2chan.us

Translator’s/bloggers introduction: Some time ago, I received an email from Kaoru Kumi, a freelance writer in Japan who had read the coverage of my blog post translations of Kentaro Takekuma’s lectures (1, 2), offering the opportunity to translate portions of the anime scholar’s extensive book on Hayao Miyazaki, Miyazaki Hayao no Jidai (The Age of Hayao Miyazaki), written in the school lecture style, that contained Kumi’s own in-depth analysis of the Nausicaa manga as well as an engrossing examination of a often-used but rarely-explained term used to describe manga.

Kumi's book, Hayao Miyazaki no Jidai (The Age of Hayao Miyazaki)

Since I’ve been busy as of late, I received Kumi-san’s permission to split the translation duties with SDS of Ogiue Maniax, where the second half of this translation will be posted.

I’ve tried my best to keep formatting simple, with underline used for titles, italics used for unusual Japanese words that were kept untranslated, and (Firstname) (Lastname) for Japanese names. I’d like to thank Kumi-san for giving me this opportunity and working with me throughout the translation process. Also, if you have any comments or questions, as always, please let me know.

Here we go, boys and girls. (laughter) Today, I’ll be talking about my analysis of the Nausicaa manga. Not the movie, the manga. The manga was a long-running series, brought into the world in January 1982, and completed in ’94. I’ve already discussed why Miyazaki started working on this project, so I can skip talking about that today… Or so I’d like to, but if I did, I’d surely see some confused faces, so I’ll tell you about his career as a manga artist before Nausicaa.

As I mentioned earlier, Miyazaki wanted to be a manga creator when he was in his teens. There’s an interview with him where he reflects on that period of his life, and I encourage anyone interested to find a copy of it (( “Kaze no Kaeru Basho” (The Place Where the Wind Returns), interview by Youichi Shibuya for rockin’on)) . Miyazaki has a number of pleasant anecdotes about this period; when he was a senior high school student, he was shocked when told that his own designs and stories were copycats of Tezuka’s manga, and so he burned all his manuscripts, or about the only time during university he brought his manuscripts to a tiny publisher, but was too shy and nervous to ask them to comment on his manga. He says that he had hardly opened the door before he had left the office. His talent bloomed while at Toei Doga, after graduating from university, in the latter half of the ’60s, during which time he published two obscure manga works while he also lead a busy life as an talented animator. The first is Sabaku no Tami (The Desert Tribe), a manga–or more accurately, an illustrated story ((E-monogatari/絵物語))–serialized in Shonen Shojo Shinbun, a weekly children’s newspaper, ((Launched in December 1968 as 少年少女しんぶん, published weekly. Changed its name in March 1970 to 少年少女新聞. Ceased publication in March 2004.)) after he worked hard on Toei’s animated feature The Adventures of Horus: the Prince of the Sun was completed in 1968. ((The title ran from September 1969 to March 1970 under the pen name Saburo Akitsu)) I’ve come across this work on the internet once, and what struck me was how cinematic its image composition is. The story is kind of like if the Pejite tribe from Nausicaa became its main characters. The serialization was cut short mid-run, and the work has never been republished, meaning that the title remains a very rare one. The other work is his manga adaptation of Animal Treasure Island. Only a bit of this was available in a book, and furthermore I was only able to look over it briefly, but this too struck me really as a manga movie. He left Toei Doga after this period.

This was the only experience he had with creating manga up to 1982. Finding out that Animage wanted to have him draw a long series must have troubled him somewhat. There are stories of him repeating many times, “Hmm, I still haven’t got the knack of the syntax of manga” as he was drawing the first chapters. In fact, he would say that he was not sure he was able to draw manga fully with pens. You know, animators use pencils when doing line drawings, right? Being so used to working with pencils meant that he didn’t know how to fully use G pens or ball pens. During its early chapters, except for chapter one, there are actual instances of him using a pencil to draw the manga. Of course, this is while he was working on the television series Sherlock Hound (1982), meaning that he was very short on time, forcing him to submit his completed pages in pencil, not having used pen and ink. Once he left the production team of Hound, he returned to using a pen.

In Hayao no Shigoto, I did an analysis of the Nausicaa manga which garnered quite a response from my readers, but I’m actually not satisfied with my analysis. I mean, while I did tackle the composition of the story, I didn’t tackle any sort of visual analysis from a technical point of view. While manga criticism was once focused just on themes and ideology of the narrative, a form of criticism which adds to that approach by looking at the actual lines on the paper to understand the author’s thought process and the manga as pure image has come to the forefront since the ’90s in the Japanese manga criticism community. You all must know the television program Manga Yawa, on NHK sattelite? On the show, Professor Natsume has a segment where he does manga analysis called “Natsume no Me” (Natsume’s Eyes). Analysis like what he does. I’d been thinking for a while, “I wonder if he’ll ever do Nausicaa…” Incidentally, he still hasn’t done a segment on Nausicaa. Allegedly, Miyazaki won’t OK it. What a narrow-minded man! (laughter) Well fine, if the NHK won’t do it, I will! And with that, I’d like to talk about my technical analysis of the Nausicaa manga.

As soon as the serialization of Nausicaa began, manga lovers began to praise it highly. It seems like the two things you heard the most about it were “it’s quite cinematic” and “its style is dense and hard to read.” This is the opinion of someone who read the manga before watching the movie, and I felt the same way when I read the manga for the first time after seeing the movie.

Putting that aside, what exactly does “cinematic” mean, anyway? You heard the same term applied to another work that began during this period, Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA, even praised as such by the man first said to create “cinematic manga” in Japan, Osamu Tezuka–though in the last 10 years of research, talented scholars have made discoveries leading manga critics to conclude with certainty that “cinematic” techniques were being used in manga before Tezuka began creating cinematic manga. But what does “cinematic” mean? You can’t pin it down. While there are a number of definitions given by a host of manga researchers, none of them sit well with me. To put it bluntly, they’re all functionally useless definitions. Well, there are some ones which are specific and pointed, but there’s always something wrong with them. “What exactly makes a manga ‘cinematic’?” I’ve always suspected that the text that can answer this question is Nausicaa. So finally, I’ve found a way to bring the answer to you, today through my technical analysis of this superheavyweight title. How smart I am, huh? (laughter) Today will be the first time that I reveal this method of analysis in public, so prepare yourselves.

