Sakuga If you’ve spent any time around hardcore
anime fans, you’ve likely heard the term at least once, and may be wondering what it
means. Is it a Pokemon? One of Boruto’s Dad’s Jutsus? A particularly impressive
variety of cherry blossom? Technically, yes. It can be all of those things. Because, as
you’ll have likely picked up contextually if you’ve heard me use it in videos, Sakuga
is a category of animation that is a defining feature of Anime. Specifically, it’s the
part of the anime what looks real pretty. And that’s about as specific as I can get,
because like anime itself, sakuga is a term we borrowed from Japanese – literally translating
to “working drawing” - that’s tricky to precisely define; ya knows it when ya sees
it, but it’s not a rigorous technical standard for animation with a certain frame count or
level of line and layout complexity. Sakuga can look and feel like just about anything;
it is by its nature the most creatively free and ambitious aspect of any anime that it
appears in. And perhaps the easiest way to understand what sakuga is… is to understand
what it’s not. Anime is fundamentally low budget media, even
by television standards. High concept prestige TV, like Game of Thrones or Stranger Things,
tends to cost 6-10 million dollars an episode. At the lower end, stuff like The Walking Dead,
and Supernatural might hit the 2-3 million dollar range. Japanese production companies
aren’t quite so forward with their finances, but it’s reasonable to guess that Tokusatsu
series like Kamen rider and Super Sentai hit seven digits per episode as well.
TV Anime, by comparison, brings fantastical concepts to life for 2-3 million PER SEASON,
meaning each episode of an anime will run its creators a couple hundred thousand at
most. And those rates are pretty well consistent throughout the industry – even shows you
might think of as “high budget” like One Punch Man fall comfortably in that range.
Other factors, like animator talent and passion, are what make the real difference there.
It makes sense if you think about it. Recognizable voices demand lower salaries than famous faces,
CGI effects can be a lot lower on detail when they’re appearing next to 2D artwork, and
animated set pieces and stunts only cost as much as the drawings that comprise them. Those
should cost more – Animators in Japan are grossly underpaid, often making far less than
minimum wage for far more than a 40 hour work week – but even if they all made 3 times
as much per episode for the exact same work they do now, those episodes would still be
relatively economical. That’s because Anime is produced ASTONISHINGLY
quickly, so no production has to pay most of its staff for very long. It’s common
for whole anime episodes to be turned around in a two month period, pushed along an assembly
line from writers to animators to the sound team so that everyone’s always working on
something. And with weekly adaptations of ongoing manga like one piece, the turnaround
time can be a handful of weeks or less. What makes this possible is tightly regimented
scheduling built on an understanding that there’s only so much animation that can
be done in the time allotted. Many anime even have their per-episode frame
counts fixed, along with their budgets, before any pre-production work is done – which
of course has to be accounted for in the schedule as well.
That means if you wanna add some extra zhuzh to a big fight scene or amp up the emotion
of your characters in a key dramatic moment… you might have to reduce some less vital dialogue
here, or a side character fight there, to a series of easy to draw close-ups and near-static
images with lots of dynamic camera panning to disguise the lack of motion beyond flapping
lips. Y’know, something a handful of artists can knock out in a few hours while still looking
half decent. A lot of the cinematic flourishes and stylistic signifiers that we associate
with anime are a direct product of this approach to efficiency.
Conversely, much of what we associate with cartoons is a product of the different limited
animation process devised by American animation studios like Hannah Barbera during the syndicated
cartoon boom of the 50s and 60s, but that’s a topic for another video.
If you want to maintain a consistent level of animated dynamism throughout a whole show,
you’re gonna have to design your characters to be quick to draw and redraw. That’s why
early gainax and current trigger’s shows are so stylized and “cartoony,” why Mob
Psycho and FMA translate so well to animaton, and why Pokemon’s anime undertook such a
dramatic visual shift for sun and moon. And those shows are – in my opinion – more
fun to watch than your average anime. But even they need to compromise on a lot of cuts
to ensure their biggest moments have the necessary OOMPH.
Those compromised cuts are what we call “Limited Animation,” while “Sakuga” refers to
the sequences between them, where animators are given time to indulge themselves – and
us – by letting their imaginations run wild. When the energy of one for all courses through
deku’s veins and the camera spins wildly around him, that’s a sakuga. When Mob throws
half a city at Toichiro in midair, that’s a sakuga. And when a waifu or hasubando starts
crying and you can see the individual tears beading up in their ducts, rolling down their
cheeks, and dripping from their chin, that’s a Sakuga too.
Drop em in at just the right time, and these sequences can elevate an already sad story
to new heights of heartbreaking, breathtaking beauty, or dramatically enhance the weight
and power of a character’s abilities when they’re fully unleashed for the first time.
Character-acting sakuga externalizes the inner worlds of anime heroes and heroines in their
most vulnerable, passionate moments; action sakuga makes the improbable and impossible
feel real, and strong environmental or effects animation can make a wild, fantastical setting
– and the magic contained within it – feel much more tangible.
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And even when a show’s setting is entirely mundane, Sakuga tends to feel pretty darn
magical. Of course you feel that the strongest in the moment it hits, but the thing is…
that feeling can linger even when the animation puts its limiters back on.
