Ganime is a new corporate project to develop the features of selective animation to provide a more flexible category of anime. Ganime was created jointly by Toei Animation and the publisher Gentosha. The overall project is to promote auteurism in animation by encouraging creators to have the freedom to exercise their imagination instead of conforming to the predetermined norms of the anime industry. The Ganime project also intends to liberate the artists’ creativity through collaboration among painters, novelists, musicians and film directors.

“Ga” is written with a character meaning “painting,” in their usage it is not restricted to any particular method but could be oil painting, ink painting, wood block printing, photography or even clay models; “nime” is written with katakana as a shortened form of “anime.” As the project name indicates, Ganime stresses the value of the drawing by the artists, treating them as establishing the core to which words and music are integrated to create a new form of expression.

At time of writing, fourteen Ganime titles have been released since the project was launched at the end of May 2006. Each work exhibits a different drawing technique, visual style and represents various genres. The Ganime Project also aims to incorporate works that employ different materials besides drawn animation. Most works have adapted noted examples of classic and contemporary literature and music to enrich the narrative element.² Ganime tends to be character-based, slower in pace and rendered with less motion than usually found in anime. Ganime has been introduced to the public as “the art of slow animation.”³ The works are being released directly on DVDs without prior showing on television or in theatres. Ganime works vary in length; the shortest being seventeen minutes, and the longest forty minutes, while most are between twenty to thirty minutes.

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In the film industry, historically it seems to be a truism that women have not occupied major positions. Although they have participated in the profession, there has been a relatively small number of female producers, directors, and head writers for many years. A similarly small number of women have held positions of influence in the animation industry.

A variety of reasons might be suggested for the scarcity of women animators: these might include systemic discrimination, institutional bias, and the fact that traditional animation and its focus on violence and physicality appealed to very few women. The relative dearth of females in the industry notwithstanding, the status of women in animation in Canada is anything but discouraging. From a cultural and historic perspective, this discussion will focus upon Canadian female animators and their experiences and suggest that at least some of the pessimism regarding women’s contributions to animation may have been overstated. Through examination of the challenges faced by female animators as well as strategies discovered that sustain their work, it becomes apparent that there is clearly a reason to celebrate the efforts and progress of women in Canadian animation, past and present.

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Animation Readership/Authorship on the Internet

Introduction

Traditional platforms for animation, such as broadcast television or cinema, are rapidly becoming obsolete as a new type of spectator demands more choice, the ability to interact with animated content and access to global distribution for their own user-generated work. Audiences are no longer satisfied with receiving a top down distribution of content from traditional cinema or broadcasters. Internet technologies are emerging to address this demand for active spectatorship and enable communities of interest to evolve their own alternative distribution methods.

Viewing animation online has become increasingly accessible with the mass adoption of broadband and the emergence of new file formats. TV 2.0 is an amalgamation of Internet technologies that combine video on demand with the social networking capabilities of Web 2.0. In the age of TV 2.0, the role of the viewer has increased in complexity with new possibilities for active interaction and intervention with the content displayed. This new audience seeks a form of spectatorship that can extend beyond the passive recipience of programming distributed by elite broadcasters. TV 2.0 on the Internet has changed both methods of distribution and traditional patterns for the viewing of animation. However, any potential for democratic participation in the visual culture of moving images that this could entail may be a brief historic moment before the assimilation and control of active readership by mainstream corporate culture.

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