by Aidan Ranney

Created on: December 13, 2006   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

The question of whether one considers the American 'cartoon' as superior to Japanese 'anime' is largely decided as to how much of both products one has been exposed to. As one might deduce from the name, 'anime' is short for 'animation'. In Japan, it is used by people to refer not to only Japanese animation, but anything animated. Besides individual animation style, the differences between American animation and Japanese animation are mainly that, for the most part, Americans still animation to be mainly for children, while other forays into adult themes and more complex stories are very rare. In Japan, animation is not limited thematically. For comics and animation, there is a product for every demographic, from colourful kid's shows ["One Piece"], to murder mystery stories ["Monster"], political commentary and romantic dramas ["Kimi ga Nozomi Eien"] for the teenage to adult markets.

Theme, character and writing maturity aside, many advocates for the 'American cartoon' complain of sophomoric and underdeveloped art and animation technique in Japanese animation. I find that in most popular American cartoons, [such as "Captain Planet" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" to cite some older examples] the quality of animation is actually typically similar to Japanese animation. The main factors in the quality of animation are universal: the amount of time and money available to the producers. Stylistically, Japanese animation takes a different approach to what movements are focused on. These are differences I can only describe as philosophical in nature. Summed up, the differences are mostly around body language and 'action' movements. While American animation focuses on more fluid, sweeping movements of the whole body, Japanese animation focuses more on the smaller details, such as the movement of birds flying across a skyline or the small shifts in posture and eye movement a person makes.

I believe that American animation has a lot it can learn from the Japanese. However, the changes I have seen in recent American shows, such as "Teen Titans", are simply trying to copy the visual drawing and emotive styles of Japanese animation, and ramping up the hyperkinetic pacing. It's a change that reflects American animators simply capitalizing on what they see to be a fad in Japanese animation. The result is a messy decline of quality, as even the aspects they are copying are over-exaggerated and, to me at least, seem ingenuine and cheap. Perhaps this is due to them taking cues from similarly cheaply done American localizations of Japanese animation. Shows ranging from average to great, such as "Pokemon", "Naruto" and "One Piece" have all been brought to our shores, but the re-edited, re-scored [usually with crap techno or hip-hop beats] and re-voiced [always with the same stilted actors doing the same static voices] are spoiling what could have been a great experience for many.

I can't say that either the American or Japanese models are superior to one another, but I can say that they are both constantly growing and evolving. If there is something the Japanese do seem to do better than us however, it's being able to create enough animated content to fill their time slots [with content that truly ranges 'for all ages']. Meanwhile, we continue to import and adopt more and more from them.

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