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Comment by YurgenJurgensen | Hacker News Reader

That something is acetate.

This is why I think Akira can't be surpassed. Not just because it was done on acetate, but because of the level of skill and consideration required to animate that way. You can't just undo that brush stroke onto the cel and try something else.

As much as technology has democratized the field, I think it also lowers the heights. I desperately hope I'm wrong and just old, but I haven't met someone who puts up something that they think is better. Maybe it's just because we're in the transitory phase - but digital animation has been around for decades at this point. Maybe it's Ikea versus handcrafting, and the shift is in the expected quality rather than the art elevating itself to meet priors.

Watch into the spider verse sometime if you want to see what modern tech can be when it’s fully unleashed, versus kept under budget.

I think the democratization means the heights won't be big-budget corporate things, they'll be on YouTube or Patreon.

Akira was a big budget corporate thing though. It's technical excellence came from having the budget to employ multiple highly skilled animation leads and hundreds of animators drawing hundreds of thousands of cells.

Conspicuously though Akira is a product of the manga industry and not the anime one. This is why it deviates from the norms in so many respects.

> You can't just undo that brush stroke onto the cel and try something else.

That's why you animate with pencil on paper first.

I think animation done in computers can be excellent, but is disadvantaged because computers make it easier to do thinks quick and cheap and the economics of animation incentivises taking that direction.

Redline is a rare example where I think it's done well.

> Redline is a rare example

Tekkonkinkreet

Akira is a cult classic and a pivotal point in anime - much more in the US than in Japan. If you don't know of a film surpassing it in skill and consideration in the thirty years since it was made it probably says more about your exposure to anime. Maybe it's just that Cyberpunk is less popular now and the big genres are of less interest to you.

The big genres of modern anime seem to predominantly be pandering to base weebs. Waifu shit meant to sell body pillows. Where is all the serious animation like Magnetic Rose at?

Eras that produce masterpieces are unsustainable.

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