While we use the term “cinematic” a lot, I’d like to pay attention today to the way that shots are connected to other shots. You understand what I mean? I’ve brought a DVD of 2001: A Space Odyssey ((Directed by Stanley Kubrick, produced in America in 1968 by MGM. Often praised as the pinnacle of the sci-fi genre, but Miyazaki apparently hates it.)) with me today, so I’ll explain while we watch. Why did I choose 2001 as a sample? I found the DVD on a shelf in my house. That’s all. (laughter) Just one film has hundreds and hundreds of shots joined together. (DVD begins to play) Those apes grunting on the screens are the ancestors of mankind; they’re picking grass and eating it. While this is all one shot up to here–there, we just cut to another shot, and we see another ape. We can call the filmed shots that’re tied together by an editor “edits.”

There’s four typical patterns of edits. Pattern A: Despite going from one shot to the next, the action continues to take place in the same location, and the subjects remain in the frame, allowing the action to continue uninterrupted.

1

2

2′

3

The astronaut is in the Space Pod hangar, and is about to ride a pod to go out to repair an important device of the antenna on his spacecraft Discovery (1). Look closely at the way his body moves. Even as we go from one shot to the next (2), his movements continue, totally uninterrupted. Ah, a light has turned on in the Space Pod, and something has started whirring as it moves (2′). While there’s an edit between the two shots (2′ and 3), the actors and props on screen remain the same between the two, and they continue to move in the same way, uninterrupted. This is the essential part of this kind of edit. If you still don’t comprehend what I mean, imagine a television broadcast of a baseball game. When you hear the crack of someone hitting a home run, a number of TV cameras all follow the ball. You watch the flying ball from multiple camera perspectives continuously, or uninterruptedly, on the screen. That is a typical A.

Patttern B: The setting drastically changes from one shot to the next, but the characters on screen are in both shots, and are not seen briefly during the sequence.

1

2

This takes place inside the space station. The man is using his voice to identify himself. Once the identification takes place, the two take their leave (1), but before they exit from the screen, there is an edit to 2. Now we’re in the space station lobby (2), see? We see the two men entering on screen a split-second after shot 1 cuts to shot 2. In shot 1, the two are passing through space customs, and in shot 2, we’re inside the space station lobby, a completely different location. The essential part of this pattern is that when we cut from one location to the next, the actors don’t appear in both in a continuous way; we do not see them on the screen for a second at the end of shot 1 or at the outset of shot 2. ((Strictly speaking, this can be divided into three patterns: exit from shot A, then cut to shot B, enter to shot B before exiting from shot A (what happens in this case), and exit from shot A, then enter to shot B. Each has their own subtle difference.))

Since the actors are unseen for a moment on the screen in pattern B, then naturally, the action is also interrupted. These men take their leave once they confirm their identities. Before the two can exit from the frame (1), there is an edit, and then they exit by walking out into the space station lobby (2). This sequence occurs in a few seconds, while the actual time to travel that far would be in the tens of seconds. Strictly speaking, we would say that the action is not continuous. However, if we look at it as movement from place X to place Y, the action is continuous in a broader sense of ‘walking from customs to the lobby’. I’ll discuss this later; this is a major point.

Pattern C: The film moves from one location and one set of characters to another location and another set of characters, turning into a separate sequence. They’re having a meeting at the moon base(1). And now we cut, and there’s the surface of the moon (2). A Moonbus is flying above the moon’s surface. The shot of the meeting and the shot of the moon take place in different places and times. Basically, it changes to a different scene. In a novel, this would be a paragraph break.

1

2

Pattern D: An edit from one place and cast to another, then a return to the original setting and characters, used to skip the passage of time.

　1

2

3

The Space Pod is slowly moving through space (1). Then we cut to a close-up of the antenna (2). When we cut back to the Space Pod, we find it on standby near the antenna (3). In other words, the time in between shots 1 and 3 has been omitted. It would probably take a number of minutes for the ship to arrive at the antenna, but thanks to editing, it only takes a few seconds. It doesn’t feel like anything’s been abridged, though, does it?

These are the four typical ways in which edits are arranged. While we are so accustomed with television and movies that we don’t even notice them, these four patterns are used in almost everything from films to TV dramas. Of course, there are plenty of deviations from these patterns. Even in this film, 2001, there are sequences edited in totally experimental ways towards the end of the movie. But what I want to get across to you is that these 4 patterns are the most basic, fundamental ones there are.

Now, let’s move to the world of manga. Japanese manga is often called “cinematic,” so if that’s really true, we should expect them to be based around the four patterns above. But what’s the actual state of affairs? Let’s take a look.

Let’s start with pattern A.

Azumanga Daioh (Kiyohiko Azuma/Media Works) p.46

(Panel 2: Snap!　（ぱきっ） / Panel 3: “Hehee…” (へへー)/ Panel 4: “Hm?” (ん？) “Hehee…” （へへー) “Is she that happy just because she split her chopsticks cleanly?” (きれいに割れたのが嬉しいのかな…)

This is Azumanga Daioh. A high school girl nicknamed “Osaka-san” is splitting apart disposable chopsticks. (2). In panel 3, Osaka-san turns to face the tiny girl. ((Try covering up the “Snap!(ぱき)” sound effect in panel 2, along with the lines to the left of it, then read the comic again. This places the panel into the moment after the chopsticks are broken, rather than as the chopsticks are being broken, increasing the number of actions that take place between panels 1 and 2. In other words, an action is omitted, and turns a A’ edit into a A”.)) In other words, there’s nothing omitted between panels 2 and 3. In panel 4, she’s swung around to show the girl wearing glasses how smartly she split her chopsticks. Again, there’s nothing left out between panels 3 and 4. Because manga is a medium of drawings printed on a piece of paper, we don’t actually see Osaka move, but we use our imaginations to fill in the gaps as she turns left and right. In short, this can be compared to the film pattern A. I’ll call this pattern A’ (A-dash).

