Guaporense and Zotis Review Animation

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Well, many movies are based on novels. I never read a light novel in my life in fact, I don't recall reading any Japanese novel, only non fiction books and manga.

Of the dimensions of Japanese culture: music, film, animation, manga, novels and videogames, novels is the one I am most ignorant about. Haibane Renmei was inspired by a Murakami novel in fact, I might try reading that one.



Since I started looking into the Writers a bit, for my film reviews, I've noticed some interesting things about the books that some movies are based on. Like, some are based on a book by the same title as the movie, and some are based on a book with a completely different title. Some are a film adaptation, and some are more like "inspired" by the book. In other words they're loosely based on the book and take a lot of liberties.

I'm reading the Screenplay for Johnny Mnemonic, and I like it more than the actual movie. It's an adaptation of a book he wrote (I think I read that somewhere, but I could be mistaken). What makes the Screenplay so good is it's written by the original author of the book, William Gibson. He is a great author. The script brings the story to life in a way the movie didn't because it actually paints a picture in your mind by doing more than just describing what's going on. It describes implications that give insight into what's going on. And honestly, it's much better written than his most famous novel, Neuromancer.

In the Screenplay he says that in the background one of the body guards, which could have been bought from a vending machine, is watching a hyper violent anime. In the movie the bodyguard is watching Demon City Shinjuku. I think having watched the movie adds a lot to the experience of reading the screenplay, and reading the screanplay adds a lot to the movie, and it's that compiled information that's making the whole experience so much fun.



I noticed for Goddard's movie, La Chinoise, he adapted it from a very old book and completely changed the setting and characters and everything.



65) Pandora Crimson Shell Ghost Urn (2016)



I love cyborgs. Although I found GitS SAC boring its mostly because it does not talk much about cyborgs at all. I find the concept interesting because in a way the notion of a fully prosthetic body embodies a lot of transhumanist ideas: essentially the body becomes a product that can be replaced like a smartphone or a car. A person's identity becomes strictly separate from the body. This series focuses on the concept of cyberization and other consequences of technology on society.

However, despite being based on a manga written by Shirow this series does nothing creative besides the Sci Fi concepts. In fact, it shows influence from modern otaku media like K-On and PMMM, with the main attraction being the cutesy relationships between the tennager cyborg girl and her pet android girl, who is very grumpy. Some feminists reading these moe manga think that the cutesy characterization of females is revenge of men against the modern empowered women. However, I would say it's just a way of representing men's own vulnerable side, venting it through fiction using cute childlike characters, and girls are moresuited because they are more vulnerable than boys although cute male characters are also common.

Overall a good show, specially due to the Sci Fi aspects. Its art and animation are pretty crude oil though.



Essay - On the relative popularity of manga and animation in Japan

I have noticed that Western fans of animation and comics tend to have the impression that manga and animation are not mainstream in Japan. Despite the fact that Japan produces the vast majority of the content of both comics and animation in the world. This needs some correction.

Japan had a golden age of cinema during the 1950's and 1960's with many classic movies such as Kurosawa's, Mizoguchi's, Ozu's, Naruse's, Kinoshita and Kobayashi among other essential film directors. After the mid 1960's live action movies declined vertiginously in importance in Japanese culture. The main reason for that decline was the expansion of manga, which had its period of greatest expansion from 1965 to 1975. Its such a great expansion in the media that it is often called the "manga generation" the ones who grew up in the 1960's. Most artistic talent in Japan was allocated to manga leaving film in state of decadence although Japan still produces some great live action like Kamikaze Girls and Love Exposure, films heavily influenced by manga aesthetics.

The rise of manga was mainly caused by its practicality: Manga can be read anywhere and since most Japanese commute to work and school by train they read manga as a portable TV in the way to work. Manga historically was also associated with working class people versus European literature which is of a more high class culture.

Manga or comics in Japanese have a long history, with the development of modern comics in Japan in the late 19th century although manga art is said to he heavily influenced by earlier picture books from the early modern period. Manga steadily expanded in popularity from the late 19th century up to 1950's when it's sales began to explode, surpassing 1 billion units by the mid 1970's and continued to grow reaching 2.3 billion units in 1995, its all time peak. After 1995 manga sales began to decline and today are around 1.5 billion units, this decline was due to 3 reasons: the rise of the internet and videogames as alternative mediums and third due to the aging of Japan's population, as young people, specially college students are the biggest consumers of comics. Still, these statistics do not include amateur manga nor internet manga, two of the markets that grew a lot since 1995.

