Akiyuki Shinbo is one of the most talked about directors by animation fans, and the popularity of works such as "The Story of Transformation" and "Magical Girl Circle" has also made him more and more famous. Its unique style is so highly sought after that a term such as "new house style" has emerged to refer specifically to this style. But when animation fans talk about "new house style", it is easy to fall into clichés such as "new house 45 degrees" and "stream of consciousness".
This article will try to explain the characteristics of "new house style" more specifically through the three aspects of "lens composition", "art style" and "narrative characteristics". The cases selected in the main text are mainly the works of Akiyuki Shinbo as a director or general director after his appointment at the animation company Shaft, and some viewers prefer to call the "new house style" of these years "Shaft style".
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > lens combination and compositional tendency:</h1>
Before explaining the "uniqueness" of the lens composition of the new house, it is first necessary to understand the conventional lens composition ideas.
Animated images play an important narrative role, and when designing shots, they tend to show the time, place, and character relationships in their entirety. According to the conventional lens composition logic, when entering a new stage, the camera order is often arranged in the order of "building shots", "relationship shots", "front and back shots", etc. When there are special needs, this order may be reversed.
We can first use Oshii Mori's "Air Killer" to briefly explain the specific form of several shots. The set of shots selected in the case depicts the pilot landing on a new base and meeting with the purge division. "Build Shots" often use large scenes such as "vistas" to illustrate the environment in which the characters are located.
"Relational lens" refers to the use of "panorama" or "medium scene", which is a general size scene, to illustrate the position relationship between characters. This shot of "Air Killer" is actually a close-up over-the-shoulder shot, which belongs to the "local relationship shot".
"Positive and negative shots" mostly use small scenes such as "close-up", which is the main form of lens in the dialogue process of the characters. In conventional lens composition logic, the size of the scene will follow a decreasing or increasing relationship.
Akiyuki Shinbo does not care about such a compositional logic at all, his shots are often combined between very large and very small scenes, and at the same time, he is also avoiding the appearance of repeated positive and negative shots.
Let's first look at the storyboard of Episode 9 of Magical Girl Circle, which was drawn by Akiyuki Shinbo in the name of Noriko Nanashima. The long-range shot is followed by a close-up shot, and then after the transition from mid-shot to close-up, it immediately cuts back to the long-range. The two very different scenes, "vision" and "close-up", are frequently grouped together.
In the past impression, lengthy dialogue was often accompanied by repeated positive and negative shots, and the repeated appearance of other characters in the same scene would make the audience quickly fall into visual fatigue and feel bored. The new-style lens assembly will bring a more significant visual impact and effectively grab the attention of the audience.
Of course, just piling up the lens according to this method is far from achieving the "new house style". The extensive use of camera positions perpendicular to the midpoint of the "axis" is a significant compositional feature of Akiyuki Shinbo or the SHAFT team's work.
Before expanding this topic, you can briefly introduce the camera position and axis, the above figure is the different screens corresponding to the 1 to 9 machine positions, the connection line of the AB two-person top view is the axis, and the No. 1 machine position is the position perpendicular to the midpoint of the axis just mentioned.
This position does not contain emotional tendencies and is suitable for objectively describing the relationship between the characters. At the same time, the correct camera position and the composition of the equal parts have quite obvious advantages, not only the perspective relationship is easy to grasp, which is convenient for the original painter to draw, but also can better show the charm of the background. In the next "Fine Art Style" section, I'll elaborate on where this charm manifests itself.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > heterogeneous art style:</h1>
For ordinary audiences, the most recognizable part of the "new house style" lies in its art style. In Japanese commercial animation, the words "art" and "background" can basically be equated, and the corresponding is "character". The art style of The new house works places more emphasis on the distinction between the background and the characters. The characters and backgrounds play their own charm, forming a delicate balance of "non-interference".
Akiyuki Shinbo has high requirements for fine arts, and in a 2005 interview he confessed: "If the pure background lens can't be interesting, then it doesn't need to exist." "The pursuit of every shot is interesting, is the creative concept of Akiyuki Shinbo, in his opinion, a boring shot, it is not as good as using real shots or directly on the subtitles to have an effect." I thought it was just a joke of his, but I didn't expect a word to be a slur, and in the subsequent creation, he really used the real shot and text in the work.
When it comes to "real shooting and text", I believe that the audience who is familiar with the new house has many related cases in their brains. Even the rough style of fan-made work "いろ物語", after using the art style of the new house, has become "tasteful".
But the use of "real shots" and "words" is only a superficial form, which is essentially a pursuit of "heterogeneity". This kind of background and characters have a feeling of incompatibility, which is a feature that runs through the works of the new house. The ways to achieve this heterogeneity include the "illusion of repetition", "abstract symbols" or "independently designed new styles", three forms corresponding to the above picture.
