Acting in Comedy Japanese Anime

Why Japanese Anime is so different from American and European ones?
I think the main reason is that it is deeply influenced by manga and its culture. 
In Japan, most of the TV anime are adapted from manga. Thus the acting'style is very special. There are lots of specific manga body language.  Especially in comedy anime, the body language are exaggerated and typical.


facial expressions:

shock:

sometimes has lightning background representing shock of characters. 
strong shading on face
wide opened mouth, strong Naso- labial folds. 
turn up the whites of eyes/eye socket full of balck shadow

turn up one's whites of eyes not only used in the situation when someone is extremely shock, but also used when someone is extremely angry or too awkward to say any word or painful.

Sometimes characters are so shock that they lose their color. In the same time lines become very scratchy。

Some Japanese TV drama which adapted from manga also has manga acting style：

 Impatient/ look down upon/ disagree

eyes without whites, just show half of the eye balls, looks like half circle.

 stared/froze/numb

When the character stare blankly, the eyes often turns to two small points without whites.

fear

When character feels afraid, there often has some lines between there eyes.

Panic

lines on forehead,  helical eyes

painful:

lines under eyes, rolling eyes

mock

large whites, small eyeballs

and so on....

Poses

Some specific poses are commonly used in animation:

apologize

when apologize, Japanese raise one palm in front of their chest, sometimes with the other hand on their head.

frustrated: 

This is a commonly used pose in manga and anime. When character feels depressed they often squat down and draw circle on the ground using their fingers.

 wait a minute：

the Relationship between Acting in Animation and Age of the Audience

The blog "The Younger the Audience, the More Obvious the Performance"  is interesting.

It says family animations are made for the child and in the same time it charms the adults.

In fact, I am not a big fan of "family animation". Though I really appreciate watching them, I like the cute characters and lovely stories. But usually I just watch them for fun.  It is hard for me to get deeply touched when watching them. For some how I fell distant from the characters.

Everything is straight forward in this kind of animation.  You will know what is going to happen next easily, the ending are always the same . The acting are so obvious, so exaggerated and dramatic. I think it makes the animation funny, but  hard to really deeply impress the adults for they seldom take it serious. Especially for the Asian people, for we seldom express our feeling directly and straight forward.

I love adults animation because it makes me think lot. The  acting in it always complicated, you may not able to tell what is the character  thinking or how does he/she feeling at some moments. They maybe hiding their emotions, that is what the adults usually do in normal daily life.

There also some other animations are mainly for teenagers, which occupying the largest market in  Japanese TV animation.

To tell the differences  more clearly, I find some examples.

First is the animation for kids.
under 7 years old

Zoey the Magician - Cute Animation by Sasapitt Rujirat

Here is an example for the kids who are under 7 years old.
In this kind of animation, acting don't have to be too exaggerated.  However they do not change so much and repeat a lot. Sometimes the movements has similar rhythm as the back ground music.
There are also few words in the animation. If they do, the characters would speak clearly and slowly so that kids could understand.





7 to 12 years old

Take My Little Pony> as an example.

This scene only last for few seconds but there are so many changes in actions and facial expressions.
Each facial expression is clear and exaggerated.
Just like kids, they laugh in this second but bust into crying in next moment.Kids at this age are changeable and impatient, they are so curious about everything that they are easily get distracted. Fast changing movements and facial expressions helps kids constantly put their attention on the animation while exaggerated facial expressions interest them and help them understand the story.

The poses are all very typical, sometimes characters has its own specific poses.
Also the anticipation always emphasized , before a character rush out, it could stay in the air when preparing.
while squashes and stretches can be very exaggerated.
The poses are specific and funny, changing fast between one to another.

around and above 14 years old
I find it is really difficult to define the animation for this range of people.
There are huge variety of animation for teenagers that it is not easy to tell what is common between them.
All in all, the acting are trend to be more complicated than those in the animation for younger kids.
The changes of poses are fewer. Movements has exaggeration but  trends to be more real.
Also the characters are more likely to be teens rather than kids and animals.

above 18 years old.

“Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade or simply Jin-Roh is a 1999 Japanese animated feature film directed by Hiroyuki Okiura. ”

“The film takes place in an alternate history in Japan during the 1950s where Germany has conquered Japan. Kazuki Fuse, a member of the Panzer Cops with the rank of Corporal, is sentenced for not following an order to kill a suicide bomber. Along the way, he meets Kei, a girl who initially claims to be the suicide bomber's sister and they develop a relationship. However, this relationship proves to be dangerous for the Kerberos Corps.”

clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_4m13MnNo

This is a animation which was made almost like a real action film. The acting in this film is very obscure. Most of the time, facial expressions are slight. Characters often looks serious  because it was at war. People hiding truth from each other.
 Also, the timing of acting is not as fast as those for young kids. It feels like the time in the movie passes as the same speed as the real time. Sometimes  every single details of  an action is described so as to accumulate emotion. There are huge amounts of tiny details in acting，while the movements are plain with few exaggeration .
Some times there are large amount of dialogue, includes a lot of information in them. But many words are useless. Audiences have to select which are useful by themselves. However sometimes there are no words at all. Everything is beyond words. Audiences has to own enough patience and life experiences so as to  aware the emotion of the characters tying to express.

Acting in Traditional Japanese Anime

Acting in Japanese anime is deeply influenced by manga and Japanese culture , which makes it special.

Here I'm going to talk about different kind of  specific acting in different kinds of anime.

First I'm going to talk about traditional anime.

The movie I'm going to analyse is 《Samurai X：Trust&Betrayal》
“This movie  is an OVA series that serves as a prequel to the Rurouni Kenshin anime television series."

It tells the story of a samurai called kenshin during the years of the Meiji Restorationwhile . He is a significant assassin well a kind people who wants to save more people in the time of misfortune. The story is about his relationship with a woman named Yukishiro Tomoe, whoes finance was killed by kenshin. Tomoe get close to kenshi so as to revenge.  However, they fell in love with each other. Tomoe died for protecting kenshin at last.

Traditional Japanese anime are similar as real life movie.  Not only the characters looks like real people (without exaggerated features), but also move real. 
Maybe influenced by the restrained and  implicit characteristics of  Asians, there are not so much exaggerated  dramatic actions in traditional Japanese anime The squash and stretch are not so apparent comparing with American and European animation .The characters's characteristics  and energy are not so easy to distinguish from one to the other by their features and poses.
Instead of acting with exaggerated movements, they likes to tell stories and express emotion with small details in normal life. 

There are no words in this scene. But we can  tell kenxin is preventing the wind from blowing Tomoe by lift his arm in front of her. This simple action and the smile on Tomoe's face shows their relationship.


Also, Japanese anime likes to create beautiful literary atmosphere in acting.
They likes to combine action of animals and scenery with acting .

This scene shows a transformation in Tomoe's feeling after she hears Kenshin says he will protect her. The weather is bad and  it is getting dark while there still has beautiful light if dusk.It represent Kenshin's kindness to her in this bad situation. Combined with the surprising look on Tomoe's face,  placid water surface is stirred by the bird, just like Tomoe's heart. She falls in love with Kenshin at  this moment.

While in this scene, even Tomoe just widely opens her eyes and sits still without answering her brother's question , we can also tell she is extremely sad and shocked after hearing the news that her fiance was killed. The color of dusk is as red as blood,  which  suits to the occasion.


Sometimes they express complicated feeling through tiny changes of characters' facial expressions.

closes  eyes a little bit

lifts head a little bit

closes eyes a little bit and turns down head

lifts head and opens eyes

                                                                    closes eyes
This shot last for about 12 seconds, which is a long time just for showing facial expressions. This tiny details shows Kenshin's thinking process.: He find out the war is over. He reminds of his past, the people he knows. At last he  makes his decision that it is the time he gives up his sword and stop killing people.                                        

some digression:

There are large amounts of frozen frames illustrating scenery in the movie. Each of them implicates the emotion of the characters at  that situation. The scenery  are so beautiful and full of poetry, which create specific atmosphere.