There’s one more pattern, A” (double-dash).

Azumanga Daioh (Kiyohiko Azuma/Media Works) p.119

Panel 1: Bam! (ばた) / Panel 2: “Let’s get ourselves back together and start yelling in time!” (かけ声かけておちつけましょう！) “That’s right, let’s take our time.” (そやな　ゆっくり） / Panel 3: “One” (いち) Bam!

Chiyo-chan and Osaka-san are running a three-legged race in the school sports festival. These two are well known for their rivalry, competing for the position of most and second most uncoordiated student at the school (laughter), and from the moment the race begins, they seem to be off to a good start, falling over right there. They encourage each other in panel 2, then fall over again in panel 3 (laughter). While I imagine that this sequence of panels reads quite naturally, if you think about it, there’s quite a bit cut out between each panel. I mean, you try it yourselves. After panel 2, the two have to slowly get back up, then try to start running again, then fall over again, as seen in panel 3. That means that there’d normally be two more actions in between panels 2 and 3, and they’ve been omitted. But, you can read the strip without thinking that anything is strange. ((Try covering up the “One (いち)” on the right part of the final panel with your finger and read the strip again. The transition from panel 2 to panel 3 feels abrupt, now. The action, “the girls begin running” is replaced by the “One.” On the other hand, if you cover up the “Hehe　(へへーー)” and the curved lines in the third panel (The “keiyu,” or the lines that show that Osaka-san is turning around) of the strip above, it doesn’t seem abrupt at all. This means that in the case of the three-legged race strip, we’re dealing with an A” edit (one or more actions are omitted between the two panels) and in the chopsticks strip, it’s an A’ edit (no action is omitted).))

I’m going to say that these correspond to film pattern A, and if there’s no action omitted between panel and panel, I’ll call it A’, while A” will be if there’s one action or more omitted between the panels. Got that? I’ll repeat it again, don’t make understanding these two a mental exercise, actually use your body to confirm what’s going on. If you do, then that will make things much easier to grasp.

What about pattern B? This would seem to be fundamentally impossible in manga. Take this for example.

Shirley (Kaoru Mori/Enterbrain) p.98

From Shirley. A little maid is preparing tea in the kitchen. Panel 2 takes place in the same room as panel 1, but her surroundings are different. So in a film, we wouldn’t see her in panel 2 at first, and after a few moments, she would enter the frame. ((In film, there are other edits possible, such as her exiting from the first panel, then already being present once the shot of the new panel starts, or her exiting the first panel, then the second scene appearing, which she proceeds to enter. However, these all have slightly different effects than the setup that I’m hypothesizing. Use your finger to cover the characters up and try for yourself.)) This girl is actually looking for cranberry jam, and so is moving from one shelf to the next in these panels. ((Pay close attention to panel 2, where the line “Cranberry jam…” appears, along with Shirley’s slightly urgent, excited posture. This is what silently helps to support the B’ edit.)) However, in manga, we can only simulate entering and exiting a frame, as these are static images. The reader must figure out what’s going on in these two panels and connect the action internally. Let’s call this B’.

B’ has a relative, which we can see here. (Shown on the screen)

Shin Takarajima (reprinted in Go Itoh,Tezuka is Dead, NTT Publishing.)

This is the beginning of Shin Takarajima, the legendary Osamu Tezuka manga that he drew at the age of 19. It seems to have been an extremely shocking manga to its young readers at the time, as they apparently felt that the car seemed to really be moving, despite the manga being static images on a page. While it’s still highly praised to this day, with individuals saying “it’s like watching a movie!” ((Though notice that there are no onomatopoeias or speech balloons.)), if you look at it carefully, this sequence of edits would be very strange if they were filmed. A car appears throughout panels 1 to 4. As I mentioned earlier, if there’s shots edited together where the action takes place in the same location with the same actors appearing in an uninterrupted way, then it would be pattern A. But as we go from panels 1 to 4, the actors are the same, but the scenery changes.　Panel 1 takes place on a downhill road. Panel 2 is in a field. 3 is a road alongside the coast, and 4 is at a harbor. While the character’s action is not interrupted, the scenery is. Generally, films tend to avoid this style of editing. However, in manga, there is nothing strange about this. Consistent action–in this case, furiously driving a car at a high speed–allows the reader to overlook the disconnected flow of scenery. While this is similar to the A’ pattern, the character stays the same on the page while the background changes. If this sequence was to be filmed, I imagine that the character would have to be out of the frame at some point, meaning that it is closer to a B pattern. I’m going to classify this as a B” edit.

While Shin Takarajima is still used today as an example of “cinematic manga,” I wonder if Tezuka actually knew what makes a manga “cinematic.” Tezuka would re-draw the work entirely and publish it once more as the “complete edition” dozens of years after the first edition, and I found it was really unexciting, or not “cinematic.”

Tezuka Osamu Manga Zenshuban Shin Takarajima (p.10~11)

The new version also begins with a car racing down a road, and for some reason the new edition seems overly stretched out; the revised one is set up as if a camera in a helicopter was constantly tracking the car. While a sequence like this would certainly look cool on TV or in a film, it just drags on when drawn on paper. I imagine that Tezuka, upon drawing this revised edition, thought proudly to himself, “look at how dynamic these pages are!” but I wonder why no one tried to stop him. “Tezuka-Sensei, this just looks like slow motion.” ((According to Tezuka, the panels that you see in the revised edition were ones that he wanted to draw from the beginning. If this is true, that means that his co-author on Shin Takarajima, Shichima Sakai, decided upon the original layout. So the B” edit was first invented by accident…? I wonder.))

