Japanese TV anime, as understood today, dates back to 1963, when Osamu Tezuka recreated his own manga Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu) for the screen. A tremendous hit, Astro Boy set a precedent for the successful cross-promotion between the two media.1 Since that time, manga and anime have remained interconnected through their characters, narratives, audiences, and visuals. The connection between the visuals of the two mediums is most strikingly revealed through line drawing (senga), which continues to constitute the material and semiotic basis of the two media and forms their aesthetic core. In this sense, graphic style provides a useful vantage point from which to explore the relation between them, one that inevitably involves a discussion of movement. The history of on-screen movement of drawn images in traditional 2D anime has been intertwined with movement expressed by and inherent in the still drawings on the printed manga page.
Manga-typical devices for rendering movement largely prefigured and informed the limited animation techniques seen in Japanese TV anime. Traditional hand-drawn animation is achieved through a series of key and in-between frames, which indicate the “first and last positions of a movement”2 and phases in between those extreme positions, respectively. Limited animation is, first and foremost, associated with a smaller number of frames per second to create movement – twelve, eight, or sometimes even fewer, as opposed to twenty-four in full animation. During the two decades following the launch of Astro Boy, however, TV anime acquired an arsenal of other time- and labor-saving devices, which included replacing the actual movement of the figure on-screen with emphatic freeze-frames (tome-e) or rapid cuts between still shots. In these instances, animation derives from the “dynamically immobile image,”3 which does not represent movement but rather implies it through dramatic poses, camerawork, or pictorial runes such as motion lines. While dynamically static images can be traced back to manga and other forms of graphic narrative, they have nonetheless become a staple of TV anime.
Recent decades have witnessed new developments, including the tendency to resort to fully animated sequences at key points of the narrative in order to produce visual spectacle4 and the increasing reliance on 3D computer-generated (CG) animation. These new trends and technologies are currently reshaping the basic anime look. At the same time, the significance of line drawing in anime has risen in prominence since the early 2000s, with hand-drawn aesthetics and its CG-based imitations recognized as one of the distinguishing features of Japanese anime in the current 3D-oriented global market. A reexamination of the multifaceted dynamism of manga and anime drawings and the interdependence of movement and graphic style enables a reassessment of aesthetic and material connections between these two distinct media forms, as well as similar links between traditional 2D anime and new 3D CG cel-look animation.
Graphic Style and Movement in Anime and Manga
Early TV anime borrowed extensively from manga’s narrative techniques, expressive devices, and aesthetic solutions. Moreover, the majority of intermedial adaptations followed in Tezuka’s footsteps from manga to anime. The graphic style of manga drawing thus provides a touchstone against which to analyze the anime image.
In graphic narratives, drawing is characterized by parameters such as the use of color and shading; the degree of detail (i.e., the visual density of the image); the level of “iconic abstraction,”5 which determines how characters, objects, and backgrounds are rendered on a spectrum from naturalistic to cartoonish; the types of graphical projection as pertains to the treatment of space and volume within panels; and the quality of lines and strokes, which partially depend on the instruments and materials employed. Not all of these parameters are equally important for intermedial comparison. For instance, with the development of digital painting and photography, animators have come to utilize much broader color palettes, together with sophisticated color schemes and shading techniques. The majority of manga serials, however, are monochromatic, which makes color coordination secondary in the comparative analysis of anime and manga aesthetics. The following discussion therefore focuses on iconic abstraction, the visual density of the image, and the quality of the line. Each directly impacts the expression of movement – the represented and the implied – in a still drawing. At the same time, these parameters are affected by the movement of the animated image. Moreover, line quality is related to the movement inherent in the drawing that precedes the depiction (and recognition) of any specific object. Such prefigurative movement bears special significance for animation.
