Limited Animation as an Attraction
Tom Gunning theorized that all cinema was ruled by two fundamental tendencies: narrative and attractions. Narrative cinema is designed to immerse the audience in a story and focuses on the characters' connections to each other and their own world, treating the audience as inherently voyeuristic. Cinema of attractions is designed to communicate with and appeal to the audience directly, using the story as a framing device to deliver particular sensations or emotions.[1] Most works create a blend of experiences, but certain films will emphasize one type of cinema more than the other. This theory extends to other forms of visual entertainment, including Japanese animation (anime). Animation can be said to have begun largely in the realm of attractions, but it quickly became a highly diverse medium. However, during the rise of television, limited animation came into focus due to its budget-saving methods. Similar to the aim of attractions, the form of limited animation inherently required collaboration and collusion with the audience: the audience was encouraged— or perhaps forced— to fill in the gaps between frames of animation using their own imagination when there were no smooth transitions between motions or scenes. In this sense, limited animation acts as a kind of attraction in and of itself, and it only purports further attractions. These methods of including the audience perspective enabled audiences to develop a deeply personal connection to their favorite anime, contributing to the success of limited animation.
Prior to the proliferation of limited animation, the animation industry realized its potential to convey narrative, but this narrative tended to exclude the audience. The advancement of animation techniques and the ability to systematize animation via a pipeline of specialized workers enabled production on a much greater scale.[2] In Japan, the education and training of new animators gradually grew in scale from individual apprenticeships to full-scale classes, allowing the creation of large-scale animation studios as the skilled workforce grew.[3] This meant that directors’ artistic visions could be realized to a greater degree, and they could tell longer, more complicated stories. Animation embraced a cinematic narrative form, producing feature-length animated movies. This kind of animation is still intended to be attractive to the senses, but it focuses on building a cohesive message, so any attractions serve to get the audience invested in a larger story rather than providing more immediate entertainment. For example, Little Norse Prince (1968) contains a charming scene of young villagers playing, singing and dancing together that could be enjoyed without the context of the film, but the ‘camera’ focuses on Hilda, conveying her sadness and distress amongst the joy rather than allowing the audience to revel in the moment. These characters are not being exhibited for the audience; the enjoyment in the scene exists for the audience to examine from afar, but not participate in. Because the audience is not invited into the world of the film, instead treated like an intrusion, there is little reason for the audience to continue thinking about that world once the narrative has concluded.
In the meantime, television became a new market for animation, developing serialized shows and limited animation. Television, as a product, requires a continuous stream of media that encourages audiences to tune in at regular intervals, so it naturally finds success in serialized stories. Despite all the progress in animation technology, animation was (and is) still an extremely time-intensive and thus expensive process. Capitalizing on the opportunity presented by television required new, budget-friendly animation techniques, which are collectively known as limited animation. Limited animation uses fewer drawings per second than full animation (the techniques for fluid action and movement into depth often used in cinematic animation) and tends to maximize the use of existing drawings. Limited animation includes techniques such as stop-images, the use of a still image for scenes where movement is not required, or repetition, the use of looping animations for repetitive actions like walking. While limited animation can feel awkward or stiff compared to full animation, its strength lies in its ability to communicate the minimum amount of information to provide the ‘feeling’ of movement and tell an engaging story.
Many limited animation techniques inherently rely on the audience’s imagination and understanding of the narrative, allowing audiences to retroactively participate in the act of storytelling. The techniques visible in Astroboy (1963) can be used as a case study. In terms of character animation, there are many points where the ‘camera’ holds on a still image for a few seconds rather than depicting movement. Depending on the context of the frame, the audience is able to impart emotion onto this stillness; when Tobio is still upon newly waking up, his stillness may be interpreted as sleepiness or confusion, but when he is still during the scene in which Dr. Tenma sells him, his stillness reads as nervousness or despair. There are also instances where characters will be shown in a series of key frames or distinct poses without any transition between those movements, so the audience has to extrapolate to understand how a real person would move from one pose to the other. In terms of the world around these characters, there are many shots that use a simple gradient rather than background or include only fragments of the background, but they are intercut with just enough shots that do include a background that the audience can still visualize where characters are in this liminal space. Alternatively, audiences may interpret background-less scenes as moments of introspection or concentration for the featured character. Every time visual information is withheld in limited animation, the audience is able to insert their own interpretation, intrinsically connecting their individual perspective to the anime they are watching.
