Brian Threlkeld: This edition of Arguments About Anime brought to you from Looking Glass The Fandom Post. Which bears a striking resemblance to turn of the century AnimeonDVD.com, but where no one ages and nothing stays broken. We’re hounded here by forum trolls we thought had long since been banned and surrounded by mountains of Monkey Magic DVDs we can’t get rid of. As location scouting goes, this was not one of our brightest ideas.
Greg Smith: Seriously, you’re paying me overtime for this one.
BT: Fortunately, along with the travel bar, we brought along one means of escape: the impenetrable 6-part ONA turned slightly more penetrable 10-episode TV series, Kyousougiga.
And also a guest arguer (agruee?) to help navigate this mess, the valiant simulcast reviewer of Kyousougiga, and our own Dr. Shouko (PSP-controlled Giant Robot not necessarily included), Kate O’Neil. Welcome!
Kate O’Neil: Thanks for inviting me! I’m slipping dangerously close to Dr. Shouko levels of video game obsession lately. No giant robots yet, unless someone knows where I can pick one up.
GBS: Welcome aboard, Kate. As for giant robots, I’m sure Japan’s working on that, but that comes as no surprise. The first models might just be a little pricey, however.
So, Brian, what do you have planned for today’s magical mystery tour?
BT: Before we get to that, I’d like to offer our guest a drink, our customary aid and companion to talking about this stuff (especially if it’s pretentiously intellectual). Anything from the travel bar, Kate?
KO: As a once working-class video major, and the furthest thing from artsy-fartsy, just Mountain Dew for me. I’ll need the caffeine.
BT: Good idea, caffeine.
All right. Kyousougiga is our jumping off point to play with talking about yet another loaded topic: composition in anime. Loaded because it can be difficult to introduce terms like “composition”, in topics like this, without the risk of sounding like insufferable film school graduates. But this is one of those interminable “art appreciation” words that is easy to understand, and the concept of which most people intuit almost every time they like how a particular shot of animation looks: how the animation and backgrounds fit together, how it moves, how it’s framed.
Composition is about how something is ordered. It took a story about both the disruption of order and what happens when it’s sealed inside a box to showcase best how the use and control of composition can transform a story into an extraordinary experience.
GBS: An interesting choice of show to start us off, one that does provide a good example of careful blocking out of the elements and how they appear on screen. The mirror “Kyoto” of the show is breathtaking in its design and layout, a bold reimagining of a place both real and unreal.
KO: It’s a bit fascinating to watch just how carefully every shot is framed in the show. Many series fall into lazy talking heads at least once or twice, but I can’t think of a scene in Kyousougiga that fell into that trap. The one shot that they did hold long on, the scene where little Koto’s father explains his background and his role, felt like an anomaly. Of course in retrospect I realize that it draws the viewer into a false sense of security so we can be surprised for what happens immediately after.
BT: Even that long shot riveted me, the way it was still from a distance of the whole scene, three-quarters of the frame, slowly moving as if on a scroll. But even conventional scenes the show managed to portray with beauty.
Foremost are any one of the scenes that are like a central visual thread in the show, the view out of the original Myoue’s temple, replicated above Looking Glass Kyoto, and modeled on the real Kōzan-ji temple outside of Kyoto. Through the story, various characters are seen in front of the open walls in one of the temple’s rooms, often in profile, overlooking glorious views of the valley beyond, from Spring to Winter. The view is always fixed, as many scenes in the show are. And looking out: four even frames of undisturbed nature while the characters live, argue, fight, and love before them.
GBS: This show loved long shots that provide a panoramic view, as if we’re looking at the original scroll which inspired the show.
BT: Right. That temple, and the Buddhist monk, Myōe, who founded it in the early 13th century, serve as the central inspiration for Kyousougiga. The temple holds the Chōjū-giga (“Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Humans”), first dating from the 11th century depicting animals playing, wrestling, and worshiping in a sequential series of drawings, and argued to be an early influence on manga—and so everything that comes after that, including anime.
KO: It was nice of the show to take a break halfway through to give us a guided tour of its inspirations, including the scroll of course. When they brought up the meaning behind the room with the differently shaped windows I began to wonder how much symbolism was mixed in with the composition. They really did take everything they could into account when making the show.
BT: Oh, yeah, there has to be symbolism all tied up in this. (There’s a pomegranate in there, for one.)
