The New York Times this past weekend ran a celebratory article (and you should read it) about film professor and critic, David Borwell. Bordwell teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; he composes a huge compilation of analytical essays at his blog; and he’s the former mentor to one of my academic mentors, Henry Jenkins.

Bordwell has been a film critic for practically FOREVER, and he’s written some impressive and influential film criticism texts, such as “The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960″, in which he explains the history of film through the lens of technological development in relation to the Hollywood style.

Now, I’ve been thinking (also FOREVER) about media criticism and how I should apply it to both my thinking and my writing (specifically for this blog).

If we think about the fan response to Japanese animation (opinionated and published, by word, voice, video, etc.), the leading voices tend to have been reviewers: the trio from Anime World Order for a contemporary example, or — as an classic illustration — writers for old fanzines (such as through the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization) who compiled episode synopses and shared opinions about series to progress the knowledge that, basically, anime exists.

However, I want to push back against the concept of “the reviewer,” because the position sits as an odd point between objective journalism and subjective personal grandstanding. I appreciate the wonderful breadth of series that, for example, Anime World Order explores, because the number one rule to being able to talk about anime is to watch it. However, I feel that to gain a more detailed and elaborate understanding of anime, fans need to move beyond their position as reviewer and advance toward that of “critic.”

I bring up the Bordwell article, because the author describes Bordwell’s approach to film in exactly the terms that I want to approach analyses of Japanese animation:

Counting blinks is just one of Mr. Bordwell’s strategies for understanding movies, the fundamental goal of the critic. Rather than just gassing on about his interpretations (as reviewers can do) or starting with a theory and finding a set of movies that support that theory (as scholars will do), he looks to the movies first, analyzing what is happening at the level of sight and sound, then extrapolating meaning.

Now, the author also critiques academics, who can tend to analyze their subject in terms of their own ideas, rather than develop ideas based on their subject (one example might be the “X and Philosophy series,” of which anime has one). But I think that the core bit of appreciation that the article promotes is that the critic analyses the media and then extracts the meaning. Of course, to move beyond the reviewer, this meaning says something about how the media operates rather than simply what the media contains (and maybe the impressions that the media evokes).

I’m trying to push this blog (when I release more content habitually) toward the perspective of a critic, which is why I tend to avoid writing reviewer-ly articles. If you’re looking for more prolific authors, you should check out:

- Awesome Engine
- Anipages Daily
- Ani no Miyako
- Welcome Datacomp

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.