Process and Production - A brief history of ... Westernization of Anime

Another post on anime as i thinks its an interesting topic, how animation has started to take influence and inspiration from western animation techniques.

Back in the 50's there was a very blurred line between western and anime as both had very similar art styles as japan had animation imported from the west which heavily influenced the art style to be very similar to the west.

50's anime was at least a decade behind of disneys art style, have a look at Pinnocheo and Astro Boy, both bear very rounded and pudgey shapes featuring large eyes, adventurous and bubbly personalities along with an incredibly similar visual aesthetic, (thinking about it both characters wanted to be seen as real boys... huh). The main difference was in animation techniques as even today  while disney would animate various scenes and frames to showcase movement and life anime would focus on big plots and flashy acting leaving context to the back burner with still shots.

It was after the 50's that the two types of animation took varying paths of style. While Disney developed their principles and worked with creating a style that could call their own, anime became very known as having the 'big eyes', leading to what has become known as moe a certain art style that is very popular in Japan and with various fans but becomes a big turn away for many new comers as its all about making the characters as cute as possible which can lead to very boring and unappealing characters.

It was the only image i could find that didn't make me cringe... but what I'm trying to say is the style of anime took a very restricted turn in certain areas because it brought in MOE money (see what i did there?). It was either this or dragon ball art style, so big strong sharp features or rounder and softer than a baby's bum leaving an unfortunate rut in style in the noughts especially. But it was during the teens that a certain style of anime became more mainstream and popular because of animations such as Kill La Kill and Gurren Lagenn, an art style that took regular anime and went crazy with it applying extremes to the principles of animations as well as action and story which was put across through the actions and movements of the characters and not just insane flashes of light and static images.  This made use of the 12 principles and western techniques and i loved this as it showed more life to the characters, some might say it takes away a sense of realism but if thats the case watch live action as animation (for entertainment) is about creating entertainment for their target audience. These anime stretched and squashed there characters with out restricting them to the confines of the human form which was still visible and clear. After this more anime came along putting more effort into their animations rather than a pretty animatic, action anime had full action scenes which were fast paced and dynamic while romance anime (while keeping the moe style) worked on subtle actions to portray emotions. Stories started to really carry weight and actions would effect the future, there became real connection with the characters and their ploy and world.

Id also like to mention the anime 'Fooly Cooly' (FLCL) for its animation style which while keeping the typical anime style fluctuated to various situations of fourth wall breaking and twisting the shape of their characters to the extreme, its very weird to, breaking boundaries i can't quite wrap my head round, think ill have to watch it more.