Instead, here’s a quick repost of the abstract I sent (two weeks late…) to Colony Drop as a submission for their fanzine (forthcoming, I have no idea the hell when).

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How Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is Basically a Movie About a Cliff and Nothing Much More (Or, How Miyazaki Tricked Me Into Believing Just That)

While you might expect a colorful and energetic analysis of a film by Hayao Miyazaki, a filmmaker great enough to merit an Academy Award, this is an essay about flying fish.

Miyazaki’s Ponyo (2008) succeeds a long line of popular, animated films produced by Studio Ghibli, inclusive of such titles as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, many of which (if not all) do not feature flying fish or anything resembling airborne herring to the least degree. Ponyo, written and directed solely by Miyazaki (a first for the Studio), features a goldfish-turned-muppet-turned-girl named Brynhildr (later, she rejects her father-imposed name for the moniker, Ponyo, bestowed upon her by a five-year-old Japanese boy) who steals the role of protagonist in this film by shoving aside more-interesting characters and unresolved plot holes. And while Ponyo the film attempts to coat a bildungsroman with elementary-school zest, this is not a movie about Ponyo the muppet. This is a movie about flying fish.

Why flying fish? Or, why flying anything? Critics of Miyazaki’s films have continually highlighted the theme of flight that pervades his movies. However, flying is not what Miyazaki’s films are about. It’s really about hair. Hair, constantly moving, blown around by wind or falling or violent weapons whizzing by unprotected foreheads. Miyazaki loves to animate hair. Why do you think that My Neighbor Totoro — a film that features a monstrous, fuzzy amalgamation of a raccoon and owl — succeeds so well as an animated film, for instance? It’s certainly not the “cute” varmint that nearly devours a pair of juvenile girls in the barrens of a giant forest. The Studio has been blustering hair since Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, gliding to Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), and culminating in the intense power of “the Ghibli Engine” that is the 1992 production of Porco Rosso.

But this is a movie about flying fish, correct? Right on the mark, but it’s about flying fish. Fish need water, water that Miyazaki unfortunately cannot animate in an acceptable manner. Water might be said to flow like hair in wind, but Miyazaki’s style dictates that all forms of liquid move like Play-doh, hair gel, or Irvin Yeaworth’s 1958 The Blob.

So, if Ponyo — a movie about a fish in the ocean — relies so much on water, does Ponyo flop? Well, this essay certainly will not let the lack of dramatic structure nor the focus on pure character profiling (the Miyazaki moé moment) slip by without lambaste. Miyazaki’s Ponyo is a wonderful work of art; however, it is not a good film. Yet, while I must believe that Isao Takahata is planning the ultimate smackdown for his directing partner in the near future, I affirm wholeheartedly that Ponyo is a good Miyazaki production.

Yes, Miyazaki pulls a fast one on his audience, forcing them to ask the filmgoer to their left or right, What the hell did we just watch?, usually preceded by, Why are Noah Cyrus and Frankie Jonas singing an Auto-tuned bastardization of the theme song in this American dub?, but he does so in a manner that satisfies the thematic animated style emphasized in his previous compositions. How? Flying fish. Miyazaki fashions a world where one never existed, between cliffs, a world of water in which fish fly like birds over submerged cars and through flourishing trees. And these silent flying fish carry Ponyo to the same pinnacle occupied by Spirited Away’s bathhouse or Laupta’s flying, aged castle.

I hope for this essay to fill in many holes left by ignorant American otaku on the history, style, and animation of Miyazaki’s most popular Ghibli films. And, of course, focus a bit more on the important elemental scenes of Ponyo, such as the flying fish that most reviewers so astutely and skillfully ignore.

Last Thursday and Friday, I got the opportunity to attend two lectures (one detailed here) by Shibata Motoyuki, who is a professor of American literature at the University of Tokyo and who has translated over fifty English-language texts into Japanese. There’s a good (and humorous) article over at NeoJaponisme that discusses a panel he spoke on in 2006 about translation. Shibata is also known as an associate of Murakami Haruki (the popular author), and the two have consulted each other frequently for a number of translations.

The Thursday lecture, which I believe to be the exceptional talk of the two, dealt with the reception of translations of English-language literature in Japan. Shibata designated two periods of reception in Japan: the first, instructive, the second, aesthetic.

In the first period, from the late nineteenth century through the war and up to 1975, the translations of American and English literature were seen as instructive. At first, it seemed that Shibata meant used to instruct Japanese in the English language; however, he meant that Japanese readers wanted to learn about foreign ideas and philosophy. For instance, Shibata explained that the 1884 translation and publication of Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography” was read mainly as a self-help book. These books could been seen as educating a generation of Japanese on inventing an autonomous self. Reading English literature as instructive media, according to Shibata, changed in 1975, when these translations were finally read mainly in appreciation of the literature’s style and aesthetics. However, he inferred that contemporary American fiction tends to be read for its ideologies rather than its artistic merits.

