“The Ritualization of the ‘Bank System’ in Japanese TV Animation With Hero or Heroine”, 2015-04-13 (; backlinks):
Japanese TV animation series, usually named as anime, has been so successful in commercial and influential in cultural at an international level. The ‘super robot’ and the ‘magic girl’ are the two major heroic themes. The ‘heroic’ here refers that the protagonist in the story regularly carries on fighting with villains to save or protect the people in the world.
The so-called bank system to re-use the animation footage is one of the techniques to substantially reduce the cost in the production of Japan TV Animation. The clips in the bank system are usually used for certain situations such as the appearing, the transforming, and the final attacking of the heroes. Since the quality of these clips, the function to transit in the narrative, as well as the expectation of viewers ‘bank system’ is possibly seen as a type of ritual in Japan TV Animation. We proposed to name it as ’ritualized bank system.
In this study, we discuss the birth and the development of ‘bank system’ in Japanese animation history, as well as the uniqueness in the theme and narrative in heroic Japanese TV animations.
The ‘ritualized bank system’ is then further explored and categorized in terms of narrative functions in several two major genres that heavily-used this technique in Japanese TV animation with hero or heroine.
[Keywords: animation, TV series animation, Japanese animation, anime, bank system, limited animation]