Manga by the mid 1990s had long surpassed any other medium in popularity with the possible exception of TV. Although certain prejudice regarding manga still remained in Japanese society among the older generations (born before the 1960's). Manga in Japan is like popular music (rock, jazz, hip hop and soul) in the Western World, a field that expanded vertiginously since WW2 and dominated youth culture during the post war decades and later expanded into general consumption by the whole population. Manga sales in Japan are about 500-550 billion yen about 8-9 times larger than Japanese live action film gross in an average year. The animation industry is around 220-250 billion yen in size but it's general reach is smaller than manga, its huge size is mostly thanks to the so called "aniotas".

While manga is perhaps the backbone of modern Japanese culture, the animation which is mostly adapted from manga tends to be relatively less popular. In Japan fans of animation specifically are called aniotas or animation otaku and they number around 4-5 million out of the 100 million adult populstion. While manga otaku outnumber then by a huge margin, the most popular anime among aniotas like PMMM or Bakemonogatari were watched by 2-3 million aniotas while the most popular mangas like Attack on Titan and One Piece are read by 20 million people. Still the fact that Attack on Titan annual sales increased from 5 million to 18 million following the release of the TV animation means that maybe aniotas might be larger as a group than its conventionally assumed. Also, of the top 10 highest grossing Japanese films of all time 5 are animated as 6 of the top 10 Japanese films in 2015. However, manga completely dominates novels in sales: the most popular mangas sell 5 times more than novels. So manga is relatively more popular in printed media compared to anime's hold in film or TV.

In the west manga is known mostly from its animated adaptations, which English speaking fans call "anime", a word that I myself despise due to it leading to extremely ignorant generalizations by illiterates in Japanese culture. Anime is more popular in the west relative to manga because it's more accessible since most westerners are used to watching TV but they do know how to read comic books. But most of the masterpieces of Japanese culture produced in recent decades are not animated of live action film but manga. Kurosawa and Ozu are more representative of 1950's Japanese culture rather than modern Japanese culture, specially because Japan changed enormously since 1950 thanks to explosive economic growth from 1950 to 1990: a film like Akira from 1988 with its extremely post modern aesthetics would be unimaginable to a Japanese man from 40 years before.

Of course, while manga as a medium is mainstream there are some of its genres and elements that satisfy a more niche audience. For instance. Manga like K-On! can be called Men's "Girl's Manga", because it combines aesthetic elements from manga aimed at tennager girls with Japanese adult male sensibilities, this genre of manga expanded vertiginously since the late 1980's when it was invented among amateur manga artists. Still this type of manga does not get into best seller lists unlike super blockbuster titles like Attack on Titan, One Piece and Assassination Classroom, which are more conventional manga featuring a teenager male as a main character and lots of melodrama. However, K-On! topped animation sales because hardcore animation nerds are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to buy it even though it's not that popular among mainstream audiences (although K-On! became popular among highschool girls which were not its target audience leading to a temporary boom of sales of musical instruments in the country).

The art style in that English speakers associate with " anime" is a very specific style of manga that developed in the late 1980's based on a mix of girl's manga aesthetics with the sharp lines of men's manga. In recent decades this style became increasingly popular and now it influenced even mainstream manga like Assassination Classroom, still among the top 10 best seller mangas in 2015 not a single one looks like "anime" except Food Wars, the closest to otaku manga style:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...es-2015/.95913

Finally, Japanese society tends to be very conservative in regards to its habits. People with obsessive interests tend to suffer in that society in contrast to American society which is more accepting for example of individuals watching 20-40 movies a week. In Japan they would be regarded as crazy movie otakus. Brazilian society is a bit more like American society in that sense although in Brazil we suffer heavily from homophobia and machismo among other underdeveloped country's diseases.

