From Animation To Anime

From animation to anime: drawing
movements and moving drawings

THOMAS LAMARRE
Abstract: This essay deals with two kinds of movement common in cel
animation: ‘drawing movements’ and ‘moving drawings’. Drawing movements is
common in traditional cel animation that strives for full animation. The latter –
moving drawings – becomes pronounced in techniques of limited animation,
common in anime. The goal is not, however, to identify and consolidate differences
between animation and anime. On the contrary, this paper explores how drawing
movements entails a decoding of live-action cinema,which is intensiéed in the tech-
niques of moving drawings that are prevalent in anime. Thus, anime is seen as a part
of movement away from one kind of cinematic experience, towards something like
new media and information. The goal of the essay is to think across media, to
explore the ways in which different movements have an impact on narrative, genre
and spectatorship. Miyazaki Hayao’s Tenkū no shiro Raputa (Castle in the sky)
(Studio Ghibli, 1986) provides a site for analysis of the ways in which anime
technique generates and exploits potentials such as èatness, jitter and weightless-
ness. Miyazaki’s emphasis on èoating and gliding presents one way to deal with
‘anime-ic’ potentials – one that has deénite consequences for the imagination of
gender, history and nature, as well as the anime-ic experience of information.
Keywords: animation, anime, limited animation, new media, gender, Miyazaki

Hayao
Introduction
As the express train to Narita airport goes through a tunnel, it passes a series of
égures – actually, a series of images of a human égure in different positions,
silhouettes sketched with neon lights – which the speed of the train serves to blur
together and thus to ‘animate’. The travelling viewer sees an animated égure
moving on the dark wall of the tunnel. This ‘animation by train’ works much like
the frames of a élm, only here it is the movement of the viewer through a tunnel,
rather than that of celluloid through a projector, that transforms a series of static
images into a moving, animated égure.
Japan Forum 14(2) 2002: 329–367 ISSN: 0955–5803 print/1469–932X online

Copyright © 2002 BAJS DOI: 10.1080/09555800220136400
330 From animation to anime
This scenario calls to mind two kinds of movement common in cel animation
– drawing movements and moving drawings. Traditionally, in cel animation,
outline drawings are traced in éne ink on a thin, transparent sheet of celluloid, a
‘cel’. The outline drawings are meticulously coloured in, resulting in an opaque
coloured shape on the transparent cel. One kind of movement is created by
photographing a series of sketched and painted images (a égure or égures). Then,
projecting the series serves to animate the égure or égures. It is a matter of
drawing movements. This is what one usually thinks of as the art of animation.
It is also possible to move the drawings. For, at the same time that cels are
prepared, backgrounds are designed and painted. The cel can be pulled across
the background in various directions, or the background pulled under the cel.
Similar effects can be created on a more elaborate scale: cels can be placed in
slots to create a scene with multiple layers or planes, in which case camera move-
ments can produce a sense of relative motion between layers. Such techniques
enable another kind of movement, one that might be dubbed ‘moving the
drawings’. It results in an ‘induced movement’, that is, an effect of relative
movement. It is like that which arises when you feel that the platform not the train
moves as your train leaves the station. Or, as two trains pass, one train seems to
stand still. In the instance of the animation-by-train scenario, as the égure comes
to life, the spectator’s position temporarily seems to stand still. Induced
movement brings into play a complex set of mobile relations between foreground,
background and spectator.
This article begins with the other kind of movement, one usually associated
with animated élms – drawing movements. It subsequently turns to the complex
mobile relations that arise from ‘moving drawings.’ This latter technique – moving
drawings – becomes quite pronounced in many Japanese animated élms,
commonly refered to as anime. In this respect, the distinction between drawing
movements and moving drawings enables a consideration of differences between
animation and anime. Yet the goal is not to identify and consolidate differences
between animation and anime. Rather, it is to attempt to think between media, in
order to explore the ways in which different approaches to movement have a great
impact on narrative, genre and spectatorship.
Drawing movements
In cel animation, when one draws movement, it is a matter of drawing and
painting images of a égure that are photographed and run through a projector –
images of a human, an animal or even inanimate objects. Drawing movement is
thus a composing of movement. Or maybe it should be called a recomposing of
movement, insofar as the movements of the égure are érst decomposed, so to
speak. The artist breaks down the égure’s movement into a series of discrete
images, which are drawn or painted sequentially, and then the speed of projec-
tion recomposes the movement.
Thomas Lamarre 331
The movie camera sets the shutter at a éxed interval in order to record
movement by parsing or decomposing it into images snapped at equal intervals.
If the animator is to produce èuid, seamless movements like those in cinema, she
must think and work like a movie camera. Matsumoto Reiji, for instance, speaks
of a time during the war when he constantly watched élms of Mickey Mouse and
Popeye at home: ‘And since they were 35 mm élm, I could see the élm and under-
stand how animation works, how each frame was slightly different from the others
in sequence. . . . By the age of éve or six, I was already familiar with the mechan-
ism of animation’ (1997: 150).
Animation artists take on the task of the shutter, drawing a égure in various
stages of motion, at relatively equal intervals. They replicate the camera’s way of
decomposing ‘live action’ but with sketches rather than snapshots. Now, as
everyone knows from playing with ‘èip’ or ‘èicker’ books, if the motion is not
broken into equal intervals, the resultant movement when you èick through the
pages is rather awkward and jerky. To avoid jerkiness, the Disney standard, for
instance, demanded that the artist draw approximately twelve frames per second.
This means that, at projection rate of twenty-four frames per second, one drawing
appears over two, maybe three frames – fast enough to fool the eye into seeing
cinema-like movement, unbroken and èuid.
To achieve èuid movements, it is not uncommon for animators to base their
drawings on élm clips. There is, for instance, ‘rotoscoping’ in which the artist re-
draws a élm clip frame by frame. In some instances of rotoscoping, the animator
simply turns to élm sequences that are already available, and reworks them. In
other instances, live-action sequences are élmed in order to produce a series of
images to be duplicated by animation artists. This was the case with the érst
feature-length colour animated élm produced in Japan after the war – Hakujaden
(The story of the white serpent, 1958). Most of the élm was shot with actors on
sound stages, and the footage was then redrawn by animation artists (see
Yamaguchi and Watanabe 1977: 64; Miyao this issue).
Nonetheless, even with the rotoscoping of live action, there are still differences
between the live-action footage and animation. Because there are real differences
between the intervals that the hand will draw and those a shutter will take, the
animator’s work is not really an exact replication of the camera’s procedures. It is
a recoding of them. Such differences are not merely differences in precision: it is
not simply that cinematography based on photography is more accurate or real
than painting or drawing. Animation presents qualities of movement that differ
profoundly from live-action cinema. Conceptually, the notion of recoding
provides a way to discuss different qualities of movement that potentially arise in
different uses of élmic media – or even between media. Animated élm is arguably
multimedia or intermedia in that it traditionally utilizes drawing and photogra-
phy and, more recently, digital colouring and computer-generated images.
Recoding is not the same thing as replicating, copying or reproducing. To say
that animation recodes cinematic movement is not to say that animation is
imitative, derivative or secondary in relation to cinema. On the contrary, recoding

is intended to show the responsiveness and expressiveness of animation. Never-
theless, for a variety of reasons, animation is often thought of as secondary, even
inferior. First, there is the common wisdom that, if a élm can be made in live
action, then it should. Animation is then reserved for those scenarios impossible
to realize in live-action cinema. Second, there is the ubiquity of cinema in the
global marketplace, especially big-budget Hollywood action features. Not surpris-
ingly then, producers of Japanese animation or anime show a keen awareness of
live-action cinema. Even a cursory glance at Japanese animated élms is enough
to make one aware of cinematic precedents and procedures. And, in their inter-
views, famous animators like Yoshiyuki Tomino or Miyazaki Hayao display a
profound understanding of cinema. Given such global biases towards cinema over
animation, it is not surprising to hear Yoshiyuki, renowned for his work as a
director and writer, express bitterness that in Japan he could not afford to make
live-action élms but was constrained to animation (1993: 10).
On the one hand, the impression that animation is secondary or inferior to live-
action cinema comes of economic and demographic concerns: cinema has larger
audiences, adult audiences, and hence larger budgets. On the other hand, there
is a sort of reality bias that comes with photography. There is a bias that photog-
raphy-based cinema inherently has greater reality effect than the drawings used
for animation. Cinema based on live-action photography can claim (and often
does) that it merely records or represents actual, ‘live’ movements. Thus live-
action cinema seems to occupy a privileged relation to movements and actions in
the world – to which animation is supposed to defer.
This sense of cinema is rapidly changing. Cinema and photography’s privileged
relation to the world was (and is) often based on a sense that the process of photo-
graphic development – in which photons contact the emulsion and gradually
effect a chemical transformation – afforded a contact with the sensible world and
its movements. More recently, such sensible contact is seen to be undermined by
the digital, broadly conceived as a medium for carrying information with no
sensuous link or contact with the world. Lev Manovich, who deals at length with
such issues in his work on new media, remarks, ‘The pretense of modern media
[cinema] to create simulations of sensible reality is similarly cancelled [by binary
code]; media are reduced to their original condition as information carrier,
nothing less, nothing more’ (2001: 25). Analogously, Thomas Looser, in his
article in this issue, deals with the problematic of analog versus digital in order
to resituate Japanese animation. Indeed, the emergence of new media not only
forces us to re-think what cinema is, but also promises new ways to think about
something like anime.
Historically, cinema has had a reality edge on animation, due to the sense that
it connects with the sensible world and its movement. And this still informs the
sense of what animation is. In terms of studio production, differences between
cinema and animation have been extended into, and stabilized in, different types
Thomas Lamarre 333
of characters and actions, genres and themes. The sense that cinema is in contact
with movements in the real world even extends to different generic takes on reality
itself. By convention, animation is deemed to be generically suited to other
realities and other worlds: children’s stories, science éction and fantasy, and
comedy, parody, burlesque. In cartoon comedy and burlesque especially, there is
a tendency to cite or caricature characters from élm and to restate, lampoon and
diségure the conventions of live-action cinema. This has traditionally provided a
way to mock and overturn the perception that animation is secondary and deriva-
tive, as is stressed in the work of Paul Wells (1998).
There is, however, another way to look at animation and at anime, that of the
recoding of movement. If I have evoked differences between cinema and
animation, it is not to stabilize the entrenched, generic distinctions between them.
I set forth such a comparison to foreground the fact that animation, as a élm art,
works frame to frame to recompose a movement during projection. Historically,
live-action cinema became (and to some extent remains) the privileged model for
recomposing movement with élm. To begin with recoding is thus intended to
highlight the importance of movement and the élmic nature of animation. Yet it
is also intended to open questions about other kinds of movement, in other multi-
media – like anime.
Animation presents other possibilities. For, to compose a movement, animation
must érst decompose or decode it. Even when animation closely follows the
models of live-action cinema, it does not merely copy or replicate. It recodes, and
thus decodes. Decoding goes beyond an imitation or reproduction of live-action
cinema, and opens up new possibilities for expression. It reaches into so-called
live action and unravels it. It thus goes to the heart of what is ‘live’. This is a poten-
tial of animation that becomes especially important in anime. Anime cuts to the
quick of the ‘live’.
Flatness
The perception of animated characters as cut-outs, as èat and two-dimensional,
often plays into negative assessments of animation’s potential as a serious, mature
form of expression. What kind of seriousness can be attained in a world in which
characters do not seem to have weight or depth? One way to open new venues for
discussion is to situate animation in the lineage of a prestigious art, such as
painting.
It is not unimaginable, for instance, that stills from an animated movie could
be viewed as art, displayed in museums, and in that context, their ‘èatness’ comes
into dialogue with traditions in art. Questions can be posed about composition in
animation, about technique, about line, colour, perspective, visual organization
and so forth. What might otherwise be dismissed as lack of depth, provided it is
linked with currents in art history, then offers new possibilities for thinking
about art. Animation thus becomes allied with aesthetic seriousness by way of
art-historical traditions and commentaries. A good example is the recent exhibit