Shibata’s lecture was supplemented by a response dictated by Prof. Robert Chodat, of the Boston University English department, who explained the same general principle — literature as instructive in its initial reception — related to the receipt of English literature (denoting the country, not the language) in America at the time when the colonies were just beginning to seek independence from England (which then extended into the later periods of American literature). The comparison was drawn between William Faulkner and Soseki Natsume, the former whose self was torn between Southern and Northern values, and the latter between conservative Japanese and new Western values.

What I want to preserve from this lecture is the concept of viewing media across cultures. More specifically, I would like to apply that concept to thoughts on the progression of the anime fandom in the United States. If we consider the initial reception of Japanese animation in the United States, do we see more viewers flocking to the media because of an attraction to new ideas (narrative structures, characterization, novel concepts/approaches to genres) or because they’re hooked on the aesthetics of the new medium (character designs, color schemes, animation styles). Shibata interpreted the frequent, post-war trend that translations of American literature would be published close to the original publication date in America as an effect of the Japanese interest in emulating the United States after 1955, meaning that the reception still depended on a magnetism toward ideas and not aesthetics. I wonder, then, looking at the contemporary trend of streaming anime online on the same day the episode premiers in Japan, if part of the cause, ignoring the major incentive of business, is Americans’ persistent attraction (continued from the 1970s) to the appealing ideas of anime.

One Day Later: More thoughts…

Reflecting on the reception of anime early on in the United States, I assume that it became popular not because of the theatrical releases of movies like Alakazam the Great but when ex-pats or Japanese friends of Americans sent VHS-recorded episodes back to America. Because most of the material was not subtitled, the translations were (to my knowledge) written in America, but a number of fans ended up seeing footage straight from Japan in the original Japanese, without any English-language aids. Because of this method of reception — watching ordinary Japanese-language anime — it would seem that fan reception in the United States would have highlighted the aesthetics of the medium. But from numerous interviews I have read and listened to, it seems quite the contrary: fans dealing with the language barrier would attempt to either analyze the existing plot without knowledge of the dialogue or would make up their own story based on the visuals. Therefore, I would say that the initial reception of anime in America was in fact based on the ideas in the anime (to reiterate: narrative structures, characterization, novel concepts/approaches to genres, etc.) instead of the animations’ styles or designs. This would make sense too, because older anime from the 1960s and 1970s clearly was not making many strides, steeped in forms of limited animation among many other shortcomings.

But I also wonder: At what point did the change from ideas to aesthetics take place? Or has it at all? Even today Japanese animation is praised for taking a step beyond American cartoons in terms of plot and characters.

If the change has already taken place, and the artistic elements of anime attract as many fans to the medium as its stories, I would pin the cause on digitization and higher budgets for anime films, imported to America as theatrical releases. In 2008, Scott from the Anime Almanac made a claim that the Matrix marks a turning point in the focus of production studios in Hollywood. The Matrix (1999) did, in fact, win four Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects, and sound, and Scott affirms that the Wachowski brothers’ novel presentation of special effects showed directors what could be done with films influenced by or directly depicting works of popular culture (eg., comic books, anime, kung-fu films, etc.). Could we say, then, that films such as Ghost in the Shell created many fans of Japanese animation not because of its story but because of its beauty? While it’s true that Spirited Away won an Oscar in 2002 because it showed so many Americans in local theaters that Japanese animation illustrates sensational adventures and incredible dreams, perhaps it also drew viewers in because of its fluid integration of hand-drawn and digital animation: something never before seen by such a wide audience in the United States. Perhaps it is also true that anime is still sensationalized in the U.S. due to the releases of films like Paprika, which make monumental use of computer graphics and integrate them elegantly into the animated style (while of course at the same time depicting fantastic stories to intrigue potential ticket buyers).

If the change has not occurred, then I wonder what strides animators must take to create a visual masterpiece. There have surely been attempts: look at Steamboy, released in 2004, which held a budget of over twenty-five million U.S. dollars ($25,000,000), but at the same time did not draw in enough American fans to the medium as expected. Instead, we see the evolution from limited animation to ordinary animation to hyperfluid* animation (the most prominent example being the works of the animation studio Kyoto Animation), the latter of which currently draws in thousands of fans in Japan as well as abroad and keeps them on the edge of their seats waiting for more (ie., the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).

I do not believe that computer graphics will push Japanese anime to a new level of acceptance in America. The use of 3D and CG has been tried (and has not impressed in certain instances). But how will the aesthetics of anime evolve in the coming years? And will it attract a new wave of fans?

• Will talk about this more (read: explain) in the near future. Look for the related articles.

