Episode 735 - Anime
Apr 14, 2025
Welcome to another DD Quackcast! We were going to discuss Ad Hoc rationalisations and also “what happens AFTER you take over the world” but both topics were waaaay too trumpish and we didn't feel like getting negative and ranty about that fellow's foolishness so we thought we'd talk anime instead! But what is anime? At its simplest it's just cartoons like any other but they happen to be from Japan. There's more to it though, most anime has a articular look to it: reasonably realistically drawn worlds and reasonably realistic figures but they all tend to have slightly oversized heads, huge expressive eyes, tiny noses and mouths, and very stylised hair and reactions. That's not always the case but it's pretty typical. But these days “anime” is also made in Korea, China, France, the USA and more, it's become a style rather than a country of origin thing.
Topics and Show Notes
What differentiates it from Western animation? Mainly that the the figures were more realistically drawn, with more realistic and detailed backgrounds, while the typical Western style was much more stylised, flat, and simplified. These differences do not denote higher quality or a lack of quality, it's just about what's being prioritised: In Western animation all that flatness and stylisation meant that facial expressions could be enhanced, animation could have more more frames and everything could look smoother and more dynamic. For anime that mean you could have much better drawn, more realistic looking figures (always with 5 fingers!), as well as things like shading, reflection, and shadows, along with much more detailed worlds that they exist in. The trade-off was less frames, jerkier animation and many simplified scenes where they repeat movements, pan and zoom over still backgrounds to fake movement, and even replace backgrounds with things like lines to indicate movement.
The upshot of this was that the more realistic style in most anime can have more appeal to adults, while the much more abstract style favoured by Western animation is always seen as a bit childish so it's been harder to maintain the adult animation industry in the west and it's not anywhere near as diverse. But the real difference is that the animation industry in Japan is massive because of the culture of producing manga which gives animation a constant pipeline of massively varied and interesting material, and the insatiable appetite of the public for new series. And because so much is constantly being produced it means the diversity of story style and genre is incredible and there is something for EVERYONE, of all ages groups, rather than the mainly violence and or sex focussed adult stuff, Simpsons clones, or kid focussed stuff in the West. It's a big, fully mature industry, while the western animation industry just isn't- it's much smaller and the older teen and adult part of it is immature so that diversity of style and genre is weak and very inconsistent.
Would you agree? What are your fave animes?
This week Gunwallace has given us a theme inspired by Landscapes and Stick Figures - A mechanically surreal piece, like mechanised people all made of crystal glass, dancing in an intricate series of interweaving and interlocking moves. It’s quite beautiful.
Topics and shownotes
Links
Featured comic:
Water Lily Hight - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2025/apr/07/featured-comic-water-lily-high/
Featured music:
Landscapes and Stick Figures - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Landscapes_and_Stick_Figures/ - by Lagoticspy, rated E.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Gunwallace/
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 733 - Watch again: Rediscovering
Mar 30, 2025
Watching, reading, and listening to things a second, third or even a million times can offer you a whole new experience. Why do we pick up the same thing to enjoy again? It could be nostalgia, it could be the need for comfort in the familiar, maybe it's research, or maybe you're rewatching the early episodes of a series so you can get more enjoyment out of new, later episodes that you haven't seen before?
Episode 727 - Painting Series: Sky and Sea
Feb 17, 2025
We haven't done anything about actual art-making for a while so we thought we'd start a series on technical stuff. Starting out we tackle painting sea and sky! These are key general background elements, they're the two biggest simple background features you can get, you don't always need them but it's good to understand these big features for outdoor scenes and how they work.
Episode 724 - America's Plutocratic classism
Jan 26, 2025
Is there a culture of plutocratic classism in the USA? I'm inspired by Trump's America and how people think that people like Elon Musk and him are above the law because they're rich, while conversely the lowest rank in society are the homeless and the poor. But what do I mean by “Plutocratic classism”? A plutocracy is a society where people's position is determined by their wealth, classism is our tendency to discriminate based on social class, put that together and you have people determining social value by how much money a person seems to have.
Episode 722 - Main characters with main character syndrome
Jan 12, 2025
Main characters with main character syndrome? What is main character syndrome? Well the way we're dealing with it here it's normally a snide criticism you level and someone who seems to think the world revolves around them, like social media “influencers”, selfish self centred people, that sort of thing. Popular figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump are great examples: they imagine the world should bend to their whim, and normal rules don't apply, like a main character in a fictional story.
Episode 718 - Dumbarses
Dec 15, 2024
This Quackcast was inspired by world renowned idiot Robert F Kennedy Jnr. We decided to talk about writing dumb characters. I keep calling him John F Kennedy Jnr because I am also an idiot. Some context: he wants to remove approval for the life saving Polio vaccine and allow dangerous unpasteurised milk to be widely sold, among other things. He's a classic idiot. This put us in mind of fictional idiots.
Episode 709 - Dragons!
Oct 14, 2024
Dragons are cool, aren't they? That's our subject for today, specifically the giant, monstrous beasties of myth, fantasy, and legend. They can be evil, they can be clever, they can be animalistic and wild, they can be friendly, they can be wise and all knowing, there's absolutely no common personality to dragons at all.
Episode 708 - Cyberpunk
Oct 7, 2024
Cyberpunk is a cool genre we have never covered exclusively on a Quackcast before. But what IS cyberpunk? It's a subset of SciFi, it's usually near future, involves body modifications, grittiness, street level computer use, techno body modification, and hacking. At least that's the way it started. Formative influences on the cyberpunk genre were the first Tron movie, Bladerunner, and Escape from New York. Tron showed us what cyberspace was, while Bladerunner and Escape from New York gave us gritty near future dystopias with cool tech, modified humans, and most importantly the punk aesthetic which was the gritty street youth fashion of the late 70s and early 80s.