and volume called Superèat, put together by Murakami Takashi (2000).
Murakami identiées a lineage of ‘superèat’ sensibility across a range of ukiyo-e
prints, which he traces into anime and manga and into contemporary Japanese art
and photography as well. There are, of course, certain pitfalls in associating
animation with gallery art. There is the risk that animation will serve only to recon-
érm the legitimacy of hallowed lineages, to breathe new life into authoritative
traditions. This is a potential problem with Murakami’s account, much of which
seems intent on re-articulating a relation between traditions of artistic expression
in Japan and the West. As a consequence, his discussion of anime – as Japanese
expression – runs the risk of a simple retrieval of tired, tendentious oppositions
between Japanese and Western traditions. And there is the risk that art criticism
then functions merely to legitimate the aesthetics of mass-market commodities.
The interaction of art and anime is crucial, however, if only because cel
animation is produced with drawings. Moreover, many animators deliberately
draw inspiration from or cite traditional art styles. It is not uncommon to locate
the origins of Japanese manga (‘comics’) and anime in twelfth-century art (see
Schodt 1996: 22; Takahata 1999; and a fuller discussion in Miyao this issue). And
animators may deliberately evoke graphic styles that have been enshrined within
Japanese art-historical narratives. A prime instance is Miyazaki Hayao’s evocation
of nihonga-style landscapes in Mononoke hime (Princess Mononoke) (Studio
Ghibli, 1997). And, as art historians like Jacqueline Berndt (1999) have argued
with reference to nihonga in Princess Mononoke, certain styles bring with them very
conservative and problematic connotations. Something important is lost when
anime is entered into art historical lineages, not least of which is the historically-
speciéc cinematic or multimedia dimension of anime. Needless to say, this is also
one way in which anime and gallery art can serve to sell each other, to accumu-
late mutually a kind of cultural capital.
What interests me in Murakami’s account, however, is its hints of something
that may not be immediately recuperable within art historical lineages or
reducible to the mass production of commodities – movement. This is because
attention to movement in anime potentially leads beyond aesthetics to consider-
ations of experience and spectatorship, and what are sometimes called cultures
of consumption. Murakami’s account suggests that, if one is to think across media
and between lineages, then one has to think about kinds of movement. He does
not centre his account of èatness or two-dimensionality on movement per se. Yet
his discussion invariably returns to, and turns on, the problem of movement. He
signals, for instance, a kind of visual organization in early modern Japanese art
that serves to draw the eye across images in speciéc ways. And it is this movement
that serves to deéne anime for him as a distinctive form of expression.
Murakami also notes that it was in the 1970s that consumers in Japan érst
became aware of a distinctive anime aesthetic. This awareness emerged in
response to the art of animated television series. Of particular importance to
Thomas Lamarre 335
Murakami Takashi’s account is the work of animator Kanada Yoshinori. Kanada

worked on two television series based on works by Matsumoto Reiji, Uchū senkan
Yamato (1974), which was later adapted and televised in North America as Stars
Blazers or Space Cruiser Yamato, and Ginga tetsudō three-nine or Galaxy Express 999
(1978). It was in such series of the 1970s that the transformations in Japanese
animation of the 1960s came to be fully expressed. At the same time, the appear-
ance of a journal devoted entirely to anime, Animage, underscored the new aware-
ness of a distinctive anime aesthetic. In short, between the 1960s and 1970s, anime
was born as a distinct form of expression. Awareness of a distinctive anime
aesthetic grew out of the art of ‘limited animation’. Limited animation, which I
shall discuss in more detail throughout this article, might be thought of as a series
of short-cuts used by animators to convey a sense of movement in animation with
the most limited of means.
Murakami himself does not discuss limited animation in great detail. He is
content initially to note that it informs the work of an animator like Kanada Yoshi-
nori, with its emphasis on shape-shifting and metamorphoses and on timing and
movement (2000: 12–15). Subsequently, he mentions that it makes use of two-
dimensional designs inspired by classical Japanese scrolls and statues, and it
allows for special movements and explosive effects (2000: 114–15). And, gener-
ally, he is content to speak in terms of something like an aesthetics or poetics of
Japanese animation, which involves an emphasis on internal conherence of works
rather than broader considerations of experience of objects. Nevertheless, looking
at limited animation provides a way to begin a discussion of animation and anime
that raises a number of interesting questions.
The emergence of an anime aesthetic is typically traced back to the technical
limitations placed on anime production during the global economic crisis of
animation in the 1960s. Financial constraints were such that studios could not
afford to produce ‘full animation’, in which animators draw as many as twelve
frames per second, in which an image lasts only two frames. It was around this
time that the érst animated televisions series emerged in Japan. Notably, Mushi
produced one of the érst series, Tezuka Osamu’s Tetsuwan Atomu or Astro Boy,
which began in January 1963 and ended after 193 episodes in late 1966.
Constrained to work with drawings that could be sustained for éve or six frames,
animators adopted different strategies for composing and conveying movement,
other than drawing it frame to frame. The result was limited animation, which had
profound aesthetic consequences.
Animators began to place emphasis on the most visually and emotionally
important poses,which could last over many, many frames. Whence one of anime’s
staples: the protagonist’s face racked with emotion, rather like a close-up but with
no movement or extremely restrained and repetitive movement (for example,
brows or lips twitching in anger). Animators tended to suppress intermediate
movements, which resulted in jerky or awkward, less graceful actions, or ex-
plosive and uncontained transitions. There also arose a tendency to move the
drawing rather than to draw the movement – a reversal of the conventions of full
cel animation. Rather than drawing each stage of a égure walking across a back-
ground, a less fully animated égure could be pulled over the background.
Moreover, as a consequence of the emphasis on static images, camera effects
became more pronounced – panning across images, following objects, tracking
up or back, framing in or out (to use some of the terms deployed in Miyazaki’s
work; see Studio Ghibli (1984b: 153)).
These and other features came to deéne the look and feel of anime. And, as
anime emerged as a form of expression conspicuously different from other modes
of expression, it is not surprising that many anime artists began to express
bewilderment over the global popularity of their work, and many insist that their
work is by and large speciéc to Japan and probably intelligible only there. What
is more, it is still common in discussions of anime to link its differences to some
kind of Japaneseness. This is usually done by opposing Japanese animation to
Western animation, often through comparison of some major Japanese égure,
such as Tezuka Osamu or Miyazaki Hayao, with Disney productions.
Yet, to reduce the complexity of anime to Japaneseness is to ignore the complex-
ity of Japan in particular, and of the modern nation in general – not to mention
the importance of globalizing forces in the production of mass culture. Here it is
not possible, and probably not desirable, to take up a critique of broad, abstract
oppositions between Japan and the West. It should be evident, however, that my
strategy of exploring different qualities of movement is intended as a way to deal
with the speciécity of anime and, at the same time, to raise the possibility of differ-
ences among various anime, without recourse to abstractions like Japan versus the
West. Look at the way in which animators like Tezuka Osamu, Miyazaki Hayao
and Matsumoto Reiji describe their early delight in the work of Disney or the
Fleischer Brothers and their subsequent interest in European comic artists and
animators. Or consider the notions like ‘japanoid’ that spring up in Japanese
commentaries on science éction and anime (as in Tatsumi (1993) and subse-
quently in Ueno (1998)). In the instance of anime at least, the operative relation
between Japan and the West is not a monolithic one of resistance, opposition and
rupture. On the contrary, the relation involves processes of multiplication of,
departure from and mutation within sources and models for animation. It is these
kinds of processes that played into the generation of new media experiences, and
even new, global cultures of consumption, around anime.
In the 1960s, for énancial reasons, animation could not continue in the old
ways, and, by the mid-1970s, something new was emerging, something that began
to show awareness of its distinctiveness, in spectators, producers and anime all at
once. What was it about Japan of the 1960s and 1970s that enabled the emerg-
ence of anime? What kinds of conditions lent force to this sort of relation between
Japan and the West that was not one of dependence or resistance, but rather one
of multiplication and mutation?
Here it is no longer a question of Japan and the West so much as it is one of
Thomas Lamarre 337
Japan in the world. There are so many different socio-historical forces at work that
it would be rash to establish a single set or to seek some narrowly causal expla-
nation. Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore the intensiécation of the logic of
capitalism and consumerism in Japan in the wake of the so-called economic
miracle – an intensiécation that reached its fullest expression during the ‘bubble’
period (1985–92). I think that it is no coincidence that an awareness of anime
emerged in conjunction with the notion of the ‘information society’. As Morris-
Suzuki shows in her path-breaking study (1988), the idea of the information
society, coined in Japan in the late 1960s, steadily achieved greater currency and
popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, because it promised a means to continue high-
growth economics by reducing the costs of production (thus ensuring increased
proéts without changing wages). Thus technical innovation, based on information
technologies, became the perceived solution to sustaining economic growth, for
it would at once streamline production and enable a diversiécation of products
for consumers. In a very real sense, when looked at from the standpoint of produc-
tion, limited animation did something analogous. It allowed for technical inno-
vations that reduced production costs. This is its economic determination or
énancial culture, so to speak. Not surprisingly then, technical innovation and
experimentation also became central to anime stories, and many stories deal with
the passage towards a new order, pivoting on the rise of computers, robots,
cyborgs, biotech and so forth, albeit often with great ambivalence.
Limited animation also shaped a new kind of viewing and consuming, one that
entails scanning, re-reading, searching information, discerning technical inno-
vation and so forth. In other words, one might say that anime generated a viewer
experience that was very much like an experience of informatization itself. And
thus I think it no coincidence that anime emerged, and is still emerging, into the
global market in conjuction with the new economies of globalization and informa-
tization. This is because post-war economic transformations situated Japan in
relation to new kinds of totalizing forces, ones that are now described in terms of
globalization, information society, the digital culture and so forth. So it is not
surprising then that so many anime also spin tales about totalizing forces. There
are so many anime in which Japan occupies the place of the globe – Japan or the
world is invaded by aliens; Japan or the world is on the verge of total destruction;
or Japan as the world saves the globe from destruction. It is probably no coinci-
dence that ‘glocalization’ is also a term coined by marketers in Japan.
Now Murakami links the emergence of an anime aesthetics – its èatness – to
the restrictions imposed by limited animation. This is now the common wisdom
about anime. Intent on putting a positive spin on anime, Murakami does not call
attention to socio-historical conditions or economic determinations. He ignores
them, in fact. He turns to the productive aesthetic consequences of the economic
limitations placed on animation in Japan. What is important is that his emphasis
on aesthetic consequences hints at something more than the mere appearance of
a commodity with a new look and feel. The emergence of anime involved a new
awareness in producers and viewers, a new experience that might be called

‘animetic’ or, to use Looser’s turn of phrase, ‘anime-ic.’ This is to stretch
Murakami’s aesthetics a good deal, maybe to the breaking point. Yet the hint of
an anime-ic awareness or experience is not without possibilities. In particular, it
opens possibilities for an account of anime that would not reduce it to socio-
historical or economic determinations, yet that would allow one to reconsider
those determinations with greater complexity – precisely by not ruling out the
ways in which consumers might make anime, as they read, view and experience
it.
I have already made one suggestion in passing – that the experience of anime
is an experience of informatisation. And this is the one that I wish to explore, that
I wish to consider from the ground up, so to speak. Part of that experience is
predicated on a breakdown of a certain model of live-action cinema. Anime, as it
emerged through limited animation, created an awareness of the process of
decoding that is part of any recoding of live action (even the cinematic). Such an
awareness of decoding can also be extrapolated from Murakami Takashi.
Murakami insists on the èatness or two-dimensionality of anime, thus restat-
ing the common wisdom about anime emerging from limited animation in a rather
novel way. His comments are remarkably brief; he limits himself to the èatness
manifested in the metamorphoses and timing of Galaxy Express 999 and Space
Battleship Yamato. But how does the paradigm of èatness lead to an interest in
metamorphosis and timing? About this connection, Murakami’s text remains
silent. Yet metamorphosis does seem logically to follow from èatness. This is
because, if one thinks about èatness in terms of two-dimensional surfaces, then
the logical question becomes: how does anything happen in this surface world?
How does anything come forth or vanish? And how is such change expressed?
Clearly, events and change can be expressed only in terms of an interaction of
surfaces, as a movement of surfaces on surfaces, as shift from surface to surface.
I should like to stretch Murakami’s superèat, and think of a superèat that entails
èat interactions or èat articulations. That is, the superèat becomes a quality of
movement, change or transformation.
In effect, the supposedly èat and depthless characters and égures in anime are
superèat. In their very èatness, they are traversed by a potential for interaction,
motion and transformation. They move on a speciéc éeld of forces.
There is another, maybe easier, way to think about this. In limited animation,
animators tend to suppress the intermediate positions in a movement. If an
animator can make a égure appear to walk using only three drawings – one leg
out, both legs together, the other out – why then draw all the intermediate stages?
The result is obviously recognizable as walking. With this minimal approach to
presenting movement, however, something new appears in the mechanism of
recognition, something that troubles it. The walking, so minimally presented, may
evoke a sense of skippiness, jerkiness, awkwardness or artiéciality. The égure
becomes not simply a walking automaton. Rather it becomes an automaton of
Thomas Lamarre 339
walking. It is a machine of walking, in a manner of speaking. It walks objects –

