Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines? (atlasobscura.com) 233
An anonymous reader shares a report: Why are there so many shots of power lines in Japanese anime cartoons? The Tumblr Power Lines in Anime is dedicated to appreciating the truly lovely and surprisingly ubiquitous depictions of mundane power lines that appear in a large number of Japanese animation series. The blog is run by Tumblr user whitequark, who first started to notice the trend while watching a romantic comedy anime. Anime series can cover any number of genres, including sports, high fantasy, office life, and, of course, science fiction, but no matter what it's about, it seems that if the story is set on modern-day Earth, it will contain some amazingly detailed images of power lines, telephone poles, and other wired infrastructure. While a number of anime series (and cartoons in general), opt for a style of hyper-detailed backgrounds before which relatively simpler characters can interact, power lines stand out for the detail and complexity required to illustrate them.
Why are Slashdot editors so obsessed.... (Score:2, Insightful)
With flooding the feed with irrelevant stories?
Re:Why are Slashdot editors so obsessed.... (Score:4, Insightful)
"News for nerds" includes anime nerds.
I personally don't care for stories on pretty much anything Apple does, but they still should be posted. Nobody is making you read them or comment on them.
Re:Why are Slashdot editors so obsessed.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But hey, as long as we're asking questions about weird anime stuff, why is it that in high school anime the classrooms are always oriented so that the windows are on the left? (From the students' perspective.) From what i understand this is generally the way real classrooms in Japan are, but that doesn't answer the more fundamental question.
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It's because students who face westward are more receptive and have better retention than if they faced any other way, so the classrooms are always on the south side of the school buildings. The rooms on the north side are used for art and for science labs.
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Most students are right handed (or, in the past, were forced to write with their right hand), if the light comes from the left (light strips are relatively recent in the grand scheme of 'schools') the drop shadow of your writing hand doesn't obstruct your writing.
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Yes, I think you are getting close to the mark. Power lines are great for establishing perspective. Combined with roofs with overhanging eaves whose shadows allow the artist to easily identify the time of day, it is possible to set a scene very quickly and easily.
In a sense, anime artists tend to put more into their work than American cartoonists in terms of establishing the scene, but they often do it with much less actual drawing of detail than American cartoonists by relying on simple things like powerl
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4chan/a/ anon spotted
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his finger was greasy from cheap delivery pizza his mom brought down and it slipped
Because tentacles in every scene (Score:1)
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound (Score:3)
He pulls the spitting high-tension wires down
Helpless people on subway trains
Scream, bug-eyed, as he looks in on them
Speaking of obvious ...
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Oh no, there goes Tokyo!
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Of all the things in Anime (Score:2)
The prevalence of power lines isn't on my top 10 list of "why?"
It's anime...
Re:Of all the things in Anime (Score:5, Interesting)
I would think power lines are a good sign of the time the story is based. Where it is to represent the present.
The near future normally would be wireless urban setting.
The past 100 years or so, we wouldn't have power-lines, as most lights were still gas in an urban environment.
Out of all other things, they can be drown without much animation.
Also power lines don't date quickly. So a scene with with them will look as reliant for 2017 as it would for 1967 so such shows wont date as quickly.
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I would think power lines are a good sign of the time the story is based. Where it is to represent the present.
The near future normally would be wireless urban setting.
The past 100 years or so, we wouldn't have power-lines, as most lights were still gas in an urban environment.
Out of all other things, they can be drown without much animation.
Also power lines don't date quickly. So a scene with with them will look as reliant for 2017 as it would for 1967 so such shows wont date as quickly.
Why would the future be wireless with regard to power? This isn't something easily reduced in overall intensity like the representation of information. It's the ability to do work being transmitted in a particular form. Most power transfer systems I've seen, even set in the far future, use some sort of conduit to transmit them.
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The idea is to have decentralized power. Imagine how cool would be to have little 30-years-lifespan nuclear reactors? (Something like what is described in The Martian.) But nooo, humans gotta be cunts, so no ponies for us.