Kyousougiga does a lot with the tradition behind it, be it religious symbolism, manga, or the ancient scrolls that put both of those things together. But also another rich form of visual art in Japan: cinema. I’ve suggested elsewhere that many shots in the show, notably those from lower perspectives, and still and from a distance, seem to directly reference the long-influential style of the first great Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu pioneered much of the composition style we see in anime like this, especially the concept of showing objects or scenery as ellipsis between character scenes. (Or the concept of ellipsis in general, which a lot of anime uses, now, almost to a fault.) These styles, evolved and translated through Kurosawa and everyone else, including anime directors like Hideaki Anno and Hiroyuki Imaishi, are to be seen in many anime shows and movies these days, but Kyousougiga is the most deliberate example I know.
GBS: Another notable thing is the use of motion, especially in the opening with Koto, A and Un roaming around the Looking Glass City causing havoc. Movement and the feeling of motion is by necessity artificial as the screen does not physically move. So, it’s up to the production team and their ability to fool our perception to make us feel motion without actually moving.
BT: This is why I liked using Kyousougiga to launch this subject: it champions composition in still scenes and moving scenes. Its seemingly chaotic action is as ordered as its quiet, meditative views of the countryside.
It’s something of a trademark of anime the way a scene can be full of freewheeling and frenetic action, yet, once a viewer understands the visual language, one that still makes sense. But the best at it aren’t just throwing as much up on the screen as they can fit. There’s an order to it, the same way a dance is choreographed, or a sports play designed, where four dimensions (x,y,z + time) are taken into account at once. (And even if they are putting in as much as they can, it’s expressly to create that overloaded sensation in the viewer, an experience all its own.)
And there’s almost only one place to start. One of the greatest animation shorts ever made, and the origin for the guys who helped revolutionize action composition for decades. From Daicon Film, later GAINAX: Daicon IV. (This version includes at the end some of the storyboards and animatics, which give a better idea than anything of what goes into sequences like this.) 30 years later it still manages to sum up all that this stuff can be.
And one of the key elements of Daicon IV, and a fresh influence at the time, comes from something I know Greg is eager to introduce, one of those very unique composition signatures that make anime what it is.
GBS: Indeed. Looking back to an earlier age, one of the best known visual spectacles, to the point that it’s now parodied about as often as it’s used in earnest, is the “Itano Circus,” the ever-present mass of missile spam that gets its name from Ichiro Itano, who worked on Macross (whence its other common nickname, the “Macross Missile Massacre”). If you’re still not entirely certain what I’m talking about, take a visit to the circus. What’s particularly worthy of note is how the movement of the missiles, combined with strategic use of “stationary” objects in the background which also change position, is what makes the screen move. Yes, it feels like the screen is moving.
It’s all too easy to do it when you have the broad canvas of outer space or the cloud-lined skies over a planet, but how do you get movement in an enclosed area such as the interior of a building? That’s where composition is key. While it may not be obvious, an animation director, production designer, and storyboard maker has to consider the camera position relative to walls and furniture. Hanasaku Iroha – Blossoms for Tomorrow provides several great examples of how you get a sense of movement from enclosed spaces with the right ways of composing a scene. In many of the kitchen shots, which often give us a “fly on the wall” perspective, similar to modern office documentaries (and the fake documentary that is The Office), the camera is poised in the doorway or just off-line from the various impediments to the view inside the kitchen. Here, the genius is in creating a sense of motion from the set standing still.
The key to all of this, of course, is the care taken at the storyboarding stage. Animation isn’t just slapped together (for the most part, we hope); it is meticulously planned and drafted. Good composition comes from good storyboarding, so it’s always nice when some releases give us features that show the storyboards and we can get some idea how the process influences the end product.
BT: But even great storyboarding can’t guarantee great composition when the budget or capable direction isn’t there. And It’s interesting how it makes us take for granted the ability to pull off good composition.
KO: Yes, because usually the only time a viewer will notice the composition is when it’s not doing it’s job. While it’s rare to see the sort of mistakes someone would make taking home movies, you do tend to notice when a show slips into talking heads for minutes on end or static shots during an action scene. Or my personal favorite, panning across random scenery during an info dump to disguise the fact that there is no budget and they weren’t creative enough to find another solution.
