Sonic
- Atomic - Neumonic
Paper
presented at The Life Of Illusion: 2nd International Conference
on Animation, Japan Culture Centre, Sydney, 1995
INTRODUCTION
Perhaps
more than any other medium, filmic animation - the hysterical
unleashing of dynamic movement resulting from the wilful
animation of the inanimate - is precisely suited to visualizing
the invisible lines and fields of energy which exist in
our physical reality and beyond. And more so than the Western
animation with which we are familiar, Japanese animation
(forthwith nominated anime) is founded on a discursive metaphysical
visuality, combining animist beliefs with the medium's fantastic
flexibility. While these ideas are symbolically contained
in animation from Japan's immediate postwar period, 1
the visual tempo, orchestration and polyphony of post-'60s
anime expresses a high-keyed formal interplay between energy
and its depiction. Specifically, energy is manifested as
the monitoring, graphing and recording of the invisible.
Scenes abound where lightning bolts crackle across the screen,
breaking up space, objects and people. Very often, this
energy comes from a character or from an object recently
acquired by the character. Characters' psychological states
are similarly outlined by superimposed swirling lines and
imported optical backgrounds - visual devices transposed
from a long calligraphic legacy in manga. 2 But
while manga often used these devices to describe interiority,
anime exploits the dynamism of movement to directly and
physically affect the real world - to graphically thrust
upon us this collision between energy and its depiction.
These manifestations of invisible energy are demonstrated
by the tangible transformation of the atmospheric conditions
of a spatial environment - where, quite simply, a force
leaves the body, mind, psyche, soul, etc. and energizes
space.
With
greater rigour than Western animation, anime employs a concept
of linear energy where a causal 'line' of energy is contracted
from one point to the next in either dispersive wave form
or directed beam form. While Occidental thought will readily
exemplify this by analogoue systems like electricity (where
man tames nature through 'inventive containment', then allows
energy to territorially pass along a controlled line), Oriental
thought provides a more immediate and corporeal model: chi.
Chi is the energy that exists in anyone and anything. It
can be hidden, exposed, tapped, exercised, abused. From
the many martial arts through to disciplines like Tai Chi,
one channels this energy as a linear flow coursing through
the body. This type of transference of invisible chi occurs
in a range of energy manifestations in physical reality
- from the stature of one's standing body to the slice of
the samurai sword to the brush stroke of calligraphy. All
are marked embodiments of channelled energy. Each example
- the shape of the body, the slice of the sword, the calligraphic
character - is a visual mark which is held in place by the
latent dynamics of an invisible energy controlled by the
body.
Animation
is the privileged mode of what I call the apparently-visual
world. It shows and reminds us that the world we see around
us can be viewed as the markings and recordings of energy
fields, transmissions and events - from the concentric rings
tabulated to estimate a tree's age to the volcanic formations
evaluated to gauge major geological transformations. Once
one accepts that all matter is but momentarily held in place
by unseen energies and forces whose change alters its condition,
then the visuality of things is no more than a slight optical
algae: slippery, alive and essentially non-objective. What
we 'see' is a disconnected moment from a more expansive
and enveloping continuum of events. The animatic apparatus
- as a catalogue of machinic , technological and textual
effects born of filmic animation - is the prime means by
which we can perceive and comprehend the apparently-visual
of the medium's verisimilitudeness as the result of frequency
relationships in time and space. As I have postulated in
THE ANIMATION OF SOUND, 3 the production of cel
animation requires all sounds and images to be calculated
and engineered according to temporal and spatial ratios
of variance. Before any sense, meaning or effect can arise
from an animated sequence, time (speed, rate, duration)
and space (foreground, background, periphery) have to be
arranged, orchestrated and conducted. While this is deftly
conveyed through the acute timing and musical command of
the wartime and postwar work by the Disney and Warner Bros
studios, the medium's potential for further mobilizing and
radicalizing the animatic apparatus is not critically evident
until the boom of anime in the early 80s.
