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TOON_DIAL

                                             July    26, 2010
                                             January 12, 2014

                                                           DRY_FLESH
   One of the first things that struck me
   about anime, is that it very often used     There are reasons of economy
   extremely cartoony foreground figures       to do this: the foreground
   against very finely detailed realistic      characters all move and
   backgrounds.                                require many more cells to
                                               get a sense of fluid motion.

      I've often wondered if                      The background drawings
      there's some other reason                   can have more attention
      they do this, if there's                    lavished on them.
      something about the effect
      that they like in some way.              The resulting effect can
                                               be very strange, though,
                                               like aliens transported
                                               into a world where they
                                               seem very out-of-place.


   Notably, sometimes they modulate the
   drawing style of the characters, using
   a more realistic look for serious            This is done a lot
   scenes, and a lightly sketched in            in "Skip Beat".
   cartoony look for more comic ones.
                                                               SKIP_BEAT


   And sometimes different characters are
   rendered in a completely different style       Cute, fantasmagorical
   depending on what kind of character they       animal side-kicks are
   are.                                           often drawn to look
                                                  remarkably like plush
   In Cowboy Beebop, Spike is a little less       toys, for obvious
   realistic than the others, to mimic the        reasons.  (If I were
   art of Corto Maltese.  Similarly, the          doing one of these,
   young girl "Ed" bounces around like a          I'd name the character
   comic figure and so is a little more           "Tie", short for
   cartoony.  Jet is fairly realistic, as is      "Product Tie-in".)
   Fey, with the exception of her insanely
   large breasts and horribly ugly "sexy"
   outfit that she wears like a uniform
   for no apparent reason (except some sort
   of visual reference to "The Dirty Pair"?).

       The dog, Ein, however, wins the
       prize for realism: it's a living,
       breathing, corgi, through and
       through.



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