BT: Absolutely. We’ve all seen that more than we care to. I alluded to it earlier with Ozu, and the way his once revolutionary concept of ellipsis has been made into nothing more than a crutch and an excuse not to think out of that (cinema-framed) box. The ‘pan’ in anime is like the adverb in writing: easy, convenient, does the job quick; but easy to abuse and it leads to stale, repetitive, and unimaginative visuals/prose.
It’s a surprise sometimes when I notice panning isn’t being used. Some studios or directors have, I think, a minor reputation for avoiding it. Especially interior settings with multiple characters, simple but carefully placed stationary shots are preferred, instead. It may not always produce the most stunning visuals, but it can demonstrate a production staff that is thinking closely about composition on a shot-to-shot basis.
GBS: In addition to the pan, there’s also the “let’s look at the character speaking from behind, so that we don’t have to animate lip flaps. We can have the other characters in a static reaction shot and we can keep this up for a minute or two!” That kind of lazy shortcut, while understandable from a budget perspective, shows poor composition at its worst.
BT: Budget in general, or just the time-limited restrictions of animation, informs a lot of this subject. A lot of it forms the visual style and cues and cliches we attribute to anime. There are a slew of composition techniques we also don’t notice when they’re done right. Take the classic, and now more frequently parodied, split screen (horizontal or vertical or diagonal) featuring close-ups of two characters in the midst of some dramatic exchange. Or the common ploy of splitting a character’s close-up face (usually angry, menacing, or scared), with one half out of frame, as if to indicate a personality divided. And the technique of freezing background animation, such as extra students in a school courtyard, while the main characters move in the foreground (this is normally accompanied by a pan, as well, making that still background a diorama for our more actionable characters).
These all can seem cheap, but sometimes they work quite well—even ingeniously—depending on the overall production.
GBS: It’s true that at this point, most of us hardly notice a great number of animation shortcuts and other composition “cheats” that production teams on a tight budget make use of. Then there are other blocking and framing choices that combine the “virtue” of limited animation with the accomplishment of other goals. The best example is what we could call fanservice framing. I’m sure we’ve all noticed more than once scenes where the characters (generally female) are speaking, but the camera is focused on their chest, waist, or thighs. Sometimes it will start with a slow pan from the calves and then move up to the character’s face, usually right as they are finishing their speech, so the animators only have to animate a few seconds of lip flaps. It’s not true lazy animation in itself, since its main purpose is to provide fanservice, but it does provide some of the same benefits to a production staff looking to cut costs.
KO: I feel that slow centerfold pan is slipping away in recent times to be replaced with something more sinister. Now we get canted angles combined with a low vantage point, aka, the creeper cam. It combines the laziness of not having to animate lip flaps with the misdirection of “look at this maiden’s comely backside!” It’s probably a terrible thing that I now only notice when a show is devoid of panty shots.
BT: Come to think of it, that “creeper cam” technique has been showing up more, you’re right. It’s of a piece with a lot of unconventional camera angle techniques used these days, something I think possible with the general computerization of the animation process, where they may be able to maneuver a scene 360 degrees around in pre-compositing stages, looking for creative shots. That it’s being exploited mainly for new ways to pull off up-skirt shots isn’t surprising, coming from this current industry.
GBS: So, we’ve come to the Dark Side of Composition.
KO: Dun dun dun, da dah dun, da dah dun…
BT: It is an uncomfortable coincidence that some of the most creative or daring design right now is in shows that play primarily to old anime modes of sex and violence. Hiroyuki Imaishi and animation director Sushio’s Kill la Kill, and Shinichiro Watanabe’s Space Dandy (with animation director Yoshiyuki Ito), incorporate and redefine decades of action animation techniques, sometimes in the service of just good fun (the former’s composition, like using screen-filling and even interactive character titles, borders on the subversive), sometimes in the service of simple titillation (creeper cam in full force for the latter, any chance it gets). Because these shows make no bones about it, I’m not that put off (as a male fan, admittedly), but for shows that use some of these new techniques in service to stories with less creative aims, like Kyoto Animation’s Beyond the Boundary, from last year, it does feel much more like pandering.
GBS: It does make a great deal of difference to what end various composition techniques are used. In a lesser show, the giant red titles of Kill la Kill would be distractions, or worse annoyances. In the right hands, however, they add another dimension to the visual footprint, enhancing the viewing experience. You’re right on target about Beyond the Boundary, largely because that show was so empty of content. There was plenty to admire visually, but all of the scenery porn could not counter the lack of substance.