and potentially anything becomes an object: human égures, animal égures,
stones, trees, machines, crowds, planets and so on. One becomes aware of a
machine of walking, because one is aware of the interval between images, between
positions of movement, between surfaces. Animation then becomes something
other than a process of animating égures, of drawing all the stages to produce
seamless movement. It is a process of inventing machines of movement –
machines of walking, of talking, of running, leaping, èying, and so forth – that
take up all manner of objects.
It might be concluded that limited animation simply makes viewers aware of
the élm process itself, of the projection of twenty-four frames per second. By
extension, one might construe it as a kind of modernist take on cinema, or as an
experimental response. But this is not exactly what anime is about.
The greater part of the élms considered to be anime are mainstream mass-
culture products – rather than avant-garde art experiments (if the distinction can
still be said to hold) – albeit ones that frequently involve subcultures, interest
groups, fan cultures or communities of affect. This means that, by and large, the
awareness of jerkiness or awkwardness is supposed to be suppressed or relatively
neutralized by the narrative drive of the anime, or by its overall effect. This was
Tezuka Osamu’s feeling about limited animation when he made Astro Boy: he
submitted that viewers would accept the shortfalls of limited animation if they
were suféciently interested in the story. For Tezuka, narrative is to absorb spec-
tators, overcoming techno-artistic limitations. Probably he never imagined that
those limitations might be perceived as aesthetic choices and technical inno-
vations.
Yet there comes a moment (as Murakami points out) when animators begin to
think of limited animation as a distinctive form of expression, as the attraction.
And then the ‘jitter’ – the jerkiness or skippiness – in the animated égure becomes
central to the story. Storyless or non-narrative elements begin to have an impact
on stories, to inform narratives and to generate new narratives. It is not just that
automaton égures of all kinds (mecha, cyborgs, robots and so forth) become
central to anime narratives. To resort to the prior example, it is not simply a
question of a walking machine, a èying machine, a living machine. Rather, it is a
question of a machine of walking, a machine of èying, a machine of living – such
machines traverse and organize narrative. And the Tezuka-style stories, in which
one comes to understand the humanity of the automaton, steadily give way to
narratives in which everyone, everything, is machinic, automaton. Rather than
high-culture critique or avant-garde experimention, anime strives to generate new
cultures. As a consequence, it does not only spin narratives of the future but also
proposes futures of narrative.
And so, to those who think of animated characters as somehow èat and depth-
less, the reply is: ‘Of course, and not only that, they are superèat.’ The superèat
of limited animation opens a sense of the interval, in two sites in particular: (1)
one senses the interval within the movements of individual characters or égures;
and (2) one feels the interval between surfaces such as foreground and back-
ground. This second feature will be discussed in the énal sections. At this
juncture, I should simply like to make a point about the superèat or anime-ic
experience: anime does much more than tell stories about machines, automatons
and monsters. Anime goes far beyond a concern for how to deal with artiécial life.
As limited animation pushed animators to seek the minimum for the expression
of movement, anime became concerned with the minimal conditions for life, and
with the question of how to generate life from movements.
Because anime often énds life wherever there is the trace of a movement or
energy, the world of anime is one in which so many alternative lifeforms come into
existence. Life could arise from the circulation of electrons, from the whir of
gears, from the combination and recombination of bytes, from light through the
rain – or, from the movement between lines in a drawing, between surfaces or
between frames. In other words, through anime’s exploration of the limits for life-
like movement, it arrives at a new world in which autopoetic entities seem able to
arise anywhere there occurs a repeated interval. This extends to themes and topics
as well. There are so many anime about discovering or inventing other forms of
life, or about confronting or battling other forms of life. There are frequently
alternative lifestyles as well. And again and again the central concern is posed,
generally with an aura of childlike or adolescent innocence: we do not yet know
what life is. Not only do we not yet know what life is biologically, chemically, phys-
ically, spiritually, metaphysically and so forth; but we also do not know – we refuse
to know even as we strive to know – what this world is. We do not yet know what
this world, this life, is of. How then to know what this life is for?
In effect, economic obstacles promoted technical innovation, which in turn
generated the positive unconscious of anime (minimal movement = minimal life
= information). This positive unconscious became operative in the aesthetics of
limited animation precisely where limited animation began its break with the repli-
cation of live action aspired to in full animation. Of course, it is possible to see,
retroactively, the same breaks occurring everywhere in full animation (and in
cinema too). For, in order to recode live-action cinematic movement, animation
had always to decode it. With limited animation, however, the decoding of cinema
is pushed to the point where live action itself is decoded, and thus the ‘live’ of
action is called in question, and so ultimately is life.
This automaton effect, this machine of moving, this informing machine, lives at
the core of anime-ic form. Yet, because it is a kind of positive unconsciousness,
it is never fully or simply expressed. I would venture to say, however, that the most
interesting anime are those that strive towards a pure expression or sustained
exploration of it. For all its immediacy (you can see it, experience it), it enters
into various layers of treatment. It shuttles along, pulses, pushes one way or the
other, combines with other effects, buries itself in continuous actions, traverses
stories, surges forth as an enigma and so forth.
Thomas Lamarre 341
To explore the range of anime-ic expression, I would ideally like to look at a

number of different lineages that have developed around different studios; around
different technologies; around speciéc animators, writers, producers, character
designers; and around different varieties, genres and cultures. Yet this essay
permits only treatment of one lineage, and so I turn to the animation of Miyazaki
Hayao, and especially to Tenkū no shiro Raputa (The castle in the sky, 1986).
There are a couple reasons for this choice. Because Miyazaki’s are often
deemed to be the most cinematic of anime, they allow further exploration of the
problematic of an anime-ic recoding/decoding of cinema. Not only does Miyazaki
show a marked preference for producing anime for theatrical release (rather than
for television or video release), but his anime élms are usually deemed to be very
cinematic in style. Moreover, the budgets for his productions are large enough to
allow full animation. Finally, Miyazaki is involved at every level of production: he
not only writes and directs but also oversees and works directly on animation and
storyboards. He thus introduces an overall continuity in style and story – a cine-
matic sort of auteur effect. This differs from many anime directors who prefer to
let the styles of individual animators show, to allow for a visual play between
diverse styles. Thus, in many respects, Miyazaki appears to be the least anime-ic
and most cinematic of animator-writer-directors.
Nevertheless, there are profoundly anime-ic tendencies in his élms as well. In
recent élms, for instance, he has recourse to techniques of multilayer composit-
ing that potentially reduce the sense of slippage between foreground and back-
ground and increase the cinematic feel – as in the 1997 Princess Mononoke (see
Studio Ghibli (1999: 180–1) for an overview of multilayer compositing). Yet,
despite such possibilities for compositing, his élms tend nonetheless to empha-
size the play between foreground and background in a very anime-ic way. What is
more, despite the budget for full animation, the animation of human and animal
characters in his élms evokes forms of movement that are quite unlike anything
that occurs in cinematic movement. In addition, as is frequently remarked,
Miyazaki expresses a deep commitment to cel animation: although Princess
Mononoke uses some digital techniques (especially for colouring), these tech-
niques are at the service of a very two-dimensional cel-animation aesthetic.
Finally, Ghibli élms, especially those of Miyazaki, have achieved such popularity
that, for many viewers, they have come to deéne a sense of what anime is or can
be. In sum, there is pronounced tension between the cinematic and anime-ic in
Miyazaki’s élms – and that is the focus of this essay.
I shall discuss a tendency in Miyazaki to emphasize another crucial feature
of animation – what I will refer to as ‘weightlessness’ – in a way that at once
evokes and minimizes the machinic effects discussed above. He deploys very
anime-ic effects (and themes) but tends to manage and control those effects
in a way that minimizes their machinic potential. Oddly enough, it is his
skillful management of anime techniques that imparts a cinematic feel to his
films. His careful management of them also expresses one of his central
concerns: the necessity for humankind to use the minimum of technology,