One thing I admire about Japan is its incredibly rich popular culture, being a country with 40% of the US's population but produces 5-6 times more animation and 20 times more comics, besides huge volumes of live action film and videogames. In Brazil we have neither comics, animation, videogames nor film as well developed industries, most books popular in Brazil are imported as well although some Brazilian authors are popular fact is that Brazil's culture is infinitely less rich than Japan's even though Brazil is larger than Japan in population.



Wow, that was a meaty little essay you wrote there. You sure know a lot more about it than me. Some of what you said really caught me off guard though.

In America someone who watches 10 movies a week... wouldn't be considered crazy? I don't know. I don't live in America, but everyone I told that I watched at least 130 movies last year acted like their head just exploaded and I was crazy. Then again, I live in Toronto which is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. So most of the people I told were first or second generation imigrants, because most of the people I know are imigrants. Most people I know think watching one movie a week is a lot, they think anime is weird, and they either think video games are deadlier than heroine or they play a lot of video games.

Also, I clicked on the link and looked at a bunch of those top 10 animes. I think most of them are what most people would consider typical anime, but obviously they're ignorant so anything even remotely close is what they would consider typical.

It's like with music. People think Hardcore is Metal.



I bought the second season of The Twelve Kingdoms. It was $95 after tax.

I'm about to start it now. I saw it once years ago, so I'm really looking forward to a rewatch. I know after my first watch I didn't like it as much as the first season. I'm confident though, that I'll appreciate it more than I did before, because I appreciated the first season a lot more. And I just love the drawing style, angles, and animation quality even though it's not on the level of masterworks like Perfect Blue and Jin Roh.



In Brazil its pretty common to watch 100 movies a year, specially because people there have little free time to do more productive entertainment.

Also, I clicked on the link and looked at a bunch of those top 10 animes. I think most of them are what most people would consider typical anime, but obviously they're ignorant so anything even remotely close is what they would consider typical.
Well, what I consider what westerners regard as the "anime" look par excellence is like this:



Most manga do not adhere to this standard. Although there are many similarities its clearly distinct.

One Piece female character looks like this:


Kingdom female character:


Haikyuu! female character:


Terra Formars female character


Attack on Titan female character


These are from 5 of the top 7 best selling manga on Japan. Apparently realistic manga designs are not in vogue these days because it's hard to drawn with realism. Manga art balances beauty, realism and drawing effort and is the result of decades upon decades of continuous artistic refinement from hundreds of thousands of manga artists.

Of course, its easy to tell all these characters look like Japanese art in style, but there is great variation within.

Food Wars, is one manga among the top 7 best selling that looks closest to "anime" in that sense:


Overall though most manga today has influence from otaku manga from the 1980's and this influence increased over time.



2,3 and 5 look similar to me. Six as well probably. No idea what four is supposed to be or that too probably, one looks different i guess because it is more shiny and with different eyes i guess, then again looks like she has the exact same eyes of the One Piece character.

Number one looks like it is from a pretty crappy anime that you like Guap .



I see what you mean about how the styles are different. I just wasn't sure about your comment about what Americans think about Anime. In my experience most Westerners think it all looks the same because they don't watch anime or read manga.

I tend to boycott most mainstream anime series. I watch more anime movies, OVA's, older anime, and obscure anime. I try to research it a lot and familiarise myself with what's out there, and then be selective about what I watch. So even though a lot of people watch more anime than me, I rarely run into people who actually know much more than mediocre mainstream anime, like Omnizoa for example. So what if he watches more hours of anine a day than me. Most of what he watches isn't worth talking about.



Number one looks like it is from a pretty crappy anime that you like Guap .
She is from a light novel. And the series is well regarded to call it crappy is rather ignorant. I didn't care much for it though.



I see what you mean about how the styles are different. I just wasn't sure about your comment about what Americans think about Anime. In my experience most Westerners think it all looks the same because they don't watch anime or read manga.
Agreed but assuming it all looks the same because you don't know it is kinda racist. If you don't know it then you should not make assumptions.

I tend to boycott most mainstream anime series. I watch more anime movies, OVA's, older anime, and obscure anime. I try to research it a lot and familiarise myself with what's out there, and then be selective about what I watch. So even though a lot of people watch more anime than me, I rarely run into people who actually know much more than mediocre mainstream anime, like Omnizoa for example. So what if he watches more hours of anine a day than me. Most of what he watches isn't worth talking about.
I see. I am selective but I enjoy mainstream stuff. Usually best sellers are entertaining but sometimes superficial.