I’ll be calling the kind of pattern seen in the revised edition of Shin Takarajima B”-(double dash minus), and I’d like to look at another example to illustrate my point.

Slam Dunk, Jump Comics Deluxe volume 24 (Takehiko Inoue / Shueisha) p.208

One second left in the game and Sakuragi-kun goes for a game-winning shot! We see multiple panels with the same character in the same location, but with different composition in each panel. At a glance, it might remind you of the opening sequence from the revised edition of Shin Takarajima, but in fact these three panels are drawn from entirely different perspectives while the panels from the revised Shin Takarajima are from a single perspective. In other words, it is like how multiple cameras might follow the same home run ball during the broadcast of a baseball game. I.e., this is A’. But it looks like a B”-, doesn’t it? ((In a B” sequence, the characters are the same, but the time and place between each panel are disconnected from each other. The B”- sequence is comparable to a long take in film.)) The strong point of the A’ shot is its dynamism, while for B”- it is its slow motion effect. This A’ sample is impressive for deftly blending A’ and B”- effects, creating a very dramatic scene, one 1/10th second at a time. ((I’d like to sit down and analyze Slam Dunk one day.))

Pattern C is fairly common in manga, right?

Whisper of the Heart (Aoi Hiiragi / Shueisha) p.81

This is the original Whisper of the Heart. Shizuku-chan and Seiji-kun are quarreling for some reason in the library. Her father, a librarian, also appears here. After that, we see the image of falling rain, introducing a whole new scene. I’ll call this pattern C’. There are other, more subtle ways of changing scene and setting.

SP Comics Compact Golgo 13 volume 57 (Takao Saito, Reed-sha) p.170-171

From Golgo 13. We see the streets of Tokyo via a series of panels. No one panel is directly related to the next, as their main purpose is to express the feeling of the city itself. We see this technique used in films quite a bit, don’t we? I’ll call this pattern C”.

As far as pattern D, we see this quite often in manga.

Zipang 2 (Kaiji Kawaguchi/Kodansha) p.82

This is from a war manga called Zipang. It’s a SF-ish story about a state of the art Japan Self-Defense Force ship, getting sucked in by a storm and being spit out right in the middle of World War II. Here, a JSDF propeller plane is out on a scouting mission, is found by a Japanese Zero Fighter, and gets into a dogfight. Forced to counter fire, the JSDF plane shoots at the Zero in panel 1, aiming at the float attached to the bottom of the plane. Panel 2 is a closeup of the Zero’s pilot. In panel 3, the Zero makes an emergency landing in the ocean, or rather, he crashes into it. For your information, the thing you see in the left side of panel 3 is the JSDF plane’s wing. While I believe that a dozen seconds or so must take place in this sequence, we get a closeup of the pilot in panel 2, allowing the time between panels 1 and 3 to be shortened considerably in a clever way, resulting in a crisp and exciting battle scene. This definitely corresponds to pattern D in film, so I’ll call it pattern D’.

Manga are still images, drawn on pieces of paper. Even so, I bet you often think “wow, this seems just like I’m watching a movie,” don’t you? Take this, for example.

Master Keaton 7 (Story: Hokusei Katsushika, Art: Naoki Urasawa/Shogakukan) p.78-79

This is Master Keaton. I happened to find that a talented manga researcher singled out these two pages in one of his books, and indeed these pages are really incredibly “cinematic.” Yes, I agree that they’re cinematic. However, I’m a bit disappointed that this researcher never grappled with the question of what makes these pages “cinematic.” ((Tezuka is Dead, Go Itou, NTT Publishing. While it is an excellent work, I found it very strange that he discusses “cinematic techniques” at length but never gives a definition for this term, nor is this term found in the index.)) I then took it upon myself to analyze this page, and noticed that this page of this manga consists of nearly all A’ and D’ patterns. If we map out the panels and write out each editing pattern… (written on whiteboard)

See what I mean? These pages go A’, D’, C’, D’, A’, D’, D’, (new page) D’, D’, A’, A’, D, and are extremely readable. When I say that these pages are nearly all A’ and D’, it also means that there are absolutely no instances of A” patterns.

So what about the Nausicaa manga? Surprisingly enough, we find quite a few A” patterns used. Strangely, though, it never feels very noticeable. I found this one particularly impressive.

Vol 5, p. 32

This is a scene where Ketcha is returning Kui’s egg. This happens to take place inside a transport glider. In panel 2, Ketcha is seen trying to loosen Kui’s saddle. A sequence of panels that has the same characters in the same spot, performing an uninterrupted action is the typical A pattern that we discussed earlier. However, if you really pay attention here, you notice that Ketcha’s actions aren’t uninterrupted. In panel 1, she is holding a giant egg, but in 2, the egg is already under Kui’s thighs. That means that the two actions, bending over and placing the egg, then standing up (The lecturer acts the scene out in front of the students) have already taken place, meaning that actions have been omitted between 1 and 2. ((However, due to the dialogue, “Oh, sorry.” “Wait, I’m taking off the saddle.” being continuous, this sequence flows naturally.))

Furthermore, in panel 3, Ketcha’s head is poking out of the window of the glider as she looks at the ground below her with Yupa. I believe that the edit from panels 2 to 3 corresponds to the film pattern B. If this were a film, we’d first see just Yupa’s head looking out the window, then Ketcha coming to poke her head out afterward. Actually, if I was adapting this manga into a film, I’d add one shot in between 2 and 3. Once Ketcha finishes unfastening the saddle in 2, the shot would change to something like this. (board drawing)

Then we’d cut again to panel 3.

