Outside Japan, anime is mainly used as a term referring to animation made in Japan. Inside Japan though, the word “anime,” an abbreviated pronunciation of animation in Japanese has been used widely as an abbreviation for all animation. However, despite the escalating popularity and attention in the worldwide media, the meaning and usage of the term is still ambiguous and is not employed with a uniform meaning. There are a number of people, especially in Japan, who persist in differentiating the meaning of anime and animation, arguing that anime is just a part of the bigger genre of animation. They assert that not all animations produced in Japan are anime, emphasizing the distinctive character and meaning of the works that do not conform to the existing popular anime image. How works are labeled, whether as anime or animation, does seem to matter. This issue within Japan is important, as it reveals the heterogeneous understandings and expectations of contemporary animation in Japan. This paper explores this controversy about labeling through investigation of the varying usage and reception of the anime label among Japanese animators and major animation related associations in Japan.

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In animation the issue of movement is central to any discussion of its nature, irrespective of its form, style or process of creation. As an animator, Norman McLaren believed “the most important thing in film is motion, movement” (in Bendazzi, 1994:117), whilst Wells describes animated films as “the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in inanimate lines and forms” (1998:10). Movement is of primary concern in this simple definition and in earlier critical analyses of animation, Sergei Eisenstein “recognised ‘if it moves, then it’s alive’” [italics in original] (Leyda, 1988:54 quoted in Wells, 1998:14). This paper considers the concept of movement in animation films expressed in the kinesic performance of the character(s).

The analysis focuses on movement in computer generated animation, specifically Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001: dir. Hironobu Sakaguchi), and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, (2005: dir. Tetsuya Nomura and Takeshi Nozue) and will draw on the work of Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. It should be noted that this paper is an exploration of the social semiotics grammar of Kress and van Leeuwen, as applied specifically to movement. This latter aspect is somewhat neglected in their work and the analysis in this paper highlights the applicability of their concepts to the analysis of movement in animation.

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