Done right, Sakuga leaves an impression in your mind of how the whole show *should* look
and feel; of what its world and characters are *really like* when you zoom in and examine
them at the highest possible level of fidelity. And that impression carries over to and colours
how your brain interprets the… less impressive parts of the show. Kinda like how the extremely
detailed interior locations of Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spiderman help to make its whole
sandbox city feel more alive and lived in. You begin to associate strong vocal inflections
with the dramatic animations that sometimes accompany them, so that even when the characters
are just flapping their lips, your mind projects those more expressive… expressions onto
them. When the camera pans fast and zooms in tight in a fight, obscuring the action,
your brain fills in the blanks of what’s happening off-screen, based on what you’ve
previously seen these heroes and villains do. Just one shot of a camera moving through
an environment can make every static background in the rest of a scene feel connected and
3-dimensional. To give a more specific example, you only
really need to see the excruciating details of what the Oosagi in Re:Zero can do once
to make its every subsequent appearance equally horrifying.
Paced out properly, in conjunction with well-crafted limited cuts that effectively disguise their
simple animation, a few doses of Sakuga can make a relatively inexpensive show feel like
a truly premium product from start to finish. UFOTable has built its entire brand on this
principle, making shows that feel like they belong in a theatre by dropping explosively
impressive bits of animation at satisfying moments, and airbrushing over the gaps between
them with simple, but effective CG lighting and other post-processing effects that liven
up the more limited scenes. It is, perhaps, a little easier to see what
they’re doing there after you’ve seen another studio try and fail to achieve the
same effect, which is about the only reason I can think of that anyone should watch hand-shakers
ever. That sort of stylistic flimflammery can only
really be pulled off consistently in a seasonal show that has the pre-production lead time
to plan it all out. But long-running weekly anime have their own way of leveraging the
power of Sakuga, beyond what they’re able pull together in the limited time they have
to make an episode: canned Sakuga. Transformations, special attack sequences, and other repeatable
story beats that justify their lavish production values through their ability to be inserted
into multiple episodes – or even every episode – of a show to pad out its run time.
You’d think they’d get old after a while, but the great ones never do.
When Ash Ketchum spins his cap and throws a pokeball, when Sailor Moon’s costume magically
weaves itself into being around her, when Sakura spins her wand and hits a card, When
this hand of domon kasshu’s glows with an awesome power and its burning grip tells him
to defeat you, and when Terriermon digivolves and his face contorts in agony as his pelt
is ripped off his swelling wire frame and replaced with Gargomon’s skin – holy shit
tamers is good – it instantly makes the adjacent fight feel more tangible and exciting,
even if none of the other animation touches that level of quality.
Honestly, I think young Geoff owes most of his anime addiction to those few powerful
moments… and uh, if you really think about it, Anime Openings are basically the ultimate
example of canned sakuga in action, so I don’t know if all that much has changed in the interceding
decades. Well, except for one thing – I have a much
deeper appreciation for the skill and artistry that goes into them.
There’s one other vital aspect of Sakuga that makes it more than just “good animation”
– the Personal element. Obviously all good animation is the product of an artist – or
group of artist’s – distinctive talents. Even motion capture requires a great deal
of finesse and skill at every stage of the process. But Sakuga really puts the key animator
at the forefront of the scene. The way they draw lines, how they handle smear frames,
their unique sense of motion, timing, body language, expression, and framing - all of
these distinct artistic sensibilities define the look and feel of a Sakuga cut.
The goal of Sakuga is not, generally, to make something wholly cohesive with the brand aesthetic
of the production committee’s animated commodity; there’s rarely enough time to exert that
much control over the artists while still letting them produce their best work. It’s
to blow the audience away with their vision and artistic ability as individual creators.
Truly great sakuga cuts act as animated autographs for the artists behind them, as inimitable
and instantly recognizable to the discerning eye as their own signatures.
Yutaka Nakamura. Yoshimichi Kameda. Hiroyuki Imaishi. Masami Goto. Shingo Natsume. Yoh
Yoshinari. Ichiro Itano. Sakuga fans know these artists – and many,
many others – by their names and by their work. They can pick them out of a crowd shot
by the swaying of the bodies, and spot their signature flourishes in a fight scene from
a mile away. There are whole communities dedicated to cataloguing and correctly crediting these
stunning animated sequences, be they crafted by well-known all-time greats or obscure,
up-and-coming amateurs. And while communities like sakugabooru are fighting an uphill battle
against the ever swelling “artist unknown” tag, they fight it valiantly, and score minor
and major victories daily. It’s not a precise science - many of the
shots on the booru’s “presumed” tag are likely misattributed – but the fact
that ANY shots not credited by official sources have been linked back to their creators, even
dubiously, is a testament to just how much personality sakuga artists infuse into their
work. And there is something immensely satisfying about being able to track the artistic evolution
of an animator across all the different productions in which they’ve made their mark.
The entertainment industry at large encourages us to associate the feelings that art evokes
in us with the handful of brands that own the rights to that art, instead of the armies
of artists who actually make it. Sakuga breaks through that veil in a powerful way. In this
realm, at least, the animator is king, not just a disposable cog in the anime assembly
line. The fruits of their labour, and the talents they cultivate across different productions,
are what the Sakuga fans are here for. And even if you’re not actively aware of
the Sakuga community, even if you don’t really know what a sakuga is, I think you
still feel that when you’re watching a real juicy anime cut. The passion, the vision,
the unique way of seeing the world that produced that specific imagery and motion… the human
touch behind it all reaches through the static and connects with you as a viewer. It’s
one of the most potently alluring things about anime when you’re first introduced to it,
and it only gets cooler the more you learn. Lemme know in the comments below who your
favourite animators are – if you have any – or if not, what moments from anime most
stand out to you looking back. I’m sure some sakuga fans watching can tell you who
made them happen. While I’ve got you here, consider checking out my recent rundown of
the best anime openings of 2020, or my list of avatar’s best fights, for more sakuga
sweetness. I’m Geoff Thew, Professional Shitbag, signing
out from my mother’s basement.