Anime 3DCG: From Denial To Acceptance, What’s The Public Sentiment?
3DCG in anime has forged ahead alongside the progresses of computer graphics. Still, harsh criticism often seems to meet it within the vocal anime community. The nightmare fuel that Ex-Arm (2021) recently provided has reactivated a selection bias, one that Berserk (2016) had breached open in the past decade. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, dance sequences in recent Love Live! productions have elicited favorable reactions from Sunrise’s core idol-hell audience — at the same time, the franchise has a media mix using 3D choreographies in the main gameplay loop of ALL STARS. It may as well be that the lustrous polish valued in modern gaming has opened people’s eyes toward the appeal of CGI, showcasing the technology’s evolution in an artistic way.
We will first use several emotional notions — denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance — from the stages of grief model, to define a few stances on 3DCG in anime. We shall then pursue by trying to lay out a quick landscape on 3DCG in Japanese animation, establishing a spectrum of uses to characterize some of the most popular anime using the technology. This spectrum may include categories like the seamless integration of 3D assets, the use of motion capture, or even the use of a render engine itself for the majority of the production.
Negativity. Denial will help us put a word on how the anime community mostly values its hand-drawn legacy, perhaps in indirect confrontation with the state of Western animation, where hand-drawn animation is becoming a lost art. This denial may also be because the history of anime 3DCG has been unsufficiently written or talked about. And it might also be because the barrier to entry is high, and one needs to have some degree of expertise or knowledge to make educated guesses on 3DCG — which I won’t claim to possess. Such a blind spot would, however, deserve to be cast some light on, and this article is merely scratching the surface.
Anger, the hostility born from frustration, whose cause lies in the selection bias previously mentioned; especially in the age of social media, structurally favoring the diffusion of negativity. This vague anger, taken into account on major anime productions like MAPPA’s Chainsaw Man by director Ryu Nakayama, might also be a defense mechanism for the people aware of the industry’s harsh working conditions. Especially since the why 3D animation is dominating 2D, hand-drawn animation in the West, is notably because of the intense labor costs involved in the act of producing both TV series and feature films.
Positivity. Bargaining is the pragmatic side of things, and is mostly seen in productions and positive receptions thereof, where a form of compromise is found between the various uses of CGI (for example in the integration of assets, for a quick shift in camera perspective, the animation of a money shot sequence, visual effects, complex or re-used backgrounds…) and the inheritance of the anime production model, as set in motion by Mushi Production since Astro Boy (1963), characterizing the animanga notion with manga for the default adapted source material. In fact, one might argue the adoption of CGI elements is in the spirit of Osamu Tezuka’s spirit for anime production, as many cost-effective production processes have remained at the core of TV anime since.
Acceptance is both a result of this gradual bargaining in modern anime production, and that of the global evolution of CGI in other cultural media, like gaming or cinema movies. But it might also come from elsewhere, from an altogether benevolent philosophy toward culture and art alike, that of seeking the best in all things. At the very least, the reception of shows like Beastars (2019–2021), having been nominated 3 times at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2022, or Houseki no Kuni (2017) for “Best CGI” of the Crunchyroll Anime Awards 2018, are factually proving there is acceptance for 3DCG done well in the anime artform. This positive reception isn’t only from overseas viewers and jury members, though. Houseki no Kuni indeed earned the VFX-Japan Awards 2018 prize “Best Award” for the Television Anime CG Category — indicating peer recognition from Japanese CGI industry insiders. We should perhaps mention that the staff on both Houseki no Kuni and Beastars seasons 1 and 2 may have been the same, since the Orange studio is credited, a studio working on CGI since 2004, then as a subcontracting structure. So the acceptance comes with expertise.
After drafting in broad strokes some of the emotional responses, and what might be causing, influencing or amplifying them in some shape or form, we should start by pointing out what CGI elements may be commonly found in anime, as well as why they might be desirable for artistic reasons. This will help us establish a spectrum, that might have further use for future criticism. To give more historical depth to this 3DCG anime landscape part of the article, I will be adopting a chronological order, so as to better reflect how evolutive — or as I’d beg to differ, anachronic — 3DCG’s quality may get.
