A sociology of the webgen

Retracing the social, artistic and intellectual evolution of web-generation animation, this article first introduces the web-gen in more detail and examines its social dynamics, focusing on the networks that made it possible. Then, it moves to the web-gen’s relationship to technology, retracing the emergence of digital animation in anime and its role in a socio-aesthetic shift. This shift is afterward investigated in its critical formulation through close reading of some of the web-gen’s key texts. Finally, I interrogate the web-gen’s legacy, illustrating how its practices spread throughout the Japanese animation industry.

The Kanada style now

Although the Kanada style has certainly known a rebirth in the 2000s, it seems that, in the 2010’s, it has gone through a new phase of decline. It’s not that it has totally disappeared: it is still thriving around specific studios (like Trigger) or artists (the most important among them being Yoshimichi Kameda). However, outside of those circles, the presence of the Kanada style is mostly visible through citations (Kanada dragons, very angular effects) and a generally snappier approach to timing. Overall, there is little formal innovation. But this doesn’t mean that the Kanada style is dead or dying; it has just acquired a new, more secondary, place in the field of anime aesthetics. This situation is what I call the “post-Kanada” era; not just because it has been long now since the golden age of the 80’s, but also because most Kanada-school animators emerging today have done so after the death of Yoshinori Kanada himself. They have therefore never directly experienced his work, and their influences might be more diverse than that of previous artists. The goal of this article will be to understand this new context, and to highlight some promising artists in the Kanada lineage.