Animation

"We had to be able to animate them so that they felt like flesh and blood, but most importantly you had to believe that they had souls behind their eyes."

"The trouble with animation today is that we’ve forgotten the basics. Every animator at Pixar can still draw. Good animation is driven by the craft not by the tools."

"You have to make all the same decisions that a live action director would have to make. Everything from where to put the camera to what the emotional tone of the scene is going to be, in addition to answering all the questions about costume design and weather and color and all the numerous elements that go into making the scene. We're there every step of the way from the very first crude character designs and early storyboards to how loud the footsteps of the Beast should be as he's walking across the marble floor. We shepherd the process from beginning to end."

"Animation is unlike other media industries in that it is, to use a sometimes vaguely applied adjective, global. The highly labor-intensive process behind animation production means that work is very often shared across countries and even continents. Animation, which is easier to dub and has much less local context than live action drama, also travels easily. The key target audience of under-nines happily watch cartoons wherever they originate. These underlying strengths of the genre remain, but it has become an increasingly tough industry for producers as more intense competition in the broadcasting marketplace has transformed their funding model. The corporate structure of companies active in the business ranges from the largest media conglomerates in the world (Walt Disney, Time Warner and Viacom Inc.) to small companies amounting to little more than a designer with a PC and the latest software package."

"About 15,000 young Jamaicans will benefit from training, digital work opportunities and seed investments to boost the digital and animation industries in the country as a result of a US$ 20 million loan for a Youth Employment in Digital & Animation Industries Project approved today by the World Bank Board of Directors. “This project facilitates Jamaica’s linkage into one of the fastest growing sectors in the global economy,” said Jamaica’s Minister of State for Science, Technology, Energy & Mining, Julian Robinson. “It is our strongest national thrust to date to mobilize the considerable creative and entrepreneurial talent among our youth towards earning our way to a brighter future.” Global animation is a growing industry currently valued around US$ 220 billion per year. International companies are increasingly looking at Jamaica as a country of choice for outsourcing animation production. As part of its “Vision 2030 Jamaica” plan, the government is looking at the information and communication technology (ICT) sector as playing a central role in the transformation of the country over the next two decades, moving Jamaica from being a consumer to also become a producer of digital platforms and content. "Youth unemployment in Jamaica is about 30 percent. This initiative spearheaded by the Government is about providing opportunities for new talents to get new skills, find jobs or become entrepreneurs,” said Sophie Sirtaine, World Bank Country Director for the Caribbean. “For the technology sector to become an engine for growth and employment, it requires the right environment with training opportunities and the right partnership between Governments, private sector and young people”, she added."

"The film industry is one of the important cultural and creative industries in Uzbekistan, including animated films. Animated films are recognized as a complex industry playing a critical educational role. Numerous sociological studies claim that modern cartoons and animated films are capable not only of influencing the child’s behaviour, but also influence the formation of his/her worldview."

"Anything can be done live-action if you have unlimited time and unlimited money. But it wouldn't have looked like the book and it wouldn't have kept the same emotion as the wonderful paintings that Chris illustrated. So I don't think it would have been as true to the book if it was done live-action."

"A February 1, 1998 New York Times story on contemporary Japanese animation comments on its wide range, but emphasizes that "animé refers strictly to `adult' Japanese animation ... racy, battle-ravaged animé ... `pornimation,' as some of the steamier romps with American-looking women, from college girls to the princesses of sci-fi legend, are sometimes called in the United States ... animé is all violence and sex ..." The article also refers to one of Japan's most popular children's TV cartoon stars, the robot cat Doraemon, as "scantily clad;" an innuendo equivalent to identifying Donald Duck or Porky Pig only as cartoon characters who go about in public without any pants on."

"Michael Johnson, president of Buena Vista Home Entertainment, said in Daily Variety, February 13, 1998, of Disney's forthcoming U.S. release of Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 Japanese box-office-record-breaking feature Princess Mononoke, "This is not anime ... it's not effects-driven or violence-driven." Mike Lazzo, vice president of programming for the Cartoon Network, assured the public in USA Today, December 18, 1997 that anime is not shown on American TV. "Japan animation is so different from what airs here ... It's far edgier, adult and violent. Anime isn't very story-based ... The story is hard to follow." When it was pointed out that the Cartoon Network shows Speed Racer and Voltron, both juvenile action-adventure TV cartoon series produced in Japan, Lazzo said that "neither show is in the style of anime.""