Why do you need to insert another shot into the sequence when you adapt it into a film, unless you see Kecha trying to poke her head in the cut equivalent to panel 3? It’s because the subject’s action has to be continuous in a broader sense even if it is actually being interrupted for a second on screen. In a film, going straight from taking off the saddle (2) to looking out the window (3) would seem far too rushed and disconnected. But, if we have her join Yupa looking down from the window, we know it’s because time has elapsed and she’s finished taking the saddle off. Since there’s no sense of continuous action from panels 2 to 3, this wouldn’t be a B pattern even when you put this sequence faithfully into film form. Again, I would probably insert the extra shot between panels 2 and 3 to make the sequence a D pattern rather than a B when adapting the work to film syntax. ((Actually, I can think of one other way of doing this, with Ketcha leaving to go to the window as Kui goes to sit back down on her egg (exiting the frame here would not be needed but is preferable). As soon as this happens, we’d cut from 2 to 3, then Ketcha enters the frame (we see her peek out from the window). The only problem here is that you’d have to animate Kui sitting and Ketcha going to the window (at the same time, at that!), which would require extra labor.))

Oh, sorry, I’m going off on a tangent about film editing, rather than manga, so I’ll try to get back on track. Assuming that this sequence is a B’, I can’t say it perfectly meets the requirement that in a B’ edit the subject’s action has to be continuous in a broader sense even if it is being interrupted for a second when a shot cuts to another. But, in fact, this sequence is quite easy to follow. If you’re wondering why, look at it more closely. Panels 1 and 2 take up the right side of the page, while panel 3 takes up the left side. This page almost reads like a map of the inside of the glider. Did you love illustrated encyclopedias when you were a kid, everyone? They often map out how each section or room is laid out inside a ship or a house in a single illustration. I think Miyazaki applied this style to the visual composition of this sequence–maybe unconsciously. We can see traces of Miyazaki’s childhood love of illustrated encyclopedias in this page.

Let’s go back and compare it to the Master Keaton we just looked at. Theoretically, we would say that Keaton, which uses no A” edits, would be more cinematic than Nausicaa. However, if we look at the two side-by-side, Nausicaa seems no less cinematic than Keaton. Why? Look closely. Many panels in Keaton extend beyond the page. We see this four times in these two pages. On the other hand, this very rarely happens in the Nausicaa pages. Incredibly, there are only two instances in the entire run of the Nausicaa manga where panels are not box-shaped. No matter how incredibly complicated and crowded the art gets, it’s always contained in rectangular panels. For a modern manga, this is a fairly rare, or should I say abstemious, spartan work.

There’s another reason that the Nausicaa manga is cinematic. During action scenes, quite a few of the edits are A’s. Take this for example.

(5) p.46-47

A fighter plane from the Valley of the Wind meets a Tolmekian warplane, and they get into a dogfight. Breaking down these panels, we get D’, A’, D’, A’, D’, A’, A’, A’, (next page) A’, A’, D’, D’, A’, A’, A’. Now this is incredible. A’ edits, full throttle! ((Panel 1 to 2, where the focus of the panel goes from the Valley of the Wind fighter to the Tolmekian warplane might seem like a D’, but if we consider the bullets as the focus, then this would be an A’ in substance. 3 to 4 and 5 to 6 would be similar. 11 to 12 and 12 to 13 are D’s, but if we consider the pilot as a part of the airplane, then these too would become A’s.)) The quick speed at which the reader goes through these panels matches the speed of the action. Furthermore, look at panels 11 and 12. Panel 11 is what Asbel, seen in panel 12, is seeing. Manga researchers call this technique “character-reader unification.” 11 and 13 have fundamentally the same composition, but strictly speaking the camera is behind the fighter plane in the latter panel while the former panel is drawn from the pilot’s perspective. Since the enemy plane is larger in 13 than it is in 11, we feel like the plane is quickly closing in. Also, supposing that Miyazaki redrew panels 11 and 13 both from the pilot’s perspective or from that of the imaginary camera following the plane in a high speed dive, skipping panel 12, this sequence would still work fine, but it would certainly lose its exciting dynamism since it turns into a B”-, or into slow motion. By inserting Asbel’s face between panels 11 and 13, and also changing the camera perspective, Miyazaki escapes creating a drawn-out scene that B”- sequences tend to create.

Let me bring out another example. This one’s from Zipang:

Zipang 2 (Kaiji Kawaguchi/Kodansha) p.60

A Zero fighter begins firing on a JSDF plane. If we break down the panels, we get D’, D’, A’, D’. Kawaguchi’s manga, such as Zipang and The Silent Service, are often praised as “cinematic.” However, we see surprisingly few A’ edits here. The reason behind this comes from the time schedule that this work is produced on.　Nausicaa wasn’t serialized in a manga magazine, but rather an anime news and information magazine. That meant that the manga could be produced very slowly, around only 16 pages a month. Compared to that, Zipang was serialized in the weekly magazine Morning, which would call for 18 pages a week. Of course, this kind of volume can’t be produced by one person alone, and so Kawaguchi-sensei has 6 to 7 assistants in his studio, all working together to produce the manga. The basic sketches of the panel layout and composition, what Japanese manga artists normally call “Name”s, are created by Kawaguchi, who would also draw the main characters such as the pilots. However, things like the Zero and the JSDF plane, or the spray of the waves of the ocean would be handled by his capable assistants, using photos as reference. To make a grossly simplified classification, there are two kinds of panels here: ones that Kawaguchi penned himself, and ones that were only laid out by him that the assistants would work on, both of which would appear normally next to each other in the manga. Naturally, there will be more D’ edits.

So, in both Nausicaa and Zipang, we see panels of a pilot’s face inserted in the dogfight scene. But in the Nausicaa example, doesn’t it feel like the pilot is actually a part of the plane, or rather, that the plane is an extension of the pilot? While we are shown the faces of a given plane’s pilot, whether that is Asbel or Mito or a Tolmekian soldier, it ultimately feels like we’re watching two birds engaged in aerial combat. In Zipang‘s case, the JSDF plane and the Zero both seem like plain machines, and it feels more like the pilots are the main characters of the scene.

