Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Six: Chapter Nine: Relative Movement
In the following clip from Kiki’s Delivery Service, note how differently Miyazaki negotiates the sliding of layers within the image to create his sense of animetism.
First, in contrast with the confined space of the commuter train, this situation here is inherently panoramic. It affords a broad view. Second, because there are multiple layers in motion, this scene imparts a greater sense of depth. In conjunction with the panoramic view, the sense of depth gives a sense of standing outside the view, of being separated from it. This sense of separation tends to stabilize the viewing position. It may not be as solidly fixed in position as the viewing position implicated in Cartesianism. But it is more stable than that in Tabaimo’s installation. Third, note how the things farther from the viewing position appear to move slower than those closer to the viewing position. This is called parallax. Parallax imparts a sense of a stable frame of reference for movement. Some commentators have argued that parallax is variation on one-point perspective, but whether we accept that interpretation or not, we can see how parallax implies a stable frame of reference. Fourth, I should add that this Miyazaki scene is almost paradigmatically modern, with its panorama of travel by rail from the countryside to the big city. Tabaimo’s installation feels decidedly postmodern, putting everything into closed loops of circulation, which are disrupted by seemingly random events of affective violence.
In addition to these points, I previously showed how character animation in Miyazaki often called upon techniques of angling that impart a sense of orientation toward the earth (a variation on gravitation attraction that gives the impression that characters are not weightless entities in a separate plane of reality but anchored into the animation world).
If we take all these points together, it becomes clearer that, against the tendency of animetism (sliding planes) to relativize the frame of reference for movement, Miyazaki uses techniques that assure a non-relative frame of reference. In the broader context of his films, that frame of reference is nature. Or, to be precise, since this frame of reference cannot be relativized, it is Nature. As such, as the frame of reference, Nature tends to become an absolute frame of reference. But in Miyazaki films it is as if Nature must be unveiled and experienced as the frame of reference, and it is the mission of the girl to orientate our senses in that direction as she gains a free relation to the modern technological condition by taking to the winds.
Now some commentators actually characterize the worldview of Miyazaki’s animations as authoritarian, totalitarian, or absolutist in its tendencies. In any event, what is important in this context is that relative movement implies another way of negotiating the tension between cinematism and animetism, which imply very different relations to technology. In fact, relative movement is quite common in the limited animations for Japanese television often referred to as anime.
