Anime mania

There’s no doubt about it: Japanese animation is hot. Television shows, films, and videos featuring the anime style of animation are wildly popular. Japanese animation is like a comic book come to life, retaining all its power but in moving form. It has a very different style from traditional western animation, incorporating heavy shading, dramatic camera angles, and beautifully rendered special effects — especially the fantastic anime depictions of ocean waves, storms, smoke, and explosions. Easier to draw than its western counterpart, anime is more limited and simpler in its execution. In Japanese anime the characters move, but their movements are generally staccato, sharp, and dramatic — not free-flowing with lots of overlapping action, anticipation, and follow-through.