However, the techniques that these two have in common are their use of on’yu (sound effect, or “sonopher”) and keiyu (visual effect, or “formpher”). The “DAKAKAKA (ダカカカ)” and the “VUII (ヴイイ)” you see in the top and bottom panels are on’yu. We also see some strange, thin lines surrounding the plane. These express that the plane is flying at a high speed, and we call these keiyu. On’yu and keiyu are a vital part of what makes comics, especially Japanese manga, so dynamic. However, you have to be careful not to overuse them, or else they get in the way of the story.

Let me show you an example of these techniques used in an unintrusive way.

Yotsuba&! 1 (Kiyohiko Azuma/Media Works p.118)

From Yotsuba&!. These are succinct and unintrusive. Nonetheless, on’yu and keiyu are being used in a very subtle way. As an experiment, let’s erase the keiyu next to Fuuka-chan’s head and the “Gara (がらっ)” on’yu in panel 3.

In the original panel 2, Fuuka-chan is bending her head back when she hears her mother calling, but if we erase the keiyu in the panel, it looks as though she was in that position even before her mother called her. Thus, the relationship between panels 1 and 2 become fuzzier without the keiyu.

Next, panel 3. Here, Fuuka-chan opens the door, “Gara,” and says “what?”, but if we take the “Gara” out, it seems like the door was open before she entered the room, see? To put it a different way, just by using the on’yu “Gara,” the action of “Fuuka opening the door” is expressed–the reader fills in the blank, mentally. While Yotsuba&! seems like a relatively simply drawn manga, it still uses on’yu and keiyu, in subtle ways. In some ways, you could consider this as a very restrained manga. Although, a surprising amount of work went into Fuuka-chan’s chest in panel 2. ((Say that the magazine wasn’t slightly being held slightly above her stomach in panel 2. If that were the case, there’d be no shadow on her stomach, which would mean that her breasts were less emphasized than they are here. I’d also like you to notice that the edge of the spine is close to touching her nipple.)) Azuma-sensei, you perv (lots of laughter).

Blogger’s/Translator’s introduction: A number of weeks ago, I was trawling through my usual Google Reader feeds when I noticed a good number of Japanese sites linking to one of the blogs on the “JAniCA Club” side of the JAniCA (Japan Animation Creators Association) website. The blog, written by anime director Osamu Yamasaki, details the current situation in the anime industry, especially from the perspective of the animators themselves. I found Yamasaki-san’s blog very interesting, and received permission to translate a particularly insightful entry. During this whole process, ANN has posted an article drawing from the same posts, so this may be material you’ve seen before. However, I think that Yamasaki’s presentation of this information is an informative one, and that his original words, though translated, may provide a better picture of things that may have been harder to deduce from the non-editorial style of the ANN post. Of course, I’d like to thank Yamasaki-san and Nekomiya-san, along with everyone else at JAniCA involved in allowing me to post this translation, and I hope to be able to translate and post other articles from the blog in the future.

– – – – – – – – –

What’s going on in the anime industry right now?!

I think that it’s a wonderful thing that the Animator’s Field Survey Symposium 2009 was conducted and held without a hitch.

It seems like the findings were quite a shock to the general public of Japan who watched that day’s NHK late night News, along with foreign anime fans…

However, you really cannot understand all of what is going on in the anime industry just based off of the information in the Symposium.

That’s why I’d like to use this post to set the record straight and clearly explain about the current state of the anime industry.

First off, it’s easy to see that the anime industry as a whole is not a poor one, as clearly seen by the large amount of content it is producing to a global audience, on the level of tens of trillions of yen.

So then why are the animators on these works as poor as they are?

Naturally, there is a reason behind this.

What you hear quite often is “It’s because the ad agencies and the TV channels take such big kickbacks…” and this certainly may be a large problem.

However, I’m not in a position to fully understand what goes on in that realm, and so I’ll avoid talking about that subject as if I knew what really goes on there.

There are rumors about the Japan Fair Trade Commission coming in to expose and clean up this section of the industry in the not-too-distant future, and so I’d like to watch what happens with that in time to come.

Now, let’s go back and take a look at the state of things on the production side of the situation.

First, there’s the widely-discussed issue of the current state of things for inexperienced inbetweeners

As explained in the Symposium, ever since the switch to digital animation, an inbetweener produces 500 drawings on average in one month.
The inbetweener is paid 200-250 yen per drawing, and so their monthly income is 100,000 to 120,000 yen, which after 10% tax turns into 90,000 to 100,000 yen take-home pay.
From this monthly income, they have to pay for their national pension, healthcare, rent, and food.
When you consider that rent in Tokyo is 50,000-70,000 yen, it is clear that one could not possibly live a decent life on this rent.

Compared to this, how much does a similarly inexperienced anime painter (shiage, coloring + touch-up animation) make?
One painter finishes 2000 drawings on average in one month.
The painter is paid 180-200 yen per drawing, and so their monthly income is 360,000 to 400,000 yen, which after 10% tax turns into 320,000 to 360,000 take-home pay.

Why does this difference in pay exist?

It’s because the relative prices paid per drawing that was established during the pre-digital era of anime exists unchanged to the current day.

In the past, a cel painter would have to wait for paint to dry, trace shadows with color, and so on, requiring the same proficiency of technique, as well as time and effort, that an inbetweener needed to have, and they would complete around 700 to 1000 drawings a month.

During this period, inbetweeners would complete about an equal number of drawings.

This is why you’ll hear veteran animators who worked as inbetweeners twenty years ago often saying, “In my day, everyone was doing 1000 drawings a month,” without really understanding the current situation.
In those days, due to the nature of the trace machine ((a machine that would bake carbon lines onto cels)), lines from anything other than graphite pencils, such as lines from color pencils, would not be transferred onto the final cel. This would allow for “one-shot drawings” where one could draw a draft on a sheet in color pencil, then trace it on the same sheet of paper for their final drawing. Also, even if the pencil lines in an animator’s final drawings were not perfectly connected, cels were hand-painted, so one didn’t have to worry about colors extending past their pencil lines as a result of a color fill tool being used on an unconnected area as they do now.