safely and wisely.
Weightlessness
Tenkū no shiro Raputa or Castle in the Sky opens with a view over banks of clouds,
in which we see a tiny ‘èying ship’ (hikōsen), that is, a sort of airship or dirigible.
We cut closer, to see a small yet bulbous craft with two propellers. There is some
activity on board. One of the crew, a woman – later we learn that she, Dora, is the
pirates’ leader – points out a large yet stately èying ship below them in the clouds.
From the pirate’s airship emerge small planes with wings that whir like dragon-
èies – èapters. Thus begins a pirate attack on the large èying ship.
We cut to a view of a girl (Sheeta) through one of the windows of the large
èying ship – it appears to be a sort of passenger liner of skies. Sheeta gazes out
the window. She ignores food offered by one of the men who attend her – men in
dark glasses. She prefers to gaze over the clouds at the full moon that appears
amid the white billows. Suddenly astonishment crosses her face: the pirates’
èapters whir past her window, and Dora looks directly through the window at
Sheeta.
As the pirates storm aboard the sky liner, a battle between the pirates and the
‘darkglasses’ ensues. The leader of the darkglasses, Muska, retreats to Sheeta’s
room to radio for help. He opens a case with an antenna and begins to wire a
message in something like morse code. Sheeta takes the opportunity to knock him
out; she smashes him over the head with a bottle. She retrieves a pendant with a
blue-green stone from him. It is her pendant. She ties it around her neck, and, as
the pirates come crashing into her room, she slips out the window. The pirates
attempt to capture her as she clings to the outside of the èying ship, but she loses
her hold and plummets down into the clouds, earthward.
The opening sequence establishes two groups battling for the girl Sheeta – the
pirates and the darkglasses. The sequence also calls our attention to her pendant,
and so we realize that it is somehow central to the story. But only later do we learn
that the darkglasses and their leader Muska have kidnapped Sheeta in order to
seize her pendant, which is a ‘èying stone’ (hikōseki) with mysterious, gravity-
defying powers (thus often glossed as ‘levitation stone’). Similarly, the pirates and
their leader Dora wish to wrest Sheeta and thus the stone from the darkglasses.
Thus begins a kind of action-adventure treasure-hunt story. The pirates pursue
the treasure out of greed, out of desire for wealth. The darkglasses pursue the
treasure out of desire for mastery, for dominion over the world – for the èying
stone is the key to a mysterious power source. Sheeta and a new friend, the boy
Pazu, will follow a parallel track – their encounter with the èying stone launches
them on a personal, quasi-spiritual quest to learn the secrets of the èying stone
and the èying castle, Raputa.
The opening sequence is dense with informational elements that preégure the
Thomas Lamarre 343
course of the action. It also establishes an initial directionality for the élm: down.
We look down from the pirate airship at the sky liner. We look down from the sky
liner at Sheeta falling earthward. In fact, in the érst portion of the élm, the action
moves from the skies to the bowels of the earth – from airships above the clouds
down to the earth, then from a cabin high on a hill down to the town below, then
down a mine shaft into tunnels deep within the earth. Subsequent actions lead
back from the depths to the heights, up to the castle in the sky. Working their way
up into the heights proves arduous for the two heroes, Sheeta and Pazu. It is as
much physical effort as moral journey – a trial of courage and values.
In brief, from the outset, the élm establishes a topology for a world arrayed
vertically. Lowest are the mines, above them the miners’ village, and cut into the
cliffs and on the hill tops are other dwellings and worksites. Pazu’s shack stands
high above the village, it is fairly part of the sky; and he tends birds and dreams
of building an airplane to soar into the clouds. Pirates and armies command the
skies, but above and beyond them èoats the castle in the sky, Raputa.
Action sequences – largely scenes of pursuit – tend to be laid out horizontally,
as with the érst pirate attack. Yet the élm develops its overall movement along the
vertical topology of its world: it circles down from the skies to the depths of the
earth, then back up into the clouds. This establishes an initial rhythm for the élm’s
sequences: pursuit and battle scenes occur primarily along the horizontal,
followed by escape by falling downward or èying upward. So it is in the opening
sequence: pirates storm through the ship, and Sheeta falls and escapes.
Of special interest is how her falling is rendered. Initially, in the opening
sequence, her fall is rendered as if seen from the èying ship. There is a shot of
clouds, parted to show the earth between them, and the égure of Sheeta becomes
smaller and smaller, as if receding from us. How do we see this decrease in size
as movement away from us? How do we know that this movement away from us
is downward movement? After all, we are looking across at the image, not down.
How do we know that she is not being sucked into a distant point on the horizon?
There are all kinds of visual cues that guide one to perceive her moving away
(not shrinking) and falling (not moving horizontally). Visual cues prepare us to
see falling: the scene takes place on an airship, and so the view is from the ship;
we recognize clouds and the lights of a city on the earth – things that are below.
Thus we perceive ‘downness’. As for ‘receding-ness’ or depth, the background is
darker, and the égure becomes fainter as well as smaller – thus we see depth and
movement into it. Still, these are conventions, and it is not impossible for someone
to think, ‘she’s shrinking’ or ‘she’s being sucked into another dimension’.
The potential for confusion about depth and direction is especially pronounced
in cel animation in which the cel for a character is laid on top of the background
or placed in a slot in front of it. Usually, the background is rendered in more
subdued tones and colours in order to impart a sense of depth, yet foreground
and background are then seen as distinct layers. This is why techniques of
computer compositing are now widely used with big-budget animated features: to
smooth out the relation between foreground and background, and thus to impart
a sense of ‘real’ depth and of ‘real’ movement in and out of it. Castle in the Sky,
however, draws and paints such effects, with gradations of colour and darkness
to create a sense of movement in depth, in conjunction with visual cues.
Still, even though one could say that this is an ‘adequate’ solution to the
problem of rendering movement in depth, the preference in Castle in the Sky, as
in much of Miyazaki’s work, is for scenes in which égures move across back-
grounds, not into them or out of them. The scenes of movement in depth are
relatively brief and used primarily in the manner of establishing shots. They estab-
lish the movement of the action to another level, below or above the actual scene
– the vertical topology. There are all kinds of panoramic views in Castle in the Sky,
and the élm provides innumerable views down into valleys or up into the skies.
Yet the élm usually avoids a presentation of the movement-in-depth itself – unless
in the form of a distant trace mapped upon panoramic view. There are, as I have
suggested, pragmatic reasons for this. Yet it also enables an aesthetic emphasis in
Miyazaki for dealing with movement – both in the overall story and for his heroes.
His is a preference for èoating, gliding or circling. He values weightlessness, light-
ness, buoyancy – achieved with the minimum of technology.
For instance, the opening sequence establishes that Sheeta is falling toward
earth, then (after the title sequence) we return to Sheeta falling through the dark
skies. Now, however, it is a horizontal or lateral view, from a distance. She falls
head érst, arms at her side, immobile. The viewing position comes closer to her,
and we see that she falls, eyes closed, as if asleep or unconscious. Signiécantly,
her body does not move through the frame. As if to emphasize her unconscious
dreamlike state, she remains in the same position in the frame – as if not moving
at all. Given an immobile égure and static frame, how do we perceive falling?
In addition to context, there are a number of cues to orient a perception of
falling. Most obviously, she is upside down, which suggests falling. Moreover,
when framed distantly, her body is positioned just above centre in the frame – to
reinforce the sense of a downward direction to the égure. Framed closely, she is
still positioned above centre, with much of her body out of the top of the frame.
And her skirt èutters.
There are so many ways to assure that our sense of her falling is sustained, even
as the framing changes. Yet such techniques should also serve to remind us of one
of the other central problematics of animation: the weightlessness of égures.
Which is to say, without speciéc indications for direction of movement, these
sketched and painted égures, in and of themselves, are oddly buoyant and light,
seemingly weightless, not rooted or anchored in their environments. Again, this
effect is partly due to the fact that the cels for characters are laid atop, or slotted
in front of, backgrounds. There remains a sense of a gap between égure and back-
ground. This is particularly true when one moves the drawn égure over the back-
ground. Then the sense that the égure is unmoored can become pronounced.
Whence the dictum: draw the movement, don’t move the drawing. But the effect
Thomas Lamarre 345
of weightlessness also arises at the level of the drawing of the égure, in the erasing
of lines in order to clean up sketches. This merits a brief digression.
When animators render égures in movement, they sketch lines that show weight
shifting, that is, lines of ‘implied mass’. For instance, there is the movement of
the hip as weight shifts from one leg to another – what is drawn is a bulge at the
hip that shifts as the person or animal moves. Thus an animator might try to give
the impression that this is real walking, that is, walking under earthly conditions
with physical laws of mass and gravity. Such natural laws and forces, however, do
not arise naturally in drawing. The animator strives to create an impression of
them.
It is worth noting in passing that this is one respect in which animation seems
very different from cinema, because natural laws like gravity are already part of
the world recorded by the movie camera. Nonetheless, without careful construc-
tion of ‘natural’ lighting and depth, élm characters also become easily unmoored
and èoat against depthless backgrounds. In animation and especially in anime, a
kind of ‘montage internal to the shot’ is often in evidence. Once one is accus-
tomed to the ‘internal montage’ of anime, one becomes more attentive to, rather
suspicious about, the alleged naturalness of the world recorded by the movie
camera. And it seems that cinema, like anime, has already transformed the
world into sheets of information and ‘composited’ them (‘informatized’ their
composition).
To return to the drawing of animation, the general tendency in animation is to
clean up sketches, and the erasure of sketch lines lessens our sense that animated
égures move in accordance with physical laws. The evocation of implied masses
is much diminished. Klein notes such effects in his account of morphing (2000:
23). Klein does not mention, however, that there is a pragmatic reason for erasing
or cleaning up sketches, for creating simple contours. When the animation of
égures is limited, when intermediate stages of movement are removed, the égures
themselves must be drawn more simply. This is because viewers tend to accept
limited animation from simpliéed characters. If the character is drawn in great
detail, the omission of intermediate movements becomes overly evident – jittery,
jerky, stuttering, awkward. And so, between the character sketch and the outline
traced on the cel, lines must be erased. Sketches are reduced to simple lines of
contour. A blizzard of sketch lines often becomes a single line. This is a way to
diminish the viewer’s awareness of gaps in animated movement. Simpliécation of
lines and égures potentially serves to manage or direct the machinic potential
inherent in animation.
With simpliécation, however, another potential is introduced – a sense that
these simple égures, whose movement now appears graceful and èuid rather than
awkward and jerky, do not obey our natural laws of movement. This is because
simpliécation dramatically reduces our sense of the weight and mass of the égure.
Only the barest evocation of ‘implied mass’ remains. As a result, the movement
of animated égures does not give us the sense of viewing masses that act and
interact in accordance to physical laws. Figures in animation seem to obey other

laws. They seem to act from, and to generate, other ‘non-natural’ forces. How
easily the actions of animated égures seem to dovetail with supernatural, extra-
terrestrial or metaphysical forces!
A number of ‘reality options’ exist for introducing laws and forces into a poten-
tially lawless space. At one extreme there are all the current attempts to simulate
physical laws in computer-generated imagery, to make those èying ésts and
crashing bodies appear to have weight and substance, to have video games feel
more like real éghts (Zardonella 1999). And it should be noted that the animation
from Disney studios in recent years has gone to great length and expense to
generate creatures with locomotion like that of real animals – for instance, the
Beast in Beauty and the Beast – with scientiéc advisors to develop proper skele-
tons and plausible musculature and so forth. This emphasis on ‘real’ anatomy
compensates for the ‘unreal’ weightlessness of animation’s simpliéed characters.
It increases the reality effects of the fantasy world.
Generally, anime explores other options for introducing forces and laws of
movement into its worlds and characters. Its solutions are as varied as the mecha
transformers of the Gundam universe, Guyver’s biobooster armour, Jubei in Ninja
Scroll, Lum in Urusei Yatsura or the Angels and Evas in Evangelion – too many to
explore here. Yet there seems to be a general trend away from constructing resem-
blances to organic beings in natural worlds. Many anime tend to be interested in
the movement of inorganic, machinic entities. Many anime deal with the interface
of machines and organisms, at the boundaries between inorganic and organic
forms. Many introduce characters whose very sketchiness and simpleness seem
reason enough for their weightlessness: soaring characters such as Lum do not
have anatomical or morphological features to explain their ability to èy (they do
not even have capes). Other anime have characters such as ninja or swordsmen
whose ability to perform gravity-defying stunts with great self-control comes as
an extension of acrobatic training, spiritual discipline – and stop-motion weight-
lessness. Yet none of these examples strives to recreate physical laws on the basis
of resemblance to organic entities or natural worlds – anatomy, physiology,
biophysics or even classical mechanics. This does not mean that anime avoids the
sciences. To the contrary, it is full of sciences and science éctions. Sciences are
not mobilized, however, to produce characters who correspond via resemblance
to the natural world.
In sum, one response to the weightlessness of animated characters strives to
introduce a sense of reality with an emphasis on implied masses, anatomical
correctness, gravity and so forth. This is a system of ‘correspondence-via-resem-
blance’ that ultimately diminishes a sense of weightlessness. Of course, there
always remains the potential for so-called non-natural abilities and forces, but it
is carefully managed and channelled with resemblances. There is another
response, one more pronounced in anime, which is to play with non-natural forces
and other sciences, to work them directly into characters and stories – and to
Thomas Lamarre 347
follow the potential implied by different character designs. The difference is:
applying movement to characters versus following the movements implied by
character design.
My point is that animated égures are not constrained to construct resem-
blances by simulating natural laws or forces. In fact, the way in which they are
produced tends to lessen correspondence-with-resemblance. Animated charac-
ters are, in essence, entities traversed by seemingly non-natural forces, of which
weightlessness is the most evident. In the instance of gravity-defying characters,
characters are generally designed in such a way that their weightlessness appears
to be generated by the conéguration of the character’s body. Of course, there are
often narrative explanations for characters’ weightlessness too. Thus their weight-
lessness frequently derives from some special conéguration of their body or
condition or world, that appears at the level of line, character design, movement
and narrative form.
This is the case with Sheeta in Castle in the Sky. As Sheeta falls head-érst
through space, the èying stone suddenly begins to emit a blue-greenish light, and
her falling is slowed. She turns gracefully onto her back and èoats downward as
gently as if asleep in bed. There is now a marvellous cause for the suspension of
gravity. The èying stone (or levitation stone) is a kind of anti-gravity device. The
élm thus directs our attention to Sheeta as a special case of buoyancy. We notice
less that all the characters in this world are weightless, for weightlessness is égured
visually in Sheeta. At the same time, because all the other characters actually are
weightless, Sheeta can appear to be the only character able to realize a potential
latent in all characters – the weightlessness (or freedom) of all humankind.
This follows narratively as well. For, oddly enough, only Sheeta can activate the
stone and its counter-gravitational forces. Initially, she summons its powers
unconsciously, as she falls. Subsequently, she calls upon it in reverie. Only near
the end does she call on it consciously, and then to prevent its use for destruc-
tion. Indeed, her story is one of becoming aware of the stone’s powers, of realiz-
ing that this marvellous power is a mixed blessing and of taking responsibility for
this legacy. It is signiécant that Sheeta tends to summon its powers unconsciously,
defensively, protectively and not actively nor aggressively.
The stone is linked to her body in some unexplained way. It is activated by her
calls for help, both unvoiced calls and calls voiced in an almost forgotten language,
the language of her people. Sheeta apparently is one of the last in the lineage of
a people who once mastered the power of èying stones. Miyazaki thus invents a
natural connection between Sheeta and the stone, one that is vaguely racialized
as a historical connection between a people and a power source. As it turns out,
the leader of the darkglasses, Muska, is also of the lineage and can control the
stone once Sheeta reawakens it. He wishes, however, to use it to dominate the
world. His active, aggressive command of it contrasts dramatically with Sheeta’s
passive, protective calls to it.
Although Miyazaki links the stone naturally (that is, racially) to a people, he
does so in order to stage a conèict within a people as well as between peoples.