It
is in Japanese cel animation that the dynamic interaction
between gesture, event, sound and image reaches an apogee,
combining extreme mannerism with post-atomic contemplative
states. Consequently, organic energies (air, water, steam,
fire and so on) collide with and/or fuse immaterial energies-psychic,
cosmic, extra-terrestrial, spiritual, ectoplasmic. While
we can easily see, for example, bodies, sword cuts and brush
strokes around us, characters in the post-nuclear realm
portrayed in '80s Japanese sci-fi animation just as easily
sense espers 4 and feel psychic beams whose visual
markings (their existence, their presence) exist in an immaterial
domain.
Not
suprisingly, the sonic - that most invisible yet most palpable
energy - surfaces to govern the textuality of anime. Far
from having the soundtrack submerged by anime's imagery,
image is emersed in anime's soundtracks. This inversion
of audio-visual logic (where convention dictates that sound
subscribe to image) creates a neumonic effect, whereby sound
is both material and referent. 'Neumonic' effects are the
law court's hammer bang and radio's electronic whoops that
command our attention; theatre's off-stage rooster crow
and cinema's off-screen crickets that locate us within the
story's time frame. These are not simply 'sound effects'
which are interpreted at a base semantic level, but sonic
effects which buzz our aural consciousness and signal that
a sign is being signified. Our brief analysis of the following
scenes from '80s/'90s anime establishes some introductory
concepts of (a) how the materialization of energy is narratively
foregrounded in Japanese animation, and (b) how such audio-visualizations
textually evidence and neumonically signify the nature of
sound in our physical reality.
AKIRA
scene:
Tetsuo attempts to escape the hospital
The
character Tetsuo in AKIRA (1987, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo)
is a quintessential post-nuclear being - one born of conditions
which both redefine our physical reality and allow for the
re-invention of the human form. He symbolizes the newness
of such a being, and in his naivete and innocence confuses
his unique energy with adrenaline power, sending him to
a state of abusive excess. His power is conveyed by his
ability to exist beyond the putative constrictions of physical
existence: he transforms physically; he projects psychically;
he transports himself between spatial and temporal dimensions.
Tetsuo's anger often erupts in a series of shock waves,
hurling balls of energy which emanate from his being and
rupture his surrounding physical surfaces. When he is trapped
in the hospital corridor and is severely threatened, a psychic
ball of energy erupts and pushes out the architecture of
the corridor. Tetsuo's destructive bent is rendered by the
recordings of power he leaves upon his immediate environment.
Recall
that image of Tetsuo left standing in the hospital corridor,
centred by the negative spherical ball which breaks up the
walls, floor and roof of the corridor. Tetsuo has encoded
or recorded his anger energy onto and into the physical
surface of the corridor. This is exactly what happens in
the aforementioned examples of the sword and the brush.
We could break all these examples down thus:
| agent
|
instrument
|
energy-source
|
surface
|
mark
|
| samurai
|
sword
|
arm/torso
|
victim's
body |
slice
in the victim's flesh |
| artist
|
brush
|
arm/hand
|
paper
|
ink
on the paper |
| Tetsuo
|
mind
|
psychic
power |
hospital
corridor |
curved
indentations on walls, floor and ceiling |
This
model is nearly identical to the often-used characterization
of how sound works, where sound waves are visually described
as if air is water and the sound waves are like the concentric
rings which form when one throws a stone into a pond of
water. It is also analogous to the functioning of vinyl
recording and speaker design (based on these same principles
of expanding and contracting waves of energy) and can be
broken down schematically as follows:
| agent
|
instrument
|
energy-source
|
surface
|
mark
|
| thrower
|
stone
|
arm/hand
|
water
|
concentric
ripples |
| sound
|
2
objects |
collision
between 2 objects |
air
|
expansion/contraction
of air pressure |
| record
lathe |
diamond
cutter |
vibrations
from recording |
vinyl
|
spiral
groove |
| record/CD
|
speaker
|
vibrations
from recording |
vibrations
from recording |
inward
and outward movement of speaker cone |
AKIRA
scene:
SOL satellite sends laser beam to the stadium to destroy
Tetsuo
In
the process of defining his post-nuclear being, Tetsuo undergoes
the transition from dumb punk to psycho-techno Gargantuan.