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For the same reason the future has aliens and hoverboards and alcoholic robots -- the artist thinks its cool. Especially in soft sci-fi where they don't have to (and usually don't bother to) justify their choices.
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Well these so called power lines use to be called telphone-lines. The idea the information needed to be sent across a wire (without conflicting with other sources) as a primary way to send data. Today data is widely sent wireless. For the future, you can expect infrastructure less power. Such as batteries that can operate for a long time, or are solar charged in the day. Where lights and other infrastructure devices can be easily moved and upgraded cheaply and easily as the demand of a city changes.
We h
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Powerlines will go away, probably, as the future belongs to decentralized power sources rather than today's power grids.
But overhead lines are not going to disappear for a long, long time. The best way to transmit information over distance is by photons, but the pathways need to be isolated from each other and shielded from interference like windblown leaves and bird wings. So optical cable will rule.
While cable can and will be installed underground in many settings, there are a great deal of areas where
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Cables strewn all over a city means the city predates electricity - it's something that was retrofitted, hung up anywhere there was space. A city district built in more recent years has far less visible cabling, because it's mostly underground.
Re: Of all the things in Anime (Score:3)
Really? Have you been to London or Paris?
Burying cables is a political and an economic decision.
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Why would the future be wireless with regard to power?
Because even in Japan, new housing areas have had the wires put underground for at least the last 25 years, and over the past decade a lot of the existing older infrastructure has started to move underground as well.
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That has to be the lamest attempt at a reply. Seriously? Wireless Power Transmission... LOL -- Seriously, if you're going to post something that low level in thought of reply, do it as an AC.
Wireless power transmission is great on short ranges, like inductive coils and pickups.. It's not going to be sending the equivalent of transmission line level work at anytime in the near future.
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...they can be drown without much animation.
Er, so this would be the future global warming episodes, then?
Power! (Score:1)
How else would you go over 9000!!?
no one tell them (Score:1)
About the tumblr that's just anime floppy discs
Serial Experiments Lain (Score:5, Insightful)
SEL is a 1998 anime. It is full of power line shots. I'd estimate that around 2-5 percent of the series consist of power lines. It would be interesting whether this was the start of the trend. Can someone please categorize this Tumblr thing into pre and post 1998, please?
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In SEL the idea of an interconnected and wired world is fundamental to the storyline. That doesn't explain why it is so prevalent in every other anime.
Makes a change (Score:2)
I'd rather power lines than one of the other things the Japanese media are obsessed with.
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I'd rather power lines than one of the other things the Japanese media are obsessed with.
Bunny girls?
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Catgirls! Moe catgirls! ^_^!
Power lines equal western cultural encroachment (Score:5, Insightful)
Before WWII, outside Tokyo - rural Japan didn't have as many power lines as western countries.
With culture going back centuries... japanese perceived power lines as western encroachment and the loss of the authentic Japanese self.
And since nearly all power lines come from and go to "someplace else", they are by definition "invasive" to the local world.
And since power utilities are authoritative entities... they represent invasive authority.
Not just that. They're incredibly loaded symbols. (Score:3)
Literally networks of power, whose center is somewhere else.
Modernity and (in their proliferation and sagging) the collapse/end/postscript/decay of modernity.
Consumerism, consumer technology, technological encroachment.
Utopian ideals (energy, artificial light) and their mundane failures to transform human life for the better.
The loss (as you point out) of the rural in the face of the urban.
Environmental destruction.
Utilitarianism and rational-instrumentalism at the expense of beauty.
Clutter and the "wreckag
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Re:Power lines equal western cultural encroachment (Score:5, Interesting)
While this seems like it can be completely explained by "obvious fanservice," there's actually some interesting history here as well. I don't remember full details (never mind a link:P) but it amounts to panties being a much larger fetish among Japanese men than we (as westerners) would expect, due to the history of how panties were introduced to the country.