Which is to say, his evocation of an ancient bloodline is not one that aférms racial
purity or ethnic harmony. The ancient bloodline is evoked to establish that the
heroine is coming to terms with an historical legacy of conèict and destruction.
Moreover, in many respects, the conèict between Sheeta and Muska is a mani-
festation of a conèict within her. Sheeta is a kind of every-human who realizes a
potential latent in all people, not just in her lineage. Hers is also a personal conèict
between delight in and fear of the stone’s powers. Thus, in effect, Miyazaki estab-
lishes an analogy across every level of conèict within the story: it is within a person
(Sheeta), within a people (between Sheeta and Muska), within humankind
(conèicts between various groups and war between people of the sky and people
of the earth). Sheeta’s natural/historical connection with the stone makes her the
embodiment of all of these conèicts. Her body, her decidedly girlish body, then
promises a site of resolution. How is this achieved?
I would argue that èoating becomes an expression of a speciéc sort of freedom,
embodied in Sheeta, which is neither aggressive striving nor fatalistic resignation,
neither progress nor retreat. As Sheeta gradually realizes the potential for weight-
lessness and learns to èoat and glide, she achieves freedom within her world. At
the same time, this is a story in which an animated character realizes the weight-
lessness constituent of animated characters. In other words, her èoating is also an
expression of a potential within anime. This has certain consequences, which
demand fuller discussion, especially as regards the matters of gender and genre.
Floating and gliding

Like so many anime stories, like so many Miyazaki stories, Sheeta’s is a kind of
coming-of age-story. It is a narrative of the passage from childhood to adulthood.
Miyazaki does not tend to visualize this transformation in the hyperphysical way
prevalent in many anime, with morphing and mutating bodies such as mecha,
cyberbodies, werewolves, monsters and so forth. (Such ‘transformer’ designs fore-
ground the machinic potential of animated movement, which Miyazaki tends to
de-emphasize, even to counteract.) Sheeta’s transformation is not visualized in a
transformative character design. Apparently, hers is an inner transformation, a
moral or spiritual transformation.
I say ‘apparently’ because her transformation is nonetheless rendered visually.
It is superécial, in the positive sense. If one attends only to dialogue and narra-
tive, there is something rote and predictable about her transformation; it is a
rather conventional character arc. Narratively, for instance, her transformation
involves learning about the èying stone – how to use it and what it can be used
for – a moral lesson. Visually, however, her transformation has far more attrac-
tiveness, for it hinges on taking to the skies, of realizing an ability to soar and
glide.
Sheeta has a ‘natural’ gift, the èying stone, which enables her to èoat safely
Thomas Lamarre 349
down from the skies rather than plummet like a rock. Later, captured by the dark-
glasses, in a reverie of her childhood, she awakens a giant robot who has fallen to
the earth from Raputa. The robot, to protect her, lays waste to the fortress where
she is held, as well as the surrounding countryside. Sheeta sees the destructive
powers of Raputa’s energy source, the èying stone, for the érst time. Pazu, who
has joined company with the pirates to save her, comes to her rescue in a èapter.
Sheeta is whisked away and, with Pazu and Dora, èies back to the pirates’ ship.
As is so often the case in this kind of story, the eccentric, irregular, smaller
group proves rather kindly, and in order to combat the vast, impersonal, mighty
forces of the army and the darkglasses, the hero and heroine strike up an alliance
with this band of irregulars. Thus Sheeta points Dora and the pirates in the direc-
tion of Raputa. The military airship carrying Muska, his darkglasses and an army
to Raputa appears in the clouds below the pirate ship. To scout the way, Sheeta
joins Pazu in a glider attached by a long cord to the pirate ship. As the military
airship attacks the pirates, Sheeta and Pazu’s cord breaks. The two sail into the
tremendous bank of clouds that encompasses Raputa. Buffeted by electric storms
and winds in the glider, they arrive at the island in the sky before the darkglasses
and the pirates.
Raputa is a labyrinthine world of expansive gardens and domed towers, with
stately arches, arcades and bridges. At its centre stands a towering tree, for Raputa
is a lost world, unpeopled and now overgrown by nature. It is a world where giant
robots, once built to ensure military dominion, now tend gardens and befriend
small animals. Sheeta and Pazu wander and marvel.
The darkglasses arrive, allied with the vast armies of the military. The soldiers
begin to loot the ancient ediéces. Sheeta and Pazu run off to aid the captured
pirates. They are separated. Muska seizes Sheeta and takes her to the central
controls deep within Raputa, where an enormous crystal of èying stone powers
the island. Muska uses the stone to unleash the destructive forces of the èying
fortress, waging war across the earth and sky. Meantime, Pazu stealthily cuts the
pirates’ bonds. Then, while he tries to énd Sheeta, explosions rock the island and
send him èying. He clings to the dangling roots, climbs while dodging robots and
other obstacles. He eventually gains the interior and hears Sheeta’s cry for help.
Sheeta has grabbed the èying stone from Muska and èed with it. She hands it to
Pazu. Then, Muska threatens to kill her if Pazu does not return the stone to him.
In response, Sheeta and Pazu decide to intone together the words that make
Raputa self-destruct, even though this could mean their death as well. Thus the
machines of destruction fall away from Raputa, as the giant tree, with the èying-
stone crystal in its roots, rises heavenward.
As this overview indicates, Sheeta’s journey seems quite passive – at least until
the moment when she stands up to Muska, but even then her power lies in words
not battle. Similarly, she accesses the stone in an unconscious or dreamy fashion.
She is kidnapped, rescued, whisked away, passed from group to group – almost
as if she were one with the stone, merely an object with latent energies. Even
though she decides to join Pazu in the glider, she does not pilot it. Ultimately it
is the force of events that carries her along. She is buffeted along as if on the
winds. To state this more positively, one might see her role as one of buoyancy
and pliancy rather than mere passivity. Hers is an ability to ride the èux of events,
but with intuitive connections that lead her in the right direction.
Pazu, on the other hand, is all effort and exertion. He clambers, climbs, leaps,
forms alliances, éghts and so forth. It is he who desires to énd the legendary
Raputa (to prove his father right; for his father once saw and photographed
Raputa, but no one believed his story). Especially in the course of the upward
journey, images abound of Pazu clinging and climbing upward. This contrasts
sharply with Sheeta who is always being carried along and escaping. Unlike Pazu,
Sheeta has no particular desire to èy; but, unwittingly, she has inherited the
potential.
It is not surprising that many consider Castle in the Sky to be Pazu’s story, a
boy’s adventure story. For he is the active character. In Miyazaki’s plans for the
élm, he conérms this, proposing hypothetical titles: ‘Young Pazu and the riddle
of the èying stone’ or ‘Captive of the sky castle’ or ‘Treasure island in the sky’ or
‘The èying empire’ (1984: 394). Yet, even if it is his story, the key to it is Sheeta’s
ability to èoat – her buoyancy or weightlessness, so to speak. Pazu is drawn into
the game to get to the heart of this mystery. Unlike Muska, however, he does not
wish to control the èying stone, but to protect it and her, to accompany and
understand.
Because Castle in the Sky clearly assigns abilities and energies on the basis of
gender, questions are always raised about Miyazaki’s intentions and about the
effects of such gender distinctions. As for his intentions, Miyazaki makes clear in
his interviews that he resorts to heroines because girls, as principal characters in
action stories, disrupt certain narrative conventions and expectations (see
Miyazaki 1984–94). Miyazaki suggests that women with guns or a resolute stride
create a sense of something unusual. He also expresses broader concerns about
the action genre, particularly in his interview with Murakami Ryū (1989: 363–4).
In the same interview, Murakami expresses his admiration for Miyazaki’s ability
to achieve a happy ending without humanism – which demands a certain intelli-
gence, a way of thought. It is this topic – resolution without totalization (happy
ending without humanism) – that appropriately leads Murakami to pose ques-
tions about the advantages of élms centred on heroines. Miyazaki’s response
makes clearer why he would introduce a heroine into a boy’s adventure like Castle
in the Sky. Generically, Miyazaki explains, such adventure stories present a boy
or young man who has a great deal of energy but who initially does not know how
or where to direct it. He énds his way only after a long detour.
Miyazaki, however, expresses his discontent with such easy stories. He
complains that such narratives entail a simple resolution, in which the defeat of
the villain solves all problems. With a girl as the lead, things do not close so totally;
one issue is resolved, or one obstacle overcome, and now the heroine continues
Thomas Lamarre 351
on with that knowledge. For Miyazaki, the introduction of a girl into the action-
adventure genre is, érst and foremost, a way to surprise viewers and to open the
genre to new narrative possibilities. In brief, Miyazaki prefers to work with
heroines to avoid certain totalizing tendencies – which, as I shall discuss below,
comprise both male adventure stories and narratives of technological progress.
Such remarks make clear that Miyazaki positions his work within the logic of
genre. As a result, even when he introduces a girl to open the male genre, he still
relies heavily on generic expectations and gender conventions – whence his
remarks, for instance, about how unusual it is to see women handling guns or
striding purposefully. And of particular importance is the empathy, understand-
ing and feeling that Miyazaki attributes to women. Women do not strive to
conquer and defeat, they come to terms with things.
So it is that Miyazaki resorts to conventional, even stereotypical ideas about
women in order to transform the action-adventure story, which is coded as male.
What is interesting is his awarenes that he works within genres. He even shows
an awareness that his use of heroines potentially reinforce certain gender expec-
tations and conventions. Girls like Sheeta or Kiki, whose skirts intermittently
èutter in the wind to reveal their panties (in all innocence, of course!), do not
exactly break with certain kinds of expectations (and afford erotic possibilities
that Murakami Ryū is quick to notice). As problematic as these stereotyped
images may be, it is essential to note that this sort of visual signature for the girl’s
character implies more for Miyazaki than ‘this is a cute girl’. Miyazaki codes such
gender differences into larger, almost metaphysical differences. The èuttering
skirts of the adorable girl already imply a certain potential for buoyancy in
relation to the natural forces, to the wind – which creates other kinds of gender
trouble.
All in all, Miyazaki does not try to break with genre or genre/gender conven-
tions, he attempts to transform one genre by introducing the other gender. His
gesture can be read as either instrumental or critical. On the one hand, it can be
read as an instrumental use of stereotypes about femininity as a means to trans-
form and revitalize received masculine narratives. (It is as if there is only one
gender or genre, male; and the female is a genre that is not one.) On the other
hand, it can be read as a critical use of feminine paradigms to challenge masculin-
ist narratives. This is argued persuasively by Susan Napier in her discussion of
Miyazaki’s young heroines: ‘Playing on traditional conventions with a contem-
porary twist, Miyazaki is clearly not only attempting to break down the
conventional image of the feminine but also to break down the viewer’s
conventional notion of the world in general’ (2001a: 125). Which is to say, to play
with gender is to play with genre. Yet the question persists: is Miyazaki’s play with
genre/gender instrumental or critical? It would be reductive to see Miyazaki’s
reworking of gender/genre conventions as simply instrumental, as if there were
nothing else to them. Then, too, it would be too much to attribute to Miyazaki a
radical deconstruction of gender oppositions. In Miyazaki the logic of
genre/gender is such that the two critical and instrumental impulses are insepar-
able. As a consequence, a feminist critique concerned with representations of girls
in Miyazaki quickly encounters metaphysical questions about technology and
nature (to be discussed subsequently).
Castle in the Sky is ostensibly a boy’s adventure story into which Miyazaki intro-
duces a second ‘hero’, the girl Sheeta, who becomes at least important as Pazu,
and maybe more important. Thus the logic of gender logic in Castle in the Sky
might be styled as combinatory. It does not put the girl in the boy’s place – as
seems to be the case with Miyazaki’s prior élm Kaze no tane no Nausicaä (Nausicaa
of the Valley of the Wind) (Studio Ghibli, 1984). Nor does it aim for a sort of
feminine adventure story – as with Kiki’s adventures in the subsequent Majo no
takkyūbin (Kiki’s delivery service) (Studio Ghibli, 1989). Castle in the Sky brings
together boy and girl. They are distinct and different but are to work together. And
their friendship or union must remain innocent to sustain this combinatory logic.
Miyazaki lets them laugh, play, hug and touch – provided it remains innocent. Only
once, as they roll on the grass of Raputa, is there the èeeting suggestion of an erotic
possibility, which immediately dissolves into ebullient éts of laughter and antics.
Their innocence assures that theirs is a combination or pairing of two indepen-
dent genders/genres, not an overcoming of them by union or fusion. It is signié-
cant that innocence and chastity sustain their autonomy – as if sexual union and
reproduction were imagined to be the site of social subordination. It is as if boys
and girls each had their distinctive energies, interests and actions, and these can
work together, at once autonomously and co-operatively – but only at a moment
that precedes yet anticipates sexual interaction.
Miyazaki works with two characters with two storylines that intersect yet seem
to sustain some degree of autonomy. Indeed, in the climatic scenes on Raputa,
Sheeta and Pazu work together, but their actions continue to be distinctly coded
for gender (she èees Muska while Pazu blasts his way through walls to help her).
And for all the overtones that Sheeta and Pazu are a pair, the énal solution is not
that they énd one another. They come together, act in unison. In brief, Miyazaki
does not simply introduce romance interest into the action genre. (This is surely
because the action genre typically uses romance as a way to subordinate the
woman to the male hero.) Miyazaki, on the contrary, invents an action élm in
which there are two heroes with very different energies, masculine and feminine
– or rather proto-masculine and proto-feminine – boyish and girlish.
In imagining the interaction of ‘boy energies’ and ‘girl energies’, Miyazaki
generally construes them rather conventionally. Boys like Pazu or like Tombo in
Kiki’s Delivery Service are extremely active and expansive; girls like Sheeta or Kiki
are far more introspective and reèexive. Moreover, in Castle, Pazu’s memories are
of his father, Sheeta’s of her mother. And, as already noted, these differences are
inscribed in character design, character movements and actions. Signiécantly, all
these differences between boys and girls typically revolve around their different
relation to èying. Boys are mechanically minded; both Pazu and Tombo are
Thomas Lamarre 353
budding engineers who strive to build èying machines that will take them into the
skies. Their skyward dreams and aspirations are expressed in machines, literally
and concretely. Girls, however, have stranger, more fantastical devices. Sheeta has
the èying stone, while Kiki has her broom, both of which are posited as inherited
potentials. In both instances, the potential for èight seems at érst to be embodied
entirely in the object itself, in the pendant or broom. Subsequently, the girls learn
that these objects are expressions of an inner potential.
For both boys and girls in these two élms, transformation is presented on the
visible surface as a process of learning to èy, of taking to the skies, with all the
spiritual ramiécations implied by èight. Girls, however, seem to have a kind of
natural gift for èying – this is true of Nausicaa, Sheeta, Kiki and even Mei and
Satsuki in Tonari no totoro (My neighbour Totoro) (Studio Ghibli, 1988). It is
something that is already there, naturally as it were, but that needs to énd expres-
sion. This is how Miyazaki deals with the different relationship that he feels
women have with nature.
In Kiki’s Delivery Service, for instance, when Kiki temporarily loses her ability
to èy, she visits her girlfriend Ursula, a painter, who is a few years older and thus
wiser. Ursula tells Kiki that all artists or craftfolk have their ‘ki’ or ‘chi’, a
traditional term which in this context means something like ‘spiritual energy’ or
‘creative force’. Thus is Kiki’s inner potential for èight associated with a kind of
artistic, creative, quasi-spiritual relation to nature. This is very different from
Tombo with his bicycle retooled into a primitive èying machine, which he strains
and sweats to pedal fast enough to get airborne. In sum, these different energies
of boys and girls imply different actions, attitudes and storylines; that is, gender
always implies genre – and, if Miyazaki emphasizes the girlish, it seems intended
to complement the boyish in a way that does not allow for subordination of one
to the other. It is crucial to note, too, that Miyazaki uses gender conventions in a
way that reinscribes an opposition between the mechanical and the spiritual,
between technology and nature. This merits attention, for it is at this level that he
attempts to create some new relation.
To anticipate my argument, I see this new relation as one in which the mechan-
ical or technological is to be minimized and redirected. It is analogous to the ways
in which the feminine Sheeta is designed to minimize and redirect the boy’s
adventure story. Miyazaki’s élm does not simply try to create a new story out of
an interaction between genders and genres. His heroines’ ability to èy is calcu-
lated as an alternative to received narrative genres. In an analogous way, his élm
aims to énd some new potential within the art of animation, some potential that
presents an alternative to received technologies.
Minimizing narratives of technology