I have the impression that the best stuff tends to be a combination of popular, acessible and critically acclaimed. Stuff that succeeds on all levels. For example, in Manga we have stuff like Nausicaa, Gunnm, Vinland Saga and Vagabond, in film, stuff like Star Wars, The Godfather, 2001 and Seven Samurai. In animation, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, EVA and PMMM, all these are incredibly well made and widely popular while being critically acclaime and are among my favorites.



Agreed but assuming it all looks the same because you don't know it is kinda racist. If you don't know it then you should not make assumptions.
I would say it's ignorant, but "racist" is a bit harsh.

I see. I am selective but I enjoy mainstream stuff. Usually best sellers are entertaining but sometimes superficial.

I have the impression that the best stuff tends to be a combination of popular, acessible and critically acclaimed. Stuff that succeeds on all levels. For example, in Manga we have stuff like Nausicaa, Gunnm, Vinland Saga and Vagabond, in film, stuff like Star Wars, The Godfather, 2001 and Seven Samurai. In animation, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, EVA and PMMM, all these are incredibly well made and widely popular while being critically acclaime and are among my favorites.
Hmm, okay, so that's how you look at it. That makes sense. I think I'm in the minority with the way that I perceive what "the best" is.

In my experience, as I reflect on my personal growth throughout my life, the more I learn and understand about film the more I realise why certain things are so good. Before I reached that point I was oblivious to it. So when I see how much further I've grown in my understanding of film than most people, and yet how little I know and how much further I have to go before I can really say that I understand film... When I see that, it shows me how hard it is to actually understand what has reached the lofty height that even most experts can't understand. So I think there is a very good chance that the best animation ever made has gone completely unnoticed and unappreciated, because practically no one else besides the creator of that work has reached that level of understanding. So it probably wouldn't get critical acclaim, and it definitely won't be popular, but maybe a decent amount of people in the higher society of art film will know about it and spread the word and highly regard it.



Essay - The Evolution of Taste: Liking or Disliking a Medium

It's very common for people to claim they like and dislike "things" that are very broad worlds. Although most of the time these claims are made based on the ignorance and concurrent prejudice instead of an opinion formed by any experience at all (for example, everybody who claim to dislike anime never watched a substantial amount of animation). And the fact is that tastes are not absolute: people's tastes evolve through time, a person can learn how to understand and appreciate cultural products like music, film, animation and books.

I did not "like" music until I discovered Iron Maiden, or at least, I did not find music that I found powerful enough to make me actively seek to find out more music, after I discovered Iron Maiden I turned from a person uninterested in music to someone who dedicated most of my free time to music. That's why I was a bit put off when people claimed that I "love anime" when I posted several animated films in my top 100 films over 3 years ago. I don't really think that a person who has sensibility to art cannot "love anime", at least not if such a person is intelligent enough to be able to learn the language of modern Japanese culture. I don't think it's very hard to learn that as well: most anime is "popular culture": adaptations of manga which sold millions of copies and are read by all demographic groups in Japan, like Hollywood movies they are (mostly) not "hard" in the sense that Tarkovsky's or Goddard's movies are.

However, to learn a cultural language requires a bit of humility: such a person must first try to understand it without having very strong expectations of what a narrative/movie/music is supposed to be. If someone watches K-On! thinking that fictional narratives must be like American narratives (such as those of Hollywood movies) such a person will not be able to appreciate it. As a result most western animation fans hate K-On! because of it's very Japanese nature. While american animation fans love Cowboy Bebop, which is a good series that is not exceptionally acclaimed in Japan, because Cowboy Bebop appeals to the american cultural psyche and is heavily influenced by american music and american cop TV shows. Is essentially anime for the fanboy of american pop culture (made by a fanboy).