But I want to talk about animation. In Japan, アニメーション (animation) has been abbreviated, in that Japanese way of abbreviating most long foreign words, to アニメ (anime), and the abbreviation covers every sort of animated design imaginable, from flip books to what American and global fans commonly refer to as the Japanese anime style. The fan following and global exportation of Japanese animation created anime as a visual style, one part of the grand scheme that is アニメ in Japan. Basically, アニメーション is a style/genre of film, while アニメ is a style/genre of animation.

So when American fans think of anime, they call to mind アニメ style/genre of animation. Although I just stated that アニメ covers all varieties of animation in Japan, I would also argue that nowadays the Japanese think of anime in the same way as us Americans. Anime has dominated the sense of animation, so that any sort of animation beyond anime is a form limited to the realm of art school students — a negative progression, or the collapse of high art to the power of low culture, one might say. However, the domination of anime over animation substantiates the influence of popular media on cultural attitudes; when people think of “anime,” they immediately picture the anime style, rather than animation as a whole.

What I really mean to say is… although Japan took home a second Oscar, many fans of anime will overlook the victory. And it’s not a victory for Japan, per se. It’s one for アニメ（ーション).

The award for Short Film (Animated) is one of the few Oscars that foreign films can receive. This year, the trophy went to Kunio Kato, animator of 積み木の家 (La Maison en Petit Cubes, or (translated literally) Building-Block House). The plot and especially Kato’s use of color is illustrated in detail over at Nishikata Film Review. Here’s a clip of his masterpiece:

(More of Kato’s work can be seen on Youtube, such as The Diary of Tortov Roddle.)

As you can see from this brief twenty-eight seconds, Kato’s film resembles nothing of what is seen as アニメ by today’s standards. Kato develops his own style, reminiscent of, in my own eyes, a more French-style of character design and color palette (see perhaps Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville).

When an anime fan hears that a piece of animation from Japan won an Oscar, what do they think of? Probably Spirited Away, which won the Oscar for Animated Feature Film back in 2002. It also, in my opinion, pushed the anime market in America into the commercial limelight, making marketers and booksellers realize that Japanese anime was actually a popular import.

But fans will probably not think of Kato’s La Maison en Petit Cubes as something worthy of their viewing time. In terms of アニメ, it’s just アニメーション. Yet that perspective recalls a vital question repeated throughout the past decade: What is anime? From the fan’s eyes, it’s the animation from Japan in the anime style. But this simple definition does not provoke these important questions: 1) Does anime have to be from Japan? 2) Must anime be hand-drawn? 3) Does anime only identify with the anime style (or is there still an anime style)? I ask these questions because modern anime challenges the assumed answers.

First, anime is a modern global phenomenon, not just in terms of its fandom, but also in production. Anime is no longer “from Japan” if we consider that a lot of anime is exported to foreign countries to be animated, with the prospects of lower costs. Anime is no longer “from Japan” when you look at Tekkon Kinkreet, produced in Japan but by an American director. Anime is no longer “from Japan” when we see its influences in American productions, such as Teen Titans, The Boondocks, or Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Second, modern anime series rely on computers, for animation and 3D effects. It is rare for a fully hand-drawn anime to be produced, especially via cel production. We think of anime as distinct from American animation, because the era of hand-drawn Disney characters has been replaced by Pixar and its related studios. The first Academy award for Animated Feature Film was presented in 2001; however, since then, the only hand-drawn animated film to win was Spirited Away, which wasn’t entirely hand-drawn in itself (the other winners have been Shrek [2001], Finding Nemo [2003], The Incredibles [2004], Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit [2005], Happy Feet [2006], Ratatouille [2007], and WALL-E [2008]). I really like Kato’s acceptance speech, because he said “Thank you, my pencil,” an ode to the hand-drawn form of animation. (Important note: the Oscar’s website bastardized his words, changing it to “my producer,” even though it’s obvious that it should have been pencil, because Kato even laughs at his own joke.)

Third, anime caters to an audience looking for the anime style, but it has slowly begun to move beyond that. One of my favorite examples is Shinichiro Watanabe’s “Kid’s Story” (viewable here), one of the eight sequences from The Animatrix. The characters and designs blur during the chase sequence, destroying any concept that an anime style existed. Looking back at Osamu Tezuka’s work, even Astro Boy does not resemble the contemporary anime style, sans perhaps the large eyes, reminiscent of Disney’s character designs. Finally, looking at Kato’s La Maison en Petit Cubes, can we say that this is truly アニメ, or must we dismiss it as アニメーション to appease the fans?

I really hope that fans, anime bloggers, or everyone celebrates this wonderful victory for Japanese animation (Anime News Network certainly did). The ANN forums are certainly talking about it; go check out the conversation.