BT: Bringing up scenery reminds me. It’s interesting to think of how setting and environment influence and even define the general composition of a show. The two dominant design modes in my mind are simple: urban, or rural.
GBS: Yeah, it’s been noticeable in the last few years how many studios have moved away from Tokyo (once the “default” location for just about any show) and set their works in smaller cities or rural areas.
BT: And that’s interesting in itself because, in my view, it has resulted in a subtle change: the top of the screen has opened up more.
GBS: Good point, that the sky has opened up, literally, as the settings have moved away from Tokyo or other urban jungles. It creates some composition challenges while providing much greater opportunity.
BT: For a couple decades the dense urban landscape, with its tall, claustrophobic buildings, elevated rail lines, and, of course, a maze of utility lines, defined—and constrained—how animation was ordered on a screen. The sky, or any horizon, was more rare. Maybe going a little too abstract here, but it seemed to correspond with stories that dealt more with inward, confused, and twisted, psychological drama. Neon Genesis Evangelion, from 1995, of course, defined this era.
KO: Serial Experiments Lain is another prime example of urban confusion, and the first one I think of whenever anyone mentions power lines and utility poles. Most American directors view utilities as an ugly obstruction to cut out of a shot, not as an objet d’art that many anime treat them as.
GBS: In general, the hothouse atmosphere provided by the city does play better to psychological dramas, such as the recent Flowers of Evil. In that case, the fact that it was a small city made it all the more claustrophobic.
BT: Oh, yes, Serial Experiments Lain would be nothing without its buzzing power lines, with background sky “the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” (to quote William Gibson). It also makes me think of His and Her Circumstances, with its frequent use of traffic lights and other urban symbols, or mundane shots of school architecture, all used as very cheap and easy ellipsis in the story. There is indeed a certain reverence for that “urban confusion” in the art of anime, as if it is the human-crafted equivalent of nature’s chaotic beauty. And for Flowers of Evil, that is confounded with the claustrophobic and even sinister way that urbanity is displayed: characters are often small or distant or to the side of frame in it, or seen from the warped, voyeuristic reflection of a security/safety mirror on the street. Though in a more rural area, the sky is indeed less taken account of in that show—the predominant natural feature we do see is the imposing yet distant mountain Sawa yearns to cross over, away from the town.
GBS: So, what impact do you think the open sky and broad horizon has on the characters and stories we see told?
BT: The move to smaller towns allows creators to keep the framing and symbolism of the urban landscape, but also to incorporate less inward or complex views of characters and stories. The result has helped contribute to a contemporary era of more humorous and lighter, slice-of-life stories.
GBS: I’m not sure I’d buy that this move out of the megacity that is Tokyo has created more humorous slice-of-life stories; we’ve had plenty of light comedies showing everyday lives set in Tokyo for a long time. The change is, perhaps, that there is a new element of simplicity and sincerity, a nostalgic look at a simpler time that is represented by “country” living. Here, I’m thinking of the recent Non Non Biyori. You could set a similar show in Tokyo, but you’d have to remove a lot of the nostalgic charm because “city kids” would be much more sophisticated.
BT: Well, true. But, from a composition perspective, that rural and nostalgic and simpler view of life was and is used in urban-set stories, too. Usually with visual and symbolic aids like the ever ubiquitous cherry tree. (A view through cherry blossoms or dormant branches is a frequent composition tool, to denote a whole range of emotional color.) Or even old abandoned buildings or vacant lots being slowly reclaimed by nature. (Mamoru Oshii loves this last bit.) Urban decay is used as a framing technique for a lot of dramatic stories.
GBS: Oh, definitely. The whole return-to-nature motif is one of the staples of anime, especially in Miyazaki’s work for example. Nature stands in for the original simplicity of life in comparison to the artificial structuring that human buildings represent.
BT: Of course, how do the “props” of nature—mountains, ocean, trees, rivers, etc.—contribute to composition?
GBS: I’d say that rivers and mountains represent boundaries that are hard to cross. A dense forest can represent a clouded mind and confusion, like the more obvious use of fog. Oceans, on the other hand, with their vast expanses might represent possibility, or unexplored terrain. The symbolic use of terrain can be a visual shorthand that spares the use of lengthy dialogues filled with exposition (the notorious “info dump”).
