Did Losing Cel Animation Ruin Anime?

Let me note at the start that this is not a Versus article. It’s a difference of opinion, not necessarily a disagreement on facts, save for one detail that leads to our difference of opinion. I’m mostly using this article by author and commentator Brian Niemeier on his Kairos blog as a discussion point, not calling him out. There’s a difference in approaches, and while I’ve used his commentaries in the past as Saturday Article Link fodder I have done a Versus on people I usually agree with before. That’s just not the case here.

For those of you who didn’t go to read the article, Niemeier–who I’m just going to go by his first name so I don’t have to keep double-checking the spelling of his last name–tries to make the point that switching from animation cels to drawing on the computer, which is still 2D art, has been a bad move for Japanese animation studios to do, hurting the visual side of the product. Now today’s Daily Video makes more sense. While that video was from an American animation studio, the process is the same. It’s also long, tedious, and costs more. Animating on the computer, even with drawing every image, takes less time though I don’t know if it takes less people. Does the animator have time to also be the colorist? My guess is no. They’ll also still need the in-betweener, the ones who do frames between the important ones to keep the process going. It rarely takes less than two people animating even a TV show.

So what’s Brian’s case for going back to cel animation, “cel” being short for celluloid, and why don’t I think that’s the problem? Let’s start seeing his case so I can make mine.

Anime’s unique visual storytelling enthralled audiences with its trademark artistry. But the industrywide abandonment of hand-drawn cel animation to digipaint has degraded the medium’s look and feel.

Nobody ever says this about Western animation. Bluey in Australia is done entirely on the computer, as are many other 2D animated shows and movies around the world, but I’ve not heard anybody complain that Disney…wait, the only 2D they have is made by other studios. Well, Warner Brothers…do they even use American animators or are they all Korean? Whatever, my point is a lot of them are also done on the computer. Many YouTube cartoons are also done on the computer, but I have seen a few YouTube animators who boast about using cel animation. Nobody calls any of them out for it.

While digipaint offers efficiency and cuts costs, it has also caused a noticeable decline in the warmth, depth, and heart that defined anime’s golden age.

To ensure its longevity and restore its artistic soul, the anime industry should forsake digipaint and return to hand-drawn cel animation.

And no, that idea isn’t as quixotic as it sounds.

There will always be a debate on new styles. Cartridges versus CD-Rom, VHS versus DVD, DVD vs Blu-Ray vs whatever’s trying to replace Blu-Ray, and even records versus cassettes, CDs, and various digital formats. Even comics and books deal with this thanks to webcomics and ebooks. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. In comics there’s a question about breaking out Clip Studio versus breaking out the Bristol board and pens. I won’t deny there is a difference, born out of necessity as much as aesthetics. With the record debate for example, songs created at the height of vinyl records were made to be heard that way, and don’t sound the same when translated to a digital format, while songs made today are made with mp3 sound in mind and probably would sound odd on a vinyl record album.

Cel animation—meticulously painting each frame of animation by hand on transparent sheets—was the standard for decades, producing classics like Akira, My Neighbor Totoro, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In fact, pretty much every anime produced before the turn of the millennium was hand-drawn on cels.

The imperfections inherent in this method gave anime the human touch that many find lacking in digital works–particularly those generated by A.I. Brush strokes, subtle inconsistencies, and the interplay of light and shadow gave each frame a life of its own. And the immediacy of colors layered on film stock fostered, I dare say, intimacy that digital methods struggle to replicate.

In contrast, digipaint’s pixel-level precision comes off as sterile. While digital tools give you consistency and speed, they also give us visuals that look overpolished and flat. Current Year anime just lacks the organic handcrafted charm the medium made its bones with.

