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Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

atlasobscura.com

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Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#91
post #52
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this even supposed to mean? That's exactly their point. The average-to-low-budget (as well as unpopular) anime still has power line shots all over because that's just what they do. On average, our establishing shots in our (Western) cartoons just aren't as detailed. Obviously popularity and quality are not hand in hand, and The Simpsons is one of, if not the most popular cartoon show of all time.

The Simpson has massively better animation than The regular tv anime in Japan. Most animes have very few animated frames and instead revolve on fixed backgrounds, scrolling, voice over and only lips moving now and then. Good animation is expensive to produce and most animes are made with very few resources and time. When a good one makes it, its nothing short of a miracle.

Let me introduce you to a concept called "pencil mileage".

Simply put, for a budget of $x, your crew can draw $y miles of lines. How do you use these to fill out the huge number of images you need to produce?

In the West, the solution has historically been to simplify your drawings as much as humanly possible so that you can have a lot of them; we tend to want to have everything constantly moving and changing. Our characters tend to be the barest collection of broad details to distinguish one from another; we are loathe to drop below shooting "on twos"^1.

In the East, they took a different path: They want complicated drawings. So one drawing will linger on the screen a lot longer, pushing up against the moment where a drawing "goes dead"^2 a lot harder. Often you'll build up to a small handful of lavishly animated scenes, where most of the episode's budget is blown at the climax of the episode.

I was raised in the Western tradition^3, and it took a long time to learn to see the craftsmanship and love in Eastern animation. I'm glad I did; I've seen some really powerful and compelling stories that I wouldn't have seen in Western work.

(There are of course broad generalizations, you can find increasing amounts of Western work that's heavily influenced by Eastern animation, and probably vice-versa as well. You can also find expensive shows and cheap shows all over the world.)

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1: exposing every drawing twice, for an effective frame rate of 12 (animators still like to think in film's 24fps) 2: If a character is moving, then goes perfectly still, there is this weird moment when your brain stops registering it as "something alive that has stopped moving for a moment" and starts registering it as "a static drawing". It's really creepy to see happen. 3: and even spent most of a decade working in it

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#92
post #46
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…

One thing I learned about anime (from discussing it with Japanese folks) is that "anime Westerners like" and "anime Japanese like" can be way different. Something may come out in Japan that has only niche appeal, only to blow up in the West. Azumanga Daioh -- Mother of a Thousand 4chan Memes -- comes to mind. Likewise, sometimes a title takes off in Japan only to find rocky soil here. I think Evangelion was well love…

I read an interview with the Lain creator where he was disappointed it was so popular in the US, because he was trying to capture (what he thought was) a uniquely Japanese zeitgeist.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#93
post #85

Short Answer: Anno Until their depiction in Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, power lines were virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when they take up more time and effort during a time-packed production schedule? However, Hideaki Anno, the director of the aforementioned anime, began to implement them in backgrounds, bringing in a new kind of mechanical urban aesthetics. Anno has a certain kind of…

I can't believe I found it, or rather, that someone uploaded just it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ When I heard power lines, for some reason one scene from Patlabor came to mind. It's the quintessential Tokyo city view from the window, and the quintessential view inside a window from the city. Outside there are power lines. You cannot avoid them. And looking in, you see the tatami flooring and dudes in…

It's not just that - both Patlabor and Evangelion often would take a slow, languid tone to observe the city. Evangelion spends a lot of time on Shinji grappling with his depression - scenes of him just sitting on a train back and forth listening to a mix-tape on an endless loop.

Patlabor The Movie, similarly, is about Hoba taking them on a tour of the city with their investigation. Half the movie is a travelogue of futuristic Tokyo.

I think both in general were representative to of the change from the faster-paced action shows of the '70s and '80s to the languid artsy style we see in 90s anime.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#94
post #90
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…

Were they that popular in the US in 2000? Evangelion started airing on Adult Swim in 2005, and Lain started in 2002 on TechTV IIRC.

