Which One Is Better? Western Animation or Japanese Animation?

   As a student from Japanese Literature, I liked all things from Japan, like foods, beverages, culture and etc. Japanese anime is my favourite things from Japan because I grew up with them. I have watched all kinds of animes, from non popular animes to the popular ones. Animes had made me cry, cheer, and laugh because of their wonderful stories. Beside animes, I also watch western animated films like Minions, Toy Story, Wall-E and etc. Just like Japanese animes, western animated movies are also famous around the world. So I want to write about the comparison of western and japanese animation. What makes western and japanese animation unique in their own term will be explored in this blog

                                               1. History 
   The first animated films made in West is Peludopolis (1931), an Argentinian animated sound film which became the first of it's kind to be released. It is known as the first feature animated film but it gone missing so no one know where it is o they can watch the first animated film. 2 years later Walt Disney produced a first animation film which used the full three color Technicolor method, Flowers and Trees. Flower and Trees became the first film that became the basic pioneer of much more modern animated film . After the success of Flower and Trees, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out in 1937 and had becomed the most successful Disney's movie in the history. This mark the rise of Walt Disney company as the most known film company in the America.
                                       
     Now let's talk about the history of animation in Japan. During World War 3, cartoonists and filmmakers in Japan created animated films as as form of propaganda against United States. The first film who showed anti-american movement is Evil Mickey attacks Japan. This film showed that cartoon is used by the goverment not as an entertainment but as a tool to made the Japanese hate United States.

   After the World War 2 ended, Osamu Tezuka made the first known manga, Shintakarajima. Shintakarajima's release to the oublic hasn't made him famous. But later He became the first mangaka who was pronounced as "the God of Manga and Animes" when he created Astro Boy. In 1962, he established his own production company, Mushi Productions and began to produced the animated series of Astro Boy. Astro Boy is the first known anime that had achieved commercial success in America and other countries.

 After Osamu Tezuka, many of talented japanese fimmakers start to appeared and suprised people around the world because of their masterpieces. Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon and many more created the best animes ever exist in this world and had achieved many awards.

                                         
                                       2.Story
   Western animation and Japanese animation are quite different from the narrative perspective. Western animation prefer to use a simple story in the narrative. A kind,cheerful hero as the protagonist. Because of the particular reasons, the hero embarks on a quest to save the world or the one he or she loved. When the hero finally able to save the world, all the good characters lived happily ever after (so cliched right?)


  Japanese animation tend to take a different approach to the narrative. The heroes are not always people who are kind, cheerful and easy going. The protagonist can be an antihero or morally grey characters who don't mind to do terrible things in order to survive. Like the heroes in western animated movies, the hero in animes also embarks on a to save his their homeland from rampaging monsters or to find someone. In much more darker animes like Berserk, the protagonist embark on a quest to get revenge on those who do harm to him in the past. So from the story, Japanese animes have more stories to tell to the viewers and we as the viewers love them because of their unique stories.

     
                                               1. Visual Style 
          The visual style of western animation had been evolved for times to times. But what interested me is the visual style used in this decade. Everything from characters and objects in western animated movies are much more detailed with eye catching colors and realistic shapes. Fillmmakers in the US used advance equipment to create animated movies while Japanese tend to rarely used advance gadgets to create animes, resulting in producing animes with visual styles that are not good as the western does. They rarely used a very advance equipment because of they usually makes animes with much more lower budgets. Therefore in Japanese animes, character's movement or objects around it are not very good to look at and can be static. But in the terms of story and varieties of genre, Japanese animation had always been superior to the US.


   My opinon is that I think that I much prefer animes than Western Animation. I grew up with watching both of them but now I think that western filmmakers have lost touch to the animation. Western animation tend to have jokes that aren't even funny eventhough it was created to make us laugh in the first place. And they have nearly the same happily ever after cliched ending not like the japanese whom still showed us the tragic endings of most animes. Because of these reasons, I stopped watching western animation but still watched animes.

 So which one do you prefer? Western animation or Japanese? Write your comment about why you pick one of them to be your favourite?