IS IT ANIME? The Last Unicorn

[SQ]

Well, I read through the topic posted, but this is what caught me off guard:

To expound on why we don't consider it anime, The Last Unicorn was produced and directed by Rankin-Bass Studios and the screenplay was written by Peter Beagle. These are all non-japanese people.

This is where Paizuri is wrong. Incredibly so.

Rankin-Bass Studios is an entirely Japanese studio. It was the studio that animated Nauticaa, as said in my first reference.

The screenplay was written by Peter Beagle, who, yes, is not Japanese.

But again I argue that the ART is japanese, and since I'm arguing for this to be called "anime" under the .org, this is strictly what I'm going by.

Japanese anime, as Japanese animation, as Japanese Drawing, which, down to its simplest terms, TLU is.

Now, someone mentioned anime style. That's just dumb.

Many things are in "anime style" now. Just because they are so, doesn't mean they're anime.
Megas XLR, Powerpuff Girls, Totally Spies!, Teen Titans, and My Life as a Teenage Robot are all in "anime style" yet they are clearly not anime.

Likewise, Aside from Streetside Special, all of the Final Fantasy game series, Vampire Hunter D(original), and Lain are not in "anime style" either, yet these clearly are anime.

So bringing up style was just ridiculous, in my opinion.

[Tsunami Jones]

Rankin-Bass Studios is an entirely Japanese studio. It was the studio that animated Nauticaa, as said in my first reference.

I'm going to dispute this. Rankin/Bass is entirely American. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankin-Bas ... ny_origins. In your first reference, it says that Topcraft animated it, not Rankin/Bass.

[Gemberkoekje]

They hired the studio Topcraft to do the animation.

While Topcraft had done several high quality animated features before this, (most notably The Hobbit), all of them had been for Rankin-Bass Productions and released only in the US market.

So if i read this right - topcraft (japanese) did the animations and RB did the productioning in the US - am i right?

[paizuri]

Your reasoning has quite a few contradictions here. I hate picking apart people's arguments line by line, but I want to use these separate parts to piece together my argument in the end, so bear with me here.

The Last Unicorn.

I know it's an anime. I don't think it's an anime. I know it's anime.

AbsoluteDestiny and I have argued over this subject multiple times.
The Last Unicorn is in that grey area.

If you know it's anime, then why do you say The Last Unicorn is in that grey area? The problem with classifying TLU is because it is a sparkling example of "the grey area". So how do we handle grey areas?

When it comes to grey areas, it's a case-by-case basis.
Nadia was animated completely in Korea. But it was directed and produced by a Japanese anime company.

Therefore, AD claims this as anime.

This is as good a precedent as any. If you're willing to accept that as proof of Nadia as an anime, then let's apply that reasoning to TLU.

The Last Unicorn was animated completely in Japan.
Although it never aired there, it was animated there, and since "Anime" is japanese animation, which is also Japanese Drawings, then, to me, The Last Unicorn is an anime.

But it was directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Ranking Jr. and produced by Rankin-Bass Productions. And no, I am not wrong in saying that they are not japanese.

The whole reason I am arguing this is because (1.) I truly believe it should be listed as anime, and (2.) I don't want to be DQ'ed from the VCA for having an only "Non-anime video" listed.

Here are my sources:
http://utd500.utdallas.edu/~hairston/luanimage.html

In 1983 the manga serial Nausicaa had been running for a year and a half in Animage, a Japanese monthly magazine devoted to animated movie features and tv programs in Japan. The publishers decided that Nausicaa was popular enough to make an animated feature based on the story in the manga with its creator, Hayao Miyazaki, as the director. They hired the studio Topcraft to do the animation. While Topcraft had done several high quality animated features before this, (most notably The Hobbit), all of them had been for Rankin-Bass Productions and released only in the US market. Their work was unknown in Japan itself. Animage wanted to show their readers that Topcraft was capable of doing a good job on the film version of Nausicaa, so in the September 1983 issue they ran a multi-page profile of the studio and showed off their previous project, The Last Unicorn. Ironically, The Last Unicorn has never to this day been released in Japan. My friend, Ryoko, found this article and was kind enough to scan in several of the images and pages as well as provide me with a translation of key parts of the article.

http://www.geocities.com/d-patanella/unicorn.html

The answer isn't as clear, due to recent developments in American animated features. A few years ago I would put The Last Unicorn in the anime category. The screenplay, while not written by a Japanese and not reflecting uniquely Japanese concerns, is mature enough to set it apart from most American child-oriented screenplays. When The Last Unicorn stood alone as the only example of its type in the West, the temptation to classify it as anime was very strong.

