It seems everyone who claims to know anime, and even many of those who don’t, know of Hayao Miyazaki.  How can you not, when he’s one of the first few Japanese animators to gain a following outside of Japan?  Spirited Away, best animated feature academy award winner, anyone?

Those critics who study Japanimation have written extensively on Miyazaki, and they cite a number of reasons as to why he is considered “great.”  His stories appeal to audiences across generations and cultures, his artwork is definitely top-notch, especially in the 2D animation industry.  He is, without a doubt, a master of the cel-style animation, and this is seen best perhaps in Nausicaa (1984).  It’s not his most famous film, at least not in America, but it’s a very influential Japanese film.  A lot of 70s-80s anime have characters and backgrounds as simple as possible, since it’s easier to draw, but Miyazaki spared no expense.  The backgrounds in Nausicaa are impeccable, and the machinery incredibly intricate, especially compared to other movies of the time, and even more incredible compared to big-studio films such as Macross and Mobile Suit Gundam.  So really, no joke, Miyazaki is a master of cel-animation.

Problem:  With the advent of computers, only the most dedicated of fans would patiently watch the sketchy lines and choppy movements that are inherently a part of cel-style animation.  It’s kind of analogous to the people who continue to play Final Fantasy 7.  Only those who enjoyed it when it was still novel, and those who care enough about the franchise to overlook the age, would put themselves through the torture of watching lego-block people for hours on end.

But that’s beside the point.  Cel-animation is also expensive.  Incredibly expensive, compared to digital programs with their layers and their automatic panning and their paint-bucket tools.  To hand paint every frame seems somewhat stupid, when you can just click linearts on the computer.

So why is it that Miyazaki insists on continuing to cel-paint his films? Is it because cel animation contains artistic merit that doesn’t exist in digital animation?  Or is it simply prideful stubbornness? It could be both – Miyazaki has said once that digital animation lacks “soul,”  yet he’s also said more recently that there are things that computers can do that hand can never – but that it was much too late for him to try it.  (I’m going off memory here.)  And yet he’s proven to be no slouch when it comes to digital animation.  Those memorable scenes in Howl’s Moving Castle, in which the stars skip across the water and die – who can ever forget those? And yet, he’s famous for having less than 10% of any of his films be digital, and his latest film, Ponyo, is completely hand-animated.

And you have to wonder, if it weren’t Miyazaki, could anyone else pull this off?  Could someone without such great influence be able to pull off something of this scale and magnificence?  Frankly, looking at the trailer for Ponyo, it’s difficult to pinpoint any technology-hindered flaws.  Sure, there are parts in which the lines taper differently depending on the frame, and the rendering of the water and the sky is nothing compared to, say, digital ones. This one was from Fafner, and that was 2004. But one can argue that it adds dimensionality, it ties in with the childlike nature of the film.

One can not argue – it is reminiscent of the old animes, and I feel that partly the reason why people hail this is precisely because Ponyo is a Miyazaki work.  It may even be Miyazaki’s last, and what a fitting end to a fruitful career it would be.  However if it were some new or unknown director, would it still be called a marvel, or would it be called backward?

That is not to say that I disapprove of traditional animation.  In fact, I believe that if done meticulously, and done well, like Miyazaki does it, it trumps digital, for the same reason that Miyazaki cited:  It has soul.  Just like there’s a kind of beauty in rough sketches, there’s a kind of beauty in animation that isn’t entirely seamless, in which one can see and appreciate the very brush strokes of the creators. This amateur video, though digital, I think, illustrates my point:  You can see the different frames, and the fact that the animation isn’t perfectly smooth really adds an element to the video.  In contrast, this (also amateur) video makes use of digital tweening effects, and it’s just – different.  There’s a quality to hand-drawn animation that digital animation doesn’t replicate, or attempt to do so, so it’s inevitable that some, especially those who grew up with old animation, would prefer the old style.

The problem with the old style is just – it’s so incredibly difficult to do things like special effects, and series like Gundam just don’t have the same level of believability: 1996, 2004, 2009 .

Bottom line? I love cel-animation as much as the next person, but I just feel that, in this day and age, with more and more films with little content and high action, people would only accept a certain kind of film in such a backward style. I mean, we’re all so accustomed to shiny, sleek and smooth graphics. I’m a self-proclaimed Gundam nut and art nerd, and I still haven’t managed to sit through Zeta Gundam, just because it’s so darned difficult to watch. In the end, cels are expensive, messy, hard to control, and digital is just so much more seamless and impressive. So while conservatives like Miyazaki prefer to stick to the old ways, it seems that if and when he finally retires for good, he may very well also be retiring with him the cel-animation era.