Iconic Abstraction and Visual Density
Individual artists and drawing traditions are distinguished first and foremost by the level of iconic abstraction, which describes the visual treatment of characters and the implementation of pictorial formulas in visual narration. Such formulas range from basic drawing conventions, which involve abridging some parts of the depicted object and accentuating others, to various shortcuts and sleights of hand that might, among other things, enhance the visual appeal of the character image. An example of the former is drawing a nose in manga, which varies from a single dot in the “cute” style exemplified by Kagami Yoshimizu’s Lucky Star (2003–), to seminaturalistic representations in titles such as Kentarō Miura’s Berserk (1989–2021) or Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal (Mugen no jūnin, 1993–2012). Common “cosmetic” tricks include the omission of double chins for leading characters, regardless of their pose and camera angle, dramatically twisted poses and bent limbs as exemplified by Kōta Hirano’s Hellsing (1997–2008) and Hirohiko Araki’s illustrations, and warped perspective.6 The level and manner of iconic abstraction in presented characters, along with the intensity and frequency of expressionistic distortions, are the most obvious and readily reproducible aspects of graphic style. Occasionally, they become idiosyncratic enough to serve as a personal signature, as is the case with the aforementioned Hirano. An artist’s approach may of course change with time. In many long-running manga series, the visual treatment of characters evolves over years, sometimes passing through a number of distinct stages. Again, Miura’s Berserk is an obvious example while a more recent case is Gamon Sakurai’s Ajin: Demi-Human (2012–21). It is also possible for a graphic narrative to combine several levels of abstraction, with the overall look of the work determined by their interplay. For instance, manga artists commonly resort to an exaggerated cartoonish style, or “super-deformed” expression, in comical scenes (with the cuter variety known as chibi). The cartoonish style facilitates visual gags and the representation of emotions and moods, but these are not its only advantages.
Although unrelated to movement per se, the inherent malleability of the character drawing, which permits an oscillation between more naturalistic and super-deformed versions,7 imbues the drawing with an element of dynamism. Moreover, switches between the default style and its distorted version may be used in lieu of other types of motion, and this is especially the case in anime.8 The super-deformed drawings share a close affinity with anime’s limited animation: Cartoonish style allows for rapid transitions between exaggerated expressions, and “jerky” animation often reinforces the comical effect of distorted figures.9 Moreover, simplified forms and highly conventionalized expressions are easier to animate. On the one hand, exaggerated, distorted character drawing reduces the work for both manga artist and animator; on the other, it serves as a dynamically immobile image. It is no wonder that this stylistic device has become a mainstay in manga and anime and one of the long-lasting visual links between the two.
Iconic abstraction involves a selective representation of an object, and thus, it overlaps with another aspect of graphic style – namely, the degree of detail. While iconic abstraction concerns character images, the latter is a subset of what I refer to as “visual density.” Visual density in manga is determined by the amount and distribution of visual information, including verbal text, balloons, and pictograms in addition to drawn images, in a panel and on a page. The density of the drawing is decided not only by the amount of detail but also by the application of textures and multiplication of lines, which may or may not have a figurative function.
Lines, in particular, often multiply in the form of hatching, which is itself a multipurpose tool. In academic drawing, hatching is the primary means by which to articulate shapes and to create an illusion of volume through shading; it similarly reflects the texture of the depicted objects. A manga artist may acknowledge this tradition, yet many dispense with academism. For the most part, hatching in manga helps to convey a certain mood or to indicate a surface, implying, rather than representing, volume. Screentones have been used for similar purposes since the early 1970s. They are considered a comparatively neutral and inobtrusive device,10 whereas hatching tends to noticeably saturate or even oversaturate the image. Not surprisingly, it is regularly implemented in kimegoma or misegoma – that is, highlight panels that mark intense narrative points. Such panels are meant to make the reader pause, frequently through a change in graphic density. Kimegoma usually contain the most intricate drawings on a page and are characterized by an abundance of small details and elaborate shading. Such an oscillation of visual or graphic density in response to the demands of the narrative is contingent on a flexible approach to the image already demonstrated with iconic abstraction. But flexibility also exists in a more general sense, as there is no fixed standard in terms of visual density. Some artists exploit the aesthetics of the empty, unmarked page, others pack each panel with visual information.
