Forum - View topicRealism in anime.
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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I just got done with first season of Heaven's Lost Property and as silly as it was it just happened to have a hang glider in it (more than one episode) that was more realistically rendered than any other anime that I had seen. (I happened to be a hang glider pilot -- my one other hobby.)
It wasn't totally realistic, of course. The artist obviously had a real model to draw from, but there is absolutely no reason for a huge takeoff ramp like they had in the last episode. The accidents were pretty realistic -- it is about what you get when you have someone untrained on a hang glider. The reason I mention this is I started wondering what place realism really has in anime? Flying is a often big thing in an anime yet is rarely depicted like it could happen in real life. Depictions of computers are a lot better than they used to be probably because most animators have a lot of experience on their own, but botched more often than not. Backgrounds are often very realistic -- school buildings in particular. But in the foreground where it matters, when have you seen something that stands out as unexpectedly realistic? I would be interested in examples. |
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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You mean not like this, right?
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Uh, yeah. You got it. 
Cooking is rarely realistic in anime. |
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Gon*Gon
 Posts: 679 |
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In my opinion....realism has no place in anime.
Anime exists for entertainment. It exists solely to entertain us. With anime, and animation as a whole, what happens is entirely up to the artist. That is...ANYTHING can happen since what exists and what doesn't is entirely up to the one with the pencil(and directors, etc. etc.). If you were given the ability to wish for anything you want...would you just wish for a sandwich? In most cases, things being unrealistic ends up making them much more entertaining. For example, look at the unrealistic absurdity of romantic comedies and harem animes. If it were realistic, every series will end up with a bunch of needless tearjerkers(realistically, most guys will only have 1 girl...) or endings like School Days. The result would be completely unmarketable and boring. And for more actiony series, imagine just how mind blowingly boring Dragonball, Gundam, or Strike Witches would be if they applied real world physics in their action scenes. The girls in Strike Witches will have to wear a lot more clothes. Goku would turn to mush just from firing his attacks and flying around. And humanoid mechas wouldn't even exist. Tons of things that makes a piece of fiction so entertaining would disappear if realism is applied to it. Even just visual effects, like the audible sharpness of swords being taken out relies on the lack of realism. tl;dr - 1)Realism is a HUGE waste of potentials for animations. If you want realism in your entertainment, go see something live-action. 2)It's nowhere near as creative and entertaining as fantastic unrealistic settings. |
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supercreep
 Posts: 526 |
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I like a great mix of both. A somewhat realistic plot but fantastical animation is what I really go for in anime, and when I first seriously started watching anime (post Toonami circa 2004) that's all I wanted to watch. Thankfully my tastes have since broadened.
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Haterater
 Posts: 1728 |
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Even live-action gets things wrong. Like explaining the internet or an actor "typing on the computer" or "playing video games." It doesn't look natural. Its small realism stuff like that that bothers me just a bit slightly when noticed. Things like DBZ that fits in that universe is understandable and no problem because they explain how things work. But tiny minor stuff like typing in many shows will always get overlooked. You also have shows that like to be flashy. Sacrificing realism if the explosions, moves, attacks, etc looks "cool." Only few might find these errors, but the audience won't mind or care as much. For greater realism stuff, as long as it explains well with the plot, I'm okay with it. The 50/50 idea is ideal, it just has to mix in well with the show. |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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This. Logic of the shown world, often mistaken with realism. In Dragon Ball bloodthirsty cosmic warriors fly, throw fireballs, resurrect each other using magical balls and that's normal. But when rules of usage of that super powerful magical artefact took a break and when one of the best warriors from no reason started to cry, instead of fight- that was unrealistic or maybe better-unfitting for DB world. I like the worlds when characters develop, instead of taking random actions, when rules can't be broken easily to solve the plot, when level of deux ex machina doesn't cross the line when I'm irritated Galaxy Express will fly through the space, but will stop for several hours longer only for special request of the real VIP that was accepted by owners. Lady Oscar will be dressed and behaved as a man, but even she can't fight for long term with society's rules. When world, characters and everything else is plausible by it's own merits it's perfectly OK. |
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Hypeathon
Posts: 1176 |
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It really about what the creative staff of an animated series or the creators of a manga or light novel that show is adapted from choose to exaggerate in terms of what they're referencing from and how so in order to to help tell and even show the type of story being presented. Like for example, you mentioned how cooking isn't usually realistic in anime, right? Well not many manga artists or writers or directors may not know a lot about culinary arts in general, but they may not want to tell or show the kind of story that goes so in-depth about cooking that they're aiming the show mainly to chefs or people that like to cook. Like another example, baseball. Big Windup seemed to go really in-depth about baseball as a means to tell a story from the perspective of a high school baseball team that just formed and the relationship between different positions of that team. Other shows that have any episode to do with baseball may not choose to go in-depth about it. There was an episode of Star Driver where the class in that show were breifly playing a game of baseball. But the story being shown and told then wasn't about the class and some students who were Takuto's enemies specifically learning how to play baseball. The enemy classmates were acting like hot shots to see how skilled Takuto really is so they could fight him in giant robot combat later. Another example is Reborn and Italian mafia gangs. I may no next to nothing about mafia gangs and hitman, but even I know babies in a mafia don't exist. But for a Shonen Jump story, the mafia element was just a means to tell a school life gag between an average joe kid and his hitman tutor forcing him to be awesome with a dash of pretty boy elements in it. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Realism need not apply in fiction at all, as by it's nature it's made up and does not have to follow "the rules". However, certain genres are different and it's generally expected that they stick a little closer to reality such as a romantic drama/comedy, or slice of life. However, in contrast I expect others to not be realistic as well such as fantasy or science fiction. Action, horror, and a few other genres fall somewhere more towards the middle ground and are harder to pinpoint.
