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As the industry continues to embrace computer-generated work, some audiences struggle to accept the change.
By Calum Marsh
The filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, a founder of the animation house Studio Ghibli, is one of the last practitioners of hand-drawn animation. His new coming-of-age fantasy, “The Boy and the Heron,” has been praised for a style that seems like a relic from the past. The IndieWire critic David Ehrlich called it “among the most beautiful movies ever drawn,” a much-needed salve “after a decade of ‘Minions’”; it’s also a likely Oscar contender.
But while much of “The Boy and the Heron” was illustrated with pencil and paint on paper, the movie — like virtually every modern anime film — makes extensive use of computer animation, including digital compositing and visual effects. The classical, naturalistic style of the film does not call attention to such techniques, though they were a fundamental part of its design and production. They’re most evident in small flourishes: the vibrant flicker of a flame, the swirling flight of an arrow.
Atsushi Okui, director of animation photography on “The Boy and the Heron” and a longtime Studio Ghibli cinematographer, said in an interview that the studio regards C.G.I. as “a complementary tool in graphic production that puts hand-drawn 2-D animation as its principal axis.”
Many recent high-profile anime movies have embraced computer-generated work more blatantly, in some cases forgoing the 2-D style entirely. “The First Slam Dunk,” released in the United States in July, and “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” (2022) were animated in a style known as 3DCG anime, which combines the hard outlines and flat planes of traditional 2-D animation with 3-D models and movement. The result looks a bit like a video game. These are extreme cases of a shift that’s been occurring industrywide. In different ways and to varying degrees, all anime has been going digital.
The transition has been a box office success: “The First Slam Dunk” ($152 million and counting) and “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” ($86 million) have been incredibly lucrative for Toei Animation, and both are among the highest-grossing anime titles of all time.
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