wonder?

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#24

Post by emodendroket »

Kihashi wrote: post #23
Symbiote wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/254…

That's interesting, since it seems to be the opposite in the US. I always assumed that was because it was cheaper to run lines on poles rather than doing the digging that could be dozens and dozens of miles. What makes it different, I wonder?

Part of it has to be that our infrastructure is among the oldest (presumably the same reason we use a form of power socket with relatively few safety features to prevent electrocution, still have lead pipes in places, etc.).

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#25

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

It is true that it is what Japan looks like but it is still interesting to see how detailed the depiction is.

Compare to the Simpsons for instance. It is set in present day American suburbs, but it doesn't look at all like a photograph. All the small details are missing unless they are relevant to the story.

In the west, even if real life photographs, power lines are commonly seen as a nuisance and avoided, or even edited out.

It is clearly a different approach to animation. I think we can make the parallel the way hands are drawn. 4 fingers for western animation (simplified), 5 for anime (realistic).

The animation budget argument makes sense, and it certainly a good explanation for pylon or railway crossing shots. But I don't think it explains everything, both obscure series and big-budget animation films have their fair share of power lines.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#26

Post by toyg »

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…

> Any place in Japan has basically power lines all over the place, even in cities

For the record, there is an ongoing debate in Japanese urban centres on whether these lines should be placed underground for good.

They are a function of the astonishingly rapid development Japan underwent in previous decades, when nobody really cared about details like the urban landscape because they had "more important things to worry about". There is an argument that, now that wild development is over, it's time to move on and improve regulations for stuff like this.

The counter-argument is that anything underground in Japan will suffer from continuous earthquake activity; that it has become a distinct characteristic of modern Japanese life (precisely thanks to depictions in all sorts of media); and that it would be extremely expensive and hard to scale, since Japanese density in urban centres is so massive. The current system can look ugly, but it works, it's very flexible and cheap, and it's pretty easy to repair.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#27

Post by grondilu »

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…

> And also because it's easy to draw

I'm not sure it is. First, that forces you to put a serious effort in perspective. And then you just can't draw black lines, you need to draw the technical devices that they connect to (transformers or whatever). This requires either technical knowledge or ground research.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#28

Post by exelius »

vorotato wrote: post #20
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.

In Evangelion, power represented civilization in various stages of decline. It's post-apocalyptic, so the state of the infrastructure shows you if an area has been abandoned, reclaimed, etc. The Evas (basically giant mecha) have to be tethered to power to work, etc.

The whole theme of the anime centers around the type of arrogance Man (in this case, a single man) would show in the face of annihilation by God, and how a man could resist God's influence and effectively become a god himself. Christian iconography is very prevalent as well (power lines form natural crosses); especially in End of Evangelion. Electric power is then itself a form of rebellion against God.

It's a super symbolically dense anime; in fact they pack in too much symbolism and it causes the show to lose focus toward the end which it never really regains -- the last 2 episodes of the original series are essentially 100% symbolism because the studio ran out of money and had to use recycled animation and stock footage with voice-overs (End of Evangelion replaces those two episodes in the storyline).

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#29

Post by deadmetheny »

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…

It's definitely a stylistic thing in Serial Experiments Lain. The transformer hums are evocative of Lain's power within the Wired, and the power lines are explicitly everywhere to illustrate how everyone is now connected. It's a great series, and relatively short at 13 episodes, highly recommended as a series to binge sometime.
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