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Link to Part I
Link to Part II

Part III: Anime and the Limits of Cinema
This last section features two essays that focus on the ways anime that possess notable characteristics that allow them to break preconceived notions of what is possible:


1. “The First Time as Farce: Digital Animation and the Repetition of Cinema” by Thomas Lamarre
2. “’Such is the Contrivances of the Cinematograph’: Dur(anim)ation, Modernity, and Edo Culture in Tabaimo’s Animated Installations” by Livia Monnet








Using repetition in cinema is a hybrid of various factors, including nostalgia for older works, the want to recreate previous successes, and the desire to understand trends in order to predict future ones. By delineating “old’ and “new” works though, it creates an illusion of relevance, where there is a clean line that separates what is old and new. As Thomas Lamarre notes, the frantic search for the newest ideas is paradoxical, as “what was new today is old tomorrow.” This is greatly evident in the speed information is created, spread, manipulated, and tossed aside in today’s society. Thus, a question arises: what is new media?

To elaborate, Lamarre begins by highlighting the main problem with contemporary media: there is no singular work which defines present day. Without a single piece that represents the present day, there is no stability in form, style, conventions, organization, language, or expression in how media is produced. Taking anime as an example, defining anime’s various stages of development involve naming singular shows which exemplified the atmosphere of the time. Space Battleship Yamato of the 70s, Fist of the North Star of the early to mid-80s, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z in the late 80s to mid-90s, Neon Genesis Evangelion in the mid to late 90s, Love Hina in the early 00s, and Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star in the mid-00s. After that, examples become far and in between, where it’s easier to spot trends season-by-season rather than over multiple years. Perhaps it’s due to us living in the present, so it’s harder to look at present day as one large whole.



In trying to define current media and create new ones, historical repetition is turned to as a way to find and create order. Of course, diversity in today’s media is a boon, but its impact leaves an unclear overall identity. In film’s past, specific properties of lenses and its various related apparatuses gives way to specific ways of representation, or in other words, a limitation. This led to the desire to investigate alternatives for representation to break from the standard.

Using Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within as a contemporary example, it’s described as a film that used hand drawn art, indistinguishable from live photography, without any reference models or human digitizing. “In principle, given enough time and money, one can create what will be the ultimate digital cinema: ninety minutes of 129,600 frames completely painted by hand from scratch, but indistinguishable from live photography,” as Lamarre quotes Lev Manovich, Computer Science professor at the City University of New York.

Unfortunately, this relation between the digital and analog is muddled through the liberal use of the term “hand drawn,” which also takes into account paint programs and other software. In addition, while real actors weren’t captured photographically, the usage of motion capture through staff members wearing reflective markers, akin to how a Pixar film would render human motions into a computerized stick figure. The result is Lamarre’s definition of digital cinema, where other media – not the content itself – is captured. In animation, the goal isn’t to create cinema, but instead to replicate cinema.

Still, this shift to digital cinema entails a myriad of possibilities, including the digitizing and manipulation of analogue works, the ability to work simultaneously from multiple locations, and decentralization of place in real life. Yet, with no origin, where is the medium supposed to build off from? The ability to exist anywhere and to be made anywhere steals away any sense of identity. Without identity, animation will seek to imitate and approach real life, which becomes the limitation of the medium.



Parallel to this concern, digital animation appears to displace cel animation, giving a sense of rebirth and renewal. Along with this new way of creating animation, there exists new ways to distribute and view these works, causing any desire to replicate older techniques to be grounded in tradition or nostalgia. Highlighting the 2001 anime version of Metropolis, which was borne of multiple ideas while featuring a character possessing multiple origins, it demonstrates not the problem of a loss of origin, but a lack of identity. Lamarre closes by calling Metropolis as a work which opens the possibility for repetition to renew old conventions in new ways. There’s no grounding in “new” media, but it’s perhaps due to “new” media refusing to become the foundation to sustain the present day. It’s ever growing, ever evolving, and potentially forever adjusting to whatever changes may come.








The terms “old” media and “new” media imply a line where old becomes new. I once again recall the joke of a 5 minute old show already becoming irrelevant. Still, as far as the present day is concerned, the malleability of today’s technology, as well as the potential for future developments, gives hope for longevity. Anime isn’t dying any time soon, and that’s something to celebrate.