Another example of the prejudice against animation in Western society is the prejudice against pornographic animation. Why would be wrong to enjoy animated pornography? Its not considered wrong to enjoy pornographic book, live action or photos. But drawn pornography (either in comics and animation) suffers from a stigma. The reason is that drawn pornography is not part of Western culture. That is due to historical reasons: since comics and animation never developed as an artistic medium but instead as peripheral entertainment sources, animation is still considered a babysitter thing: to entertain small children to allow parents some free time. As a result since Western culture is xenophobic, consuming graphic pornography is frowned upon.

It's also a fact that animation is the least developed artistic medium (perhaps, even less than the far younger medium of videogames). It's a medium that the vast majority of people do not consume in significant quantities if compared to live action film (including TV and movies), books or music, for example. The only type of animation that is widely consumed consists of simplistic comedies like Family Guy, South Park and The Simpsons. Before I discovered Miyazaki that was also the only type of animation I consumed, after I discovered Miyazaki I decided to expand my knowledge of animation and got to understand much better how incredibly rich and diverse animation can be.

Although a serious problem animation has is that it is mostly restricted to one country. There is some animation made outside of Japan but they are usually very simplistic or if relatively complex then in a very small number (in movies like Wrinkles or When the Wind Blows, good serious animation made in Europe). In Japan animation is also mostly restricted to manga adaptations and mostly a slave of manga aesthetics (something Miyazaki heavily criticized), there is very few creative and original animation like Miyazaki's, Takahata's, Oshii's, Norstein's and Anno's.

Still if one takes into account the total volume of animation produced in shorts, movies and TV, it still adds up to a huge amount and probably greater than, for example, the entire literary output of 16th century Europe (because only around 10% of Europe's population was literate back then and fewer had access to ways to distribute what they wrote and Europe's population was also much smaller). I have already consumed several dozens of animations that can be regarded as masterpieces and I know less than 5% of all animation (although I know most of the most highly regarded stuff).

The modern world now produces much more art than at any previous period in history and at much higher orders of magnitude: the world economy today is estimated to be around 100 times the world economy in 1800 (source: Angus Maddison) and hence the number of people with the free time and resources to dedicate themselves to art is also enormously larger. These objective facts contradict the subjective statements that people make regarding the decline of art, if today there is much more art being made than in any previous period why do people worship the old stuff so much and complain about the decline of art? I suspect two main reasons:

(1) The psychological need to feel superior to other people by claiming appreciation of stuff nobody else consumes.

(2) The fact that the most influential works of art are the oldest ones because they have more time to become influential.

Another reason is that longer periods of time allow for art to prove itself universal, stuff like the 9th symphony is appreciated by people from many cultural backgrounds and different personalities, it's not a product of it's time but instead timeless. We don't know now if a recent popular movie like Star Wars 7 will prove itself a masterpiece in the future.



I would say it's ignorant, but "racist" is a bit harsh.
True. Prejudiced is a better word.

Hmm, okay, so that's how you look at it. That makes sense. I think I'm in the minority with the way that I perceive what "the best" is.

In my experience, as I reflect on my personal growth throughout my life, the more I learn and understand about film the more I realise why certain things are so good. Before I reached that point I was oblivious to it. So when I see how much further I've grown in my understanding of film than most people, and yet how little I know and how much further I have to go before I can really say that I understand film... When I see that, it shows me how hard it is to actually understand what has reached the lofty height that even most experts can't understand. So I think there is a very good chance that the best animation ever made has gone completely unnoticed and unappreciated, because practically no one else besides the creator of that work has reached that level of understanding. So it probably wouldn't get critical acclaim, and it definitely won't be popular, but maybe a decent amount of people in the higher society of art film will know about it and spread the word and highly regard it.
Well, I personally believe there is no such a thing as "best". Only things that I personally find myself liking at a point in my life. I also find myself liking stuff that lots of other people like, popular stuff (at least among some circles). I also like some less popular stuff but usually the more popular it is the higher are the chances that I will also like it. Some other people have more "individualized" tastes.



Well, I personally believe there is no such a thing as "best". Only things that I personally find myself liking at a point in my life. I also find myself liking stuff that lots of other people like, popular stuff (at least among some circles). I also like some less popular stuff but usually the more popular it is the higher are the chances that I will also like it. Some other people have more "individualized" tastes.
Everyone has individualized taste. Most people have undeveloped taste, so things that appeal to less developed taste are usually more popular.

