Ask John: Why Does Anime Look Better than American Animation?

Question:
Why are American animation shows like Teen Titans and many others visually impared compared to Japanese animation like Ghost in the Shell and Inuyasha that look much more appealing and visually attractive?

Answer:
Although I’m not personally interested in or impressed by most American animation, I have enough respect for the art of animation to refrain from concurring with the statement that American animation is “visually impaired.” I agree that typical anime has a different visual design concept from typical American animation, but I don’t believe that the visual design of typical American animation is incomplete or crippled. American and Japanese animation have different aesthetics because of the differences in the cultural attitudes toward animation from which the genres come from. Conventional American animation emphasizes unreality and focuses on literal animation quality while Japanese animation emphasizes a sense of reality and places a heavy emphasis on the visual aspect of animation.

The predominant American attitude toward animation is that animation is a cinematic medium for children and artists. Traditional two dimensional animation should depict either children’s cartoons or may be used as an art form for serious artists to create works that have limited exposure and appeal. Since animation in America isn’t perceived as an equal alternative to live action film, which can depict reality and target mature, rational, mainstream viewers, animation in America is forced to distance itself from reality. (Of course, there are rare exceptions such as King of the Hill.) Mainstream American society believes that cartoons shouldn’t mirror reality. Cartoons are whimsical fantasy – total fiction that will entertain children without threatening their innocence with enlightenment about real life. American animation may use highly stylized character designs like the Power Puff Girls, or use settings in the distant past or future like The Flintstones and The Jetsons, or use animal characters in place of humans like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse in order to distinguish itself from reality. American animation also frequently avoids using realistic backgrounds, once again, in order to separate animation from reality.

American animation may use characters and character designs that can’t be mistaken for real human beings, but if this is a shortcoming, American animators compensate for that unreality by employing fluid animation quality. American animation is known for using more frames of animation than anime, resulting in lots of movement, and very fluid and lifelike movement. American animation also synchs “lip flap” to dialogue to create characters that look believable when speaking while anime may not always accurately match an animated character’s mouth movements to the character’s spoken dialogue.

Japanese animation is often accused of looking cheap because it often has limited animation. Regardless of how attractive an animated character looks in a still image, the eye can notice when the character’s body movements seem stilted or unnatural. Anime frequently uses fewer frames of animation than typical American animation does. And anime often recycles animation by using the same character movements in different scenes and looping the same background art. When a character speaks with his or her mouth covered or hidden, or speaks with his back turned, the effect may enhance mood or character personality, but it’s also an animator’s trick to avoid having to draw mouth movements or facial expressions.

Although the technical animation quality of anime may often be lower than that of typical American animation, anime has more freedom than American animation. Unlike American culture, which perceives animation as an inherently inferior form of cinema than live action, Japanese culture is willing to accept animation as an equal alternative to live action, which is why anime like Perfect Blue- often called a live action film made in animation- exist. Unlike American culture that insists that animation should be unrealistic cartoons, Japanese animation strives to be convincing. Character designs may be highly stylized, but they’re still intended to convey believability. Small details like light and shadows, costume and clothing design, hairstyles, body proportions, realistic settings and backgrounds, and recognizable real world details like cars, food, stores, crowds, street signs, chairs, and other background elements all serve to make anime seem like a stylized depiction of real life. Likewise anime often uses bright colors and sharp contrasts of colors as common in real life, while American animation often uses softer or muted colors that subconsciously evoke a fictional world different from the real world.

I don’t believe that the visual design of Japanese animation is intrinsically superior to that of conventional American animation; it’s simply different, and some viewers are more predisposed toward one style of art than the other. The design of anime seems more detailed, more crisp, more intricate than typical American animation because it has to be that way in order to portray a convincing alternate reality. American animation usually doesn’t look photo realistic because it’s not trying to evoke a sense of reality. The goal of American animation is different from the goal of anime, so the visual design of American animation is different from the stereotypical look of anime.