The Manga – Anime Connection
If you really want to understand anime, first you need to
know about manga. Why?
In the U.S., animation for TV or for movies is very
different from comic book art. Animation by companies
like Disney or DreamWorks focuses on movement – lots
of movement. Characters move, scenery moves, the
background moves… most people think the more
movement there is the “better” the animation is. (That’s
why a lot of people were surprised when South Park
became popular – the characters hardly move at all,
much less the scenery.)
Since Western animation normally requires a lot of
movement to be considered “good,” if a comic book is
adapted to become an animated cartoon or movie, most
of the time the characters are simplified so they can be
drawn more easily when they have to move. (The
more detail a character’s clothing has, for instance, the
more an artist has to re-draw when the character
moves. If a sleeve doesn’t have any stripes, there are
no stripes to re-draw as the arm moves.) That’s why,
for instance, Batman’s costume looks pretty simple in
a cartoon, instead of having all the detail, shading,
highlights, etc, that it has in the comic book. The
creators of the cartoon don’t want to spend too much
money on re-drawing his costume every time Batman
moves.