"When the first anime-genre videos were released in 1990-91 through mail order and direct sales to the comic-book fandom specialty stores, it was understood by this market that these were animated equivalents of movies like The Terminator and Die Hard, full of explosions, blood-'n-guts, adult dialogue, and often a brief risqué nude scene. Around 1994 the anime videos expanded into the major video mass-market chains and became accessible to the general public, which tends to assume automatically that all animated cartoons are safe for children. This resulted in the necessity for warning advisories on the video boxes such as "Contains violence and nudity;" "Contains brief nudity and mature situations. Parental discretion advised;" and, "Recommended for Mature Viewers." But these did not yet include explicit sexual titles."

"Japanese animated explicitly adult cartoons developed along with the general animated Direct-to-video market. The first Japanese Original Animated Video (OAV) title was a science-fiction drama, Dallos, released in December 1983. The third OAV release, on February 21, 1984, was Lolita Anime I: Yuki no Kurenai Kesho * Shojo Bara Kei (freely translated, Crimson Cosmetic on the Snow * Young Girls' Rose Punishment). This half-hour video, first in the short-lived Wonder Kids erotic anime series, consisted of two 15-minute dramas of rape and sadistic sexual torture/murder of schoolgirls, whose spirits exact a gruesome supernatural vengeance. Of the seventeen OAVs released during 1984, six were "general" and eleven were pornographic. In 1985, after the viability of the direct-video market for action-adventure anime had been established, the total was 28 action-adventure titles to just another eleven porno titles. The Japanese domestic OAV market has grown accordingly, over the past decade, with 1997's output of 162 "general" titles and 62 erotic titles (including some multiple volumes of series) being about the average ratio."

"None of the anime distributors are willing to discuss sales figures, but John Sirabella makes a broad estimate that adult anime is about 30% to 40% of the overall anime market. "If the general market is $100,000,000, that means that the adult videos are selling $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 a year." This is disputed by CPM's sales director, Mike Pascuzzi, who estimates that the adult sales only make 15% to 20% of the general market. "Don't forget that there are several other anime video releasers such as Viz Video, Pioneer, AnimEigo and Urban Vision which do not have an adult label at all. They may have a few individual titles which require a Mature Audiences warning due to R-level content, but they are not really in the adult market." This may be a difference in perception as to what constitutes the "adult anime market" as distinct from the general market. Would a raunchy adolescent comedy full of college-fraternity style humor such as panty raids, peeking into the womens'-gym showers and foul-mouthed dialogue, but no explicit sex, count as an adult or as a general sale? Although the dividing line between general anime and adult anime may be vague, there is a definite adult market. All the anime companies producing for that market agree that sales are steady, and increase as a direct result of the number of titles available. There is no sign yet of any saturation level. As long as production in Japan turns out 50 or 60 new titles per year, there appears to be the potential for unlimited growth. Many, though not all, of the adult cartoon videos range from mild eroticism to explicit pornography. However, there does not seem to be a broad correlation between the anime pornography audience and the market for American-made stag cartoons and live-action sex films. The overlap so far is minor, and the American general erotic video/TV market does not seem to be interested in tapping into the lode of Japanese animated titles."