Basically, because the Japanese were fairly immodest by western standards -- mixed bathing and all that good stuff -- when we started introducing our values into their country we brought with us both (western-style) modesty -- ie: hide your reproductive bits -- and also panties at around the same time. So the Japanese went through a period where you could go to the bath and see fully naked women basically whenever you wanted, but panties were kept hidden and therefore became the forbidden land while in the west, panties were introduced primarily to be an extra barrier against a woman exposing her naughty bits accidentally.
Of course these days mixed bathing is pretty rare (though not completely gone) and girls in Japan tend to be just as self-conscious of their nakedness as we are, but the history still bears its mark both in art and even in life (that's a large part of why used panties vending machines were a thing until the Japanese government had to specifically ban them.. I mean sure some westerners have a fetish for dirty underwear but nobody here would ever dream of setting up a vending machine to sell such things -- the market simply isn't large enough or concentrated enough to bother.)
Another "interesting" thing to watch is the length of girls' stockings. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] if you want to get an idea of how much time and energy the Japanese put into what we would consider relatively benign crap, simply because of the way they meshed western modesty and other western ideals into their culture over the past few centuries.
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Found the media studies grad.
Now where were we? Oh, yes, I think I will have fries with that.
It is called a visual style.... (Score:3)
The artists picked a visual style to convey the esthetic impact they are trying to achieve and use it in their drawn backgrounds. Apparently this includes power lines.
Where I get where this basic artistic concept might be lost on a lot of folks reading Slashdot because we tend to be thinking about the technical nature of things, it's not that hard to understand.
BONUS: They pick the music in the background to drive an emotional impact of a movie, not just the visual images used. Try not to get lost in the enormity of the thought..
Double Bonus: Annime is NOT reality, regardless of how much you think it so. It's an animated cartoon and the stories are not real life.
Yes, this post should be read to be dripping with sarcasm.
Re:It is called a visual style.... (Score:4, Funny)
My Waifu says you're wrong, it's reality!
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In this case, it is reality. Power lines are everywhere in Japan.
It is common for backgrounds in anime to be almost photographs of actual places. When it come to places, anime is a very accurate depiction of real life Japan. Of course, that's assuming the setting is Japan, present day, present time, hahahaha.
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When it come to places, anime is a very accurate depiction of real life Japan
So the school can be a very accurate depiction, while the tentacle monster enthousiastically making love to the pretty school teacher is less accurate? Damn.
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I really hope that was an intentional reference. Because that would make me happy.
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They are everywhere and it's really helped Japan have good infrastructure. Not just power, but phone and internet. They string fibre onto those poles and bring it right to your home.
Many different companies use the poles, so there is immense competition.
Art imitating reality (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've ever been to Japan, especially iconic locations like Tokyo, you'd pretty quickly realize that, for how otherwise clean and tidy the Japanese are, the rats nests of power lines depicted in anime are basically true to life. Ubiquitous powerlines (even the type seemingly haphazardly strung between buildings like neglected spider webs) are a normal sight there, so when mirroring or representing reality, it isn't a surprising detail to include to give just that little extra grounding. For those on the outside looking in, it could seem exaggerated, but it is hardly the case.
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Because they're easy to miss (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the documentary "Crumb", on underground commix icon Robert Crumb, R.C. demonstrated how he took a lot of photos and drew scenes from them rather from memory, because it's easy to mentally tune-out a lot of very big, annoying things about modern life: billboards, power lines, transformers. He didn't want to miss them when he drew, so he took photos to force himself to acknowledge them with photos.
Sure enough, once he pointed it out, I realized that was one of the things that made his work both very solid/real and also very gritty. When there's no panels with large swaths of empty, blue sky, it really forces you to acknowledge everything we've put in the way.
In anime, it could be similarly an attempt at heightened awareness/realism, or a form of social commentary, or a subtle nod that the characters are in the Ugly Real World and not the Sparking Virtual Reality or Romantic Past.
