Western and Japanese Animation

The focus of this week's lecture was the style and content of traditional Western animation and those of traditional Japanese animation.

First, we looked at Disney's Bambi, which exemplifies everything Western animation does well. It is considered to be "full" animation, and features very realistic movements for the animal characters, which bring across their characters brilliantly.

We then looked at some traditional Japanese animation, also known as "anime". We focused specifically on animated films by the acclaimed Japanese animator Miyazaki; his work, and anime in general, tends to be far darker and more explicit than western animation, while still being aimed at children. I think this might be because western animation is influenced strongly by Christian values, due to the fact that so many western countries have very deep Christian roots. This results in somewhat tamer material, or at the very least, less explicit.

In general, I am not a big fan of Japanese animation, for two reasons. Firstly, I do not especially like the "partial" animation style, which I find a little dull. Secondly, many Japanese animations are very poorly dubbed, which I think takes away some of the enjoyment I might have had, as I'm sitting thinking "this is poorly dubbed" rather than "what great animation". However, I do appreciate that the storylines in anime are often very interesting and entertaining, particularly the animated film Princess Mononoke.