Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Eight: Chapter Thirteen: Multiple Frames of Reference
In other words, the sense of Marie walking forward is relative, and with both foreground and background in differential motion, she becomes the frame of reference. We cannot see where she is going (although we see one fork go by), and this scene is supposed to be aimless action, that is, play and exploration. But, if we already have a sense that she is going nowhere or going in circles, it is because the character is indeed moving her arms in circles and going nowhere. This is repetitive directionless motion with only a relative frame of reference.
When Marie decides to turn around, the frame of reference not only changes (we see the railroad tracks differently) but also multiplies (we see the tracks forking again and again). Here we see how the animetism of flat compositing tends towards disorientation and a multiplication of paths. Which is to say, the frame of reference is not stable, and so, even as we lose one frame of reference for orientating movement, a whole series of orientations appear, equally plausible.