What do you guys think?

Should we base the declaration of anime by where the screenplay was made or where the actual cels were made?

Well, if you'd like to base your argument entirely on these two sources rather than stating how they support your argument, I will recap what I think they prove.

The first article is helpfully bolded to say that TLU was completely unknown to the japanese market. It is implying that while they did do the animation work for the movie, it was never intended for the japanese market. I'm not sure how this clarifies the grey area at all.

The second article only serves to support that there is considerable dispute as to what TLU should be considered as. But although you quoted the section where the author says that a few years ago, he would've considered TLU to be anime, when reading the paragraph as a whole, his tone conveys that he no longer thinks that it is.

In fact, reading the article further (and I recommend you all do as it is a well-written article), the author says:

Due in part to marketing and unfamiliarity with Japanese idioms, anime stands apart from Western animation in the eyes of many fans. Following the anime explosion Akira's release in the USA created, virtually every Japanese-animated production is lumped into the "Anime" category although, to be fair, some subdivisions within that category will have to be made in the next few years.

and

This was the atmosphere that led to The Last Unicorn's theatrical release in the USA. Once again, a superb voice cast was assembled. This time, the cast included Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, Christopher Lee, Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow. Music for the film was provided by the soft rock group America; the result was far more pleasant than the bland Top Ten hits of the group might suggest. Unlike the adaptation of Return of the King (where the Nazgul was given a ridiculous speaking voice and Tolkien's horror was subdued ), The Last Unicorn retained many truly frightening moments. The animation was often smoother, and the backgrounds were even more beautiful than in the Tolkien films.

Further complicating the matter of The Last Unicorn's placement is Peter Beagle himself, for he filled his screenplay with Yiddish allusions that were likely obscure to non-Jewish viewers. The most blatant example of this is Schmendrick's name, which in Yiddish refers to a good-natured loser. In itself, this represents an amazing transformation from traditional unicorn myths, for the Unicorn is often used in Christian allegory as a symbol of Christ; unfortunately such a textual analysis is perhaps irrelevant to a Web Page devoted to animated films.

The sharp contrast between the film's origins and script and the film's graphics appears to have confused many of the film's viewers. On the one hand are the characters' appearances; Amalthea has the lean willowy look of such anime females as Minako from Sailor Moon or Maytel from Galaxy Express 999. On the other hand is the richly ethnic screenplay. The dilemma is clear. Should we classify a film based on its look or based upon its screenplay?

and finally

Furthermore, a few American cartoons are heavily indebted to the "anime" style of filmmaking, meaning that the onscreen violence is more graphic and that the characters (particularly the female ones)lean closer to an Asian style of draftsmanship. Blurring the lines even further is the fact that the Dirty Pair, who never existed as manga creations in Japan, appear periodically in American comic books drawn by Adam Warren and that a manga version of Star Wars is being heavily hyped to American consumers. This cross-pollination also includes Japanese-drawn editions of X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman comic books. From the vantage point of mid-1998, it appears that the "anime look" no longer qualifies a film as anime, and even the source material may eventually become irrelevant.

The Last Unicorn probably now belongs in the American feature film category which, given the hybrid nature of the movie, could change at any time.

So, grey area still confirmed, with this author leaning on the non-anime side.

And to address these later points...

Well, I read through the topic posted, but this is what caught me off guard:

To expound on why we don't consider it anime, The Last Unicorn was produced and directed by Rankin-Bass Studios and the screenplay was written by Peter Beagle. These are all non-japanese people.

This is where Paizuri is wrong. Incredibly so.

Rankin-Bass Studios is an entirely Japanese studio. It was the studio that animated Nauticaa, as said in my first reference.

The screenplay was written by Peter Beagle, who, yes, is not Japanese.

Even if you'd never heard of them before, a little online research will turn up that Rankin-Bass Studios is not japanese either (see TJ's wikipedia entry even).

But again I argue that the ART is japanese, and since I'm arguing for this to be called "anime" under the .org, this is strictly what I'm going by.

No, as you stated in the beginning, we go on a case-by-case basis when it comes to grey area animations. And as you have so amply shown, this is very much a grey area.

