So Much Anime, How Does Japan Do It?

I was just thinking about Japanese Anime in general. It again occurred to me that most anime have most of their episodes animated very simply. I was thinking about this as I watched the Anime "Ouran High School Host Club" on Netflix. It is a really funny Anime, but it is not hard to notice the lack of actually movement in the animation at times. The boys make these poses all of the time that infatuate girls and all the animators focus on is animating around the boys a sort of softening effect.

(This image is from hulu.com)

There are some exceptional episodes where the animation is suddenly far better than before, but most of the episodes might have a single still frame of the characters as they talk. It doesn't take much animation to covey speaking in Anime, just movement of the mouth going up and down is all. There are some various emotions that can be conveyed by changing the mouths and the eyes for funny moments. Then the characters might move, but they tend to stay staying still a lot. I guess if the television companies want to make episodes for weeks at a time, then they have to give up certain aspects in order to meet the demand.

Only special episodes with important fighting or action scenes tend to get animated very well. If you read the manga ahead of time, you will more likely know where and when those fight or action scenes will take place. However, not all Anime follow the storyline to the black and white graphic novel due to the budget or popularity cutting the series short. This occurs often.

(This image is from myanimelist.net)

Here we have a picture from the Anime "Fairy Tail" which uses some strange computer effects in order to portray magic casting. Using the computer in order to substitute certain things in a 2D anime show can surely help cut back time, but it doesn't match the style of the rest of the animation and looks misplaced. When animations use only 2D or only 3D, everything looks like it should belong in that world. I even had a hard time with the fact that in Disney/Pixar's "Wallie" the video clips from the President on Earth are entirely real while everything else is CGI. That just seemed weird. It would have been better if they made the magic in 2D for "Fairy Tail" and made those videos in "Wallie" animated instead.

(This image is from rottentomatoes.com)

When it comes to Anime movies though, things are completely different. The animation studios have more time, animators, and a budget in order to get things done the way they want to. Some studios still do a much better job with their animations in their films though. Take a look at Studio Ghibli.