Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Nine: Chapter Fifteen: Full Limited Animation
Miyazaki Hayao wishes to distinguish the work of Studio Ghibli from anime and its ‘otaku worlds,’ which means that he rejects the art of limited animation produced for television. This is why he characterizes Ghibli work as manga-eiga or manga film (or cartoon film) in opposition to anime. Ironically enough, anime otaku have not necessarily rejected Miyazaki animations, however. His shojo characters in his early works in particular remain male otaku favourites, and one current of female otakudom dubbed fujoshi or ‘rotten girls’ derives one of its favourite BL (boys’ love) paradigms from Miyazaki’s Heidi of the Alps: Sebastian. In other words, otaku cultures seem more open and diverse in comparison with Miyazaki and Ghibli who are pickier about what qualifies as animation.
The Ghibli contrast between manga-eiga and anime boils down to a contrast between full animation and limited animation, with an emphasis on character animation. Those who champion full animation tend to denounce limited animation for its lack of movement. Indeed the animator Otsuka Yasuo, whose work had great impact on Miyazaki and Takahata, contrasts full animation and limited animation in terms of ugoki-e (moving images) versus tome-e (still images).
It is this characterization of limited animation in terms of stillness or immobility that I wish to challenge, because such terms are usually used to imply that limited animation is not an art, not animation, because it does not have enough movement. Historically, however, limited animation emerged an art, and in my opinion, limited animation is not only as artful as full animation but is also more interesting and challenging than full animation today. To understand the art of limited animation, we need to avoid a strict opposition between movement and stillness, or mobility and immobility. We need to think in terms of different modes of movement, to look at how limited animation orientates movement differently than full animation.
I’ll approach the movement of limited animation from two directions. Let’s first consider how animations associated with Miyazaki, Takahata, and Otsuka used ‘still images.’ Then we can turn to the dynamics of movement in limited animation.
