2017-12-23
Old anime looks different, but sadly I can't tell you exactly why
One of the things I did this year was watch some older anime; the Crusher Joe movie (and one OVA) from 1983, and Iria: Zeiram the Animation from 1994. One of the things that struck me about both of these, especially Iria, is how they looked and felt clearly different from modern anime. This is more than a difference in the look of the art, the style of people's outfits and hair, and the kind of settings; it was also something distinctly different in how each work looked in a broader sense.
(Crusher Joe is very distinctly an 80s work; consider this scene, for example.)
Some of this is in the use of 'light gleam' effects that aren't used as much (or in the same way) any more, such as the bright beam blasts near the start of this Crusher Joe scene. My understanding is that this classical effect in cell-based animation is done by leaving sections of the cell either completely transparent or translucent (with coloured film behind them) and then letting the backlight from the rostrum camera show through the cells. This gives a vivid glow in a relatively simple to animate way (and it's a glow that can spread outside the lit up area).
Crusher Joe is a film and was clearly well-produced even at the time. Perhaps as a result, its 'old anime' feel is mostly confined to how things are drawn; there's an old fashioned feel to both the foreground and the background rocks along the roadway in this segment or the hand-drawn digital display in this scene at about four seconds in. But even then there's something that feels distinctly old about how the movie simply rotates the cell of Alfin in her cockpit starting at four seconds in this scene. I can see how this would be an easy effect to do in a cell-based world; you draw the cell a bit larger and then just rotate the rostrum camera when you film the frames.
A case with a deeper feel of difference is the opening for Dirty Pair: Project Eden here (or on YouTube with sound). This is from 1986 and undeniably beautiful, but at the same time it strikes me as something that you wouldn't see today and that looks definitely old fashioned (it too has a bunch of 'light gleam' effects). I suspect that a lot of the unusual feel is the use of silhouettes and of echoed movement (for example at 51 seconds). But I don't know if this was easier or harder in days of drawn and filmed cell animation.
Iria: Zeiram the Animation is an OVA and thus probably had less production resources that the Crusher Joe movie, which I suspect makes it lean more heavily on things that were easy to do in the cell animation days. Looking at its opening, I see things that stand out to me at various points; there are repeated inset frames of animation (at 25 seconds), 'light gleam' streaks (at 29 seconds), rotating cells (33 seconds), distinctly overlaid foreground snow (at 1 minute), echoed frames of animation (at 1:26), and then it just runs some earlier animation backward starting at 1:29 or so. Beyond that, there's a lot of scenes in the actual show that feel to me like they wouldn't be done today.
(For example, it feels like Iria uses a lot more held frames and panned frames than is normal today.)
However, this is where I run into the limits of my ability to analyze and explain animation this way. All of what I've talked about so far is basically hand waving and theorizing. I know both Crusher Joe and especially Iria feel distinctly different but I can't really tell you why, with chapter and verse and technical details. All I can do is look for some obvious things that feel unusual, when really it was a much more pervasive thing that ran all through my watching of both works and it didn't feel directly related to the different look of hand painted cell animation. I'm pretty sure that many shots were composed and designed differently than they would be today, but I can't tell you how (or why); at best I can theorize about obvious things, like rotating cells or those 'light gleam' effects and how they give the frames an overall glow.
This frustrates me a bit. I'd like to be able to understand this myself and be able to explain it, instead of waving my hands and doing what feels like nit-picking. Instead, it's another limitation I've discovered on my ability to analyze things.
(This is part of the 12 Days of Anime for 2017.)
Sidebar: The other way Iria looks different
As an SF show, Iria takes place in a different world (a couple of them, actually). It's clear that the show has worked hard to create a coherent yet decidedly different cultural feel for its setting, where the clothes, the buildings, the vehicles, and so on are all pretty different from what we'd usually see yet also clearly go together. This is a degree of work and imagination that doesn't seem to come up very often in modern SF shows, which generally look far more normal and conventional.
2017-12-22
Some words on Mimi in the last episode of Flip Flappers
(There are spoilers here.)