I don’t know about that. I don’t watch as much anime as Brian does (I’m almost done working my way through Samurai 7 and just finally finished Tomo-Chan Is A Girl a few months ago) because I’m still trying to get the universe to let me create a work/play schedule that’s productive and relaxing, so maybe he has a wider sampling. I was here before the “Japanimation” craze thanks to Battle Of The Planets, Robotech, and Voltron: Defender Of The Universe among a few others that were either made for Japan or by Japan for a US audience (Transformers, Thundercats, and Mighty Orbots come to mind). I have seem some lazy animation that wasn’t the same for me. Compare the original and remake of Rurouni Kenshin for example

On the other hand, it doesn’t look bad, just different. Some shows could benefit from the grittier look, but the idea that it comes from the tools I don’t think is accurate. Going by Clip Studio, the program I use for art that also has animation functions, it’s not that hard to replicate the tools used. There are watercolor brushes, various types of ink brushes that were made both by the Japanese company that created Comic Studio (the  previous name of the software in Japan, while the US distributor opted for Manga Studio until the recent name change) and by enthusiasts of that and other software whose brushes are compatible with each other. Those programs probably also have virtual brushes and pens that emulate their physical counterparts.

The anime market is now flooded with formulaic series that prioritize quantity over quality. With tight schedules and limited budgets, many productions cut corners, resulting in uninspired backgrounds, stiff character movements, and lackluster color palettes. Studios’ focus on mass production has quashed the artistic innovation that defined the industry, turning it into an assembly line for disposable entertainment

In the previous paragraph he goes over how the computer became a necessity during the cel and animator shortage in the 1990s (I’m not sure which year) and studios realized you could work faster and cheaper, without having to worry about mixing paints or spending money on all of the tools required to make animation, and get more people animating. The cut corners can’t be blamed on the computers. That’s the studios or the networks/distributors not understanding how long it takes to make good animation. Considering how much fanart and indie creations in comic and cartoon spheres looks really good while others don’t, it’s a matter of talent and taking time to do it right. While I’m hardly a great artist, I’ve noticed when I have more time it looks better than when I don’t. Don’t blame the tools, blame the companies.

And don’t say it can’t be done. The venerable Studio Ghibli still uses traditional cel animation, proving there’s still a market for handcrafted aime.

Plus, using cel animation will make studios bold enough to readopt it stand out in a saturated market. These days, differentiation is the name of the game, so bringing back painted cels is a no-brainer. Besides, making artists take their time with every line and brush stroke is the best way to restore the deliberate creativity now missing from many anime films and series.

Like I said before, there are still people on YouTube that use cel animation with little to no computer assist, though the latter requires a special camera system I’m betting most indie creators don’t have access to. Whether you draw and paint the cel or just draw pictures on paper and color on the computer, or if you do everything on the computer, the end result is blamed on the creators. I’ve noted before the tale of Kat Hinzman, who was so good at the old Attack Of The Show‘s “User Created” competitions they tried to hamstring her with MS Paint and she still managed to go beyond the assignment. (She actually wrote me because she read me discussing that and found it hilarious.) It’s not like low quality work is something out of the computer age. How much anime came through the “Japanimation” pipeline that was utter garbage, as studios and distributors tried to cash in on the new home video market of VHS, Betamax, and Laserdisc?

Will a cel revival face resistance? Yes. It’s labor-intensive and takes significant resources, making going back to cel art a daunting prospect for studios already operating on thin margins. But cel animation’s return needn’t be an all-or-nothing proposition. Studios could adopt a hybrid approach, using digital tools to streamline certain parts of the process while employing hand-drawn cels for key sequences.

How would that work? If using cels also means coloring the cels rather than the images on the computer, all you’re replacing is the camera. Computer coloring also allows for lighting and glowing effects that aren’t as easy to replicate in paint, makes it easier to keep track of each drawn image, using “onion skin” to create a ghost image of the previous panel to work on. I think there’s a problem in a lot of creative fields where some techniques are considered “sacred” when they really only exist because it was the only option at the time, while too many newer artists fail to keep what worked in the past under the mistaken belief that everything should be new. Choose the technique that works best for you, don’t be afraid of old or new techniques, and create a system that leads to the desired end result…making good art, or swords, or food, or (insert your product/service here).

I’ll end on this video I found going over someone using Clip Studio to do animation while replicating the cel process, not just “cel-shading” the art.

Catch more from on Spywi’s Mind Palace YouTube

The rules don’t change because the tools do. It’s not the animators or the tools that are the problem. It’s the people in charge. As usual.