Most of his scenes chart the upscale shift in degree from
the human former to the post-human latter. In the first
stadium confrontation between Tetsuo and Kanada (and then
between Tetsuo and the SOL satellite beam), the transition
is symbolized by a fight between the material and the immaterial.
This is represented respectively by visual displays of spherical
and linear recordings of energy. Tetsuo is a material being
battling the purity of a laser beam from Kanada's gun, an
immaterial line of energy which slices through all molecular
density. Typical of post-'80s Japanese sci-fi animation,
characters are defined by the nature, type and level of
their energy. All post-nuclear beings have strange powers;
the specificity and identity of their powers is the crux
of their scenarios.
Remembering
that in anime, these powers and forces energize the space
within which they occur, AKIRA positions all spaces and
environments to capture the recordings of energy waves and
lines. Atomic bomb blasts leave huge craters downtown; an
esper's piercing scream shatters glass buildings; psychic
energy causes subterranean chambers to rise and rupture
the overground; etc. At its most extreme, the architecture
of AKIRA is rendered not as solid form, but as a network
of recordable surfaces. Logically, the soundtrack of AKIRA
highlights how energy waves and lines perform in this manner
by exploring the various ways that sound can be temporally
split from image, for we most notice the effect of sound
when it does not obey the constricture of image. In Western
photo-cinematic action films, the big boom of a dynamite
explosion is always in sync with the visual ball of flame.
In AKIRA, the sound of destruction is asynchronous. As a
single percussive incident, it is mistimed to the visual
moment of destruction; as an aural passage, it is delayed
from the visual sequence of destruction.
The
SOL satellite showdown exemplifies both forms of asynchronism.
When Kanada tries to shoot Tetsuo with a laser gun, Tetsuo
hurls an energy ball toward him. As the veins build on his
forehead in a spread of humoral tributaries, so does the
concrete break up due to vein-like fault lines fanning out
as if feeling the shock waves of an earthquake. The synchronous
relation between the dynamic events (caused by agent, instrument,
energy-source and the mark on a surface - charted above)
are thus delayed, extended and established as a running
counterpoint to the visual action. Contrast this, for example,
to the archetypically Western climax in CARRIE (1976): she
twists her neck, eyes the door, the door instantaneously
slams shut on cue to a violin stab. In AKIRA, instead of
seeing and hearing one simultaneous explosion, we see and
hear a gradual build-up of energy, from its projection to
its eventual detonation. Following the breaking apart of
the concrete on which he stands, Kanada registers the loud
explosions around him; but he is then caught off-guard by
the silence that follows, as falling pieces of concrete
rain down on him. His reactions to the situation are as
out-of-sync as the elaborately orchestrated soundtrack.
When
the SOL satellite beam is first sent down to the stadium,
the audio-visual delays in the Kanada-Tetsuo fight are transformed
into a complete dislocation between sound and image. The
atmosphere becomes enveloped by a bright blue haze; a deadly
silence befalls the scene; a thin ray of light appears;
the gravity is altered as small pebbles slowly rise - and
then the soundtrack erupts in a series of explosions as
the ground is carved up by the beam, as if it is a gigantic
samurai sword slicing across the ground. 5 Then
here, in response to this audio-visual rupture, Tetsuo beams
himself up and past the threshold of the earth's atmosphere.
There in space - where no sound exists due to the absence
of atmosphere which could audibly register sound waves -
Tetsuo rips apart the SOL satellite. Visual explosions appear,
but the soundtrack is dead silent. The paradoxical quietness
of this audio-visual dislocation is generated by a dimensional
split, exporting us into a truly metaphysical realm wherein
we can ponder the operation of sound-image relationships
within such dimensional warps and shifts. On numerous occasions
in AKIRA, the most devastating destruction is depicted in
either total silence or with naught but a soft vocal tone
or subtle deep rumble. In these scenes, the energy is so
intense it appropriately appears to be beyond the recording
range of the soundtrack. In anime, when the sound is so
severely dislocated from its image, the apocalyptic 'big
bang' is nigh but will never be heard.