Hand-drawn animation has inherent limitations that can hinder any attempt to reproduce on-screen the source work’s visual complexity line-by-line, with the difficulty of animating an image growing proportionally to the number of lines and the degree of detail. This means that source images are streamlined with smaller details abridged. Hatching in most cases is removed altogether. In recent years, series like Berserk (Liden Films, GEMBA, 2016–17) and Shadows House (Clover Works, 2021–) have tried to imitate hatching via digitally applied textures, but the results amount to approximation at best. To some extent, the simplification is set off by the same flexibility that underlies the use of highlight panels in manga. In the medium of anime, this flexibility likewise exists on multiple levels. For instance, anime employs “ratio dynamism,”11 whereby complicated action sequences utilize a higher number of frames per second to achieve a visual spectacle of smooth, sophisticated animation. It also exhibits variable graphic density such that the number of lines on-screen increases in freeze-frames with an equally dramatic effect. The ultimate form of this expressive device is termed “harmony,” developed and popularized by director Osamu Dezaki in hit manga-to-anime adaptations such as Aim for the Ace! (Ēsu o neraé!, 1973–74), The Rose of Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara, 1979–80), and Joe of Tomorrow 2 (Ashita no Jō 2, 1980–81). In harmony, visual density is achieved by rendering the image in a painterly manner, with nuanced coloring and hatching applied to both the background and the characters.
Parallels between the two media are obvious, although the devices at play are not necessarily identical. There are multiple ways to signal the importance of a highlight panel, including its size and position on a page. By contrast, in a freeze-frame, it is the combination of stillness and graphic density that is impactful. While the painterly freeze-frame provides visual spectacle in an isolated moment, backgrounds continuously enrich the anime image. The introduction of cel-animation in the United States in the mid-1910s brought about the physical and conceptual separation of the two planes: animated characters and static background. This innovation greatly facilitated the development of commercial animation; it also enabled animators to invest more time and labor in backdrops. The new practice of balancing intricate backgrounds with simplified characters was established in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century,12 and later perfected in Japan. It culminated in a stylistic convention that remains the mainstay in the anime industry. While the quality of production and materials may vary, the result is usually a relatively detailed background painting that implies depth through the use of linear and aerial perspective. The disparity between characters and background in terms of drawing style, volume, and detail has become so entrenched in anime aesthetics that the harmonization between the two visual planes still reads as a type of special effect.
In manga, meanwhile, the background can assume more diverse roles and appearances. In principle, the background is easy to omit since it is not the primary means of enriching the image: The location or stage of a narrative event (the visual background space) is usually introduced in an establishing shot, whereas backdrops detailing the characters’ surroundings are often absent in medium shots and close-ups – that is, when the visual focus is more or less exclusively on the character. Of course, a nonfigurative background can become visually dense when it includes ornamental patterns or pictograms, but the stylistic disparity between the layers of the drawing can be emphasized or eliminated with equal ease. The changeability of manga backgrounds expands the expressive potential of the medium. The majority of these stylistic variations never find their way on-screen, however, as they are obstructed by anime’s tendency to standardize the treatment of backgrounds in service of balancing the degree of detail and movement under budget and time constraints.
Moving Lines: Movement in the Line
Comics critics maintain that every visible stroke of a drawn picture is a trace of the artist’s drawing hand and thus points to the creative impulse and labor of a particular individual.13 Such a personal touch is already apparent at the prefigurative level – that is, before the reader recognizes objects and scenes on a page. As such, the quality of linework may induce intense affective reactions on the one hand and serve as a sign of strong subjectivity on the other.14 But understanding the drawing as a product of an individual’s efforts has another implication. A line or a stroke represents not only the mood or the worldview of its implied maker; it also signals the gesture that went into its making.15 In other words, it evokes the movement of the drawing hand on a literal, somatic level. Any mark on the surface, be it an analog page or a digital screen, is therefore imbued with its own dynamism.
Of course, this dynamism fluctuates depending on the scale of the gesture and the roughness of the resultant mark.16 Unmodulated, clear lines reveal little about the process of their production when compared to the bold brushstrokes or frenetic crosshatching often encountered in action or horror scenes, which directly convey energetic gestures. For the same reason, vigorous pencil hatching can effectively replace or reinforce motion lines, imparting the same sense of rapid movement. The internal dynamism of the hand-drawn image is not determined by the quality of marks alone, but rather by their relation to the illustrated object. The sketch is considered the most immediate and most dynamic form of drawing not only because it lays bare any hesitation or deliberation on the part of the creator, but also because its strokes do not coalesce into a definitive, final outline, as a sketch is always incomplete. The viewer must close the gaps by adding their own imaginary strokes, and yet this closure is transitory, with the ensuing shapes always open to reinterpretation. It is for that reason that even a drawing comprised of uniform, neat lines may feel unstable, implying movement on a very basic level. This is seen, for example, in Haruko Ichikawa’s Land of the Lustrous (Hōseki no kuni, 2012–).