“[Appleseed] revolutionize[s] the animation business”
Appleseed (2004), a movie that aired on April 17th, 2004, is a very important landmark in the history of modern anime. Ghibli co-founder and president, Toshio Suzuki, even stated it “would revolutionize the animation business”. According to Mark Schilling in The Japan Times, concerning its production costs, it was an “innovative use of out-of-the-box animation software to create Hollywood-style effects at a tiny fraction of Hollywood budgets.” Directed by the great Shinji Aramaki, the movie helped to establish Digital Frontier as a Japanese CG cinematographic powerhouse when it came to its original releases — 10 years after it “started producing CG works in 1994 as a new section of TYO Image Enterprise”. This production was harsh as it took nearly a year to produce.
Triva of its production apart, let’s take a look at the CGI elements that make up Appleseed’s greatness. First off, the entire movie was produced in full CGI, which already tells a lot in terms of the processing power required to render it all, especially with the microprocessors of the time. Full CGI is also found in a future Digital Frontier movie, Gantz:O (2016); and where Appleseed might have staggered, Gantz:O is a much riper fruit. As to why full CGI may artistically find value, it is because it conditions the immersion, the character designs, props and acting, the sets, the wider possibilities for camera movement… Beyond art, from a business standpoint, since full CGI requires much more involvement to modelize and texture assets in pre-production, to animate in production, and to light, render and correct in post-production… Such a factor plays in the barriers to entry to produce such an animated production. Telling us a lot about how dedicated the filmmaking staff, and how trustful the investors or the production committee members are.
Toon-shading, also called cel-shading, is also used in the Appleseed movie. It’s a technique whose most popular example from a Japanese production might be on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002). Cel-shading, the name reminding us of earlier animation production techniques, is “a type of non-photorealistic rendering designed to make [3D] computer graphics appear to be flat by using less shading color[s] instead of a shade gradient or tints and shades”, “often used to mimic the style of a comic book or cartoon and/or give the render a characteristic paper-like texture”. This is a lighting that seeks purpose, and is eminently artistic. However, this plays into the denial and bargaining stances on anime 3DCG, since there is a willingness to go back to the past of anime, with cels. It fundamentally rejects some of the possibilities of 3DCG, namely photorealism, in favor of the anime legacy alongside its suspension of disbelief.
“Producer Fumihiro Sori’s vividly realized future world and hypercharged battle scenes […] outclassed the average arcade game, […] the average live-action pic”
Motion capture, “recording actions of human actors and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation”, was used in Appleseed’s production. According to CGWORLD (a monthly Japanese magazine on computer graphics founded in 1998), issue 90, published on February 25th, 2006, “[Digital Frontier] is equipped with motion capture studio called “OPAKIS” in Odaiba, Tokyo”. This may have played into why the reception of the action was so positive, with Mark Schilling commenting on “producer Fumihiro Sori’s vividly realized future world and hypercharged battle scenes that outclassed the average arcade game, not to mention the average live-action pic”. Motion capture was also used in the direction of Ex-Arm, which can be seen in the particularity of the character acting. Probably because it was primarily a live-action director handling this anime production — the same reason the anime was a failure, but one from which to learn.
Texturing and shading are tied together as concepts, and Appleseed made great use of both to depict metallic surfaces on its mechanical models. It comes at no surprise then that Shinji Aramaki, the director, had nigh 20 years of experience as a mechanical designer, quoting inspirations such as “Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam and Star Wars”. In its spiritual inheritance, Houseki no Kuni (2017) also potentfully incorporated texturing and shading to its character designs, as detailed in this amazing infographic with data provided by CGWORLD.jp. It describes visually the evolution of the lighting patterns as well as the glossiness, mentioning reflection, refraction and highlights. Even the softwares, namely render engines V-Ray and Pencil+, are told about. The mastery over shading is also found in Orange’s subsequent Beastars, for example in a dark scene where a blue outline of the characters helps to distinguish them, in an immervise storytelling. And the character design’s emphasis on shadows that draw the fur further proves the studio’s delightful character design and modelling.