In addition, in terms of color design, new houses are also more inclined to use a large number of solid color blocks such as black or white to reduce the amount of information and highlight the parts that are wanted to be emphasized in the lens. It's a deliberate design, and in the layout of Magical Girl Circle, the wires that serve as the foreground and the umbrella that serve as the background are originally designed to be colorful. But in the main film, it is replaced by a pure black and a lot of dark umbrellas. The purpose of this is clear at a glance, in order to highlight the role of Xiao Meiyan, who is holding a light blue umbrella.
Paying attention to the fun of the art itself and letting it serve the character is the basic feature of the art style of the new house. However, the new house art serves the form of the character, not like the art supervisors such as Dongji Kazusei, who pursue the natural integration of the background and the characters, but relies on strong contrasts and contrasts to highlight the characters.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > a narrative full of impurities:</h1>
The shots and the art ultimately serve the story, but does an animation need to serve the story entirely?
The famous director Mori Oshii once said that "animation is not a container for narrative". Therefore, he will deliberately add some "impurities" to the work, so that each shot is no longer only for the narrative. The legendary Three Sacred Beasts, "Dogs, Birds, and Fish", are the impurities that Oshii Mori likes to add to his works. Although Oshii's approach is not the golden rule of the animation world, Akiyuki Shinbo's practice coincides with Oshii's.
The new house also tends to add a lot of "impurities" to the narrative process. Specifically, the new house likes to use "anachronistic plot" or "abnormal behavior of the characters" to temporarily disrupt the development of the story and temporarily interrupt the emotional continuation of the characters.
For example, in the adaptation of "Xia Zhilan" by director Xinfang, there is a character who appears particularly frequently, and he only has one line: "Please give me salt.". Brother Yan did not help with the development of the main plot, or even interacted with any other characters, he just sat quietly in the corner of the coffee shop, shouting "Please give me salt" while the main characters were discussing in full swing. However, such a "low narrative" design has left a lot of laughs and left a deep impression on the audience.
For example, in "The Story of Transformation", Tatsuya Oishi, who is deeply involved in the true legend of the new house, has made a more exaggerated attempt. The overall atmosphere of this scene in episode 15 of "The Story of Things" is very tense, and Araragi is caught by the neck and hangs his life in a line, and at this moment, Oshino Shinobu appears from his shadow and saves Araragi with a set of strange and complex actions.
This gymnastic action of Xiao Nin is incompatible with this tense atmosphere, and in order to show this complete set of actions, the director deliberately stretches the objective distance between the characters, and "rationality" makes concessions for "expressiveness". But this "anti-narrative" design, which is both inappropriate and unreasonable, has become the finishing touch of the entire episode.
In the post-japanese talks included in the original album, Tatsuya Oishi also said that because Oshino Shinobu is the "king of vampires", the mention of vampires thinks of Romania, and mentioning Romania will think of the local gymnast Nadia Komanech, so he designed this gymnastics action for Oshino Shinobu. This narrative line of thinking that puts "character building" above the plot appears frequently in Akiyuki Shinbo's works.
In addition to the "low narrative" and "anti-narrative" design, the narrative method of breaking the "fourth wall" is also the hallmark of Akiyuki Shinbo's works. "Fourth wall" is a term used in drama, where the character on stage is surrounded by a background and three walls on both sides, and the fourth wall is the imaginary estrangement between the audience and the characters. In general animation, film and television works, characters will only participate in the plot of the play and will not interact with the audience. "Breaking the fourth wall" refers to the interaction between the characters and the audience, with the real world, and even with other works.
The characters in "The Story of the End" know that they are "acting", and even express the opinion that the entire animation project is "too arbitrary", which is a typical case of "breaking the fourth wall". In fact, in the works of the new house, it is very common for the characters to know that they are "acting" and try to interact with the audience, and "The Incredible Teacher" is eager to show the entire shooting scene directly to the audience.
Similarly, Akiyuki Shinbo likes to "play with the terrier" in a large number of works, which is also the act of breaking the fourth wall. Throwing "memes" to the audience, as well as imitating popular bridges in reality, are all forms of interaction with the audience, and always make the audience smile.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > summary:</h1>
The combination of large and small scenes and objective symmetrical compositions; the art style that exudes charm and contrasts with the characters; and the narrative that contains a lot of impurities but is full of imagination and surprise. Together, these three form the style of Akira Shinbo. This style was formed in the process of interacting with each other and running into each other with Those of Sujima Iijima, Tatsuya Oishi, and Shin Onuma.
For animation enthusiasts, as well as animation practitioners, studying new house styles can help us broaden our thinking and enhance our understanding of shots, art, and narrative. In recent years, Akiyuki Shinbo has also directed "The Lion of March", a work that tries to jump out of the constraints of self-style, which proves that the "new house style" is also constantly evolving. I hope that when you personally study and summarize, you can maintain a developmental perspective on this topic.