Was Hayao Miyazaki right?

[SzechuanSauce]

Most of us here would probably know that meme of Hayao Miyazaki, hunched over a table, cigarette in hand, proclaiming that "Anime was a mistake, it's nothing but trash"

Now, he never actually did say that, but he did say some other things that seemed just as cutting as proclaiming that the entire medium stinked, and that was that he felt it was much too self-referential. For Miyazaki, the biggest problem with anime was that it came from people with no real life experiences, no heart that they can put into the work.

For Miyazaki, many younger animators aren't putting themselves into the work as he feels that anime should, but are just constantly parroting things they see on television. They aren't based on anything real, anything that would provoke genuine emotion in a person, but are just a series of tropes that the otaku animator adores. They cannot stand to look at other people and can only retreat to the idealized image of anime and manga, and that is why, to him, "The industry is filled with nothing but otakus!"

He was, at that point, just speaking of the art of drawing, but I think this can be applied broadly to not just how characters are drawn, but how they act and so much more.

Do you guys agree with that? Not just in Japanese animation, but fiction in general? Does it seem as if fiction seems to be based more so on tropes rather than real experiences the creator had?

 

[FortePlus]

Yeah.



Media is filled with derivative slop and people who fervently defend such. Fundamental change needs to involve the consumer and unfortunately it's far from just otaku, or nerds in the west, fuelling the continued production of these things. As long as this continues to be misunderstood we will not see anything but continued decline.

The image above is taken from a video where Miyazaki met with some animators who wanted to make something "creepy". Miyazaki proceeded to cook them for making something with no intended use or defined purpose behind it. But the viewer whether through cable or subscription model will uncritically accept what is in front of them just as it was uncritically made by the artist.

 

[SeptimusMagisto]

Demanding that people have real life experiences is gatekeeping. Reading and watching fiction is most of my life experience.

 

[Reveen]

I mean, there's right in the sense of being accidentally right and being actually right. It depends as to what degree Miyazaki made his judgements based on actual artistic problems in the medium (as opposed to most works just being bad, which... yeah?) and to what degree his saltiness is just him embodying the Actual Art Degree from Disco Elysium.

Problem

Yeah, it's another copotype -- the worst one. The most savage and brutal. The Art Cop. Nothing is good enough for him. Everything is *shit*. You have to employ an armada of adjectives to depict and demean the mediocrity of the works and visual institutions around you. Really *flex* that critical muscle. Until the vocabulary for PUNISHING mediocrity becomes second nature. Here we go...

Solution

Trite, contrived, mediocre, milquetoast, amateurish, infantile, cliche-and-gonorrhea-ridden paean to conformism, eye-fucked me, affront to humanity, war crime, should *literally* be tried for war crimes, resolutely shit, lacking in imagination, uninformed reimagining of, limp-wristed, premature, ill-informed attempt at, talentless fuckfest, recidivistic shitpeddler, pedantic, listless, savagely boring, just one repulsive laugh after another.

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Obviously most anime sucks. But an important thing to consider that the above mentality generally doesn't is whether the suckage is a product of the artistry or lack thereof of the artists themselves and how much is due to the structural issues of how the industry functions (aka the manga industry basically being Mangaka Crusher 2000).

 

[Lookashiny]

I mean, there's right in the sense of being accidentally right and being actually right. It depends as to what degree Miyazaki made his judgements based on actual artistic problems in the medium (as opposed to most works just being bad, which... yeah?) and to what degree his saltiness is just him embodying the Actual Art Degree from Disco Elysium.



Obviously most anime sucks. But an important thing to consider that the above mentality generally doesn't is whether the suckage is a product of the artistry or lack thereof of the artists themselves and how much is due to the structural issues of how the industry functions (aka the manga industry basically being Mangaka Crusher 2000).

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Yeah, people who criticize the worst, most churned out anime have to take into consideration the fact that the manga and anime industry work on the back of over-worked, under-paid people with massive amounts of crunch time. Sure, it's not artistically inspiring, but what can be under those conditions?

