Week 6: Finally, with reference to Cavallaro (2006), what distinguishes Mononoke technically as being – it is generally agreed – a great work of anime?

Cavallaro (2006) discusses several reason of which can contribute to the total successful of Mononoke Hime on technical terms. Fristly, its characteristic historical setting is based on the mythology and legends in the land itself in the changing era of Japan since the fourteenth centuries (Drazen, as cited in Cavallaro, 2006). Secondly, Cavallaro (2006) extracts director Miyazaki opinion of delivering the message to the younger audiences frankly in other to tell that both adults and children are not living in a “blessed world”, that we “share the same despair” in the human society (p.121). Director Miyazaki also wanted to say through the anime that the stereotyping of ‘bad people’ is not the people who carry out the forest cut down; in fact they are all hard-workers (ibid). Least but not last, to make the anime more realistic, there are more animation cels which allow the fluid of movement and facial expression while keeping the animals not being “cuter than the real thing” (Callavaro, 2006, p.126). Finally, according to the author, 90% of the anime was produced from animation cels. The other 10% was digitally created by software, however, keeping the feel of animation cels without the feel of digital like Toy Stories. Another reason for this work to be made with traditional crafts is, as Atsushi Okui (as cited in Cavallaro, 2006) states: “if digitalization keeps progressing the way it is, eventually the job of the cameraman for animated films may disappear. … We wanted to make it a compilation of nonconputerised animation techniques” (p. 130).

Reference:

Cavallaro, D. (2006). The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki. London: McFarland & Company.