Full CGI is very interesting in its own right, however most of anime actually presents hybridization when it comes to handling 3D, merging it in unique ways with 2D. This is for example seen in Ghibli, though connoisseurs shall have to mind this studio as a rather conservative existence in the anime world. We all remember Hayao Miyazaki’s famous quote, “an insult to life itself”, referring to a brief AI animation “demo of a grotesque zombie-esque creature” back in 2016 — whereas the concept itself triggers my AI neophilia. And yet… Qyrese Anderson, in an article titled “Studio Ghibli Announces First CGI Film, ‘Aya and the Witch’”, on June 19th, 2020, wrote “What separates Aya from the rest, of course, is that it’s a fully CGI film — the first in the studio’s history. Studio Ghibli has been lauded as one of the last surviving crusaders of theatrical 2D animation, but it seems that even they can’t deny the benefits that come with computers. Their foray into the new medium has already sparked debate amongst animation fans.” Full CGI was only announced in 2020, Castle in the Sky released in 1986, so it took the studio at least 3 decades of resistance.
Hybridization as the process of including CGI elements in Ghibli movies is historically documented by film researcher Rayna Denison in Ghibli Studio: An Industrial History (2023). “According to the company’s own statements, experiments with CG animation began a little earlier than [on Princess Mononoke (1997)], during the production of Isao Takahata’s 1994 film, Pom Poko […]. Most importantly for the future of CG animation at Studio Ghibli, Pom Poko’s creation was also the frst time that Yoshinori Sugano was approached to help with the production. Sugano was in the CG animation department at Nippon Television (NTV) at that time.”, she writes until going into more detail.
“However, the inclusion of CG animation in Pom Poko was rather low key. In a move that paralleled Ghibli’s earlier uses of analogue special effects, for Pom Poko Takahata sought to incorporate CG animation seamlessly into his otherwise cel-animated feature film […]. As the cinema pamphlet for the film explains: “The computer that was used is called Indigo and is the machine that ILM (the special effects company founded by George Lucas) used for Jurassic Park. Additionally, Takahata said the most advanced and yet simplest thing, “I want the finish to be smooth as though the CG is invisible.” It was Sugano of NTV’s CG department who took charge of the work in practice, but it seems to have been very difficult.””
“This first instance of CG animation at Studio Ghibli was not extensive. After reportedly nearly a year’s work, it amounted to one scene and, additionally, the use of digital editing processes for Pom Poko. The CG-animated shot is of bookcases in a library where a group of tanuki have taken human form and are receiving a lecture […] It is a composite sequence in which cel-animated drawings were scanned into the backgrounds, forming the ceiling and floor of the panning shot, while computer-animated bookcases filled the foreground.”
Merely the integration of assets, justified by being labor-intensive. This can also add a touch of realism, or allow to artistically use texturing and shading to polish the render.
Deformation of models is a part of character acting that we still haven’t touched upon. This permits an exaggerated motion that doesn’t shock the viewership, striking people as going down the uncanny valley route, because it is respectful of the camera’s perspective — revealing great staging efforts. This is notably seen in Sublimation, a CG animation studio that notably handled Love Live!’s 3D. This studio has been established by Production I.G’s CG team, “entered into a capital and business alliance with Sunrise in 2018, and entered into a comprehensive business alliance with Netflix in 2019”. With such a background and alliances, and having worked on its own adaptation on Dragon’s Dogma (2020) and its original production on Shikizakura (2021), one can expect great things to come from Sublimation. At the very least, the Love Live! dancing uses this deformation at times, a proof of Sublimation’s mastery of its own artform, 3D animation.
Now, let’s talk about a few miscellaneous productions and studios in the 3DCG landscape. Sometimes, of course, 3DCG can fail. Berserk (2016) was a particularly severe case where I felt the animation was sometimes too jittery. Perhaps as some sort of post-mortem excuse, in a Web Anime Style column on January 17th, 2019, the director complained on the state of the industry: “Itagaki stated that when “animation breakdown” happens, it is usually not because of negligence from the production assistants or because the storyboards were finished too late, but because the smaller/mid-sized production company had lost out to a bigger company in the “war for animation directors.” In other words, the production has no choice but to leave bad animation as it is.”.