LAPUTA
scene:
Sheeta & Pazu clasp the levi stone and chant the 'charm
of ruin' to destroy the sky castle
The
balance of energies - how they lock into and against one
another - is a fragile system. While we may intellectually
appreciate the relations between microcosms and macrocosms,
anime is notable for its respect of the same. Every energy
source has its own threshold, its own location, its own
environment of manifestation. One slight touch and everything
is put out of balance. The apocalyptic finale in LAPUTA
(1986, directed by Hayao Miyazaki) pictures this well.
The monstrous, archaic construct of the floating sky castle
suggests an unworldly presence of power, due to the gravity-defying
spectacle of a solid rock castle floating in the air - an
environment which also contains its own gravitational force
governed by the central levi stone. When Sheeta and Pazu
speak the charm of ruin ('Balse!'), they dislodge the sky
castle's mystical power core, causing the whole energy system
of the massive hovering rock to collapse and uncover the
marvellous organic root system which drew life and sustenance
from the ground surrounding the levi stone.
Sheeta's
levi stone pendant is a miniature version of the sky castle's
huge levi stone. This stone not only allows bodies to levitate.
It also gravitationally binds bodies to it. As the sky castle
falls apart, the inner core of energy - a bright blue spherical
apparition - is revealed as the energy ball which attracts
all surface material of the island (stone, ground, tress,
roots, etc.). Just as the slight alteration of an underground
tectonic plate can effect a major earthquake, so does the
utterance of 'Balse!' cause the whole sky castle to collapse.
Each creates a sonic vibration that unsettles a previously
still surface - like the stone thrown in a pond creates
concentric ripples. The sky castle's destruction is a visual
rendering of the apocalyptic finality under which many pan-Pacific
islands exist: any island enjoys stasis and equilibrium
until sonic, tectonic and oceanic waves disturb it.
Characteristic
of Hayao Miyazaki's eco-sci-fi, 6 the levi stones
of LAPUTA are succinct visual symbols of macrocosmic eco-geological
energies which hold the earth in place: planetary gravity,
physical density, oceanic currents, and so on. The core
levi stone of LAPUTA is remarkably similar to the deathly
white orb which opens AKIRA. Each is a ball of energy that
disturbs and destroys. In AKIRA, the energy ball sends a
series of outward shock waves which raze the metropolis.
In LAPUTA, the energy ball inverts energy waves to create
a self-contained gravitational force for the floating island.
Both are invisible energies which determine the visual landscapes
of their environments; both exploit the animation medium's
capacity to render such energies visible and determine the
direction of their flow.
PATLABOR
scene:
fight between Ohta in a Shinohara and a renegade labor in
a city canal
PATLABOR
(1991, directed by Mamoru Oshi) features many scenes where
re-programmed renegade industrial robots ('labors') wreak
havoc by recklessly careering through Tokyo. In many respects,
this figure of the gigantic monster or robot trampling the
city underfoot fuses the gigantic spectral presences found
in yokai folklore (beings the size of mountains suddenly
materializing to destroy villages) with the mid-'50s to
mid-'70s Toho cycle of monster movies (Godzilla, Mothra,
Ghidra, Rodan, Gamera, etc.). Particularly, the stylized
Toho movies delight in destroying dioramas of Tokyo again
and again and again. The semiotic baggage of Godzilla is
too dense to detail here (nuclear radiation/mutation, urban
decimation, American imperialism, postwar traumatization,
etc.) suffice to say that Japanese postwar entertainment
embodies destructive principles and aesthetics, the legacy
of its own nuclear devastation. PATLABOR exhibits this base
impulse to re-imagine the destructive, wherein the city
- its landscape and architecture - is treated as the surface
across which an agent of destruction leaves its visible
mark. From helicopter view (uncannily recalling the telescopic
perspectives of World War II air-borne bombing raids), the
renegade labor has carved a line across the architectural
order of the city's town planning. Like the calligrapher's
ink on paper, the groove cut into the vinyl disc or the
film of aerial bombing, its path of destruction is clearly
recorded.
