The Use of Rotoscoping in Ghost Cat Anzu

The Use of Rotoscoping in Ghost Cat Anzu

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, an unconventional animated film has captured everyone’s attention: Ghost Cat Anzu. Directed by the visionary Atsuhiro Yamashita and featuring the talented actor Miku Moriyama, this film combines live-action and animation elements to tell the enchanting story of 11-year-old Harinashi and the 37-year-old ghost cat, Anzu. In this mystical world, other supernatural beings like the frog spirit and the mushroom spirit join them on their fantastical journey. This film received a nomination in the Director’s Fortnight section at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, making it one of this year’s highly anticipated works. This article aims to discuss the use of rotoscoping technique in the film.

At the north entrance of Ikebukuro Station, a little girl gazed at the owl statue inside. A partially opened gacha capsule rolled to her feet. Weaving through people dressed as various anime and manga characters, she somehow ended up wearing a mangaka's red hat. With a cheerful spring in her step, she dashed into the tree-lined path ahead. On a moving train, the girl leaned against the window, watching scenes representative of various areas flash by: streetscapes, festival lights, dancing crowds, and penguins swimming in an aquarium. Finally, in a long-gone apartment, she pushed open a door to find Osamu Tezuka, the mangaka who poured his heart and soul into his work day after day. Sensing the sound behind him, the artist turned and greeted the girl with a smile.

In 2019, Toshima City along with two other cities was awarded the title of "East Asian Cultural City". Anime director Yoko Kuno and film director Nobuhiro Yamashita were invited to create a promotional animation for this event (hereafter referred to as Toshima City Promotional Animation), the content of which is described in the first paragraph of this article. This collaboration served as a prelude to their work five years later, when they teamed up again to produce the feature-length anime film Ghost Cat Anzu. Notably, the core production principles of both projects are so similar that the promotional material for both highlighted the unique animation technique of rotoscoping.

In the Toshima City Promotional Animation, whether it's a fleeting passerby or the little girl protagonist, their every gesture carries a peculiar realism. The characters' movements, and consequently the motion of the lines in the animation, lack a certain fluidity and naturalness unique to traditional animation. Instead, they resemble live-action footage filtered through special effects, with the lines clearly delineating the characters' moving bodies. This doesn't convey an inviolable realism; rather, it introduces a subtle uncanny valley effect as they move -- derived from live-action footage yet maintaining a delicate distance from our perception of reality. This slight sense of unease and dissonance is precisely the unique impression that rotoscoping imparts. The majority of movements and trajectories in Ghost Cat Anzu can be traced back to this technique.

In the context of Japanese animation, rotoscoping refers to the technique in which the key animator(animators responsible for drawing the “key frames” which create the main poses and movements that guide the overall animation) select and trace the key frames from a live-action video or pre-made 3D computer animation. Bodies, positions and perspective relation of the reference objects are often traced in this manner. Compared to traditional keyframe drawing, beyond its efficiency and time-saving aspects, rotoscoping is notably precise. In the production of both the Toshima City Promotional Animation and Ghost Cat Anzu, Nobuhiro Yamashita led the live-action team to shoot the reference footage, which was then handed over to Yoko Kuno's animation team to complete the final product. The controversy and uniqueness of rotoscoping often stem from the fact that the animation team always has a concrete template to refer to, making it seem like a shortcut. But is it really so?

In traditional thoughts, animation as a form of visual media is often linked with "imagination" to distinguish it from live-action footage. This perspective is prevalent not only among viewers and critics but also in the minds of animators. Key animators in early days generally rejected rotoscoping. During that period, the anime industry, which had fewer personnel and productions and had not yet become stable and productive, allowed much more creative freedom, resulting a trend in which all animators wanted to create scenes that live-action could not achieve. However, in contemporary times, as animation has become industrialized, realism is gradually becoming a more common choice among animators. Just as 3D models are often used in hand-drawn animation to depict complex and precise machinery, rotoscoping is increasingly employed to recreate everyday actions more accurately. Key animators usually need to invest much more effort to flawlessly depict these actions. In an industry where "realistic animation" heavily depends on innate talent, isn’t the use of rotoscoping a form of democratizing artistic skill?

