Animation

Whats up with the animation in anime anyway?
Even big budget mainstream features use limited animation techniques.
Is it just ingrained into the collective Japanese animators' conscious?

Anime? More like slide show (amirite)

And the obvious reasons to this is are 1) the less animation, the cheaper the anime 2) the less animation, the cheaper the anime 3) the less animation, the cheaper the anime 4) the less animation, the cheaper the anime and 5) since most anime are adaptations of manga, it seems almost natural to keep still drawings in their original state.......

but what can i say, economics breeds laziness

When Japan first started animating, they used cost-cutting measures popularized largely by Hanna-Barbera (Partial animation, it has a proper name which I forget.  Anyone watch the Flintstones recently?  Watch them walk.  Only their mouths and legs move, instead of redrawing the entire frame) and in their own fledgeling manga industry (movement lines).  The movie/tv industries were relatively pinched for money and couldn't spend a lot on exquisite Disney-style animation so they  cut down on their overhead.  The techniques they learned stuck and get passed down onto later generations of animators, and of course everyone loves saving money (or simply has a very small budget for their project, like EVA), so the practices continue to this day.

If they have American Budget I am pretty sure you can see all the grass animated, but alas they do not.

by american budget do you really mean ghibli budget for a single movie? american cartoons arent particularly heavy on the animation either (and if they do, it gets traded off with simpler art).

but also remember that there was a period of time when animation in animated TV shows was actually present, and good! see shows like hunter x hunter; nowadays, with everything computerized, it seems that people like to cut corners/costs even more than they used to..... i long for a return to the analog

story, character design,voice acting talent, musical score, etc are infinately more important than framecount.

>>6
Truth.

"American Budget" probably means the budget for an American theatrical release, e.g. Disney or Pixar.  Theatrical releases in Japan do tend to be well-animated, moreso than the television shows - the "big" important ones, anyway.  Much like in America.  Although the average American animated television show does tend to have better animation than the average anime, from a purely technical standpoint.

>>6
yes; hitsuji no uta, at least the first couple episodes, was really good because of its style, even though it was nothing more than a slide show. however, that is a VERY rare case. i'm sure violinist of hamelin would have been a good watchable anime if it had more animation; but unfortunately it had almost no animation and it tanked quality wise, despite a good story, good art, etc etc. it simply bored me to death.

i'm not asking for higher framecount; i'm asking for more than just partially animated stills. The purpose of watching an animation is to see shit move, otherwise i might as well just stick to manga (in most cases of manga -> anime adaptations, the manga is better anyway).

>>6
What is it with anime fans being so defensive against full-frame animation?

Full-frame animation helps make a character feel alive, helps build empathy for the character, allows the character to express subtle body language... A general audience will feel more for a simply-drawn character that expresses human-like motion and body language than a highly detailed character that is mostly static. And having full-frame animation does exclude having a good story, good music, or effective character design.

>>6 Truth
>>9 not always.
I have seen many Disney (supposedly the best full frame animation in the world) shit and I have never felt some empathy for any of the characters they have made. I have felt even more empathy with the Japanese charas and even if the animation is more limited, many times is the character's profile and background story that makes you feel more identifyed with it.

OFF TOPIC- I could say that also depends too much on the type of personality of each person. If you are the kind of person that feel something for issues like social justice or just hate to see weakest people being bullyed by the stronger ones, maybe you could feel yourself identifyed with some characters like Kato of Gantz or Kenshin and Sano in Rurouni Kenshin or if you had a big  loose at some time in your life you could identify your self with moments like that of serena's friends dying and then she cries cuz she feels that now she will be all alone forever in sailor moon or Remi, whose beloved ones die one after another.

>>6

you can get all of that outside of animation.
i watch animation for the animation too.

Ghibli films have large budgets and certainly dont need any cost cutting measures but still use limited animation techniques.

japanese animation seems to have a thing for saving the animation budget for one or two parts. see any given shonen fight series for great examples. Air Master has incredible 20-second fight scenes, and it does that by skimping on the unimportant part of the episode where nobody's fighting. DBZ (same director) is actually beautifully animated in two or three spots, but they're buried in a mountain of still-frame standoffs and three-frame punching animations. even in a miyazaki movie, they seem to work conservatively, saving the budget for the big setpieces. this is kind of frustrating, like you guys are saying, because you lose some visual consistency. frankly, i don't think miyazaki really gives a damn about that. only the biggest-budget japanese animated films, really detail-obsessed stuff like akira and steamboy, actually look completely visually consistent.

>>10
WHAT?