BT: Universal stuff, sure. But some of it is traditional and cultural, too. Some of it just comes from simple aesthetics—things that just go back to centuries-old artistic traditions.
KO: Exactly, sometimes a mountain is just a mountain. Symbolism aside, nothing says that you’re in the middle of nowhere like the hills fading into other hills as far as the eye can see. The ‘untouched by man’ majesty of the undeveloped wilderness makes for a fantastic setting. Who knows what could be lurking out there.
GBS: We should also keep in mind that mountains are sacred spaces, often the site of shrines and temples. From the composition perspective, of course, a mountain can represent a place where a character can see far away, so it is a place where one can find a new perspective.
BT: Bringing up temples is interesting. The Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple, a constant setting in anime, is the composition go-between in the medium, gateways between urban and rural (not to mention contemporary and historical). Looking from either perspective, they are used often as something to center the design of a scene—again, literally a gate to look through onto where someone wants to go, or to look back on. (Something we illustrated earlier with Kyousougiga, which provides a masterclass on the subject.)
GBS: A good point. The peace and quiet of the urban shrine does present us with a “rural” space that is deliberately left unsullied by too much human alteration. From a composition viewpoint, it’s also a way of separating a character from his or her “natural” environment. In the countryside, it can still have this effect as the shrine or temple buildings themselves represent the activity of man in place of nature.
BT: Then there is the Third Way of anime: fantasy. Sci-fi or medieval or Steampunk, it’s where all these rules and traditions about urban and rural composition are sometimes melded, or mashed, together. On spaceships, in labyrinthine castles, or the underworld.
GBS: While at the same time fantasy landscapes also give the greatest freedom to the production design team. If the work is an adaptation from another source, they may have certain formal limitations, but how they animate another creator’s fictional world is still up to them. If it’s an original work or the source material is very vague about the setting, then the sky’s the limit (actually it isn’t, since they can go beyond the sky to the stars, of course).
Sometimes, of course, you can get experimentation and a respect for tradition occurring at the same time. This season’s Hozuki no Reitetsu is a good example of that. On the one hand, the opening especially and many of the outdoor scenes bear a resemblance to traditional painting styles. At other times, the show plays with those same traditional composition elements, adding unexpected movements to normally static areas and using unconventional angles in formal settings.
BT: Hozuki’s an odd show, I think, in how it looks. But I like it. The interior design is precise and ordered, influenced some by traditional Yamato-e art design and woodcut ukiyo-e prints, but they rove the camera around, in that fly-on-the-wall method you ascribed earlier to Hanasaku Iroha. The exteriors, however, exist often in older, more traditional Japanese art: vast, grim watercolor landscapes of hell with endless or indistinct horizons, and little demarcation of where the front of stage is supposed to be, either. Characters seem small in it and, far more colorful than their setting, move about like puppets in front of a curtained backdrop. (Although the show seems, so far, to have more up its sleeve, flipping all this on its head when the characters visit the candy-colored and cozier Shangri-La, in the third episode.)
KO: The show really likes to switch styles on the fly to fit its storytelling needs. The traditional backgrounds set the scene, but with so much of the comedy being modern the inside settings reflect that. Then in episode four it creates a whole new look for the retelling of a traditional fairy tale in a children’s book. Since the show is a comedy set in hell it can get away with changing its look for different purposes.
BT: Now that we’ve come full circle from a show you were reviewing, Kate, to one you’re reviewing right now, I suppose it’s a sign to wrap this up. We can go on and on about all of the creative and singular uses of composition being used in today’s anime. (I’m sure our readers think we’ve been going on and on already.) There’s enough to this subject that we’ll probably revisit one or more parts of it at some point. In any case, we recommend watching any of the titles mentioned—especially Kyousougiga—and to take some closer looks at how things are (or are not) put together.
The portal back to Real The Fandom Post is about to close, so time to down what’s left of our drinks and get out of here. Thanks to our guest, Kate, and to those reading along.
KO: Thanks for inviting me!
BT: You’re welcome! Nice to have you along. Thanks for putting up with us and our terrible Argument location scouting…
(Any hints as to what new rabbit hole we’ll drag people into next time, Greg?)
GBS: For our next outing, as Valentine’s Day is not too far away, perhaps we’ll look at something related to love.
BT: Love? That’s never a theme in anime, is it? Well, I guess we’ll make a go of it.
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