Comparing the current methods of digital paint, where one doesn’t even have to color shadows on the reverse side of the cel anymore, the amount of time and labor spent by a painter compared to an inbetweener has decreased drastically.
The reason new animators live in such distressed conditions is because the relative prices of these two jobs has not been changed, because of individuals who do not understand the changes that have occurred in these two occupations.

This issue is also resulting in the creation of a problem that can result in the breakdown of production schedules.

What is becoming of the anime industry, where the conditions above have already been going on for the past ten years?

The number of talented young individuals in the current anime industry who can draw decent key animation has shrunk by a extremely large number.
The harsh working conditions that new animators face is the primary cause of this problem.
Many anime companies ask new animators when they hire them, “can you commute from home?” or “are you receiving an allowance from your parents?”
This is because newly hired animators will not be able to sustain themselves without these things.

With this initial filtering of their applicants, the companies repel a large number of talented individuals who want to work in the anime industry, leaving only those who will work for 50,000 to 60,000 yen a month.
While a few young men and women with skill and craft remain within this group, willing to work, a significant amount of the rest of the group are hobbyists.
People who don’t particularly care if anime is their job.
A large number of staff who treat drawing anime as a hobby enter the industry every year.

In the past, most animators quit because they didn’t have the talent for it.

But these days, smart and talented individuals are leaving the industry.
Of course, this can’t be said about everyone in the industry.
I do have juniors in the industry, leading difficult lives where they are trying desperately to pursue animation as a profession.
However, working right next to these serious and dedicated individuals are hobbyists who lazily draw pictures as if they were doing it for fun, people who are making doujinshi, or who are playing games, watching anime, or reading manga instead of doing work.
If they can earn their monthly allowance of 20,000 to 30,000 yen, they’re happy to continue on with their carefree lives.

Smart and motivated newcomers who see that leave the industry.

They see their friends in college who were less talented than them go to work in the gaming industry where they make around 300,000 yen a month, and think that it’s just stupid to be crushed by the absurd industry that they’re currently working for.

The result of this is that the talent pool of animators is running dry.

This has been going on for ten years.
The percentage of talented key animators rising up from this pool of fresh animators has fallen drastically.
Currently, the exemplary directors, animation directors, designers, and talented key animators who are all holding up the Japanese animation industry are in their 40s and their 50s.
Most of these individuals were already working as directors, animation directors, and designers when they were in their 20s.

This same group is still supporting the anime industry today.
And as the years continue to go by, the weight on these men’s shoulders is only increasing.
It’s because there has been a shocking decrease in the number of talented key animators who ought to be fostered by the system.
Young animators today can’t draw layouts.
They can’t draw key animation or proper timing (exposure) sheets.
So, if the director or animation director doesn’t go back and fix everything, then it won’t pass as a decent work of animation.
With no other options available to them, the veterans will draw all of the key animation, while the young animators will just do cleanup.
This is called “2nd key animation” and people in this position may think of themselves as key animators, but twenty years ago, this was called key animation tracing, which was a job of the inbetween animator.

These days, you often hear complaints like, “The director or animation director is getting too involved in production and not doing their checking duties on time, which means we’re rushed on our schedule, and it’s causing us a lot of trouble” coming from colorists, photographers, or sound engineers.
However, if the animation isn’t redrawn at this step, the end product will look horrible.
The person who the abusive cries of “terrible, off-model animation!” ((作画崩壊!, Sakuga houkai!, a commonly hurled complaint)) and “awful production!” are directed at? The director or the animation director.

This is also where a client passes their assessment.

If a poor end product is created, the director and the animation director will have a harder time finding their next job.
However, decent key animators aren’t being brought up.
With no other option, directors and animation directors shave off more hours from their nightly sleep and fix more drawings.

Animation directors earn 300,000 yen an episode.
On average, it takes a month and a half from the time that drawings are received to the time that the episode is finished.
This means a monthly salary of 200,000 yen.
These directors are twenty-year veterans of the anime industry.

Working in the same place as these directors are inexperienced colorists, making 300,000 to 400,000 yen a month.

The producers at the production companies understand the state of things, but they do nothing to change them.
It’s because this problem can’t be fixed by just one company adjusting their pay rates.

An absolute minimum living wage for a fresh inbetweener is 150,000 yen.
Dividing this by 500 drawings a month, that comes out to a minimum of 300 yen a drawing.

Currently, the cost of a colored inbetween frame between colorist and animator is 400-450 yen.

If you give 300 yen of this to the animator and the remaining 100 to the colorist, do you know how much the colorist would make?
2000 drawings a month times 100 yen = 200,000 yen.

Why can’t companies fix their budget like this?

We strongly wish that the Association of Japanese Animators, the regulatory body organized of the various production companies, will take the needed measures and enact regulations.

At school, not wanting to drive home in my long break between meeting my advisor and a film screening cause of rush hour. Therefore, this hastily-done silly translation of a spreadsheet some 2cher made of various popularity rankings for summer season anime. Any questions should be answered by the notes, but if not, just post a comment! Click for large, obviously. Oh, and Stolen from Yunakiti, just like all the cool guys do.

CROSS†CHANNEL ~to all people~ ((Tildes mandatory.)) is a ~visual novel~ ((Tildes optional.)) written by Tanaka Romeo and recently fan-translated. It was good, you should read it if you want to do that kind of thing. Don’t try to find out the plot first, as it seems like every single element is a spoiler.

The main character is wildly immoral, but as he’s supplied with both a good reason (the apparently ever-present mansions full of child torturing rich people) and some actual self-awareness and intelligence, it’s certainly better than most other popular games I could mention. And I thought the moral was pretty obvious, though well meaning, but obviously otaku haven’t paid any attention to it. Maybe they didn’t play it.

It also seems to have completely confused some people, but I didn’t see anything difficult about it at all. But nobody I know has finished it yet, so I can’t discuss it. Come on, guys!