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This is amazing. As a kid I was fascinated by power lines, substations, transformers, and how all this stuff was connected together and worked. By observation I had a pretty good understanding of how local power grids worked. I'm still fascinated by it today as a balding 40 year old sitting in a home office reading /.
Anyways, its great when animators get some detail you notice about the world (that everyone else seems oblivious to) right. And certainly notice it when its wrong, and power lines are always do
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Makes me think of the segment from the Crumb movie "A Short History Of America" [youtube.com] (50 seconds long)
Ever been to Japan ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever been to Japan ? - First time I went down the residential streets of Tokyo - I tought - this looks like like I'm in an anime.
Anime creators are just copying what they see outside their houses.
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I like those drain tiles they have. It was probably Katamari Damacy that brought them to my attention; how can you fail to notice them when you pull up a row of them with a sticky ball of stuff?
I also like those diagonal rock retaining walls, though from too much time spent on Google street view, it seems that a lot of them are just lines drawn into concrete to make it look like that kind of wall.
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So, in this case is art imitating reality. Like cops eating dougnut in US police procedurals.
Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
there are a lot of power lines in Japan you insensitive clod ! ^_^
Re:Because... (Score:5, Informative)
Mod up (I don't have points today). I lived in Japan for ~ 4 years and all the utilities are on poles. Powerlines are a way of life and just everywhere. They are the backdrop for where these artists come from. I always put it down to it being earthquake protection.
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Those aren't power lines, they're tentacles in disguise!
Nope. (Score:3, Informative)
In more modern animations, wind power turbines win out over power lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Yes. But they're only there to carry the power from the wind turbines that are prominent at the start, or something like that.
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I'm a bit alarmed that it got +5 informative. I was aiming for "~3 meh".
It's a real thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
You need only look at Tokyo (capital of Japan) to see the mess of power lines that exist in real life. [duckduckgo.com]
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Perhaps the more pressing question is, 'why does anime under-represent the number and complexity of power lines?'
Play with memes (Score:5, Funny)
US flicks have fruit-stands as the go-to chaos focus. Nobody knows why, other than maybe "everyone else does it".
I always wanted to see a play on the concept where a massive fight breaks out around a fruit-stand, and everything else around it is flattened and smoldering, while the fruit-stand remains intact due to the acrobatic heroics of its ordinary-looking owner. Somebody fires a missile at the stand, and have it coincidentally pass through a tiny gap in stacked melons in slow motion.
After the fight ends, the owner starts to wheel the stand away from the quiet-but-smoldering mess, but stumbles on a road reflector bump, and the entire stand finally crashes down in glorious fruit spray.
When movie memes get too entrenched, it's time to mock them.
Similarly, a Japanese flick could have a monster fight that repeatedly ends up landing in power lines, but nothing happens with the lines: they bend a bit and then bend back to normal without drama. Have the antagonist get frustrated in that throwing his victim into them results in nothing. Finally he grabs a line, tears it in half, gets ready to zap his opponent, but just then his crime partner a few blocks away smashes another opponent into the power station, cutting off power to the line, rendering his zapping tool (torn cables) useless.
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Fruit stands explode in a colorful way when you drive a car through them at high speed. Or shoot them with a machinegun. And fruit is cheap.
You just wrote up 5 times the number of ideas... (Score:2)
If you wanted yours to be turned into a movie, you'd have to leave for France and befriend some Art House director to produce your movie (in black and white, of course), financed by "ministry of culture" grants.
Because of how background art is made (Score:5, Informative)
I know this is supposed to be kinda tongue in cheek, but most animes have specific background artists that will be asked to portray some scenery as faithfully as possible, including stuff like worn down buildings, crusty old signs, overgrown lawns, faded out street signaling, corroded paintjobs... and yes, power lines.
There are lots of titles that are specifically tied to a city, or even a specific neighborhoods... well, much like several TV series and movies.
But picking half a dozen titles stretched over 2 decades or more that have power lines in them and saying it's an "obsession" has to be a joke right? Do people even realize hundreds of titles are released every year?
