Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Japanese Animation - An Overview

Japanese Animation is a style of animation that originated in Japan. There are many differences between American and Japanese Animation. How can you tell the difference between the two pictures below:

The one on the left is Japanese and the one on the right is American. Can you see the difference? The one on the right looks simple and the other one looks more complicated. Not all Japanese Animation looks that simple. In fact, some Japanese animation looks MORE complicated. The best way to tell is by looking at the eyes of a human character. The eyes will always be somewhat simple in the American style.


Not only the animation is drawn a different way, it is also used differently. In America, as you may already know cartoons are for children. In Japan it is for all age groups children, teens, and adults. For them, animation is just as good as "live action!"

Another difference is that the Japanese story line is more interesting. In America it is all about a hero, or a group of heroes and heroines, that fight ugly evil people continuously. In Japan, it is a different story. First of all, the hero is different. Most of the time it is about normal people in their every day environment. Now wait a minute, doesn't that sound boring? Actually it's not, let me explain. Let's take Ranma 1/2, for an example. It is about a boy that turns into a girl with cold water and goes on all these marital arts adventures. Now, that is normal to him because he was born in this strange world. That isn't so boring is it?

Also, the enemies are different, as well. For one thing, they are not all ugly. In fact, some of them are really cute. They don't attack people for any reason either. They ALWAYS have a reason. Sometimes it's revenge and sometimes it's to rule the world (because they were just born power hungry). In Japanese animation, it also shows more of what the enemies' perspective is; why they are being "evil".

The story itself isn't always good against evil. In Japan, it can be about saving the world in different ways as well. Lets look at "Slayers TRY," there really wasn't a real, real bad guy. It's about the gods wanting a clear universe and the people of the universe didn't understand that, but in the end it all gets explained. They die, get married or go their own way, that way you'll never know what the ending is going to be, just like life..

Source : http://library.thinkquest.org/

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