My parents forced me to eat food that I didn't like, and eventually I grew to like it. That taught me to regularly try things that I don't like and eventually learn to like them. I apply it to not only food, but everything in life. Music, movies, sports, etc... I've learned to like Basketball even though I didn't used to like it. I've learned to enjoy trashy B-movies even though they're horrible quality. I've learned to appreciate Rap music even though for most of my life I couldn't stand it.

People who watch a movie, don't like it, and say it's bad, are just exhibiting an ignorant attitude. I think because they want their opinions to be just as valid as people with more developed taste and more informed opinions, they argue that quality is subjective. But I think they are inconsistent as soon as they start arguing with someone else, or say that someone else is wrong in their opinion. If people think that quality is subjective, then they should never say that one movie is better than another, or that another person is wrong. They should just say they like one movie more than another and leave it at that. As soon as someone says a movie is a good movie, there must be criteria for why it's good. Because "This movie is good," is a factual statement.

I would say first look at an obvious comparison. The Godfather compared to Avatar. You can clearly see that The Godfather has better acting, better directing, better cinematography, better dialogue, a better story and plot, etc... So why would you assume that two movies which are so close in quality that you can't tell which one is better aren't necessarily better or worse than each other just because you can't see the difference? It's like if you have two sticks and one is only a millimeter smaller. Which one is longer? Is it subjective? No, you just can't tell, but if you had a ruler then you would be able to tell.

In the example of a stick, length is the quality that is being measured.

In film, you would be measuring acting, directing, cinematography, etc... If they're close and you can't perceive which is better it just means you lack the tools to decipher which is better.

That's my opinion, and I don't think it's more valid than someone else's if they know more than me, but I do think it's more valid than someone's who doesn't know what they're talking about.

At least I studied how to do word studies in University and have done a word study on the word "Quality."



I would say first look at an obvious comparison. The Godfather compared to Avatar. You can clearly see that The Godfather has better acting, better directing, better cinematography, better dialogue, a better story and plot, etc... So why would you assume that two movies which are so close in quality that you can't tell which one is better aren't necessarily better or worse than each other just because you can't see the difference? It's like if you have two sticks and one is only a millimeter smaller. Which one is longer? Is it subjective? No, you just can't tell, but if you had a ruler then you would be able to tell.
I guess that in art the ruler is subjective in itself. The quality of directing, writing and acting is subject to aesthetic judgement which is dependent in the stabdards that are socially constructed. A ruler is physical and a 1 cm is 1 cm at any country or time, aesthetic standards change across cultures and periods. That's why it's so hard to come up with objective judgment standards in art. Although it's true that there are some regularities in art, usually I can understand why things are regarded as great.

In animation, for instance, taking the average out of many blogs this fellow animation fan https://aquabluesweater.wordpress.co...ternet-series/, made this list up:



The top 10 is pretty solid stuff (except 9) and the top 1 is my favorite animation of all time. This is the average of the opinions of hardcore fans so they know their stuff well. I think that watching most of that top 50 is essential for knowing modern animation specially in terms of narrative driven animation.

In terms of liking and disliking stuff. I like some genres more than others. I like metal more than rap, I like science fiction more than gangster themed stuff. I still can enjoy rap and gangster stuff but not as much as the other stuff. I dislike, however when people claim to dislike entire worlds like "videogames" or "manga/anime", when they are not genres but entire worlds that reflect the spectrum of tastes of large number of people, in that sense they are not actually saying anything other than signaling that such a person doesn't know what he/she is talking about and that such a person is arrogant in writting off entire world they do not know.



Essay - Animation, drawing, live action and photography

Animation is a reflection of the human mind while live action is only a mechanical process of producing images through photography. Animation uses drawings and the illusion of movement generated through sequence of drawings. Drawings are always and everywhere art and the thing about drawings is that they are not a reflection of reality but a reflection of the human mind.

For example, when you see the drawing of a military vehicle it is much clearer and well defined than a photo:





That's because the artist emphasises the key details that matter for the human mind, while the photo is just the outcome of a physical process that is not conscious and hence does not articulate the human perception of reality. The drawing focuses only on the aspects considered essential by the artist, producing a portrait of the reality as perceived by the artist's mind. This additional clarity explains why in WW2, Japan produced instructional videos for aircraft repair animated, despite the massive costs of producing animation at the time, because learning was much faster with animated instructional films instead of live action ones.