It is difécult to be precise about alternatives to received technologies in Miyazaki.
In all of his stories, there is a broad and general critique of the use of technology
for destruction and domination. It is as if all received technologies are inherently

generators of social unevenness and destruction. Indeed, it sometimes seems that
Miyazaki sees no alternative, that his response to this problem is to destroy and
refuse all technologies – as with the énal destruction of Raputa in Castle in the
Sky. His response is not so pat as an elimination of technology, however. He is
well aware that his art, animation itself, relies on technology. His alternative
involves a minimization of technology – within his narratives as within his anima-
tions – through an exploration of alternative energies. Such an exploration
involves the creation of speciéc kinds of alternative worlds and histories. Again,
Castle in the Sky is a prime example.
At the outset, in the opening sequence, there are hints that the action takes
place in an alternative world with another historical framework, one that is more
fully evoked in the subsequent title sequence. As the pirates storm through the
ship, for instance, we see that it is a kind of luxury liner of the sky. There are men
and women in ballroom attire, who, naturally, scream and scatter as the pirates
crash by,while shots are exchanged between the pirates and the darkglasses. These
are but brief glimpses of something like period dress and manners. Historical
evocation is sketchy and obviously subordinate to action. Yet these are dress and
manners that evoke a world reminiscent of late nineteenth- or early twentieth-
century Europe. Indeed, Castle in the Sky is sometimes billed as Miyazaki’s
Treasure Island, and commentaries establish the period look as nineteenth century.
The period look comes primarily from period technologies of communication
and transportation – as with the outdated telegraph and Morse code used by
Muska to call for help. Likewise, the èying ships and machines recall earlier tech-
nologies of èight. In the title sequence, we see what Helen McCarthy describes
as ‘a panoply of magniécently dotty eighteenth- and nineteenth-century èying
machines rendered in a graphic style and gentle colour scheme reminiscent of
antique prints’ (1999: 97).
This is an alternative nineteenth century, however. The outdated communi-
cation technologies may or may not be the same as those used in our historical
world. And the earlier technologies of èight are logically extended by Miyazaki
into a range of possible èying machines – possible, that is, on the basis of those
earlier technologies. McCarthy remarks, ‘All were designed by Miyazaki himself,
and despite their extravagant appearance, all are workable according to the tech-
nology on which they are based’ (1999: 98). The title sequence thus invents an
alternative history of èying machines, one that extends the possibilities of nine-
teenth-century technologies.
We know it is intended as a history because the title sequence adopts rather
old-fashioned, quaint-looking graphics and colours. There is only one other
sequence in the élm that uses the same colours and graphics – the one in which
Muska tells Sheeta about how the robot fell from the sky. A similar look is adopted
for an old photograph. The shift to ‘older’ styles in graphics and colours is
evidently intended to signal historical record rather than personal memories
Thomas Lamarre 355
(which are rendered in the same colours and graphics as the rest of the élm, as
with Sheeta’s memories of her village). Thus, with its evocation of outmoded
graphics, the title sequence establishes the back story for the story about Sheeta
and Pazu, as a history. Indeed, it is the transformation of the back story into
history that lends Castle in the Sky its epic quality.
The title sequence opens with an image of the wind personiéed: a cloud with
a woman’s face blowing the wind. This érst and most bucolic image is accom-
panied by one of a person standing alongside a human-sized windmill. Subse-
quent images show humans’ progress in harnessing the power of the wind. Wind
is harnessed to power machines that dig deep into the earth. Then humans – or,
rather, men, it would seem – conquer the skies with ever grander and more elabor-
ate èying machines. Finally there are vast èying castle cities, islands in the sky.
This triumph is followed by disaster. There are indications of a great storm,
images of dark clouds and lightning followed by a èying city in ruins on the
ground. Streams of people pour from the fallen castle. And, as if coming full
circle, we return to the shepherd girl next to the windmill designed to pump water,
a girl who seems to be Sheeta.
In the title-sequence history, the source of power for the èying castles is not
speciéed. Indeed it is misrepresented as giant propellers, as if the authors of this
history could not understand the èying stone. Subsequently in the élm, we learn
more of this history: pure crystals of èying stone were mined from the earth and
used to power the castles in the sky. Moreover, we learn that these castles, as the
term shiro implies, are indeed èying fortresses, military installations in the sky.
While the title sequence hints at these possibilities, its history remains deliber-
ately sketchy, incomplete. The appearance of èying castles is situated as yet
another stage in the development of men’s ability to harness wind-power. And the
fall of the castles in the sky is caused by storms rather than by apocalyptic wars.
The sequence delivers a history so broad and oblique as to be mythical – the
‘natural’ rise and fall of a civilization. It is a natural history that has to be relearned
in the course of action in the élm world – in an alternative nineteenth century.
In the course of the élm, together with Sheeta and Pazu, we learn that the èying
castles were of a highly advanced civilization – highly advanced in military techno-
logical terms – that had destroyed itself some seven hundred years earlier. The
élm’s alternative nineteenth century is channelling its enthusiasm for techno-
logical progress and power into the quest for the ancient civilization’s source of
power, to which Sheeta’s èying stone provides the key. This, then, is a post-
apocalyptic nineteenth century – a nineteenth century in which technological
progress does not move forward but loops backward. And the title sequence
prepares us for a circular story, too – from simple to complex to simple, from a
human scale to a gargantuan, monumental scale, and back to a human scale.
This loopy historical framework is reminiscent of Miyazaki’s prior élm,
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Both adopt a post-apocalyptic stance in order
to question the uses of technology for domination and destruction. Not only does
the advanced technology lie in the past, but the present of this post-apocalyptic
world appears to be located in our own past. In Castle in the Sky, the use of an
alternative nineteenth century thus produces èoating or hovering history, which
gives all the signs of historical periods and periodization yet only in order to
confuse their temporal order, to confound a sense of historical progression.
Thus Castle in the Sky offers its critique of our received technologies and our
ideas about them. With its period-extrapolated wacky machines, it seems to seek
some alternative to our received technologies. Yet, in the élm, it is not so much
received technologies themselves that prove troublesome. It is the way they are
used and imagined, and how they are handed down and received. In brief, it is a
question of how technologies are narrativized. The villain to be defeated is not
only Muska but also what he represents: a nineteenth-century-derived faith in
technological advances as the basis for progress. What Miyazaki calls into
question is a totalizing narrative about technological progress. This is an issue also
evoked by Napier (2001b) in an essay on Princess Mononoke that calls attention
to the ways in which Miyazaki’s élm forces viewers to address myths about
progress. What concern me, however, are the ways in which Miyazaki’s problem
with technology becomes one of narrativization, comprising both genre and
history and form.
As we have seen, at the level of genre and narrative, Miyazaki calls into question
the male adventure story, because it is totalizing in its logic of progression and
resolution. With Castle in the Sky, he delivers an action-adventure plot that moves
swiftly and relentlessly forward. And Castle in the Sky imparts a greater sense of
resolution than subsequent élms such as Kiki’s Delivery Service or My Neighbour
Totoro, due to the prominence of the boy’s adventure story. Nevertheless, Castle
in the Sky centres on an enigma, one that entails learning about the past in order
to move forward. As a consequence, the story tends to loop back into the past,
not just into the backstories of the heroes, but into the entire history of their
world. It advances and retreats, advances and retreats. It circles. And, true to his
dislike of complete resolution, Miyazaki does not resolve the enigma totally. Simi-
larly, the temporal loops inscribed by the post-apocalyptic setting make it imposs-
ible to sustain any simple narrative about scientiéc or technological progress. In
sum, Miyazaki resists a totalizing narrativization on both fronts – genre conven-
tions and teleological history – by centring on an enigma.
This style of enigma-centred post-apocalyptic narrative could be styled
‘hermeneutic’, because it moves in circles between past and present in an attempt
to resolve the problems of present. But these are only partially and temporarily
resolved. In fact, there is no narrative solution to the problem of narrativization,
for a simple and total solution would merely repeat the problem. And so the
question about alternatives to received technologies returns, with greater
precision: are there any alternatives to the masculine narratives of technological
progress with their impulse toward domination and destruction of nature?
Castle in the Sky, centred as it is on the èying stone, directs our attention to the
Thomas Lamarre 357
possibility of alternative sources of energy or power. The èying stone is so magical

