Japanese Animation and New Media
Lecture Two
The following sequence from Spriggan is not only a fun action sequence, but you can also see the visual logic of movement of animation shift toward ‘cinematism.’
Cinematism is a term that I’ve borrowed from Paul Virilio to indicate movement that takes the bullet’s eye view, so to speak—a ballistic sense of movement. The viewing position adopts the position of the speeding train, or speeding bullet, or in this case, the running hero. Now, even though much of the sequence is actually constructed of sliding layers and lateral movement, we have an increased sense of movement into depth. The hero plummets down on his pursuer, or a car or blanket rushes at us. You feel that things are rushing at you, as if you were traveling at high speed into depth.
In fact, although this feels like high-speed motion into depth that adopts the point of view of the technologized entity (that is, cinematism), the effect is largely created through enlargement or magnification of the image in conjunction with rapid editing. And there is a gradual escalation of scale of perception, ending with Spriggan taking out a surveillance satellite. This enhances our sense of technologized perception and motion. Indeed, the sequence feels like hyper-cinematism.
What is amazing is that this sense of cinematism, of ballistic vision, is achieved without actual movement into depth of the viewing position. This serves as a reminder that, even though this is a good example of cinematism, doing cinematism in cel animation usually happens in a very different way than in cinema—because we do not actually have a movement of the viewing position of the camera into the dimensionality that is drawn upon the images. I’ll talk about this more in the context of the animation stand.
