Forum - View topicWhy does the musical style of anime differ from cartoons?
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Centzon Totochtin
Posts: 3 |
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In anime background music is used as a means to enhance certain scenes in a show by providing some sort of support either emotional or it will help carry the flow of an action scene. However, in cartoons that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. And the majority of background music seem to have been reduced to sound effects or is very minimalist. Why is that? The extensive use of music is very successful in anime, but is largely ignored in cartoons except in the case of sing-a-longs. Is it out of laziness or is the story and the structure of most cartoons so different it wouldn’t really support the compositions of someone like Kenji Kawai or Susumu Hirasawa, instead it would feel out of place?
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John Casey
 Posts: 1853 Location: In My Angry Center |
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I guess you never watched Avatar The Last Airbender. Or Jackie Chan adventures. Or insanely patriotic cartoon G.I. Joe. Or Venture Bros.
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Centzon Totochtin
Posts: 3 |
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I have and while they're awesome those types of shows are in the minority. And the structure of those cartoons are relatively the same. |
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jsc315
 Posts: 925 |
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or how about any of the marvel or DC cartoons. Batman and Justice League had some of the best music ever in a animated series ever.
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naninanino
 Posts: 680 |
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What strikes me more than the use and quality of OSTs are the musical scenes in cartoons, especially cartoon movies. Or the lack of them in anime. In anime it's left mostly as background music or used in a more natural way, like the singing sequence in Whisper of the Heart or in idol anime.
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Imperialkat
 Posts: 227 |
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It depends on what you're comparing it to. The main adult comedies (Family Guy, Simpsons, South Park) don't really need full-song backgrounds outside of a few gags and transitional music. Action cartoons and your standard Cartoon Network/Disney Channel fare just needs some little instrumentals to be effective. Anime in general, I think, has more (or more serious) dramatic elements that would benefit from a more robust soundtracks. But there's not that much difference in music usage between the average anime and your standard superhero-style cartoon. Of course there are exceptions on either side. And most movies on both sides have great mood-enhancing music (I think due to increased use of dramatics).
Or maybe you're looking at the styles of music used? Maybe the orchestra-style BG music that is prevalent over here doesn't strike you as much as the compositions you might get from a Yoko Kanno? |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7988 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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There's a lot of examples to the contrary of music being used badly on both the domestic animation and anime sides though. I'd have to say that anime wins over domestic slightly though since there's more variety of musical genres and more talented composers.
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saint of m
 Posts: 4 |
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It also depends on the anime.
I can't remember the score to Vampire Hunter D so well, but's been over a year since I heard either Karas movie and that score that brings us into it is still fresh in my memory. |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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I remember Ren and Stimpy had classical music playing in the background. And other western cartoons still had background music though I can't seem to remember the melodies of many.
Perhaps anime uses music with a heavy hand, bashing you on the head and telling you what to feel at a certain moment. Sad moment? Play some sad piano music. Dramatic, stirring moment? Cue the strings. Build to som big action sequence? Smash those drums! I suppose western cartoons are more subtle or have less mood shifts so the music doesn't stand out as much. |
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Centzon Totochtin
Posts: 3 |
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Not necessarily. There's a lot of variety when it comes to certain scenes. It's not alway sad scene cue sad piano melody or action scene cue those drums. This is the song used for the action scene in Heroic Age http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5OgLEtJt-E But, yeah what you said about cartoons music being subtle goes back to when I said they often take a minimalistic approach. |
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SgtMustang
Posts: 158 |
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Granted I'm not up to date w/ most domestic animation(someone mentioned ventur bros tho and that is a great domestic cartoon w/ great music) but some anime series/movies have some of the best music of any domestic live action. FMA: B, Hellsing the original series, Cross Game, Evangelion(the series or rebuild movies), Touch(some excellent OP), Cowboy Bebop, Gungrave, FLCL.
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Hypeathon
Posts: 1176 |
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I'm honestly not interested in deciding which use of a musical score is ultimately better between Japanese and American animation in general. However from my understanding of how I see the use of music soundtracks applied in anime most of the time, it tends to be recycled a lot. It's not necessarily how in American animation where each episode needs its own series of tracks and what is ever heard in that episodes isn't applied the same way in most other episodes. With soundtracks in anime, it's kind of done the same way anime fans would take whatever tracks of their favorite show they downloaded and use it for their fandub project if they feel like doing that. A certain track that's used for a certain scene is used over and over again throughout a show for maybe the same reasons or slightly different reasons. I could be wrong, but that might be a cost-efficient thing to do as far as music in anime goes.
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Simply put, cartoons are throwaway entertainment for children here. It's very rare to see cartoons with actual music, as opposed to short 20-30 second melodies that accompany certain scenes. Even rarer if it's actually orchestrated and not some synthesized stuff. Effort isn't really something that gets put into American animation in any category, while there's anime out there with over 200 song tracks for their soundtrack; like Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters. Kind of interesting a card-game selling focused show has a lot more effort put into it's music than anything we've made. Music is pretty much an integral part of animation in Japan; they can sell many OSTs, OP/ED singles, and Image songs. The only non-movie OST you really see here is a compilation of pop-culture songs that are kind of not originally for the show. Or at best, something like the Powerpuff Girls soundtrack where they get random artists to sing somewhat related songs, but PPG is really the only one I can think of. Last edited by TitanXL on Fri Jun 03, 2011 2:51 am; edited 1 time in total |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Quantity over quality? 200 tracks for what? Are these worth listening on it's own?
Last edited by EireformContinent on Fri Jun 03, 2011 2:58 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Well, first off I must point out that anime are cartoons.
Assuming what you mean to say is "Why does the musical style differ from domestic/western cartoons", this would be my answer: It's not so much that it differs between those two as it is that it differs between low quality productions that don't really try to be a serious entertainment and storytelling medium and higher quality productions that do. If you're just throwing together some low rent production basically designed to distract small children and/or the stupid for a half hour there is hardly any reason to get fancy with the music. If however you are trying to do something more and want to try and create a real quality production with some real merit then obviously there is reason to utilize music more effectively. Unfortunately, especially with TV animation, we tend to see less of the latter group when it comes to western animation. That's the reason for the trend you're describing. Of course, it's far from a black and white line despite what certain Japanophile idiots will tell you. Western animation still produces plenty of high quality productions that do use music effectively (many of which have been mentioned already in this thread) and there are also plenty of anime productions that don't really bother with music too much as well. You're just less likely to be familiar with them as a fan outside of Japan. |
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