
Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines? - drops
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-power-lines-anime-electrical-infrastructure
======
coolandsmartrr
Short Answer: Anno

Until their depiction in _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ in 1995, power lines were
virtually non-existent in anime. After all, why draw them when they take up
more time and effort during a time-packed production schedule? However,
Hideaki Anno, the director of the aforementioned anime, began to implement
them in backgrounds, bringing in a new kind of mechanical urban aesthetics.
Anno has a certain kind of obsession with mechanical structures, such as power
lines and rail tracks, as he likes the way they continue into a distance. He
continued depicting them in his later works, such as _Kare Kano_ as well as
live action features such as _Shiki-jitsu_ , _Love and Pop_ and his recent
blockbuster _Godzilla Resurgence_ [1]. Given how Evangelion revolutionized
anime, the industry quickly followed its influence including its aesthetics.

Source: I've interviewed him.
[Link]([http://rickyreports.com/archives/annohideaki/](http://rickyreports.com/archives/annohideaki/))

[1] Well, it is rather an essential feature to portray destruction within this
long-running monster franchise.

~~~
unabst
I can't believe I found it, or rather, that someone uploaded just it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9GZrKztXQ)

When I heard power lines, for some reason one scene from Patlabor came to
mind.

It's the quintessential Tokyo city view from the window, and the
quintessential view inside a window from the city. Outside there are power
lines. You cannot avoid them. And looking in, you see the tatami flooring and
dudes in their underwear.

I thought it might have been Patlabor 2, but it was the original movie. So
that's 1989. Both movies are staples of Japanese anime.

But power lines can also be found in episode 1 of the TV series.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTs97NpnUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTs97NpnUo)

So my short answer would be Patlabor, but that's just from my own memory.

I think the commonality here is that the power lines are used to portray a
sense of scale for the robots. A kid growing up in Tokyo knows exactly how
high those lines are.

~~~
Chathamization
I just checked out Bubblegum Crisis (1987), and that also has multiple shots
with crazy power lines in the background. For instance, 11:38 here:

[https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698](https://youtu.be/JlFGbBPQGLo?t=698)

~~~
sirmarksalot
The shot has power lines in it, but they're not really the focus. It's a busy
nightlife scene, and the power lines serve that effect.

In the Patlabor shot, the detailed power infrastructure is a bit more
purposeful, adding to the atmosphere of an average suburban neighborhood full
of average people. But again, it's not the star of the shot -- it's just one
of a handful of choices that create the mood.

In Evangelion, the shots are framed to draw your attention to a wooden pole
with a transformer box that was probably designed in the '60s, serving as a
stark contrast with all the futuristic technology around it.

------
ekianjo
Because that's what Japan looks like, duh! Any place in Japan has basically
power lines all over the place, even in cities like Tokyo.

And also because it's easy to draw and show for 5 seconds in every anime to
save on the precious animation budget because it's super static and goes
everywhere. Added bonus it can be added into any decor and you would not
notice it's the same pattern imported all over again in between animes.

~~~
GuB-42
It is true that it is what Japan looks like but it is still interesting to see
how detailed the depiction is.

Compare to the Simpsons for instance. It is set in present day American
suburbs, but it doesn't look at all like a photograph. All the small details
are missing unless they are relevant to the story.

In the west, even if real life photographs, power lines are commonly seen as a
nuisance and avoided, or even edited out.

It is clearly a different approach to animation. I think we can make the
parallel the way hands are drawn. 4 fingers for western animation
(simplified), 5 for anime (realistic).

The animation budget argument makes sense, and it certainly a good explanation
for pylon or railway crossing shots. But I don't think it explains everything,
both obscure series and big-budget animation films have their fair share of
power lines.

~~~
vanpeebles
Precisely ... because the Simpsons is the epitome of all western animation. /s

~~~
gravy
What is this even supposed to mean?

That's exactly their point. The average-to-low-budget (as well as unpopular)
anime still has power line shots all over because that's just what they do. On
average, our establishing shots in our (Western) cartoons just aren't as
detailed. Obviously popularity and quality are not hand in hand, and The
Simpsons is one of, if not the most popular cartoon show of all time.

~~~
ekianjo
The Simpson has massively better animation than The regular tv anime in Japan.
Most animes have very few animated frames and instead revolve on fixed
backgrounds, scrolling, voice over and only lips moving now and then. Good
animation is expensive to produce and most animes are made with very few
resources and time. When a good one makes it, its nothing short of a miracle.

~~~
egypturnash
Let me introduce you to a concept called "pencil mileage".

Simply put, for a budget of $x, your crew can draw $y miles of lines. How do
you use these to fill out the huge number of images you need to produce?