In
AKIRA, when Tetsuo turns the SOL satellite's laser beam
against the earth below, shafts of light pierce the clouds,
causing a rain of laser destruction to fall on Neo-Tokyo.
Typical of much post-nuclear apocalyptic anime, lines, rays
and beams of intense energy randomly fall across a metropolis,
causing chaos and destruction, not unlike the infamous black
rain of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite the Western ignorance
of the subtextual scarring which lines the underbelly of
popular Japanese imagery, anime remains remarkably attuned
to the effect its past has on its current psyche. Irony
is deeply folded into PATLABOR's contemporary image of the
city: the urban/domestic elements of police, citizens, robots
and criminals are the agents of energy control and abuse.
Rather than rays, beams or waves of light and sound carving
up the landscape, here it is people and machines that tear
the social fabric and architectural blueprint. As Ohta in
his Shinohara droid battles the malfunctioning labor, he
causes an equal amount of damage. Police and the criminal
element wage their war, but the power and energy of each
adversely affects the surrounding environment.
GIANT
ROBO
scene:
Dr. Franken Von Fogler short-circuits all Shimizu drives
causing the Notre Dame black-out
In
a sublime fusion of the Gothic with the apocalyptic, an
early scene from GIANT ROBO (1992, OVA series directed by
Yasuhiro Imagawa) opens with the huge church bells of Paris'
Notre Dame Cathedral clanging with the bodies of dead scientists:
the death knell of old science for the city of the future.
While these bells are not integral to the story of GIANT
ROBO, the image of the bell is highly relevant to notions
of sound.
The
spherical design of bells allows them to resonate harmonically-tuned
frequencies, so that sound waves created within the bell
generate a complex sonic event which rings the whole bell,
causing it to vibrate and send out a clear and rich tone
capable of carrying across great distances. In essence,
a bell is half-ball and half-megaphone: the dome of the
upper-half rings and resonates while the aperture of the
lower-half amplifies the ringing. When a bell resonates,
it becomes energized by the force brought to bear on it
and sends out a series of shock waves. The image of the
bell's spherical upper-half is thus remarkably similar in
both image and function to the sky castle's spherical lower-half
in LAPUTA and the erupting spherical upper-half of the nuclear
white orb in AKIRA.
Once
the bells of Notre Dame have sounded, an expanding set of
shock waves emanates from the central cathedral to eventually
surround Paris: as a negative energy field drains the city
of power, all lights are extinguished from the centre out
to create a black hole. The knolling bells ring across the
city and ominously signify the event of the energy drain;
the blackout silently and visually follows the pattern of
concentric circles which neumonically replicates a bell's
own spherical wave formation. Once again, the visual is
the recording of energy waves which rupture a material surface.
Actually, the blackout is a macro-circle of energy drain
that follows a micro-circle or internal circumference of
Dr. Shimizu's underground laboratory, which has risen to
the surface to create a circular island of black energy,
which then drains the surrounding area and later the globe.
As
in many horror and Gothic-inspired scenarios, the earth
covers the past, the dead and the forgotten. While Occidental
Gothic sets its scenes near a graveyard of buried dead bodies
who return to life to haunt the living, the 'Oriental Gothic'
of GIANT ROBO functions according to a pan-Pacific logic:
tectonic plates on the ocean floor are themselves markings
of the earth's life in a previous epoch, waiting to rise
up and destroy the present through a cataclysmic earthquake.
The earth is the past. Dr. Franken Von Fogle - presumed
dead and buried in the past - returns to haunt the prosperous
city running on the Shimizu drives he invented by literally
raising his underground laboratory to the surface to create
a black hole of oppression.