 

[Ori]

I mean you could say pretty much the same about the bottom end dregs of virtually every entertainment industry it's just that usually the working conditions on the average indie film are sometimes a fair bit better. The Anime industry being still so focused on the nature of itself as 28 minute episodic made for TV formatting (ofc barring OVAs and movies but I'm going with the 'primary' industry) is probably responsible for a fair bit of the issues at hand. That being said there's still some good shows out there but it seems that they happen in spite of the industry if anything. The lack of a dedicated 'indie' scene for breakout talent also i think has it's issues as I would bet most of it is making content for internet platforms where they are lucky to get 50 views.
edit: after thinking about it a bit more I guess thats kinda what Manga's function is but again that tends to be almost an ouroboros of industries feeding into one another.

 

[beast_regards]

It is still an equivalent of the old man saying that "Back in my days..."

Actually, this is exactly what he is saying. And he is technically right. In his days, it was indeed different. It was a reflection of the time they lived in, and experiences they had.

However, with all its creative bankruptcy, cash grabs, and other issues, the current state of media is also a reflection of the present day and time.

It is just that no one could say to him "in our days, it sucks because everything sucks"

It would not only be very rude, it would probably violate a few company to media communication policies.

 

[RoseEmbolism]

Miyazaki had a point when it comes to creatives just repeating the same cliches over and over again, without context. I mean look at the whole "tossed into an otomei game" subgenre, which now just opens with the prince denouncing the villainess, because that's what every other LN or anime does, all in some paer-thin pseudo-Regency setting, because that's what every other pseudo-otomei game LN does. No worldbuilding, barely any character design, just this weird incestuous design work where writers just crib off of each other's work.

Seriously, its like someone hooked a chatbot up to TV Tropes.

 

[firefossil]

Recursion is endemic in modern entertainment media, due to studios disliking taking risks and fans getting old enough to recreate fannish things.

The thing with anime is that issue gets compounded by low budgets and crunch production schedules. The average MCU movie is still a good movie with high production values, even if your desire to see it after seeing two dozen similar movies is diminished. With anime it ends up just recycling the worst of bad fanfic trends like gamifying anything or harems everywhere, because without the resources they're limited to chasing popular but schlocky stuff and replicating it in the cheapest no effort ways possible.

Getting specifics is difficult but my understanding is that anime budgets in terms of dollars per minute of footage are generally close to an order of magnitude below western counterparts.

 

[Kadmus]

Also there's absolutely artistic and deep and incisive anime works out there, being made right now. They're not the most popular or successful, because 'good' art tends to be more challenging to engage with than the regular everyday popcorn entertainment of most 'commercial' art.

It's also hilarious that Miyazaki, the man whose entire catalogue is basically 'nature is good' repeated a million times or adaptations of books, thought he had any leg to stand on RE originality of thought.

But on a broader level, yeah, the anime industry probably is filled with nothing but otakus; people whose passion for the artform or the project outweighs all the devastating negatives of working in the industry. There's certainly no incentive - or even really ability - for most 'real' artists to do anime work. It's the same thing you see in games production.

 

[Kei]

"Anime was a mistake" was a troll meme taken from an interview in 2014, at which point Studio Ghibli was an international household name and Miyazaki had retired about three times. Miyazaki's actual critique of anime isn't incorrect insomuch as it comes from, to a degree, a place of privilege. He had gotten into animation and founded Studio Ghibli during a time when the Japanese economy was booming, when the industry could afford to take more risks, and when animators weren't barely managing to just scrape by even after working long hours. By the time Miyazaki had made his critiques, the industry had consolidated in such a way that the biggest business model in town was "follow-the-leader", a self-referential behemoth that does deserve criticism, except Miyazaki seems to have shifted the burden of responsibility onto the beleaguered footsoldiers in the industry rather than criticizing the industry itself.

Given Miyazaki's own left-leaning politics, I don't think Miyazaki intended to place blame solely on industry grunts, and it's almost certain that he's aware of how broader market forces work. But he's also been known to be kind of a cranky old man who yells at clouds, so I'm not ruling out a strong line of "back in my day" sentiment either.

 

[Crimson Flight]

Miyazaki's greatest legacy will be people using his name to bait posts. An incredible achievement for a man who doesn't use the Internet.

 

[BossFight]

I honestly think we are living in a golden age if anime so no

 

[Local Birb]

I remember watching those documentaries, if you've grown up watching Ghibli movies this is a very very bittersweet ride.

Now he's not wrong, the majority of modern animes is bland industrial copy paste. This is true of pretty much anything made for mass consumption.
But he run his own studio, with hand-picked teams, he can afford to take all the time needed to produce quality works.
The people printing weekly episodes on razor thin budgets, constant overtime, pushy executives and low pay can't afford time.