In this all however, there’s still the problem of being new and relevant. The speed of information nowadays dictates peoples’ perception of time, so there will always be a need to latch on to some form of stability, normally in the form of the latest, most popular anime. The most popular, well known, and successful work will serve as the pillar of stability of its time, attracting all forms of love and hate. They serve as a saving grace, a necessary evil, and a symbol of frustration, at least until the next popular work arrives to change the trend of the time.








Tabata Ayako, also known as Tabaimo, debuted in 1999 with large-scale artistic installations featuring ordinary characters in everyday settings, representative of the present day. Her rise to fame, however, was in 2001’s Yokohama Triennale, where she was the youngest of approximately 100 artists, marking the beginning worldwide solo exhibitions and galleries before she was appointed professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design at age 22, one year later.

Her installations all had short animated films, reflecting social and political issues without belonging to any particular animation trend. As Livia Monnet claims, Tabaimo’s works “seem to be afloat in an ahistorical, atemporal nonspace.” In other words, they exist independent of time and place. Of her installations, the ones discussed are Japanese Kitchen (Nippon no daidokoro, 1999), Japanese Pedestrian Crosswalk (Nippon no odan hodo, 1999), Japanese Public Bath: Men’s Bath (Nippon no yuya: otoku yu, 2000), Japanese Commuter Train (Nippon no tsukin kaisoku, 2002), and Inner Views of a Japanese House (Nippon no ouchi, 2002).



At least of the works spoken of, they’re mostly macabre and morbid in nature. For example, in Japanese Pedestrian Crosswalk, as a group of disembodied women’s faces are singing the Japanese national anthem in a higher than normal pitch, a man in an old-fashion employee suit removes his wounded heart and tries to sew it back together. At this very instance, a samurai appears suddenly and slices the employee’s head off, with screen text simply stating “here comes a samurai who chops off heads.” After just repairing his heart, the employee now has to sew back his head as the samurai is in turn beheaded by another samurai. This mirrors the economic downturn of the time, with inward-looking neonationalism running alongside rising unemployment, violent crimes, and social instability. In fact, both the samurai featured are ronin, or unemployed, master-less retainers.

In rethinking duration, time, and movement as animation, the past and present, which normally leads into the future, is instead reenvisioned by Tabaimo’s art with the manipulation of space. To clarify, Tabaimo’s animations, described by Monnet, use an unmoving scene with a moving camera that creates the illusion of spatial perception, movement, and time. Still, as Monnet adds, “[Tabaimo’s] installations seems tremendously productive at first, but ultimately translates into a shallow, derivative aesthetic and a conservative, even reactionary view of history.”

A general theme in Tabaimo’s works is voyeurism, where the installations are multiple large screens on multiple sides with limited views of the actual content, often through the use of dark rooms and small peering holes that the camera looks through. It gives a feel of discomfort, where one feels forced to become an intruder or an invisible observer. Through limiting gaze, the thought of sight as a power is transformed into a handicap.







Tabaimo’s works draw from the manga works of Kazuo Umezu, Junji Ito, and Suehiro Maruo, in addition to Edo-period prints and various graphic artists. In relation to anime, I don’t personally see a direct connection, although at the macro scale, the use of animation in cinema is portrayed here as a method of involving the audience in unorthodox ways. As an example, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni’s visual novel employs a first person perspective of the main protagonist of a given chapter. Higurashi itself has little to no player interaction, so it’s quite literally a visual novel, rather than anything interactive. Due to this, all the reader can do is watch as the main character slowly goes mad over the course of the story, where reality and hallucination begin blending. Yet, through the eyes of the protagonist, everything seems like reality, despite the reader’s awareness.

Now, imagine if Higurashi’s anime were done in first person. Or, even better, imagine if every major scene in the anime were through a small peep hole, where a static camera would capture a limited part of a gruesome scene, leaving much to the imagination. Of course, this is unlike horror films and games where a character is hiding from a monster, yet they only work since the former is realistic and the latter involves interaction. As far as animation goes, there’s little experimentation in horror, much less differing camera techniques. Even disregarding horror, the very intent of making audiences uncomfortable just seems counterproductive. Action shows get audiences hyped and pumped. Romances make audiences get drawn into the characters. Dramas keep audiences at the edge of their seats. Comedies keep audiences happy and howling over absurdities. Where would works of uncomfortableness go?