yet strangely natural, with its unexplained luminosity and resonance across great
distances. It is as if the magnetism of the loadstone of the Laputa in Guilliver’s
Travels (one of Miyazaki’s many intertexts) were allied with luminosity. Its
wonders seem to promise a magical alternative, at least initially. Ultimately,
however, the èying stone proves as open to mundane abuse as any other power
source. Miyazaki does not opt for a magical solution. Still, the wondrous promise
remains, and the quest circles around the possibility of an alternative energy
source. This is a quest that cannot be fulélled with an actual material (coal, oil,
gas, uranium or such) for these are subject to possession and allow for domination
and social imbalance. If the èying stone holds our imagination, it is because it is
less tangible, manipulable. Yet, because it can be mined, reéned or otherwise
manipulated, it can be held, controlled, mastered. The alternative could only be
an energy that cannot be thus held and wielded. There is only one such form of
energy that Miyazaki always supplies in abundance: the wind.
Of particular importance is that the wind resists narrativization. It is not the
object of the treasure hunt, it is not the goal of the epic quest. Nor is it the site of
a hermeneutic enigma like the èying stone. Rather it is the vehicle for all the élm’s
activities – vehicle in the double sense of medium and transport. The wind carries
along everything and everyone, and, even when destructive, it is a positive, almost
vital force – an animating force. It is worth recalling that the word animation itself
derives from ‘animus’ or wind. The wind is the vitality of nature itself. Or rather,
I should say, of nature herself. For, in the title sequence, the wind is given a face,
and that face is decidedly a woman’s.The wind is personiéed and rendered quaintly
as a female deity, blowing the air and clouds. The feminization of the wind should
come as no surprise. After all, does Miyazaki not introduce the feminine in order
to break with male genres? Analogously, an animistic feminine force is evoked to
break with masculine narratives of technological progress.
If Castle in the Sky is seen as Pazu’s story, this is the effect of the wind: to temper
and redirect his boyish enthusiasm for machines, away from domination and
destruction, towards something safer and gentler, something that follows nature
rather than battles it – something like the glider or the windmill. For, if there are
real alternatives to received technologies in Castle in the Sky, they are those that
ride and channel the wind and that also function on a human scale – the glider
and the windmill. The élm delights the imagination with èying machines of all
shapes and sizes, and lures the viewer to a gargantuan castle in the sky. Yet it
destroys the possibility that such wondrous achievements present real social
alternatives. For those technological achievements are based on power sources
that can be held. The implication is that forms of power that can be held invari-
ably allow someone or some group to hold that power over others. Power sources
that can be acquired or held also entail a plundering of nature, a conquering of
the natural world. Ultimately, both the airship technologies and the èying-stone
technologies lead to domination and destruction.
The glider, however, entails the least degree of technology for èying. Nor can
its power source – wind and human ability – be mined and owned. Its pilot follows
the wind rather than controls it. And it is, of course, the glider that saves Sheeta
and Pazu in the end. We last see them gliding into the sunset.
Narratively and conceptually, Miyazaki’s solution to the question of alterna-
tives to received technologies with their destruction and domination may seem
rather banal. Technological creations, such as the robots, do not in and of them-
selves dominate and destroy. It is how they are used – whence the touching scenes
of robots who protect nests, befriend little animals and tend gardens versus the
frightening scenes of the same robots laying waste to the countryside. And there
are hints of a lesson about getting back to nature. What is more, the entire story
seems to linger on the possibility of a world before development – at once sexual
and technological development. As a message or moral injunction, this may
indeed seem rather banal.
Things are more complicated, however. Development will occur; in fact, it has
already occurred. Moreover, the eventual misuse of technologies seems to lie
latent in their power sources. Thus, at the same time that Miyazaki seems to
mistrust technology in general, he moves away from a simple question about
whether technology is good or bad in and of itself. He turns to the problem of
power sources or energies. Castle in the Sky is nothing if not a search for another
energy. Miyazaki’s effort is then to minimize and redirect technological develop-
ment on the basis of a different source of energy. And this is where his responses
become distinctly anime-ic.
Let me review some of the prior points to explain his anime-ic responses.
The way in which lines are erased to clean up sketches augments the weightless
potential of animated égures. With the égure of Sheeta, Miyazaki begins to
explore and emphasize this basic potential in animation. His is an aesthetic take
on a technique used to diminish the viewer’s awareness of ‘jitter’ in the movement
of animated characters – a jerkiness or skippines that becomes especially
pronounced in limited animation when intermediate stages of movement are
omitted. By emphasizing weightlessness, Miyazaki can at once embrace the
simplicity of animated characters and diminish the machinic effects implicit in
animation. In other words, he uses one potential of animation (weightlessness) to
lessen another potential (jitter) that arises in limited animation. Whereas there are
other anime makers who embrace jitter in narratives that explore automatons,
cyborgs, digital technologies and such, Miyazaki strives to diminish jitter while
remaining true in the lineage of limited animation. In sum, art is deployed to
minimize machinic effects, and to re-receive technologies. This effort is at the very
heart of Castle in the Sky.
In the élm, Sheeta’s weightlessness is given a causal and hence narrative expla-
nation. Her seemingly magical ability to èoat down from the skies is attributed to
the èying stone, to her use of it. Yet the èying stone does not allow her to èy, it
merely prevents her from falling. And she uses it unconsciously. Floating must be
Thomas Lamarre 359
more conscious and active. It is in èying that Miyazaki activates weightlessness.

But not any sort of èying will do. The best machines of èight are those that
demand the least technology, the least degree of machine. And so, when Sheeta
takes to the skies with Pazu, it is without the stone, in a glider, on the winds. In
sum, èying is where Miyazaki explores minimizing technology by maximizing a
‘natural’ energy that lies potential in anime-ic expression. It is as if a particular
potential of the medium has become the message. It is as if an aesthetic response
to technical limitations within animation has unfurled an ethical message about
limiting technology.
Moving drawings
I previously mentioned some features of Miyazaki’s élms that seem to impart a
cinematic feel. As writer-animator-director, for instance, he attends to every detail
of his élms. This ensures an overall consistency in line, tone and contour in his
works. And his attention to detail in the construction of backgrounds allows for
panoramic sweep as well as focus on details. This gives the impression of a vast,
detailed, consistent world for action. He uses viewing positions that appear to
simulate camera angles in cinema. But what of movement?
Usually, to produce characters who seem to move like people in live-action élm,
full animation is used, and as many as twelve frames per second are drawn. Even
with the most expensive animated élms, however, budgets are never big enough
to ‘rotoscope’ every action, and so there are built-in limitations – not to mention
the limitations of the artist’s hands and eyes. Still, although his budgets are rela-
tively modest by Hollywood standards, Miyazaki could probably afford to pay
greater attention to the full animation of characters’ movements, if he wished. He
seems content, however, with a certain degree of èuidity, grace and plausibility
in movement. But he does not strive for the anatomical and facial precision of
movement so important in other forms of animation. He prefers to use more
simpliéed and cleaned-up sketches in front of detailed backgrounds. The simpli-
écation of characters lends a sense of grace and èuidity to movements that might
otherwise appear choppy or jerky. This preference also allows him to use some of
the strategies of limited animation even as he minimizes its machinic effects.
Nonetheless, the consequent weightlessness creates another problem, a
problem with depth. For seeing simpliéed characters against detailed back-
grounds works in two directions. On the one hand, it could suggest depth,
especially if the colours and lines of the background cel are more subdued than
those of the character cel. On the other hand, the characters may seem to èoat,
to come unmoored from their environment. That is, depth is implied but remains
incipient if the relation between foreground and background is not smoothed out,
not well composited. Backgrounds may be painted using art techniques that
impart a sense of depth, but then the simpliéed characters still look èat with their
solid outlines and scant modelling. One is aware of a gap or difference between
the foreground and background layers. It is as if foreground and background

constituted different dimensional layers rather than aspects of a single three-
dimensional world.
The multiplane camera, and more recently multilayer compositing, was
designed to overcome this problem of depth between foreground and back-
ground. Yet, even with the multiplane camera, there are moments that reveal the
strange dimensionality of layers of slotted drawings. In Castle in the Sky, for
instance, when Sheeta and Pazu arrive on Raputa and look over the edge of the
cliff, the viewing position shifts and one becomes aware of sliding layers. This is
always a problem with multiple planes. As one’s viewing position moves, the
relation between different planes transforms – but not in the manner of ‘real’
depth (for which live-action cinema remains the norm). This is because propor-
tions do not change in accordance with position.
The problem – if it really is a problem – might be resolved with computer-
generated spaces in which the viewing position moves in depth without the visual
artifacts that occur with layers. This is supposed to make animation feel more like
cinema. But it should be pointed out that cinematic depth is no less constructed
than depth in other arts. It simply has a greater hold on our sense of what real
depth looks like.
In any event, Miyazaki addresses the problem of depth in a very different
manner from live-action cinema. On the one hand, he énesses and conceals the
problem. As already discussed, he tends to avoid scenes with movement in depth,
while using panoramic establishing shots. In addition, the background landscapes
are drawn with suggestions of depth but these are not so pronounced as to appear
incommensurable with the character égures, which are but slightly modelled with
shadowing. On the other hand, he puts the obstacle to work, he makes of it an
opportunity. He does this by calling attention to surface movement. He exploits
the potential awareness of a gap between foreground and background by putting
the foreground layer in motion. This is especially true with scenes of èying. As we
have seen, the kind of èying he prefers is a manner of gliding. With gliding he can
bring into play the effects that arise from the sliding of multiple layers.
Miyazaki continually makes such storyless effects central to his narratives: just
as weightlessness becomes integral to his story, so he uses gliding to activate the
sliding of layers within his narratives. Thus he makes the non-narrative potentials
of his art integral to narrative. Indeed, what makes Miyazaki interesting is that he
thinks and works with storyless elements, building his stories out of them.
It is ironic that this gliding/sliding solution is what imparts a cinematic scope
and feel to his élms. For what feels cinematic is the èuidity and mobility, not only
of character but also of viewing position – in conjunction with some of the
features outlined previously, such as detail, consistency, panorama. Yet this
viewing mobility is in many ways quite different from the cinematic, at least as it
is conventionally conceived.
Thus, I return to the ‘animation by train’ scenario evoked at the outset. I
Thomas Lamarre 361
mentioned then that the animation by train scenario entailed another kind of
movement as well – ‘induced movement’ in which the traveler feels change in
relative speed and motion, as when two trains pass or when the passage of the
train through a tunnel serves to animate égures on a wall. As we have seen, cel
animation frequently resorts to the movement of animated égures over a back-
ground. Relations of foreground and background are easily emphasized, some-
times intentionally, sometimes not; and, even though there are deénite visual cues
to orientate the direction of movement, at times it is hard to say which is moving,
the foreground égure or the background landscape. It is like those scenes of car
travel in B-movies, in which the car stands still while the scenery moves past the
car – a failed attempt to create an illusion of travelling, failed largely because the
car appears to have depth while the scenery does not. Sometimes the disjuncture
is so obvious that the effect becomes humorous.
This depth disjuncture can be especially pronounced in anime. In anime one
frequently detects the slippage between planes, especially between foreground
and background. Even when multiple layers or planes are used, the sliding of one
plane over, under or through another plane remains part of the visual experience.
For instance, one sees in proéle a girl running down a road with a forest in the
background – as in some of the scenes in My Neighbour Totoro in which Satsuki
runs about in search of her younger sister Mei. It is hard to say which is moving,
the girl or the forest, the girl or the clouds in the sky. In fact, the girl is running
in place, and her plane – the cel on which she is drawn – is moving in relation to
the forest plane or sky plane. Naturally, one is supposed to see the girl running
forward. Or so it seems initially. Yet it is often equally easy to see the forest sliding
back. One sees the sliding of surfaces over surfaces. Maybe Satsuki’s search, for
instance, is not so straight forward, visually or narratively – does the slippage
between planes underscore the futility of her search, imparting a sense that, in
fact, she is getting nowhere?
These kinds of scenes – in which an animated égure is pulled across a back-
ground – run counter to certain ideas about how animation should work. In a
comparative account of anime, Disney and the Fleischer Brothers, Raffaelli
observes that ‘the Japanese style did not respect the rules dictated by that master
of animation, Norman McLaren (according to whom one must not move the
drawing but draw the movement)’ (1997: 127). Although it is difécult to speak
of anime in general (since there are many anime styles and formats), there is a
marked tendency to move the drawing and to emphasize the slippage between
layers. And this is precisely what Miyazaki does, as noted previously.
It is not surprising then that Miyazaki differentiates his work from animation:
he uses the term manga eiga or ‘manga élm’ (1982: 151–2). He speciécally refers
to Castle in the Sky as a manga élm rather than animation (1984: 395). One way
to think of this is as a distinction between an animation that focuses on animat-
ing characters (as with Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse, to use Miyazaki’s
examples) and an animation that aims for a cinematic mobility with manga-like
drawings. In sum, it could be thought of as a distinction between drawing move-