Live action film is a sequence of photographs, images produced from the mechanical process of a machine filming. As a result the degree of detail and most of the images portrayed are beyond the control of the makers of the film, instead live action film is filled with extraneous detritus that makes it harder for the viewer to digest vis a vis animation. Live action is an inefficient medium.

I always liked animation since I was a child for this abstract quality and efficiency in the way it transmits information to the viewer. Besides these qualities animation also has a higher degree of freedom, since the artists are in full control of the process of making it. This means that animation holds a greater artistic potential than live action but this artistic potential is most of the time not realized.

The idea that animation is for children is the outcome of a historical process. Although I also think that since simpler drawings are easier to draw than more sophisticated drawings, then children would be more open to animation made using simple drawings. However, I am not quite aware of this preference for simple drawings in regards to children: When I was 10-11 years old I found Disney completely lame and I liked the art of games like Starcraft, which is much more complex. The idea that children's minds are simple is a myth that exists in the minds of adults who have forgotten their younger selves. Still this idea has provided a strong influence for the development of animation, or more precisely, for its stagnation as an artistic medium in the west.



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I always liked animation since I was a child for this abstract quality and efficiency in the way it transmits information to the viewer. Besides these qualities animation also has a higher degree of freedom, since the artists are in full control of the process of making it. This means that animation holds a greater artistic potential than live action but this artistic potential is most of the time not realized.

The idea that animation is for children is the outcome of a historical process. Although I also think that since simpler drawings are easier to draw than more sophisticated drawings, then children would be more open to animation made using simple drawings. However, I am not quite aware of this preference for simple drawings in regards to children: When I was 10-11 years old I found Disney completely lame and I liked the art of games like Starcraft, which is much more complex. The idea that children's minds are simple is a myth that exists in the minds of adults who have forgotten their younger selves. Still this idea has provided a strong influence for the development of animation, or more precisely, for its stagnation as an artistic medium in the west.
This actually hit me in the feels, because I felt/feel the same way as you do. Disney at a point was basically a joke to a kid watching Dragon Ball, Gundam Wing, Trigun, Lupin III and movies like Wings of Honneamise, Macross Plus, Princess Mononoke, Castles In the Sky and Patlabor. What my young mind was able to make of those films is really just a less definitive version of what I make of them now. Of course I understand concepts within the films better and I'm a little more critical about certain things, but I'm able to view this material with the same exuberance that I did as a child.

On the same page, this is the reason why I prefer animated sitcoms to live action sitcoms, the possibilities are essentially endless and allow for total freedom to tell a story.
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I'll just comment on the subject of subjectivity in art before I read the two most recent posts.

Quality is by definition objective. To make a qualitative statement, "One thing is better than another," there must be a standard of excellence. Art has many subjective elements, but it's qualitative elements are not subjective even though at high levels they may be impossible to determine. People have a hard time separating their feelings and personal taste from objective standards of quality. When it comes to art, even defining what art is, is hard to do and may have subjective elements. There's an expression that often rings in my ears, "All great artists are misunderstood." I don't think it's possible for the human mind to fully grasp true art. Not even the artist their self fully comprehends their own art. When I made my own art I always felt like it was creating itself and I was just a vessel. That kind of thing can't be measured. I understand why people say quality in art is subjective, but while the idea trying to be communicated is reasonable, I don't think those words are accurate. No one can determine which of the greatest masterpieces are the absolute best, but perhaps a supreme being who knows everything can. The point is there are subjective elements to art, but quality is always objective.

It's like this: If art is subjective than there is no "best" but there are degrees of excellence. It's not subjective in the sense that a person can say the art they like most, or that makes them "feel" the most, is better than art they like least. It's subjective in the sense that within the same grades of excellence no one can say which is better, only which they like more.

People who say one is better than another because art is subjective are always wrong. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of subjectivity, objectivity, quality, and art. It is only ignorant people who make no effort to even understand the meaning of the words they use who say such absurd things, and who make little effort to develop their own taste.