"Since the 1960s, Japan has produced a considerable number of cyborg narratives in manga and anime, particularly in works targeting male children and adolescents. From early manga examples such as Kazumasa Hirai and Hiro Kuwata's 8 Man and Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009, and their subsequent anime versions, the protagonist is commonly cyborged against their will or desires. This positions them as victims, regardless of how physically powerful they are. Their sense of inferiority and vulnerability usually underpins these narratives, either subtly or explicitly. The depiction of female cyborgs adds complexity to the positioning of cyborgs in manga and anime, especially in terms of gender. Female cyborgs may be equipped with remarkable physical strength, combined with voluptuous, eroticized bodies (for instance Major Motoko Kusanagi in Masamune Shirow's original manga and Mamoru Oshii's anime version of Ghost in the Shell); and these powerful female cyborgs are also frequently ascribed roles as protectors or supporters of incompetent and insecure male protagonists. Although some female cyborgs may possess characteristics that indicate a transgression of the conventional boundaries of gender, this transgression is often limited and undermined by other elements of their depiction. As Kumiko Sato points out in her essay "How Information Technology Has "Not, Changed Feminism and Japanism", "female cyborgs and androids have been domesticated and fetishized into maternal and sexual protectors of the male hero" and thus "their functions is usually reduced to either a maid or a goddess obediantly serving her beloved male master, the sole reason for her militant nature.""

"Although all cultural products, including anime, are inextricably linked to some philosophy, when the Japanese deal with Christianity in their anime, it is more for literary effect than for philisophical argument: symbols, more than syllogisms, are what most Japanese anime artists are concerned with. For instance, in Golgo 13, the protagonist is an assassin known as "Golgo 13", which refers to Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified, and the alleged day-Friday the thirteenth-when Jesus was killed; but beyond the common feelings of death, sorrow and loneliness which both Jesus and Golgo 13 felt or feel, there is nothing else in common between these two. Or again, in Rave Master, Shiba's sword is called the "Ten Commandments," which shares the idea of judgement with the biblical commandments but nothing else. One of the things that follows from this is that, agreeing with C.S. Lewis's claim in his essay "Christian Reunion: An Anglican Speaks to Roman Catholics," Catholicism is a "jungle of symbols and Protestantism is often a "desert" of bare platitudes (C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, p. 396), when Japanese anime deals with Christianity, it tends to gravitate toward Catholicism."

"Besides being symbolically richer-and hence better to create a "spiritual mood"-than Protestantism, Catholicism is also more likely to be featured in Japanese anime because many of the western, biblically-inspired stories that the Japanese have drawn from and encoded in their anime were set in Europe at a time when there was no Catholic-Protestant divide and so have typically been thought of as Catholic."

"Moreover, the entire Gothic genre itself, with its sympathetic vampires and the like, was largely a product of the Romantic Movement, which, though it began in Protestant countries, combined the Protestant emphasis on freedom with Catholic imagery. This Romanticism, in turn, influenced countless anime, such as Vampire Hunter D. Indeed, when Japanese anime present unorthodox Christian views, these views are not always the product of Japanese pluralism but are sometimes Japanese appropriations of Romanticism's unique conceptualization of Christianity."

"[I]t comes as little surprise that when we look at Japanese anime, we are bombarded by innumerably different presentations of gender and sex, including those having to do with major Christian figures, such as angels, demons, priests, cardinals, nuns and popes. For instance, in Earthian, the two protagonist angels, Chahiya and Kagetsuya, are not only partners in evaluating humanity, but are also shown to be gay lovers since both are in male form when they have sex. Or again, in Trinity Blood, the head of the Catholic church is a bishonen ("beautiful boy") pope, who is flanked by a female cardinal. Most of these encodings don't reflect orthodox Christianity, which as traditionally claimed that while sex belong to the body, gender belongs to the soul or spirit, and because the higher affects the lower, the soul or spirit determines the sex of the body. As a result, when orthodox Christians call God "He' and not 'She,' they mean to say that God is essentially masculine, even though He, of course, has feminine attributes. Or again, female bodies point toward feminine souls and male bodies point toward masculine souls, and even though females should have some masculine attributes and males should have some feminine ones, neither sex should engage in any activity, such as cross-dressing or homosexual love, that would confuse or blur the essential differences between men and women. Moreover, while angels and demons don't have bodies as we understand them and hence are sexless, it doesn't follow that they don't have genders since gender belongs to the soul or spirit. It's based on a theory of gender such as this, coupled with the belief that God made all things to function in certain ways, that most orthodox Christians have held beliefs such as the masculunity of God (John 3:35), male headship in marriage (Ephesians 5:32), the unnaturalness of homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9), the lack of sexual marriage of Heaven (Matthew 22:30), the importance of gender for church office (1 Timothy 2:12), and condemnation of cross-dressing and the like (Deuteronomy 22:5). As a result, orthodox Christianity would take issue with Earthian's gay angels and Trinity Bloods female cardinal, and would see potential danger in anime's general tendency to over-feminize men, for instance, masculine, spiritual authority is poorly represented by Trinity Bloods bishonen pope. Perhaps more than any other issue, this sort of treatment of gender and sexuality demonstrates that Japanese pluralism has penetrated deep into the minds of Japanese anime artists. The ultimate result of this is that when these artists produce anime, they encode their pluralistic interpretations of Christianity into their works. And because pluralism has little use for propositional truths or religious doctrines, when Japanese anime presents Christian teaching, it is almost always rendered inaccurately."