However, for Yoko Kuno and her team, a work almost entirely dominated by rotoscoping clearly transcends the usual collaboration between key animators and in-betweeners(animators responsible for drawing “in-between frames” which depicts the transitional movements between the key frames to achieve a more natural motion) that occurs in specific scenes or shots. This brings us to the core question: what does rotoscoping mean for Ghost Cat Anzu? Interestingly, compared to its predecessor, the rotoscope-animated film The Case of Hana & Alice, the most notable difference in Ghost Cat Anzu, as suggested by its title, is its fantastical elements. Fantasy elements in this film are not overly explained. When the protagonist Karin first encounters the fat cat that behaves just like a human, she shows an indescribable shock. However, after she inquires about Anzu-chan's origins, we as viewers lose any further opportunity to question the film's surreal aspects. Various yokai sitting in a circle, a persistent "god of poverty"... the fantasy reaches its peak when Karin saves her deceased mother out of hell. Yet, the fantasy here does not only refer to these fantastical characters and plotlines but also to the corresponding intensity of the animation, brimming with the unique spirit of the medium.

One particular shot left a very deep impression on me: after the pursuers from hell sequentially pass through a tunnel into the present world, a fixed shot with a strong sense of observation captures these hellish minions dancing and brandishing their weapons as they menacingly march off-screen. When the ruler of life and death, the Yama King, finally arrives, the camera shakes and the space within the house warps. At this point, I realized that this shot marked a boundary. In contrast to the prior scenes dominated by rotoscoping, the film reaches a point where reference material is almost useless -- at least for depicting the bodies. In the subsequent chase scene, what the audience sees becomes distorted: from the wrinkles of human movements to the spaces of streets and alleys being traversed, and even the impossibility of Background Animation (refers to the background part of the animation which is drawn and made to move by the key animator) in a realistic work, all become evident in this chaotic, abstract sequence.

The segment featuring the key animator Kai Ikarashi beautifully exemplifies the essence of traditional Japanese animation, while also providing a positive counterpoint to the preceding rotoscoped scenes that leaned towards realism. As previously mentioned, while rotoscoping brings animation closer to our perception of reality, it cannot be equated with realism itself. At its core, rotoscoping is an imitation of reality. We might instinctively feel that the movements depicted through rotoscoping are both familiar and strange. This is because the restrained lines exhibit an excess of motion, in turn creating a sense of anxiety and uncertainty within the realm of near-reality. For the protagonist, Karin-chan, an idle father and a deceased mother have sown seeds of instability in her heart. Under such circumstances, her unexpected stay in the countryside becomes all the more unsettling. However, the ghost cat Anzu-chan, unfathomable by reality, behaves indistinguishably from a human. We can understand him, and we clearly see that in its nonchalant demeanor, there is no trace of the unease that permeates the human characters.

From the point of character design, it can be said that this cat, whose behavior closely mimics that of a human, is consistently portrayed as non-human by the creators due to its physical form. However, it is precisely because of this, that its actions exude an effortless grace, seamlessly incorporating the considerable empowerment bestowed upon it by the key animators, thus making it visually more convincing to us. Alternatively, let's consider this: the real-world persona of Anzu-chan, provided by Mirai Moriyama, merely determines his placement within the frames of the film. We observe this peculiar creature without questioning its origins. And in the end, the uproarious and surreal chase scene seems to alter nothing tangible except Karin-chan's own heart. So, let's regard this experience as a midsummer night's dream. With such thoughts in mind, young Karin bids farewell to her father, who came to meet her at the train station, and dashes off towards that promised land where fantasy and reality can still coexist harmoniously.

This time, the movement of her running had completely shed the tension which exists in their initial arrival in the town. Instead, under the brushstrokes of the key animators, the film joyfully exhibited its own impulsiveness: the swaying of the ponytail, the scattered shadows, and those rhythmically timed movements occurring between each frame, all liberated from the hesitations and indecisions brought about by continuous rotoscoping. Here, we witness the true essence of Japanese hand-drawn animation.

Let's revisit the Toshima City Promotional Animation mentioned at the beginning. It's now clear how Kuno and Yamashita's first collaboration subtly follows a certain creative philosophy. From initially focusing on rotoscoping to allowing the key animators to freely create the unique visual effects of hand-drawn animation, imagination isn't exclusive to animation, just as rotoscoping has its own convoluted path to reality. In the conclusion of that promotional animation, the little girl encounters someone impossible to meet in an impossible space, turning these dual impossibilities into a fleeting yet radiant possibility. This reaffirms my belief that animation, as one of the carriers of visual imagery, can truly manifest its essence in the dialectic between virtuality and reality.

written by OreoOlymLee