In any case, it's not an obsession by any means... apart from Lain because it's thematic (it symbolizes how everything is connected), for the vast majority of titles it is just a staple of urban environments. It's part of the scenery. From another perspective, obsessive behaviour would be trying to hide them when they are quite obviously there.
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You give a satisfying comment that rings true, I'd like to mod you up if I had points.
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I don't know about that. I don't watch anime, but I do watch thousands of Vocaloid music videos (PVs) on nicovideo, made by thousands of different (mostly amateur) producers. The one recurring theme and/or image that completely stands out above all else, is overhead power lines. It's nuts how often it comes up. And I'm not talking about isolated scenes in videos full of different images, I'm talking about videos where there is only one image for the duration, and it's of power lines.
Seems like a bit of a n
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It's much more than half a dozen titles... More like a hundred or so, and the work is still in progress.
Forget the power lines (Score:2)
Goes way back (Score:2)
Obviously this pays homage to the Roadrunner cartoons, which seemed to have a large amount of power lines for such a deserted place. They also made nice twangy sounds when Wile E. Coyote ended up being catapulted by them.
David Lynch as well (Score:2)
“The fact that it controls us.
I don’t know why all people aren’t fascinated with it. It makes beautiful sounds, and it makes a lot of times some incredible light. It runs many things in our world and it’s beautiful. It’s sometimes dangerous, but it’s magical. It’s such a power and it can make some beautiful images and sounds.”
“I don’t understand it either There are things that come into the home, you know things that are built or created outside
Oi (Score:2)
. You don't get it, this is the future. Lines on lines, one pole every 2 meters. The sky will look like spaghetti, I'll have one substation on top of another!
I will rain heavy transformers down on you, and you will drown in them
Anime seems to have more moments of reflection (Score:2)
You can often see it in anime dubs: the dubbed version often adds noise and talk where there was none.
It seems that for Americans there must always be action or talk, or they think the viewer will get bored, and in Japan they have a more contemplative mood and it's perfectly normal to have a character be silent and thoughtful for a few moments and just look at the clouds, powerlines, or some other random element nearby. So powerlines show up because that's the kind of thing people just stare at randomly whe
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Yes! I love that aspect.
Power Lines, Neon/Electric Lights, Rain, ... (Score:2)
... are all ingredients of urban romantic sujets. I also could imagine that open, manually strung powerlines are very common in Japan, just as are top-down built wooden houses - for traditional reasons. And perhaps because of earthquakes, difficult landscape and easy maintainability.
"5 centimeters per second" has elaborate and long short of urban and suburban settings, including details such as crooked modern lamp posts, bulding sites, modern urban life, and yes, powerlines, etc. The best shots in Ghost in
They're just into lots of detail (Score:2)
Watch any anime, these guys are the best at capturing things, be it the movement of a dog or the steam off a bowl of noodles. Most anime food is incredibly detailed.
They just like capturing this stuff and it captures our eyes when watching. I hate to have become that cliche guy but over years of consuming the select good stuff, it's really good stuff to consume. Often whimsical and fun.
Go watch the opening 15 minutes of Redline, that should make anyones day.
Who cares about power lines? (Score:2)
The real question is why it is seemingly obsessed with objectifying women and sexualizing young girls in particular. It is disgusting.
That's how it is in Japan (Score:3)
What a silly question.
It's because that's how power lines are in Japan. They are not put systematically underground like in the US.
Same reason that the lampposts look the same... (Score:2)
Same reason that the lampposts look the same in comics.
- because that's the lamp post outside the window of the office.
They see it out the window, so it'll be included a lot.
May emit showers of sparks (Score:1)
I like it when the bridge computer has sparks shooting out and knocks out random ensign. You'd think the 24th century would be fly-by-wire and use optical or low-voltage control loops rather than high current conduits. I mean this stuff [wikipedia.org] was around in the 1950s, significantly before the original series was filmed.