I have tangled feelings about both Flip Flappers as a whole and its ending, feelings that I'm still sorting out. However, there are some aspects of the ending that I'm completely behind, and one of them is the show's perhaps odd decision to spend most of the first half of the last episode on a knock down, drag out fight with Mimi when Cocona and Papika had already neatly punched her monster out at the end of the previous episode. As spectacular as all of the fighting might have been, was it really important or necessary?
My answer is that yes, it was, or at least it felt that it belonged to me. To put it one way, it would be nice if you could get your over-protective mom to go away just by you and your girlfriend telling her to buzz off, but life is not that nice. Getting your overbearing mom to ease off generally requires a big screaming argument, although this is usually delivered by words, not you and your girlfriend beating down dark mom's monsters and eventually her more or less directly. But this is Flip Flappers, so this particular psychological point was delivered through some spectacular fireworks.
(In the end it wasn't just this fight, of course, and it never is. Dark mom Mimi had to come around, not merely be beaten down. Beating people up doesn't generally change their mind, and Mimi had to have her mind changed in order to really resolve the situation. Multiple things ultimately contributed to this change of heart, not just Cocona and Papika, and I feel that even Dr Salt wasn't quite as completely decorative as he looked. His presence mattered, even if he didn't actually do anything except stand around.)
Mimi's possessive over-protection of Cocona was a pivotal development (as was Cocona's willingness to accept it), and disposing of it casually and briefly simply wouldn't have felt right. It and other unresolved issues around Mimi needed to be resolved with enough effort to make the result feel earned.
PS: One of the things Flip Flappers is about is external representations of internal psychological struggles and issues. See, for example, this discussion of the pivotal episode 7.
PPS: Yes, they're girlfriends. How much more on point does transforming under their own power into a matched set of armored wedding dresses have to be? Flip Flappers may not always come out to say things out loud, but it's not beyond hitting us over the head with them.
Made in Abyss passes the threshold and enters the unknown
(There are some spoilers here.)
"The Great Fault", Made in Abyss's ninth episode, is well known as anime-original content. Despite the stereotype that usually comes along with that, the episode is widely regarded as solid work that does important things with Riko's character and is simply enjoyable. You could quibble about the ending, where Reg is the one to make the climactic finish instead of Riko, but perhaps this was intended to be part of the point of the episode, to show that Riko could hand a fight to Reg when necessary and wouldn't insist on doing it all herself.
(I'm making an excuse for the show here. It's not flawless.)
It is my opinion that episode 9 is much more than this and that it shows that the show's creative staff fully understood what they were doing. Episode 9 does one very important but inobvious practical thing, which I'm putting in a sidebar at the end, but beyond that it carries a huge metaphorical and mythological charge that is the silent marker and foreshadowing of a phase change in Made in Abyss. This is because of just what Riko and Reg face and defeat at the end of the episode. What they face down and see off is not just any monster of the Abyss; it is the initial monster that Riko and Reg faced, the crimson splitjaw from the very start of their adventure together.
This crimson splitjaw is the gauntlet that has haunted and dogged Riko and Reg from the first episode onward; it was unfinished business from the past. In defeating it, they pass beyond the threshold of the past and enter the unknown, moving on into a new world. The crimson splitjaw was a lingering remnant of their old life that started in Orth, and now they're beyond it.
(Yes, this is a very Campbellian view of things.)
As people who have watched Made in Abyss know, episode 10 will go on to make this change very concrete.
In short, episode 9 primes us for episode 10, not in an obvious way but in a subtle, indirect one. I think it's deliberately designed to do so, since the staff of the anime adoption specifically brought back that crimson splitjaw, not just any monster and not even a generic crimson splitjaw (if they didn't want to design another type of monster). As a result, I like this episode quite a lot.
(This is part of the 12 Days of Anime for 2017.)
Sidebar: The important practical thing episode 9 covers
Episode 9 contains Riko's first serious encounter with the Curse of ascending in the deeps of the Abyss, and illustrates how hard and wrenching it is even in the third layer. This serves as an important lead in to the ascent she goes through in the fourth layer during episode 10, and means that the major impact of the Curse there doesn't come out of more or less nowhere.
(Being told about the Curse in exposition with semi-cute pictures isn't the same thing as having seen it in action the previous episode. The latter primes us much more; it's more visceral and real, especially with how Riko's hallucinations went.)