Tanaka Romeo, beyond the pen name and his constantly making off-topic jokes, is a pretty good writer, so I wish he’d move to some other format. Beyond my feeling kind of silly about discussing literary merit in porn, it seems like it’s nearly impossible to have a single ending to one of these stories without invoking time loops, and I’m getting tired of them. It’s almost as bad as how all mysteries have to start with long discussions about locked rooms, as if they’ve all only ever read the same Agatha Christie novel over there.

UPDATE: Tower of Friends is pretty real.

On Saturday I took this picture:

I think that covers that.
Read the rest of this entry »

I totally bought Kannagi even though I didn’t watch it. $35 for 7 episodes :o
I also didn’t take notes, so I’d better write this down before I forget any of it…

Facts about Yamakan:

• He is cool
• He composed the Haruhi dance in his apartment while standing on his bed
• He recommends Summer Wars by possibly-acclaimed director Mamoru Hosoda
• He doesn’t actually hate slightly-more-acclaimed director Akiyuki Shinbo
• He probably shouldn’t have made three dancing anime in a row
• “If I said I didn’t like any other directors, people would yell at me on the Internet again”

Highlights of his panels included an Asian guy, possibly from a mysterious land known as “#denpa”, dancing the Kannagi OP.

Facts about Kikuko Inoue:

• She was a fish in a previous life.
• She “knows this”.
• She spent half of her panel asking Hidenori Matsubara to let her be in the next Eva movie. (He offered to let her be Pen-Pen)
• People in the audience thought Maikaze and games were recorded differently from anime, but they weren’t.
• She can remember how to sing the Ah My Goddess opening, but not Cruel Angel’s Thesis. But she did her best!
• Only girls can join her 17-year-old club, because it’s more bittersweet.

Tomorrow I’m going to do something other than sitting in guest Q&A panels, I hope. Like sitting in Surat’s panels.

Last year, I was sitting in a lecture hall in Kyoto Seika university, I believe at a guest lecture Takekuma Kentaro was giving, when the speaker mentioned a radio show that featured anime director Mamoru Oshii grilling Ghibli producer Suzuki Toshio on Ponyo. I forgot about it for a bit, until all the buzz about the US release of Ponyo started heating up. I soon discovered that the radio show this conversation took place on, Suzuki Toshio no Ghibli Asemamire was available for free online! The episode in question is the August 2008 broadcast, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea vs The Sky Crawlers.’ An mp3 was available for download on the site from here (next to 2008/8/12), and I also discovered a unofficial transcript of the conversation on this blog, so I used these resources to create an unauthorized fan translation of this radio show. If you can, I suggest listening to the radio show alongside the transcript in order to hear more of the emotion in their voices, but that is obviously optional. A dvd of over 40 hours of the radio show is also available for purchase.

The often-heated but always-friendly conversation touches a number of subjects, from Ponyo and The Sky Crawlers, to the state of the Japanese animation industry and the fate of hand-drawn animation. I hope you find it as interesting as I found it, and as usual, please don’t hesitate to contact me through comments or email with any corrections, suggestions, or questions. Also, if you are a rights holder of any of the materials that I have translated and would like the material taken down, again, please contact me through the email address found on the sidebar.

Suzuki: Have you seen [the new] Indiana Jones?
Oshii: No.
S: You should see it. Basically, it’s present-day Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones, and about his grown-up son that he had when he was messing around with women in the past, right? So, I was wondering, why is it that everyone’s making movies these days about parents and children? Look, Miya-san is doing it, you’re doing it… If I wanted to sound like a critic, I’d look at you three and say that what’s interesting is that your movies are in the sky and in the ocean… They’re in unexplored territory.
O: That’s right.
S: So then, what’s here and now doesn’t matter to you. That’s what I found interesting. Don’t you think?
O: That’s standard, patented Suzuki Toshio sophistry of the highest order.
All: (Bursts out laughing)
O: Tell me what you personally found interesting, okay?
S: I was just thinking. It was a thought.
O: A thought? Isn’t it obvious that someone getting older is going to make stories about parents and children?
S: Yes, that’s exactly it! Miya-san is 67, right? And Spielberg is 62, 63?
O: Around 63.
S: Right? And Oshii-san, you’re 58?
O: 57!
(laughter)
Staff: So that one gets a rise out of him! (laughter)
S: So, all of you are working with the same theme, you see? The details between each film might be different, of course. But still, it surprised me. And what I was thinking was, whether your stories are in the sky, or in the ocean, or in uncharted lands, they’re all the same thing. They’re all about the afterlife.
O: Well, that’s inevitable.
S: Huh?
O: If you’re older than 50 and making movies that don’t deal with the afterlife in some way, something’s off about you.
S: Yes, yes, yes. (Impressed)
O: I saw Ponyo the other day and figured something out. I realized, “Oh, Suzuki Toshio had absolutely nothing to do with this movie,” and I was certain about it.
Staff: Absolutely nothing? (strained laughter)
O: That was a 100 percent Miya-san movie.
S: Well, it really is Miya-san’s movie.
Read the rest of this entry »


> mkvextract attachments \[gg\]_Umineko_no_Naku_Koro_ni_-_02_\[F5D5399B\].mkv 1:BALZANO_.ttf
> ftxvalidator BALZANO_.ttf

====== BALZANO_.ttf ============================================
------ sfnt: Balzano, sfnt ID: 10644 ------
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Yeah, I think I’ll put off fixing this one.

In case you still remember kransom’s posts, you might think this is some kind of insightful and highly detailed blog. Unfortunately, you’re actually thinking of all the other ones on the sidebar.

Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei vol. 2 is a cool manga, you should read it. If you’ve already watched it, it pretty much covers all the same jokes, but personally I don’t care about that.

Faust vol. 2 doesn’t have Kara no Kyoukai in it. I guess everyone hated it so much in the last one that it’s gone now? I haven’t actually read this one yet, but Omo covered vol1 pretty well.

Gakuen Alice has a really unfortunate DVD cover but you should watch it if you like that kind of thing.

I haven’t done anything recently except play Umineko (which is more or less brilliant) so maybe this blog and that other blog will stay dead for a while.