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Nevermind that we have circuit breakers and fuses whose very reason to exist is to prevent dangerous overloads of power from actually destroying circuits and harming things and people.
And the Nation
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Well circuit breakers and fuses aren't effective [wikipedia.org] when you're on a war vessel...
But what about war wessels?
Re:May emit showers of sparks (Score:5, Funny)
The C4 that lines the inside of the Enterprise bridge consoles is essential for correct functioning.
Re:May emit showers of sparks (Score:5, Interesting)
Supposedly, their power transmission system is based on some sort of high-energy plasma being piped throughout the ship, and every piece of technology they have can be made more or less effective by simply funneling more power into it, even if you have to steal that power from things like lighting or life support. (For example, the computer calculates more quickly, shields become firmer, sensors extend their range and resolution, etc.)
So -- bearing in mind that "pipe more high-energy plasma from one part of the ship to a completely unrelated part" is default behavior in any crisis -- that in mind, it's amazing things don't blow up constantly.
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Re: May emit showers of sparks (Score:2)
Samsung made the battery backups inside the consoles.
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Seat restraints also interfere with ship operations.
Pro-tip: Your ship's matter-antimatter reactor should be reinforced with explodium for maximum efficiency.
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At some point they gave thought to the lack of restraints. In ST:TMP, the arms on Kirk's chair fold down automatically to grab his legs during the wormhole scene.
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Seatbelts are considered tools of war.
You can see this in the couple of episodes in the parallel universe where the Enterprise is a ship of war. (Yesterdays Enterprise)
Like silencers, no peaceful society would need them.
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They'll get right to it - after they work out seatbelts or harnesses.
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Because science fiction isn't about science most of the time. Hollywood essentially does not care. They want action, and sparks flying and an ensign flying is action.
These days things are even worse. The Hollywood writers don't even try anymore, I suspect they don't even know that the crap they write is crap. Sparks flying out of everything. The great writers are gone, now it's the age of "make shit up". Seriously, I heard a military character say "oh twenty three hundred", as if the writer was so stup
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Because the boob tube knows we won't grasp a sense of urgency from mouth words that require mental effort to attend. They need a visual aid, besides loud noises and shakycam.
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http://english.vietnamnet.vn/f... [vietnamnet.vn]
Re:Has anyone looked at real pictures of urban Jap (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly... I used to wonder why there were so many images of vending machines in Anime, they are everywhere... it is not unusual to see scenes entirely lit by vending machines even in residential (non big city) scenes there would be vending machines everywhere... is it some kind of symbolism? I don't have vending machines on my suburban street.
Then I went to japan and realized that vending machines were actually everywhere, even in small towns and residential neighborhoods.... its just part of every day life there.
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The real question you should ask yourself: Why can Japan have vending machines everywhere like this, and not have them destroyed almost immediately by thuggish little shits.
Or, why does one "culture" include lots of thuggish little shits.
Personally, I was more surprised by the extreme variety of vending machines in Japan when reported by a friend, never having been there myself. In Finland, we have almost perfected the nanny state so something like tobacco vending machines would be unimaginable. And I'm not sure what to think about the machines for buying used panties.
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I think the question isn't "why are they there?" so much as as "why are they usually in focus, even though they're a background detail?"
TFA blames Evangelion, and while I won't try to say they're wrong I'd go a bit further and suggest that its a common theme in dystopic universes everywhere. Perhaps Japanese artists think their country (OK lets face it, city since something like 90% of anime is made in the Tokyo region) is more dystopian than we do. Or maybe its just "the way things are done" and nothing
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Aboveground is cheaper to fix after an earthquake
Re: Japan just has lots of above-ground power line (Score:3)
Japan has a MUCH bigger problem with earthquakes & tsunamis than hurricanes (Tokyo & northward is about the same climate as the Northeastern US & maritime Canada). Tsunamis bring saltwater inland (very, very bad for underground power lines). Earthquakes shear underground power lines apart (or stretch them & cause subtle, harder-to-troubleshoot flakiness).