They got US cable distributors because they were insanely popular for years even though that kind of distribution wasn't available.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#95
post #85

Short Answer: Anno Until their depiction in Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, power lines were virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when they take up more time and effort during a time-packed production schedule? However, Hideaki Anno, the director of the aforementioned anime, began to implement them in backgrounds, bringing in a new kind of mechanical urban aesthetics. Anno has a certain kind of…

I can't believe I found it, or rather, that someone uploaded just it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ When I heard power lines, for some reason one scene from Patlabor came to mind. It's the quintessential Tokyo city view from the window, and the quintessential view inside a window from the city. Outside there are power lines. You cannot avoid them. And looking in, you see the tatami flooring and dudes in…

I just checked out Bubblegum Crisis (1987), and that also has multiple shots with crazy power lines in the background. For instance, 11:38 here:

https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#96
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, J. Michael Straczynski was the first person to get a successful arc-based television series on TV, with _Babylon 5_ - the pilot aired in 1993. He had tried earlier with _Captain Power_ in 1987, but that only lasted a single season, and it was kind of doomed to be thought of as a kid's show because of the toyline tie-in.

Soap Operas?

I was thinking of that too, especially of all the personal problems the characters had in Evangelion. I had to stop watching because of the main protagonist repeatedly asking why his father doesn't show any love for him. A lot of people are into those story-lines, and I guess it partly explains Evangelion's popularity with women too.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#97

Short Answer: Anno Until their depiction in Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, power lines were virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when they take up more time and effort during a time-packed production schedule? However, Hideaki Anno, the director of the aforementioned anime, began to implement them in backgrounds, bringing in a new kind of mechanical urban aesthetics. Anno has a certain kind of…

Oh, wow. How did you manage to interview Hideaki Anno?

Despite the fact that his best works are anime TV series, I always thought Anno was one of the best filmmakers alive. His works in the 90s are absolutely amazing, particularly Evangelion and Karekano. He is a complex artist on many sides; formally he is the first (and mainly only) modern anime director: he uses the long-shot substantially less in favor of close-ups, which are just harder to use (almost anything can be OK-explained by a long-shot, while close-ups are pretty limited semantically). Aesthetically he is very original, with how he plays with music (Haendel in Evangelion 22, Beethoven in Evangelion 24, Bach in the "sex scene" of Karekano) or my favorite aesthetical treat, the use of text.

Love and Pop, and then Shiki-jitsu were a very promising start for him as a live-action filmmaker... but unfortunately, it looks like personal issues got to him. In the 90s there was a trio of Japanese filmmakers with similar approaches and amazing talent: Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon and Shunji Iwai (who is also the main actor in Shiki-jitsu). For different reasons, none of them seems to have used their whole potentials.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#98
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where to read, but it seems to me that end of the 90s, TV shows (real and anime) became less episode based but got a whole story arc, like we know from current TV shows like "Game of Thrones", "Breaking Bad" or "The Wire". I always hear people talking about how "The Sopranos" was the first TV show that did this, but anime like "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Cowboy Bebop" came out years before it.

AFAIK, J. Michael Straczynski was the first person to get a successful arc-based television series on TV, with _Babylon 5_ - the pilot aired in 1993. He had tried earlier with _Captain Power_ in 1987, but that only lasted a single season, and it was kind of doomed to be thought of as a kid's show because of the toyline tie-in.

> AFAIK, J. Michael Straczynski was the first person to get a successful arc-based television series on TV, with _Babylon 5_ - the pilot aired in 1993.

Would you consider Twin Peaks (1990) to be arc-based?

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#99
post #55

Short Answer: Anno Until their depiction in Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995, power lines were virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when they take up more time and effort during a time-packed production schedule? However, Hideaki Anno, the director of the aforementioned anime, began to implement them in backgrounds, bringing in a new kind of mechanical urban aesthetics. Anno has a certain kind of…

Which article(s) do you recommend for going into more detail on "Evangelion revolutionized anime"? I remember reading on how one of the people involved was surprised at its popularity despite all the "characters being messed up".

So, this doesn't have the best translation to English, but it's probably the most useful Japanese perspective on why Evangelion was such a revolutionary work for its time. It contextualizes the series as a cultural event and shows how Anno compares with the other convention-breaking directors of that era.

http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic018/intercity/higashi_E...

Keep in mind that Azuma has his own slant as something of a pop philosopher in Japan, but I think he nails exactly what made Evangelion a surprise and a trendsetter.

Let me know if you enjoyed the article—I can post more links on useful reading or you can PM me for more.

Re: Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?

#100

I dont mean to be terse, but why is this article on the front page?

Probably because groups of hackers and anime nerds have a fairly large overlap, esp for those who grew up in the 90s/00s. I spent many nights as a teen watching classic anime (Robotech aka macross, etc) on kqed (bay areas pbs station).
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