Anime Flicks and Me

Looking in the retrospect, about 10-15 years back, as children we didn’t have much recreational activities except climbing trees and picking up fruit, playing in the courtyard, running to catch butterflies and glue ourselves in front of television sets to watch the few cartoons that were aired. At that time, the only existing television network used to telecast them as a chunga (complimentary) just sort of to acknowledge, “Yes we do have kids in Pakistan.” I remember, how much I used to hate cricket matches because they replaced the time of our chunga cartoons, leaving us feeling deprived. Nevertheless, my prayers and wishes were eventually amply granted and a separate sports and full time cartoon channel were launched, but as my mom said, “It’s too late, you have grown out of that age.”

But the time has gone when animated movies and cartoons were considered to be only ‘child’s play’ and a ‘no adult zone’, because with the discarding of conventions all around the globe and the countless possibilities to experiment and improve existing knowledge and potential, the production houses are generating new creatively aesthetic animated movies that cater to children and adults alike. That’s even evident from the number of renowned actors who have lent their voices for various anime characters like Walt Disney, Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, Antonio Banderas, Tom Hanks and countless others. Academy Awards have also recognized it as a unique genre of movies and offers nominations in the categories of Best Animated Feature Film and Best Animated Short Film of the year.

Animation is basically a graphic representation of drawings to show movement within those drawings. A series of drawings are linked together and usually photographed by a camera. There is a slight change in each individual frame to follow whatever movement is to be depicted so that when they are played back in rapid succession (24 frames per second) there appears to be continuous movement within the drawings.

Among the pioneers of animation, Winsor McCay of the United States, Emile Cohl and Georges Melies of France are included, but it was Walter Elias Disney commonly known as Walt Disney who epitomized the genre of animation movies. He was the first animator to add sound to his movie cartoons with the premiere of Steamboat Willie in 1928. Some consider McCay's Sinking of the Lusitania from 1918 as the first animated feature film but in 1937, Walt Disney produced the first full length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A dyslexic by birth, Disney had difficulty with language and vocabulary and thus shifted his genius towards animation and started working at the Kansas City Slide Company, with his friend Ubbe Iwerks at the age of 19 and won his first Academy Award for Flowers and Trees. This film was the first to use 3 strip Technicolor (color).
Early animations, which started appearing before 1910, consisted of simple drawings photographed one at a time. It was an extremely labor intensive process as there were literally hundreds of drawings per minute of film. The development of celluloid around 1913 quickly made animation easier to manage. Instead of numerous drawings, the animator could now make a complex background and/or foreground and sandwich moving characters in between several other pieces of celluloid, which is transparent except for where the drawings would be painted on it.

With the introduction of computers, animation took on a whole new meaning. Many feature films of today had animation incorporated into them for special effects. A film like Star Wars by George Lucas relies heavily on computer animation for many of its special effects. Toy Story, produced by Walt Disney Productions and Pixar Animation Studios, became the first full length feature film animated entirely on computers when it was released in 1995.

Talking about the psychological aspect of the anime flicks, the psychologists have opined that they provide a sort of escapism from the hectic realities of busy practical life, where logic is the prime factor and motivation is money. Animated movies nourishe and project the more humane side of the human personality to which a person can relate or even become nostalgic about his or her tension free, fiddly diddly childhood days. Movies are regarded as the perfect form of mass communication and even propaganda to some extent and the same is true for anime flicks.

Whenever you have sometime to probe into animated flicks and cartoons, you will notice that while most of the anime flicks and cartoons project the positive and humane virtues of love, care, generosity and sacrifice, but along with them, there are too many others which give negative messages, promoting violence, anger and frustration among viewers. Such flicks should be discouraged by anime film producers as well as by the viewers alike, because basically people always associate anime flicks with children and childhood, and we should celebrate these carefree happy days throughout our lives without any streak of violence. What do you think?