MY
NEIGHBOUR TOTORO
scene:
King Totoro, Satsuki and Mei summon the tree to grow from
the seedling patch
Just
as destruction can result from an epic drain of energy (prominently
figured in GIANT ROBO and in much post-apocalyptic scenarios
from the East and the West), creation can embody what would
normally be a destructive force. The energy utilized in
the advent of either force grows from its opposite. Most
examples discussed so far evidence ways in which a surface
is ruptured, scratched, engraved, distorted, encoded, etc.,
by an energized instrument whose vibrations change facets
and features of the surface, and thereby the surrounding
space. In MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1987, directed by Hayao Miyazaki),
a key scene reverses this.
When
King Totoro wills the tree to grow from the seedling patch,
the tree sprouts forth from the earth: the ground is an
energized surface which reacts to King Totoro's will and
hyper-accelerates the tree's growth. In keeping with Miyazaki's
perspective on the role eco-systems play in shaping our
environment, the living earth gives birth to a living tree.
This bi-polar model of energy flow - that which energizes
and that which is energized - can be discerned in the mirroring
of the underground root network by the overground branch
structure. Here instruments and surfaces are energized by
each other. The animated simulation of time-lapse photography
portrays the invisible time line of the tree's life-force,
thereby acknowledging that the moment of our perception
(the 'image' of the tree) is ultimately a mere intersection
in another continuum (the 'life' of the tree). As we have
uncovered thus far, the apparently-visual world around us
can be surmised as the recordings of past and dormant energy
fields. The expansive terrain of post-'60s anime also freely
inverts this metaphysical precept to project forward and
view the apparently-visual as ground for that which might
come to exist. Thus, the flat earth is a potential forest;
the still pond has subsumed the stone thrown into its depths;
a post-nuclear civilization is built upon the craters of
death caused by bombs of the past. In fact, these are the
key subtexts, commentaries and themes to which drive the
bulk of contemporary anime.
But
perhaps the most forceful demonstration of this relationship
between the latent/invisible/hidden energy of the ground
and the manifest/visible/exposed energy of the tree lies
in the haunting resemblance the sprouting form bears to
the infamous 'mushroom cloud' of atomic and nuclear bomb
blasts. Consequently, such an image can cast the tree as
violently rupturing the earth, or cast a bomb blast as being
part of a life-death cycle for a city. Each are exemplars
of the bi-polar energy flow that is - philosophically, at
least - accepted as the nature of life more by the East
then by us in the West. This scene in MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO
is poignant and elegiac, yet it does not shy away from the
power of metaphor it employs.
UROTSUKI
DOJI
scene:
The advent of Lord Chaos' reign and the Chojin in Akemi's
womb in Osaka Temple
The
sprawling UROTSUKI DOJI (1992, directed by Hideki Takayama,
the saga so far numbers nine episodes in two series, totalling
just under ten hours) features most of the metaphysical
and meta-textual aspects of Japanese animation discussed
above: a fusion of dimensions; a collapse of space; an implosion
of time; a collision of energies; an explosion of audio-visual
conventions; and so on. Also, the numerous apocalyptic closures
UROTSUKI DOJI clearly site an ongoing textual dialogue between
linear energy lines which carve and slash cities and spherical
explosions which engulf and digest complete atmospheres.
Working within the operative generic codes of Japanese erotic
horror animation, UROTSUKI DOJI is distinguished by two
co-joined sonic features which are pertinent to our discussion
of neumonic functions in anime.
The
first is the interpolation of on-screen dialogue with voice-over
thoughts. Logically, a confounding complex of narration
arises when a range of characters from different yet simultaneous
dimensions psychically communicate with each other in whichever
dimension they momentarily reside, as well as engage in
their own flashbacks, which occur in various dimensions
where further psychic communication is carried on between
dimensions. What is particularly noticeable in UROTSUKI
DOJI is how much plot and character development exist at
this level, giving rise to intriguing narrative implications
rarely explored in Western cinema. While the image track
maintains a fixed location for a set scene, the soundtrack
is fluid and multiple. Voice - inhabiting multiple locations
- is the vehicle by which the soundtrack registers dimensional
warps and demonstrates the neumonic role of the dialogue.