As mentioned earlier, the “gestural expressiveness of the line”17 is an essential part of graphic style. It might even serve as a principal parameter for drawing distinctions between individual artists and larger trends, such as the “organic” and “inorganic” periods in the history of postwar manga.18 The question then arises whether anime is able to replicate this important aspect of the manga image. Insofar as a line or a stroke is taken to refer to the work of a specific artist, it is impossible to reproduce it on-screen, unless the artist animates their own drawings. But the internal dynamism of the line still persists in traditional hand-drawn animation. To what degree this comes through is determined by the nature of animation as a media form that involves several types of movement and by the trends that influence the medium in a given era.
Two contrasting types of movement may emerge in fully animated sequences: the inherent dynamism of the line and the ostensible movement of a figure.19 The viewer’s gaze gravitates to the latter, while the “figural force”20 (the implied motion) of the lines is subsumed by the moving form they outline, only to resurface in moments of stillness. This tendency is reinforced by the preference of uniform lines and solid, definitive forms that characterize many mainstream animated works, starting with Disney. Anime is no exception: Neat and even contours have remained a default in the industry for almost three decades. This does not mean, however, that anime has no use for the expressive potential of the line.
Movement inherent in the manually produced mark is bound to play a crucial role in anime because it lies at the core of the dynamically immobile image. This kind of motion precedes the dynamic poses of character figures, compositional tricks, camerawork, and so forth. Nowhere is this prefigurative movement more apparent than in harmony shots, which present the viewer with an entire complex of “indexical artefacts of embodied gesture”21 – in other words, brushstrokes, expressive linework, and hatching coalesced into a single image. Yet the use of expressive lines in anime is not restricted to such special cases. For one thing, Japanese TV anime has not always relied on neutral linework, particularly in its early years when it was still referred to as “TV manga” (terebi manga), a term well suited in terms of content and expression. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, manga-to-anime adaptations became the norm, and animators strove to imitate the graphic style of the source works. This proved challenging as it coincided with the first “organic” phase in the history of postwar manga when artists experimented with tapering, uneven, or overlapping lines. Their reproduction in hand-drawn animation is difficult insofar as clear-cut forms and smooth transitions between frames are industrially required. The easiest compensation was to increase still shots and sectioning, a technique that involves selectively animating parts of the image such as a character’s mouth or limb. Mangaesque linework and limited animation ended up in a mutually reinforcing relationship. Expressive lines imparted the anime image with dynamism, at the same time steering it away from actual animation and toward “TV manga” in an almost literal sense.22
Tellingly, the move of the anime industry toward clean lines and even outlines in the late 1980s coincided with a new interest in fully animated sequences, spearheaded by the work of Katsuhiro Ōtomo and Mamoru Oshii. Even that shift did not completely erase expressive linework, however. In addition to harmony shots, character close-ups with little or no actual animation have continued to employ tapering lines, open contours, and hatching. Furthermore, the 2010s witnessed the reemergence of variegated linework on-screen. Nonetheless, this does not signal a simple return to the “organic” phase of the late 1960s. Nowadays, anime adaptations do not necessarily seek to reproduce the gestural qualities of lines found in their source works. Experimentation is inspired by the influx of new technologies, rather than the medium of manga itself.
Coda: Graphic Style, Movement, and New Technologies
Manga drawing generates a sense of movement on multiple levels, some of which are unrelated to the contents of the image. In hand-drawn TV anime, this inherent dynamism was at times repurposed or substituted with other types of movement, and diverse manga styles were streamlined to fit conventions and technical demands. New technologies slowly but steadily reshape the basic anime image, opening new avenues and closing old ones.