"While a growing body of research is examining the effects of sexism in television and video games on sexist attitudes, there has been little research specifically focusing on this issue in the context of anime. Anime is an abbreviation for Japanese animation, and is often based on manga (Japanese graphic novels/comics). Some genres of anime/manga frequently contain sexist content, including sexual harassment, scantily clad women, and objectification of women (Brenner, 2007). In one study of perceptions of sexism in anime, Bresnahan, Inoue, and Kagawa (2006) asked male and female participants from the US and Japan to watch an episode of Dragon Ball Z, before rating their perception of the characters. Participants from Japan and males from both of the countries perceived the characters as exhibiting stereotypical traits, but those who held more traditional views of gender roles perceived fewer stereotypes. Both participants from Japan and males (across both countries) endorsed the notion that the characters would serve as good role models and liked the characters. The study suggests that participants were often aware of the sex stereotypes portrayed in the anime and viewed these characterizations as not only acceptable, but good examples for others. And while this is only one study, when coupled with other scholarly work (Brenner, 2007; Kim, 2002; Napier, 2005) and discussions within the anime fandom itself, there is reason to believe at least some genres of anime may contain more sexist content than others, and may be more closely tied to sexist attitudes as a result."

"These results largely support the notion that most popular anime series contain sexist content and are consistent with most of our hypotheses. First, although women make up about half of the world’s population, women are largely underrepresented in anime. Second, female (vs. male) characters are more likely to be portrayed in a sexualized manner. Third, main or central female characters (vs. secondary or peripheral) were more likely than expected to be curvaceous and to be dressed and act in a provocative manner. Our fourth prediction, that central male characters (vs. secondary or peripheral) would be more hypermasculine in a manner parallel to that of female characters, was not supported by the data. Finally, men were more likely than women to use a weapon as an indicator of physical violence and aggression, a result consistent with stereotypes about men (Eagly & Steffen, 1986). Together, the results largely support the notion that anime as represented by several of the most popular series often contains sexist content."

"Although anime fans’ degree of sexism tended to be lower than both college students and a community sample, we hypothesized and found that consumption of anime in general is positively related to both benevolent and hostile sexism. In other words, while anime fans generally do not support sexist attitudes, viewing anime is associated with greater sexism. We predicted, and found, that a preference for hentai in particular mediated the relationship between consumption and hostile sexism. Furthermore, we predicted, and found, that preference for action and mecha genres mediated the relationship between consumption and benevolent sexism. Two unexpected results were also observed. First, a preference for slice of life anime also mediated the relationship between consumption and benevolent sexism. One possible explanation is that slice of life anime often contains portrayals of relationships that may well include sexism in everyday interactions. Second, a preference for the drama genre mediated the relationship between consumption and both hostile and benevolent sexism, with drama negatively predicting both dimensions of sexism. It may be possible that anime in the drama genre more accurately portrays the sexes and the nature of their relationships (e.g., trouble or discord in a romantic relationship), although it is surprising that these results differed so considerably from the slice of life genre. Future research is needed to disentangle these results and better understand what, precisely, leads one to positive associations with sexism and the other to negative associations. Taken together, the results support the notion that consumption of anime is associated with sexist attitudes, though the relationship is specific to particular anime genres."