The closest would be those of dark humor, such as Welcome to the NHK and Watamote, where the intention is to comedically express the ugliness of otaku and hikkikomori lifestyles. Yet, these are still humorous at the end. They’re exaggerated and overplayed so the shows don’t drive away viewers. In the same vein, Tabaimo’s works are intended to be satirical and comical, so it’s hard to argue for the removal of comedy. Still, Tabaimo’s works are comedic due to their serious nature, where one is unable to completely take it seriously without discomfort involved. The same can be said for Welcome to the NHK and Watamote, where they deal with real life problems, so much so that one can only laugh at how pitiful the main characters are.





So, here’s the big question: what was the point of all this? Does anything here actually matter?

The main problem I see with this book is that it’s a collection of essays, using the introduction as its only means of tying everything together. Still, with each of the individual essays, let’s ignore first what they’re arguing for or against. Their content isn’t as important as their implications. Namely, these are all highly educated, adult, and professional scholars writing on anime, that Chinese cartoon crap that we consume like junk food.



On one hand, awareness of what is being written is needed to know how we, as anime fans, are being seen as. It’s one thing to be treated as a joke by other media fandom communities. It’s a completely different thing to be seen as a disorganized mess by the people whom words can reach national and international readers, specifically those whom wish to study anime seriously, no matter how absurd that may sound.

On the other hand, the content is, again, mostly based on personal investigations, or in other words, opinions that happen to have scholarly sources to back them up. These essays shouldn’t be taken as absolutes, but they should serve as examples for the potential for anime to spark discussion. Analyzing our favorite parts of anime is great, but there’s always the danger of overanalyzation, as demonstrated in Brain Ruh’s analysis of FLCL who acknowledges his own disregard of the director’s intentions. No matter the country of origin, artistic films always beg to be analyzed, despite the creator’s wishes. However, there comes a point when a robot is just a robot. It’s fun to throw out and propose a new possibility of unintentional actions, but…Just don’t overdo it.

Anime is simply another form of media to express ideas, very much unlike books, theater, film, art, poetry, or music. Unlike everything else though, anime enjoys a fictionalized state of existence, where anything can be visually drawn to move, with imagination being the only limitation. As such, there are things which can only be said and shown through anime, while at the same time avoiding the constraints of reality. Cinema Anime exalts anime as a form of media equivalent to film, which in of itself wasn't always seen as a source for high art. Since the late 1800s, it was used as a source of news, cheap entertainment, and political propaganda, but it wasn't until decades later did film garner respect.



To summarize, the purpose of these posts aren't to argue the meaning behind specific anime, the intentions behind the anime community, or even the current trends in anime, but to highlight different ways anime can be interpreted. It’s great to enjoy our anime as a form of entertainment, but if we don’t ask for more, we’ll never get anything more. If we want better stuff, we need to get serious about what we like. It’s as simple as figuring out what we like, what we hate, and why that is. From there, we’ll most likely get flame wars and such, but at the very least, it’ll allow the anime community to slowly mature as people capable of answering the questions “what” and “why.”





tl;dr –
Lamarre: Future technologies will bring about a “new media” that will allow for new ways to create and experience cinema and animation. This is both a necessity and an inevitability.
Me: To figure out these trends, it’s important to note anime that bring about significant changes not just in the anime community, but in the industry. However, it will become more difficult as the speed of information exchange increases.

Monnet: Through the play of sight and blindness, Tabaimo’s installations are of a genre, age, style, and context of their own.
Me: Anime is lacking in shows that purposely obscures the viewer’s experience, despite opportunities in horror, psychological, and dark comedies existing.


Conclusion:

Cinema Anime is about how anime can be interpreted and treated as a medium at the same level of film, invalidating any labels of “high art” and “low art.”
From this all, we can at least see the possibilities of extending, and overextending, stuff in the real world to anime, and allowing us to read into intentions, meanings, and implications of the anime we watch, the creators behind them, and how it all affects us as viewers.



Brown, Steven T. Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Print.