The
second sonic feature of UROTSUKI DOJI is the metaphorical
use of sonar and aural figures to shape both narrative and
soundtrack. In the film's climactic conclusion, the central
character - Amano Jyaku - engages in a dialogue with the
as-yet unborn Chojin (Overfiend), who has been transported
to the womb of Akemi and left to hibernate in the Osaka
Temple. Akemi is suspended in a non-space, hair floating
upward, as concentric rings of luminous sound waves emanate
from her womb, while maidens chant to keep her alive in
the Temple. The womb is a crucial symbol here, being the
sonar-tactile environment which shapes human experience
to a remarkably sophisticated level prior to 'birth'. Enveloped
in such a hyper-sonic domain, Chojin's voice transmits like
a telepathic heartbeat across the converging dimensions
resulting from Lord Chaos' destruction. At every level,
this scene resounds with the sonic. Energy - that essence
of the universe which is at the centre of UROTSUKI DOJI's
labyrinthine plot - is materially centred in the womb of
the unborn, and psychically projected via waves of sound.
Recall: the still water disturbed by the catapulted rock;
the earth by tectonic fractures; the metropolis by nuclear
detonations. Now, the womb - symbolically and neumonically
a universal drum of life in UROTSUKI DOJI - is disturbed
by the emergence of the Chojin whose birth causes parallel
dimensions to cataclysmically fold into each other.
Let
us compare this to an Occidental vision of the metropolis'
nuclear demise in the live action film FAIL SAFE (1960,
directed by Sidney Lumet). The final scene is a montage
of still photos of New York married to a continuous high-pitched
drone signifying the melted telecommunications between New
York and Moscow. Such a finality rarely occurs in Japanese
animation, as the soundtrack usually voices, announces or
predicts that which shall ensue. Put simply, worlds (including
Earth) often end, but music, sound effects and voice inevitably
continue past the image, indicating literally or symbolically
that life-forces still exist and energy still radiates.
The irony that FAIL SAFE surrenders under the light of this
comparison is that it attempts to end the world by de-animating
both image (as photograph) and soundtrack (as absence of
voice, music & sound effect) - which is the exact opposite
of the audio-visual fusions which drive much anime. Symbolically,
we could liken the cyclical, open-ended nature of Eastern
narrativity and its metaphysical dismissal of foreclosure
to the acoustic phenomenon of reverberation, wherein the
acoustic event always carries past its occurrences in both
time and space, and-most importantly-within a frame we can
audibly perceive. In terms of anime narratives, this means
that their story lines feverishly flow well past our Western
barriers of death, matter, and force.
AKIRA
scene:
opening title sequence
Somewhere
between the audio-visual fissures explored in the endings
of both UROTSUKI DOJI and FAIL SAFE is the opening title
sequence to AKIRA. A flash appears on the horizon's edge,
a huge ball of black energy grows and expands its circumference
in sheets of white fallout, gravitating silently toward
our location and engulfing the screen in silent white. FAIL
SAFE is mute and immobile, incapable of witnessing and evidencing
the very destruction which defines the purpose of its story.
UROTSUKI DOJI perversely images - excessively, repeatedly,
continually - all that FAIL SAFE cannot bring itself to
show. Rather than staging apocalyptic scenarios for spectacle,
AKIRA positions us to experience a nuclear blast-and to
live through it. Its white silence is a deathly visitation
in the act of narration: we witness, we die.
Yet,
sound-the life of the sonic, the energy of its waves-orients
this narration in profoundly mystical and life-affirming
ways. The white screen gives way to the standard aerial
cartographical perspective; but this time the city is reborn,
and the frail remnants of the central Tokyo are held by
thin bridges to the surrounding mainlands. The shimmering
red and orange, the sinuous bridges, the pulpy morph of
Tokyo's remains all evoke the image of a heart. And at its
dead centre: the monstrous gaping crater left after the
bomb drop which created Neo-Tokyo.
Accompanying
this black void is the truly earth-shattering sound of taiko
drums uniformly pulsing in huge, single, metronomic explosions.