Watching CGI can be gorgeous, but it can also be atrocious, truly a mind-opening experience in an anime fan’s journey. I also felt difficulty going through SANZIGEN’s BanG Dream! season 2 as well as through the Roselia movies, perhaps because of the frame rate. The animation had just too much lag in it, not enough fluidity. Which is not something you feel in Appleseed where there is more fluidity. This might have been done willingly, though, to go according to the limited animation aesthetical sense proper to the anime legacy. This same slight lag may be the result of not using motion capture, since Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio: Ars Nova (2013) was also a TV series. Perhaps the tight production constraints associated with TV anime broadcast are to blame, since Appleseed was a movie with a year-long production time. And Deen’s Ao Oni movie in 2017 was something far more sinister…
“[Anime director Mitsuo] Iso did tell me to try it […], and I can’t afford to sleep on it anymore”
Next? What’s the foreseeable future for 3DCG animation in Japan like? With major players like studios Orange or Digital Frontier still active, one may expect great productions for the decade to end. And the working conditions of hand-drawn animation in Japan aren’t the best, so this might allow 3DCG to comparatively thrive some more. Which could hurt anime’s legacy, so it’s hard for me to want one or the other — as both a traditional artist with some experience on graphics tablet, and an aspiring 3D artist learning Blender. At the very least, people in the industry are starting to acknowledge the need to have some experience in 3D nowadays. In a Full Frontal interview, the legendary sakkan Toshiyuki Inoue mentioned Mitsuo Iso’s influences, where we learn about the director behind The Orbital Children. Toshiyuki Inoue says “I’ve repeatedly heard him say that he liked Yoshinobu Inano […] In the 70s and 80s, Inano was someone who did some very realistic animation. […] I think Iso may have acquired his own way of animating by trying to develop a “realistic movement” that was appropriate for Inano’s “realistic drawings.”” A footnote of this interview clarifies that “Yoshinobu Inano […] has since then moved on to 3DCG animation.” And in another interview with animator and sakkan Kenichi Yoshida, about the open-source 3D software Blender he tells that “Well, Iso did tell me to try it, but truth is once the production had started, I couldn’t find any spare time to do so… I ended up doing everything on paper because it was the fastest way to go. It was just too hard to pick it up halfway through. Despite all that, I think from now on it’s going to become increasingly important to master these animation tools, and I can’t afford to sleep on it anymore.”
Japanese-influenced animation is wider than just anime, and notably includes South-Korean animator minusT’s (prominently Touhou) animation on Blender, showcased through a decade of releasing videos on YouTube. The Miku Miku Dance community, formed around a Vocaloid software, is for example an inheritance from the doujin circle culture. Perhaps we can then see some legacy from the Bandai garage kit in the way some models are born taking parts from one another, or how you can homebrew your own productions with shared motions, sets, stages and models. Known for the Miku Append model, Tda is a modeler that worked for “the model of the Virtual YouTuber known as Kizuna AI”, so there is a form of professionalization found in some prominent members of the MMD community. French animators Benjamin Faure, and Cédric Hérole much before him, both started with 3D animation before joining the 2D anime industry. So 3DCG is also a way to democratize animation, able to bring in some fresh talent, from overseas too.
In the course of this article, we have seen together some of the emotional stances that the concept of 3DCG in anime can spawn. From it being a blind spot in the anime legacy, or a fairly recent addition to it that still hasn’t been very much talked about, we have gone on to mention the community’s outrage at productions like Berserk (2016) and Ex-Arm (2021), two adaptations that seem to have ruined perfectly fine manga works. Then, we have considered the pragmatism with which studios approach 3D as a technology, in Tezuka’s production model spirit — for a small independent studio, the assets done in pre-production may as well form a good basis for a game as derivated product to spawn an IP-owned media mix, as Ken Yoshida, president of Picona Creative Studio, explained. This way, the studio generates revenue elsewhere than from streaming or broadcast rights, which can help the staff better remunerate animators or other workers. And there is growing acceptance for well-produced 3DCG anime, as the prizes awarded to Orange’s productions Houseki no Kuni and Beastars tell us, an acceptance that was there with baffled audiences even in 2004 when Appleseed first came out. Throughout the scope of this article, we have also established a spectrum of artistic techniques in use in anime that employ 3DCG, like motion capture or the integration of assets, something used by Ghibli in as early as Pom Poko in 1994. We have cast some light on the history of 3DCG in anime, in its infancy and still in the making, as well as mentioned a constellation of popular productions and well-integrated companies, like Sublimation, spawning from Production I.G and tied to Sunrise and the streaming giant Netflix. And at last, I have also articulated how 3DCG might brighten the future of anime, bringing in fresh talent from other animation cultures inspired by Japan’s rich culture. It is with the hope of convincing you, the reader, of 3DCG’s qualities that I leave you, wishing that familiarizing audiences with the depth of techniques used and the actors of this undercurrent of Japanese animation might help to produce a fruitful result for the reception of 3D anime productions.