ments and moving drawings. Miyazaki, needless to say, wishes to emphasize the
mobility possible by means of moving drawings.
One effect of this sliding of égures across backgrounds, and slipping of back-
grounds under égures, is an induced movement of the spectator – like the feeling
that the platform, not the train, is moving. It is this that gives one the sense that,
although one sits still as one watches, one somehow moves with respect to the
images. This may be achieved with camera movements as well, and yet the effect
is unlike that which arises in cinema. For the effect comes from the sliding of one
plane over or under another – with a sense that foreground and background are
in (relative) motion. The sense of induced movement even becomes vertiginous,
because, in addition to one’s own sense of movement, one sometimes has the
sense that the background is in motion, and sometimes the character. The entire
world itself seems to enter into motion.
Cinema typically strives to reduce the sense that the background is in motion.
At least this is true of what is often dubbed ‘classical’ cinema, what Noel Burch
calls, in some of his later essays on early cinema, an ‘institutionalized mode of
representation’ (Burch 1990). Such a mode of representation generally goes to
great lengths to create the illusion that the égures move, not the world around
them. Burch shows that the institutionalized mode of representation had to
override, undermine and rework many of the surface effects of early cinema in
order to produce a sense of ‘motionless voyage’ into the illusory world depicted
on the screen. This motionless voyage – an almost Cartesian sense that the world
is laid out before us for us to move into and act upon, as on a grid – became
second nature to cinematic representation, at least in what is thought of as
classical cinema.
This is why viewers may well laugh at those scenes in B-movies in which the
world appears to be streaming past car windows. For such scenes are, probably
unintentionally, at odds with institutionalized codes of cinematic perception of
movement.Viewers might even feel that the scenes of traveling scenery go against
some natural sense of movement. There is no evidence, of course, that the correct
or natural way of perceiving movement is one in which the mover moves through
or into the world. On the contrary, one could argue (and many have) that we truly
perceive the world coming at us. Which would be rather like those scenes in anime
in which the viewer follows someone running from behind, and the world seems
to rush at and stream past the one who runs. The world seems to move, not the
runner or viewer. Is it a subject that moves? Or the world? Or do both move at
once? In such moments of induced movement, it would be very difécult to insist
on a strict division between spectator and object.
Rather than try to argue that one sense of movement is more natural or correct
than another, I should simply like to point out that there are potential differences
between cinema and animation in their presentation of movement – different
qualities and experiences of movement. Nor do I wish to imply that animation is
Thomas Lamarre 363
incapable of presenting a cinematic quality of movement or that animation effects

are impossible in cinema. (In fact, as I mentioned previously, one could think of
these sliding layers as analogous to what is refered to as ‘internal montage’, that
is, a montage that is internal to the shot that breaks down the distinction between
montage and shot.) My aim is to call attention to the effects of induced movement
made possible by composition with mobile planes, to the possibility for induced
movement and an experience of a ‘movemented’ world. This is a potential that is
easily emphasized in animation, one that became prevalent in anime as Japanese
animators found ways to present movement without relying on very expensive full
animation. Miyazaki fully realizes this potential in his manga élms.
Miyazaki is also adamant that his élms are children’s élms. In the draft plan
for Castle in the Sky, he sees the élm as geared to a younger audience than
Nausicaä as well as a return to the manga élms that he saw as a child. His emphasis
on children’s élms and childhood experience is clearly a way to explore a certain
potential of the animated élm. It seems that, with the children’s manga élm, he
seeks something almost primordial. That is, he is interested in something that is
developmentally earlier or prior. He strives for a space and time that is prior to
sexual and technological development, which promises access to an earlier,
innocent nature – but one that is nearly impossible to locate or realize. Miyazaki’s
‘prior to’ also seems to be ‘prior to cinema’. Or, more precisely, it seems to be
‘prior to cinematic forms of movement and cinematic subjects’. This demands a
brief digression into some discussions of early cinema.
Tom Gunning, for instance, speaks of early cinema as a particularly modern
form of entertainment, one that involves a succession of thrills and distractions
limited only by viewer exhaustion. He uses a famous example – the reaction of
early élm audiences to Lumière’s Arrival of a Train at the Station, a élm which
apparently created something of a sensation due to the panicked reaction of the
audience as the train rushed at them. Audiences were said to scream and èee in
terror. Gunning links this to what Schivelbusch has called panoramic perception,
in which the passenger ‘no longer belongs to the same space as the perceived
objects; the traveller sees the objects, landscapes, etc., through the apparatus which
moves him through the world’ (Schivelbusch, cited in Gunning 1995: 126).
One possibility that arises from this ‘seeing through the apparatus that moves
through the world’ is the motionless voyage analyzed by Burch. The spectator
becomes one with the movements of the camera and thus travels into a élmic
world. It is a voyage that merely follows the apparatus and observes actions in this
other world – a going along for the ride – what Lynne Kirby (1997) calls the ‘spec-
tator-passenger’. One might also think of this alliance of spectator and vehicle in
terms of the production of an ‘apparatus subject’ or a ‘machinic subject’ that
moves in the world in a new way.
In a élm like Castle in the Sky, there is something like panoramic perception.
The élm allows the spectator to travel into an imaginary world, an alternative
nineteenth-century, in a truly panoramic fashion. The spectator moves around in
this world as if she or he belongs to a different space from the perceived land-
scapes and objects. But what is the apparatus through which she looks? On the
one hand, it seems that èying machines of all kinds – even a èock of birds that
wheels and soars over the valley – allow for a soaring, panoramic view of things.
One sees from the eye of things that èy. On the other hand, the viewing position
is typically lateral to, alongside, the èying machine. Miyazaki rarely, if ever,
presents movement from the viewpoint of the machine. There may be a practical
reason for this: I mentioned that there are certain pragmatic considerations with
cel animation which make it difécult to present movement in depth – making a
lateral view a stronger option. Yet I think that, even if pragmatically dictated,
Miyazaki’s preference is crucial to our experience of his manga élms.
Miyazaki’s use of èying affords a panoramic perception, yet he resists the
viewing position that allies spectator and machine. He avoids the sensation of
becoming a èying machine. When questioned in an interview about his interest
in èight, he replies that he personally likes planes and images of èight; but then
he notes that, even though Castle in the Sky is set in the sky, there are not so many
scenes of èying. And he remarks that, in the scenes with èapters, the sensation is
like that of a bicycle, of running rapidly over the ground (1986: 479). Recall too
that Pazu and Tombo, his mechanically minded boys, build èying machines out
of bicycles. In other words, when Miyazaki does render motion from the viewing
position of the amalgamated machine-subject, he opts for the simplest, earliest,
most ‘natural’ technology possible – not train, car or plane, but bike or glider – a
sensation like running over the ground.
This deliberate limitation is consonant with a general message about minimum-
impact, human-scale technologies that do not involve wasting and battling over
resources. It also has a profound impact on panoramic perception. There is indeed
a sort of panoramic perception, which imparts a cinematic feel to his anime. Yet
this is a limitation on technology that becomes a form of ethico-aesthetic expres-
sion distinct from cinema. This limitation comprises not simply his choice of
machines (gliders, bicycles and windmills). It involves a strict adherence to, and
exploration of, the potentials of ‘limited’ cel animation (and the fundamentals of
élmic expression). On this level, the resistance to technology implies a strategic
avoidance of visual technologies of movement-in-depth. The result is an aesthetic
emphasis on weightlessness, which is then activated in èying, in gliding – from the
movement between planes rather than the animation of égures – in brief, induced
movement.
Induced movement could be thought of as a primordial form of panoramic
perception. It is a movement that seems to place the viewer in a different space
from the objects perceived. It promises to separate out a viewing machine-subject
that travels over and above the motionless world – to impart a subjective depth.
Yet it does not. By creating relative motion between the world and the spectator,
induced movement sets the surfaces of the world in motion. As a consequence,
the world becomes a bit too dynamic to be perceived panoramically; it is sensed
Thomas Lamarre 365
but not quite objectiéable (in the sense of forming stable points of reference).
Miyazaki stresses this primordial moment by turning to bikes and gliders, by
playing with the sensation that the ground moves at you, past you, as you run
along. There are movements and sensations of movement, and the viewing
position glides or runs or scans this world, but never entirely emerges from it.
I would challenge, however, the conclusion that Miyazaki’s preference for the
sensation of induced movement is simply an evocation of childhood sensations
and experiences. Obviously, at every level in his élms, there is a strong tendency
to seek something prior, earlier, childlike, innocent, natural or primordial. Yet, as
the example of Castle in the Sky suggests, this ‘prior’ only arises ‘after’ (after
development, experience, technology and so on). His childhood is an adult’s
childhood; his earlier technologies arise in a post-technological world and history.
Likewise, manga élms like Castle in the Sky do more than reconstruct children’s
adventures, fantasies and experience. Miyazaki’s play with weightless égures and
sliding surfaces induces motion in the world and in spectators, evoking a kind of
‘prior’ to panaromic perception – prior to classical cinema, that is.
Yet, as with the ‘prior’ generally in Miyazaki, this primordial panaromic percep-
tion is as much ‘after’ as it is ‘before’ cinema. Miyazaki’s eye is not merely that of
earlier technologies. His apparently primordial perception is futural perception as
well. The manga élm is as much new medium as it is early cinema. It involves an
experience of scanning and seeking information as much as one of èoating,
gliding and soaring. For Miyazaki’s eye is not only that which glides like a bicycle,
soars like a glider or èoats on the wind. His eye is also that which scans images,
which scans between images, which thus scrambles the relation of montage and
shot, which then seeks correspondences based not on resemblances but on
energies and their resonances – and which feels oddly like an intensiécation of
the journey begun with the high-speed electric train.
McGill University
Acknowledgements
This paper beneéted greatly from all the presentations and discussions at the ‘Japanese Pop Culture’
conference organized by Livia Monnet at Université de Montréal in March 1999. And I am
especially grateful to the contributors to this issue, whose articles and comments helped me to re-
articulate mine. This research was conducted with assistance from both the Fonds pour la
Formation des Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche and Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
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From animation to anime: drawing

movements and moving drawings

Keywords: animation, anime, limited animation, new media, gender, Miyazaki

Japan Forum 14(2) 2002: 329–367 ISSN: 0955–5803 print/1469–932X online

imitative, derivative or secondary in relation to cinema. On the contrary, recoding

art-historical traditions and commentaries. A good example is the recent exhibit

Murakami Takashi’s account is the work of animator Kanada Yoshinori. Kanada

awareness in producers and viewers, a new experience that might be called

walking. It is a machine of walking, in a manner of speaking. It walks objects –

To explore the range of anime-ic expression, I would ideally like to look at a

concerns: the necessity for humankind to use the minimum of technology,

interact in accordance to physical laws. Figures in animation seem to obey other

does so in order to stage a conèict within a people as well as between peoples.

Floating and gliding

Minimizing narratives of technology

for destruction and domination. It is as if all received technologies are inherently

possibility of alternative sources of energy or power. The èying stone is so magical

more conscious and active. It is in èying that Miyazaki activates weightlessness.

the foreground and background layers. It is as if foreground and background

drawings. In sum, it could be thought of as a distinction between drawing move-

incapable of presenting a cinematic quality of movement or that animation effects

—— (1984b) The Art of Nausicaä, Tokyo: Tokuma shoten.

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