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the Rancorous
 Posts: 2248 Location: Hunting the Dragon in Gransys |
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There should have been no sound whatsoever in the space battles of Star Wars!!! 
*serious switch flipped* I actually agree with your statement though; sometimes too much realism can make things boring and uninteresting, especially in sci-fi stuff. Epic space battles would be pretty dull if they followed the "real laws of space". As for fantasy, I don't see how realism has any place at all. I mean, it's fantasy, it's not even supposed to be our world and science really doesn't apply. Having said that, I just want things to make sense. I don't care if high school girls have fantastic powers and strength and are the only things that can hold back creatures that are destroying the world, I just wish that the powers that be would treat them as that important and not throw them into a real-time death match where they literally try and kill each other just so that they can give them a rank number. *cough*Freezing*cough* Or better yet, if one of them is heavily injured, they remember that the character is injured and not have them walk away fine and dandy a couple minutes later. *cough*Freezing*cough* Another small thing that I've noticed kind of bothers me deals with winged characters/creatures: Many times, the wings are not believably large enough to support the creature/character in flight at all (I'm looking at you Kurumu from Rosario+Vampire and flying pig from Valkyria Chronicles!) I think it was one of the Making-of specials from Lord of the Rings that got me noticing that one; they specifically point out that they took the wing-body mass proportions into account when designing the winged beasts that the Nine ride on. When it comes to action, I mostly don't give a damn. Black Lagoon, for instance, is completely over-the-top and physics-defying in its action, but that's part of what makes it awesome. The only times I really want realism is with war-stories and dramas. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Wow a lot of thoughtful answers here. Thanks everyone.
I would be careful with a blanket statement like this. Fiction can't go fully abstract the way painting can. You have to have some reality to give the fictional part some structure. Imagine playing tennis without a net. It wouldn't be much of a game. Also, if you had a mile-high net it wouldn't work very well either. Most of the comments above seem to speak to this -- there is an upper and lower limit to the realism that should appear in an anime or for that matter any work of fiction. What I was most curious about is when the realism is unexpected. Why would Fate/Zero have a cameo of Bill Clinton of all people in it? Why would Lucky Star need a faithful rendition of Kyoto station in it? I am looking for examples of things like that. |
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3013 |
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For humor, and to let people know the time period the series takes place? But I get what you were meaning with your first example with the hang glider. At the moment, the best example that comes to my mind is from Squid Girl season 2. Squid Girl (the character, not the show) has a whole host of squid related, and in some cases not squid related, special powers and unusual abilities. Most notable among them is her tentacle hair, which she has often used to lift people far larger than her into the air. I never gave any thought to the fact that she should have been falling over all the time when that happened due to the weight imbalance, because hey, it's a silly show about a squid girl. But then in an episode of season 2, we find out the bracelet thingies on Squid Girl's arms (I am unsure if she's just wearing them or if they are actually part of her body) actually let her adjust her weight (somehow), and that she normally keeps her weight set so that she's far far heavier than she appears. Squid Girl mentions how she wouldn't be able to lift such heavy objects all the time without it. The fact that a show with things like tentacle hair and weight altering bracelets would bother concerning itself with a concept like an object's center of gravity surprised me. |
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Kruszer
Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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You do realize that's what the rest of the paragraph after that sentence says more or less though, right? That I do expect is a bit of structure provided by the genre. So we'd agree there. Certain genres are more flexible than others in terms of realism though. However, personally sometimes I like it when a series does something I didn't expect it to do. Like add or switch genres, or changing the rules within the structure of the story. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Realism for the sake of having it and it hampers the show in some way is just terrible.
For example, if DBZ was nothing but rotoscoped martial artists, well, good for them, but then you lose all the crazy over the top fighting when it's limited to that kind of stuff. I really couldn't care if "it's just like real martial arts!" Especially when "real martial arts" don't involve energy beams and junk. Now.. a show like Cowboy Bebop rotoscoping some hand to hand fights since it's just normal people? Maybe.. but it's nothing I care too much over. Realism just tends to suck the fun out of things, like all the shiny new HD graphics video games have to have these days.[/i] |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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What's fun is taking something real and then giving it a slight unrealistic twist just to start things going. What is not fun is a guy having his arm blown off and then the next scene he has his arm back with no explanation of how it got there. Or if a guy cheats on his girlfriend and she doesn't get upset, even though there's nothing to suggest that cheating is normal in their society. You simply must have at least some realism in a story, otherwise it isn't a story and instead a collage of abstract images. So yeah, I refute your position completely. You need to go away and think of the consequences of what would happen if realism weren't a critically important aspect of the story. |
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