Herein lies perhaps the major neumonic signifier that shapes
the fantastic, post-nuclear textuality of anime. The crater
we see is the still and dead recording of an energy event
(the bomb drop) which has left a physical impression of
its energy field (as in the afore mentioned example of Tetsuo's
rage in the hospital corridor). Remembering the concave
aspects of previously discussed examples of speaker design,
water displacement and bell tone, let us now note the structural
relationship between a drum skin and its resonating chamber.
Once struck, the drum skin is momentarily rendered concave,
then convex, then a series of fluctuating shapes between
the two, modulated by the proportionate shape-shifting of
the drum chamber. In line with the symbolic purpose of AKIRA's
political project, the pneumonic signification of the figure
of the crater can be summarized thus: just as the surface
of the drum skin is traumatized by the force brought to
bear on its surface, so too does a nation's landscape and
its inhabitants suffer an analogous psycho-geological scarring.
And just as explosions in Japanese animation are rendered
asynchronous, so does the present in AKIRA reverberate its
past.
The
figures of white screen + silence and black screen + sound
stand at diametrically opposed peripheries of animation's
audio-visual range, coupling visibility with deafness, and
audibility with blindness. They are the edges of the medium,
signposted to declare that all spatio-temporal events in
between can exist. It should be noted that all audio-visual
texts have the potential to articulate radical sound-image
configurations (as indeed does momentarily occur in Western
live action cinema), yet it is in anime that their conventional
fixity is liquefied as a vast reservoir of metaphysical
possibilities. Anime's audio-visualization of energized
spaces, surfaces, instruments and beings and their resultant
neumonic and symbolic effects posits ways in which the latent
can be manifested, the potential realized and - most importantly
- the sonic visualized and the visual 'auralized'.
Notes
1
Japan's assimilation of Western culture is arguably heightened
during the postwar American Occupation. Following America's
departure from Japan in 1952, the 60s is marked by refractions
and mutations of all Japan had assimilated, giving us their
peculiar re-invention of a technological future under an
Eastern logic. This period is as vital to the formation
of contemporary Japanese culture as America's postwar baby-boom
is to its own. It is generally regarded that the animation
industry in Japan blossoms with the formation of the independent
MUSHI STUDIO under the leadership of Osamu Tezuka in the
early 60s (culminating in the successful sale of Tetsuwan
Atom - ASTRO BOY - to NBC in America).
2
The acknowledged sensei of virtually all modern manga conventions
is Osamu Tezuka. Many stylistic traits of visualizing the
inner psychological states of a character were defined in
numerous of Tezuka's works between the mid-'60s and mid-'70s
like EULOGY TO KIROHITO, MW and BLACK JACK. See GLIMPSES
OF A FANTASTIC WORLD - my programme notes to the Osamu
Tezuka Retrospective in the 1995 Melbourne International
Film Festival catalogue.
3
An investigation of relationships between sound and image
as engineered in the process of animation is detailed in
my THE ANIMATION OF SOUND
in The Illusion Of Life, 1991.
4
Espers is a Japlish term for beings who have extra sensory
perception. Such characters - human, cyborg & robotic
- have been staples of anime since the early '80s.
5
It has taken a decade for Western photo-cinematic action
movies to even attempt this 'demetered' dramatic timing.
The explosions of INDEPENDENCE DAY, for example, may have
'plausible' perspectival shifts (the corridor of death down
Main Street USA has some slight delays which have been labouriously
storyboarded for redundant comprehension), but the orchestral
cues persist with moronic on-beat timing. Once again, 19th
Century musical conventions nullify the aural power of the
soundtrack. Western cinema is neurotic when it comes to
music cues - pathologically fearful that an audience won't
'feel' the 'mood' on cue. Anime is subsequently as difficult
for Speilberg fans to experience as free jazz is for country
& western fans.
6
See MAGIC,
MAYHEM MAELSTROMS - my programme notes to the Studio
Ghibli Retrospective in the 1997 Melbourne International
Film Festival catalogue.