On the otaku thing, I think this is very hit or miss, You might get someone like Anno, someone that will push forward because they have a vision they want realized. (For better or worse of course).
Or you might get someone raised on eroges, as Miyazaki put it "someone that can't look at people" that will end up making nothing but fan service with cardboard cut-outs for characters.
The real problem is not those damn youngsters, the problem is the entire industry being driven by greed.

Good stuff still get made, it just requires the planets to align.

 

[TranscientLurker]

Miyazaki is right that the anime industry has basically morphed into a creative ouroburos. Whatever you think of 'great anime' coming out today, its important to note that the sheer speed of eagerness to recycle whole genres and storylines, along with constant 'keep-it-safe-and-profitable' methods has reached a pace unmatched by any other time period in its history.

Of course, it should be noted that Miyazaki being disappointed is an old man thing, but aside the man's personal life, its hard to blame him. The outpouring of creative interest and power from the ascendant industry back in his time is gone; the modern anime industry has become a hollowed out shell with destroyed talent pipelines, with the majority of studios barely breaking even with each project - and no hope of systematic change over the horizon.

 

[aquinas]

Miyazaki is right. Market forces / otaku culture has rendered most new stuff complete pap. At least since the early 2010s it's backed away from the desperate pedophile demographic, but spell-circles and Isekai with completely interchangeable bands of color coded 'waifus' is not much better.

Got a pile of shows a while ago from a relative and my wife and I deleted literally 200 of them on the criteria "tits and five colors". It was a fun evening.

For every Redline there's a literal dozen truck-kuns.

 

[Parabola]

Hayao Miyazaki is a dinosaur and he's able to say the things that he does from a position of being able to make what he wants to make as opposed to being told what to make instead of doing what what the industry demands, but he's also not wrong. Anime-original works feel rarer nowadays, adaptations are all over the place, and most of them are incredibly trashy isekais.

Miyazaki had a point when it comes to creatives just repeating the same cliches over and over again, without context. I mean look at the whole "tossed into an otomei game" subgenre, which now just opens with the prince denouncing the villainess, because that's what every other LN or anime does, all in some paer-thin pseudo-Regency setting, because that's what every other pseudo-otomei game LN does. No worldbuilding, barely any character design, just this weird incestuous design work where writers just crib off of each other's work.

Seriously, its like someone hooked a chatbot up to TV Tropes.

Click to shrink...

It says a lot to me that even something like this concept was sufficiently different from the rest of isekai to spawn a sub-genre of its own. Isekai is generally so unimaginative and derivative that what sets them apart from one another is what you do with them, how you approach them, what the tone is, not what sort of insane nonsense you can get away with by making a whole-ass world with complete freedom (which you'd think would be a greater strength). Every time you watch or read one, you are spinning a roulette to see what you're going to get in terms of setting, and then a different roulette to see what is done with it (without twists, done in an edgy way, treated completely silly, etc).

You can't say that other genres in anime are that original nowadays either.

 

[beast_regards]

Various Ghibli movies - as well as other works with the philosophical messages - were made in the era of economic prosperity where the older generation (which Miyazaki is) tried to teach the younger the important messages about the past they forgot (anti-war messages) or the issues they were blind amid of all the progress (environmental messages, nature-good-thing).

Those were fine for the time. It resonated with people, and with economic growth and lot of extra money to put into artistic pursuits a lot more could be made.

However, as the time went on, we realised we were very much killing ourselves even without environmental breakdowns and wars, simply because of the soul grinding nature of the society where economic prosperity isn't guaranteed, and even absence of war doesn't prevent harmful societal issues that could ruin us. Or are actively ruining us.

This created a generation of new writers - otakus if you care - which were simply too depressed and only cared about escapism, as this world was and is joyless, and nothing seems to matter in the long run.

Corporate bigwigs, of course, didn't really care - but cared about profits above everything else and went for what was popular, and popular was some entertainment for the masses who sought a way to relax, and didn't want to be taught messages about perils of modern societies. They learned it already through 12-hours shifts, with shitty pay, and even shitter bosses, and no perspective for this ever changing.