Marc Steinberg argues that the vacillation between stillness and movement in limited animation enables the audience to get used to projecting a sense of life onto a still image of a character, meaning they can more easily project life onto any other still form of that character, such as toys and other merchandise.[4] Many limited animation techniques involve stillness, but there is still a clear attempt to depict movement, meaning that the audience will always view the character as at least capable of movement. One character animation technique called sectioning treats certain parts of a character as separate from each other, animating only the most relevant part while keeping the rest of the character still. The degree of sectioning often varies across shots, such that characters do not move in a consistent manner: in Astroboy (1963), Dr. Tenma’s beard and wrinkles sometimes move in accordance with his speech, but other times, they remain completely still while only his mouth is animated. Yet the audience is not under the impression that this character cannot move the rest of his body. The audience may not register these inconsistencies consciously, but they will become used to the idea that a character may be subject to different laws of physics and motion within the same narrative continuity. Similarly, the abstraction of the character’s environment(s) makes it easier to accept the possibility for the character to exist in another version of reality. As a result, popular limited animation anime series such as Astroboy (1963) were able to capitalize on the media mix, which refers to “the media environment whereby a particular franchise releases interconnecting products for a wide range of media platforms and commodity types”.[4] After all, if Astroboy still feels ‘alive’ and endearing when he is motionless on a screen, then a motionless image of him turned into a sticker or a toy can support the same feeling. Interestingly, media mixes allow audiences to form even more connections to the original property, which should only bolster their ability to project life onto limited animation.
Limited animation also melds well with the purposeful inclusion of more traditional examples of attractions, since the cinema of attractions involves a more direct acknowledgement of the audience and invitation to participate. Anime intros are one of the most blatant examples of attractions in limited animation: they are fully disconnected from the narrative of the show; they communicate directly with the audience, particularly new audience members who may need a ‘primer’ to understand the current episode’s plot; and they are designed to be sensory-stimulating, whether through visuals or music. One of the first magical girl anime, The Secrets of Akko-chan (1962), features a catchy jingle in the intro that the audience can easily sing along to and think of even when they are not watching the show. The transformation sequence popularized by magical girl anime is both an attraction and a limited animation technique. It allows the showrunners to reuse one set of animations nearly every episode and acts as a spectacle for the viewer. Despite the usual narrative implication that the transformation is happening rather quickly in-universe, the show slows down time to allow the audience to admire every detail. The connection between limited animation and media mix enabled meta-attractions as well, such as the idol singer featured in Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel (1983).
The cinema of attractions ultimately involves forging a connection between the audience and the content they are viewing. In its attempts to be as efficient as possible, limited animation opens up its story to audience interpretation and engagement more than full animation. This enables the success of media mixes and makes more blatant attractions still feel like part of a cohesive experience, as they develop further connections with the audience.
Works Cited
[1] Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” in Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (London: BFI, 1990), 56–62.
[2] Walt Disney’s Multiplane Camera, 1957; “Fleischer Studios,” Popular Science (Paramount, 1938).
[3] Laura Montero-Plata and Marie Pruvost-Delaspre, “Shaping the Anime Industry: Second Generation Pioneers and the Emergence of the Studio System,” in A Companion to Japanese Cinema, 2022, 215–46.
[4] Marc Steinberg, “Immobile Sections and Trans-Series Movement: Astroboy and the Emergence of Anime,” Animation 1, no. 2 (November 2006): 190–206, https://doi.org/10.1177/1746847706068903.
Originally published on April 21, 2024 for the class "History of Japanese Animation" at the University of Chicago.