The digitization of anime production caused a first wave of change. Drawing, coloring, and photography particularly benefited from the introduction of digital tools that greatly expanded the expressive arsenal of traditional 2D anime. Specialized software has simplified the task of creating clean outlines; at the same time, it has significantly reduced the costs of labor and the time required to combine idiosyncratic linework with actual animation. An increasing number of mainstream anime such as Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019–) and Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun (Jibaku shōnen Hanako-kun, 2020) have been experimenting with colored or irregular contours, as well as lines of wavering thickness. The same applies to coloring. The application of gradients and textures to the character plane has become a norm since around 2010. The impact of digitization on photography cannot be underestimated either. Besides the various digital effects, the opportunity to integrate multiple heterogeneous materials (e.g., 2D and 3D CG elements) into the same image and to manipulate an unlimited number of layers has led to a deepening sophistication of limited animation techniques. Generally speaking, the production of visually dense images has become much easier.
The addition of gradients, textures, blur, and other effects at the photography stage of production has also facilitated the reduction of the stylistic disparity between background and character planes without sacrificing graphic density of the former or movement of the latter. Just as with linework, the old conventions persist, and manga-to-anime adaptations do not necessarily strive to replicate the interplay of characters and backdrops that characterizes the source work. Still, the possibility of new approaches is noteworthy.
Digital tools have greatly enriched anime visuals and the medium’s expressive range. But what can be said about 3D CG animation, which has finally begun to gain ground in the industry? 3D CG has become the means to realize on-screen the more complicated, nonlateral movement of complex, detailed objects. For a long time, these objects were limited to vehicles, weapons, and battle robots. The principle was then extended to groups of armored humanoids, allowing for more involved crowd scenes and battle panoramas. From 2010 onward, progressively more series have been made with the entire cast modeled and animated in 3D. Even so, there is a reason why 3D CG has only dealt with ostensibly inorganic objects for several decades: 3D character models have been notorious for their inorganic feel that cannot be mitigated solely by cel-shading (a nonrealistic rendering technique designed to make 3D images look flat through the use of hard-edged shadows and outlines in 3D models). Cel-shading is widely embraced in the contemporary anime industry as the primary means to replicate the look and feel of hand-drawn animation. But no matter how closely cel-shaded characters may evoke the flatness of their 2D counterparts, they lack the gestural force found in traditional drawing. After all, linework in cel-shaded animation is an artificial addition that is typically generated with the help of specialized software, even if various manual corrections are usually required when creating character models and executing the second half of the production process. The resulting absence of implied motion makes 3D models appear static and stiff compared to their hand-drawn equivalents. The problem may be solved by introducing textures and other elements to the cel-shaded image that evoke embodied gestures. To date, these attempts have often been hit-and-miss.
The handling of the differing levels of iconic abstraction in cel-shaded anime poses another challenge. Exaggeration per se is not unattainable in 3D CG, as evinced by children’s anime such as Chi’s Sweet Home (seasons 3–4, 2016–18). Yet such works use cartoonish character designs as their baseline. It is impossible to simply transform a more realistic 3D model into a super-deformed version. Another model needs to be made from scratch, and its own changeability will also be limited. Likewise, deliberate distortions frequently employed in traditional anime (and manga) for expressive or aesthetic purposes are unachievable in 3D CG animation.
These setbacks beg the question of whether the attempts to reproduce the aesthetics of 2D anime in 3D CG are viable. Various operational and technological discrepancies prevented the complete replication of manga imagery in 2D anime. On the level of the line drawing, however, the two media have much in common. Both manga and 2D anime allow creators to instantly alter aspects of the graphic style, be they the quality of lines, the degree and manner of iconic abstraction, or the amount of detail. This multifaceted dynamism is absent in the type of 3D CG animation embraced by the anime industry today. As a result, this type of animation has no direct access to expressive devices developed in and shared by 2D anime and manga. In principle, these devices can be imitated, yet the process often becomes too costly to be feasible. It is telling that most of cel-look animation’s current challenges regarding style and expression are solved with the assistance of traditional techniques, including intricate hand-painted backgrounds that suffuse cel-shaded images with the warmth of a human touch, sequences animated entirely in 2D for scenes that involve super-deformed characters or require more evocative facial acting, and so forth. This is not to suggest that 3D CG imagery is inferior to the older media forms. It is, however, important to acknowledge that certain kinds of movement cannot be achieved by computing but only through the act of drawing, even if new technologies make it possible to emulate the cel-look.