Japanese anime, as Japanese animation, as Japanese Drawing, which, down to its simplest terms, TLU is.

I think you are oversimplifying what anime is, and only when it suits your particular views. For a rule of thumb, it's easy to say that japanese animation is anime and it probably works most of the time. However, for those exceptions, like TLU, you have to look a little deeper. I contend that anime is more than simple "japanese animation". That is, however, the short answer.

The long answer is that cultural origins play a part in the determination of anime. You agree that Nadia is anime, even if it is, by your definition "Korean Drawing". Why should it be considered anime then? Perhaps because it was originated by Japanese people, for Japanese people? They may not have finished the entire product from beginning to end by themselves, but for the most part, it was entirely planned to be a product for the japanese people.

If anime is just "japanese drawings", then does anything I, being 1/4 japanese, draw constitute as anime? No, it wouldn't even be considered animation since me drawing on a piece of paper would be a static image and hence, not animated. But semantics aside, I have no japanese cultural identity to speak of. I was born in the United States, so I would argue that I could not create an anime unless I went to Japan and decided to work in an anime studio there and put something out for the japanese public.

Or how about Kia Asamiya, a well-known mangaka, had a run as the artist on at least one of the Batman books here. Does that make Batman manga? No. He drew it for the North American public here for DC comics.

Furthermore, as was stated in the second article you cited, TLU had many themes and references that were very much non-japanese. It was never planned for a japanese audience, the japanese studio that handled the animation merely did the legwork in helping get a product out for consumption by western audiences.

Currently, I don't consider TLU to be anime. I believe that there is room for argument, but your current argument isn't swaying my belief in the slightest.

[the Black Monarch]

I think it's a peculiar case of non-Japanese animation being made by Japanese people.

[cholinms]

I haven't actualy watched The Last Unicorn but, the first time I was told about it I was told it was Anime.

Going into a definition of anime based on where the film comes from or what it looks like doesn't make any sence to me. If you want to simplify the answer as far as you can, "Anime" literaly means animation. The Japanese adopted the English word for their own use. This is because there is no word for drawn pictures that move in there language. Going buy this definition you have to consider Snow White, Loony Toons, Osmosis Jones, Shrek, The Wuzzels, and many others as Anime. That definition is to broad based for a site like this.There have to be restictions on what can be accepted as Anime. Not everyone will agree with the rules but if the cannot be changed they have to be followed.

As for wheather or not The Last Unicorn is Anime or not I cann't say as I have yet to watch it.

I just thought I'd through in my thoughts on the arguments that I read here.

[Scintilla]

If you want to simplify the answer as far as you can, "Anime" literaly means animation. The Japanese adopted the English word for their own use.

If by "English" you mean "French"...

[Arigatomina]

So...the reason The Last Unicorn is not considered anime is because:

1: it was made by Japanese people for American viewers
2: the style was Japanese, but the target audience was not Japanese
3: it was made in Japan, but not for Japan
4: its original audio is in English so it was subtitled for foreigners (though this wasn't listed)

Then tell me why Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is considered anime when:

1: it was made by Japanese people with funding from Americans and for American viewers
2: the style was Japanese, but the target audience was American
3: it was made in Japan (maybe) but not for Japan
4: its original audio is in English and it was subtitled or 'dubbed' for foreigners (though this wasn't listed).

Now...VHD Bloodlust did have a prequel established in Japan for Japanese viewers. But we're not talking about the original, we're talking about the US-funded sequel, released with with an original English audio because its target audience speaks English.

Visuals alone, both look Japanese. Audio obviously doesn't count, so 'anime' doesn't need to be in Japanese. Both target US viewers (though Bloodlust did get released with subtitles for Japanese speakers - just like The Last Unicorn has been since then, American's aren't the only people who import 'foreign' films).

The only thing these two have different are the stories themselves. VHD is based off a Japanese story and TLU is based off an English story. But I'm confident we can find quite a few 'anime' that were based on English stories, and 'easternized' the same way VHD was 'westernized' to fit their target audiences.

I'm not particular about whether or not TLU be counted as anime, but if it isn't, neither is VHD's US-funded sequel.

[ibanix]

Having not seen TLU, and going only on the evidence presented here, I think paizuri has the more convincing arguement.

[Malificus]

I'm starting to wonder, does our definition of anime mean Japanimation, or merly the style in general? answer that and ytou will have the answer to your question.