Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Nine: Chapter Fifteen: Full Limited Animation
We have seen in the Ghibli documentary on Otsuka Yasuo that Taiyô no ôji Horusu or Little Norse Prince features prominently in Ghibli’s history of its manga-film style. Takahata, Miyazaki, and Otsuka worked together on this film. Now, although the Ghibli documentary calls attention to the dynamics of character animation and movement, Little Norse Prince also uses techniques of limited animation. In fact, one of the key dramatic scenes of the film — the wolves attacking the village — uses nothing but ‘still images’ in combination with movement of the viewing positions (pans across the image) and editing (cutting from image to image).
Techniques of limited animation are here used to enhance the sense of violence in the scene, and as such they also stand in contrast to scenes with fuller animation. Character movement thus becomes associated with a sense of freedom of movement.
