I recall thinking at one time that I wasn't very particular about some newer anime titles which depended (in my opinion) too heavily on computers. It seemed to get more and more common until I eventually read the headline [in 2001]: "No more cells will be made in Japan". If you don't know; a cell is the original art on which a frame for anime is drawn. Artists typically draw out a character, or scene on a cell, and it is captured on a frame for film. Showing these in succession gives birth to animation. That's how it used to be anyway, but that all changed. It seems that Fuji, which was the last company still making animation cells in Japan; decided to stop producing them - being that the high quality paper pulp required to make them was extremely expensive. To me this seemed like a tragedy. In case you missed the significance of what I said: it means that all animation from this point forward will be computer generated (CG).

So will this be better for anime? That in itself is sort of hard to predict. I've certainly never been an expert at looking at my crystal ball. But in order to understand where the future of anime is headed and what might be missing from now on, we have to look at where anime came from to get a better understanding. In the 60's and 70's it's hard to really describe anime the differences in anime, but you can see some definite issues of the day. One is lack of fluid movement. Anime of that era tended to move sort of awkwardly in some places. It wasn't necessarily jerky motion, more than it was a problem with how people see movement, and how to approximate that in animation. Probably the biggest problem is with depth perception. For some reason it always seemed like Japanese animators had a hard time with making a character move farther away, and then get closer. As time went on, anime got better at this, although you can still see this problem in some anime in the early 80's.

During the 80's is when anime really started to come unto it's own. By this time it was a genre unto itself. Anime at this point tended to vary widely in budget, but use of computers was virtually nil - even for high budget anime. Of course then again computers couldn't really do a whole lot back then, and it was probably much more cost effective to use people anyway. Much of anime in this period was notably meticulous. Some anime titles were remarkably realistic, down to even the smallest details. Anime of this period also tended to blossom in regards to it's artistic value. It wasn't just a cartoon, it wasn't just moving pictures with sound - it was a sort of theatrical presentation that simply couldn't be done in film. You could say that anime was still lacking in some respects, but many of them (such as Akira) probably have yet to see their match, and perhaps never will.

The 90's seemed like it would be just an extension of the 80's, that is; until the computer started to come into play. At first anime in the 90's looked like that of the previous decade, but with a closer look you can see subtle changes in the color schemes used. In the 80's colors tended to be more flat, and in some cases "murky" which was simply a side effect of animation in that period. Animation in the 90's tended to have much more vibrant colors, were usually brighter, and in some respects added clarity to the animation. In the 90's anime seemed to enjoy the best of both worlds. The lessons of the 80's paved the way for good artwork in the 90's, but the additional help by computers assisted in creating dazzling special effects. But as the 90's drew to a close, things started to change.

Enter the CG exclusive phase of anime. The first rather striking feature of modern anime is the simplicity. Simply put, the complexity in animation went down. This could also be due to a slump in the Japanese economy leading to lower budgets, but even lower budget anime in the 90's tended to have better detail. Coloring also seems to have suffered - mainly due to the fact that there isn't much variation in them, and shading is just a blending between a few particular colors - an easy to spot signature of computer graphics.

What we've gained:

The obvious point is that we've gained a lot of "effects" in anime. Especially with bright lighting and bright glare - this is something that traditional anime did extremely poorly, and was a good enhancement in 90's anime. After all, how do you draw white light? Computers tend to enhance other aspects as well, such as blurring sequences between near and far objects, and special effect style distortion of the animation. Unfortunately this tends not to work very well for animation at the moment, probably not because of the lack of computer power or budget, but because animators are not sure what to do with them. In the future it's likely that this will mature into much more interesting effects. The biggest gain in CG generated anime, is probably the animation itself. Although the animation tends to be more simple, computers are good at moving animation sequences from point A to point B with smaller amounts of effort. Anime used to have two distinct types of animation sequences: involving high and low frame rates. Intense action sequences had higher frame rates to compensate for more movement, while more lax scenes dropped frame rates to save effort, time and money. With CG anime, frame rates never have to be dropped completely, since a computer can fill in the blanks fairly easily. Where the difference used to be in frame rates, the difference now will probably be higher detail in action sequences, and lower detail in lax scenes.

What we've lost:

Most people tend to overlook what anime simply doesn't have anymore. While the changes are in most cases subtle, to me they are sorely missed. Loss of abstract creativity. This isn't totally a fault of the computer. Computers also come into play as a limitation not only in terms of the limits of the computer itself, but in how it tends to limit the mind of it's user. For instance shadowing and reflectivity are things easily rendered on a computer, but when done in previous decades animators gave shadows and reflections a life of their own in a way that probably wasn't the most realistic but much more artistic and creative.

Computer generated anime also means that there will be no more cells. By the time you read this the culture around cell and anime cell collecting may be a vague memory to only the older anime fans. This is a sort of funny one to mention, but it's significant to hard core anime fans who have for years sought animation cells from their favorite series. To see anime fans denied this part of their culture, to me seems very awkward. Another odd point is that animators won't be able to sell these cells themselves. There is this sort of gray area that used to exist when it came down to animators selling their cells. Animators used to be able to draw up cells, and after their use in production... they quite often just sort of took them home. Companies recognized this, which in fact was against the copyrights which they technically held, but they conveniently ignored it for the benefit of their animators who could make some additional money from the project they worked on. With computers there really aren't any more cells, so in essence the days of selling animation cells are over.

The as of later in the 00's anime seems to be better coping with it's place. It is sort of strange to say, but anime has moved towards copying itself. Instead of forging to new areas of realism and experimentation, anime is in fact purposely trying to look more like anime (of the past). If anime will ever evolve into something else remains to be seen. Squaresoft seems to be making headway with realism in CG movie production. Although the characters don't look good enough to pass off as life like, they are getting close. When that point comes, and it becomes commercially viable it may give birth to a new type of animation. The way things look today is that anime has forged a genre for itself and seems to be sticking to the tradition of looking like anime instead of evolving itself.

So where is CG anime headed? It looks like it's going to come full circle, and in the future anime may look a lot more like anime of the past.