All those anime are adaptation of the light novels which were all made with escapism in mind. Either the depressed author wants to escape the joyless life through fantasy. Or is desperate to produce something successful so they can escape it being a famous writer. Or both.

Miyazaki didn't understand the new times - he retired at the height of his career set for life - and didn't quite understand how everything goes to shit and the there isn't extra cash to put into artistic experiments anymore. Bigwigs want cheap shit which brings profts. And the audience want to forget for the while how horrible they feel. If they wanted to feel bad, they would watch the news, or their own life. But Hayao Miyazaki, man from different time, doesn't understand it.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Don't Japanese animators have to work like 70 hours a week to keep up with rent with how badly anime pays these days.

I feel like that may be important

 

[Kei]

Don't Japanese animators have to work like 70 hours a week to keep up with rent with how badly anime pays these days.

I feel like that may be important

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Animators are infamously underpaid, as their salary largely depends on how many frames they draw, and the pay-per-frame is staggeringly low; it's not something you can get into without really just loving the art. The Trash Taste podcast had an episode where they interviewed an anime animator; it's almost two hours long, but it's pretty illuminating.

 

[Alex]

A lot of the criticisms of modern anime and Manga feel like reflections of things said about comic books particularly super hero comics. They slowly morphed into this unwieldy bloated mess almost unable to tell a coherent story because the focus shifted from telling a story to appeasing comic book fans.

 

[Susano]

I think there are two different layers here: A generalized take of Miyazaki's criticism, and what he said specifically.

Generalized, yeah, the anime industry has become pretty repetitive. On the SV Discord, it has been joked or rather observed several times about Isekai, that you have one grand formula and you are allowed one (1) change you can make to make your work "distinct", but you have to follow the formula in everything else. That to me seems more than just chasing trends; that seems almost pathological to me.

That is certainly something that can be criticized. But even then of course, as has been noted in this thread, Miyazaki is in no real position to make that criticism, because he back then had the freedom to do it differently. He had a privileged position, used it, and now rails against people who simply do not have that privilege anymore. It's kinda self-serving, and kinda very boomer.

But what is more, I think his criticism goes way too far. It basically says, normatively, that fiction has to be this and that, that there can or should be no other kind of fiction, that there is just one single purpose, and people like him are the gatekeepers of that purpose. Which is bullshit. Not all fiction has to be moralizing/educating, and there is nothing wrong with escapism or "otaku tropes" per se. Yes, you can just write a story so people have fun with it, how scandalous!

It is just absolutely elitist and entitled to tell people they have badwrongfun, as it is called in the RPG community.

 

[Gourd]

Given Miyazaki's own left-leaning politics,

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I need to watch... okay, I maybe should... alright I really don't want to... watch The Wind Rises sometime, because that film sounds wild (in a bad way) in terms of its politics or lack thereof as a film from every description I've heard about it. And the fact that Hideaki Anno plays the main character which is a deeply... what. decision.

 

[Vyslanté]

I've found it to be quite boring, though it's very funny in how terribly they pronounce French

 

[Alex]

A lot of the criticisms of modern anime and Manga feel like reflections of things said about comic books particularly super hero comics. They slowly morphed into this unwieldy bloated mess almost unable to tell a coherent story because the focus shifted from telling a story to appeasing comic book fans.

Click to shrink...

To continue this, the turning point for comics was distribution, comics going from being a thing you could buy in grocery stores, gas stations and corner shops to dedicated Comic book stores. This changed the main clientele from children to young adults and adults with much more disposable income leading to a lot more comic and nerd secondary products like statues posters and action figures (much more expensive and detailed then the fairly disposable stuff made for kids). This inevitably led to the stories in the comics themselves to become more branching to encourage people got every related issue and more reliant on continuity to reward long time readers for their knowledge. This was one of the big reasons for the crash in the 90s, as the big two had pandered more and more and more to an ever shrinking niche of the market and when that was tapped out (mostly due to the speculation bubble popping) they struggled to stay afloat.
Anime and Manga has always been more connected with the average audience with anime playing on TV and Manga being a far cheaper and more available medium than comics but it still suffers from the same problem of companies being hyper focused on appealing to the small demo of obsessive nerds with lots of disposable income. This leads to a lot of copy pasting what has sold well before and pivoting stories to be appealing for those people with lots of stories of aimless men in their 20s becoming super powerful heroes or villains through a twist of fate.