In the West, the solution has historically been to simplify your drawings as
much as humanly possible so that you can have a lot of them; we tend to want
to have everything constantly moving and changing. Our characters tend to be
the barest collection of broad details to distinguish one from another; we are
loathe to drop below shooting "on twos"^1.

In the East, they took a different path: They want complicated drawings. So
one drawing will linger on the screen a lot longer, pushing up against the
moment where a drawing "goes dead"^2 a lot harder. Often you'll build up to a
small handful of lavishly animated scenes, where most of the episode's budget
is blown at the climax of the episode.

I was raised in the Western tradition^3, and it took a long time to learn to
see the craftsmanship and love in Eastern animation. I'm glad I did; I've seen
some really powerful and compelling stories that I wouldn't have seen in
Western work.

(There are of course broad generalizations, you can find increasing amounts of
Western work that's heavily influenced by Eastern animation, and probably
vice-versa as well. You can also find expensive shows and cheap shows all over
the world.)

\----

1: exposing every drawing twice, for an effective frame rate of 12 (animators
still like to think in film's 24fps) 2: If a character is moving, then goes
perfectly still, there is this weird moment when your brain stops registering
it as "something alive that has stopped moving for a moment" and starts
registering it as "a static drawing". It's really creepy to see happen. 3: and
even spent most of a decade working in it

~~~
satellitec4t
I couldn't quickly find a link/reference, but I remember reading a couple
years ago that, when shown images/photographs, in the West we spend most of
our time looking at the foreground objects, while in the East (might have been
Chinese specifically who were tested?), they look at the background more than
westerners (which is not to say that they look at the background more than the
foreground)

~~~
fjsolwmv
It was Freakonomics, I think. Or a contemporary book

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rebuilder
In addition to the reasons given here, I'd say that as far as bang-for-buck in
terms of visual realism goes, power lines are pretty effective. They look
complex but are quite fast to draw with line tools or model in a 3d package
and usually can be represented with minimal shading. Creating the impression
of modern urban landscapes is largely a question of creating very detail-dense
images, and power lines are a pretty cheap way to add a lot of small detail.

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exelius
Lol... I was going to say this exactly. _Evangelion_ and _Lain_ were pretty
popular even in the US around the year 2000, so I imagine they were near
ubiquitous in Japan. Both were well-animated and the power lines a symbol that
was returned to again and again.

Anime/manga also loves to meme/trope things like this because animation
studios are cheap and love 30s tracking shots across 2 hand-drawn panel with
nothing more to animate than a bit of lens flare. IMO it started as a style
thing but quickly became a “this is a cheap way to pad our runtime” thing.

~~~
bitwize
One thing I learned about anime (from discussing it with Japanese folks) is
that "anime Westerners like" and "anime Japanese like" can be way different.
Something may come out in Japan that has only niche appeal, only to blow up in
the West. Azumanga Daioh -- Mother of a Thousand 4chan Memes -- comes to mind.
Likewise, sometimes a title takes off in Japan only to find rocky soil here.

I think Evangelion was well loved on both sides of the pond but I have no idea
about Lain. It seemed a closer fit for Western cyberpunk sensibilities though,
and I have no recollection of it turning into a media phenomenon the way
Macross, Eva, or One Piece did.

~~~
deadmetheny
If I recall correctly, Lain was fairly popular both in the West and Japan,
largely for similar reasons, although it was less big in the West since at the
time it came out anime had not really become A Thing yet.

To your point, Cowboy Bebop can probably be considered to be one of the
biggest causes for anime to gain so much traction in the US due to being on
Adult Swim and having a killer feel and soundtrack, but its lasting power
wasn't nearly as strong in Japan.

~~~
exelius
IIRC Cowboy Bebop was developed explicitly with western audiences in mind.
It’s success informed later shows (in a similar way to how thr Chinese market
is influencing Hollywood movies) so it really is a landmark show, even if it
wasn’t as well received in Japan.

~~~
hkmurakami
I mean they made a Movie spinoff from the show, so it was sufficiently popular
at the time. It didn't have mass appeal staying power a la Eva or Geass, but
the former is an outlier and the latter was made in an era where the
production companies became much more sophisticated about fan cultivation and
pre planned media mixing.

~~~
deadmetheny
Oh yeah, I don't mean to suggest it wasn't popular, but it also doesn't seem
to have had the same level of sustained popularity that it has here in the
West.

------
xefer
In that great documentary "Crumb" cartoonist Robert Crumb shows his notebooks
in which he keeps pictures of all sorts of mundane infrastructure that he
incorporates into his drawings.

It's really effective in this sequence "A Short History of America":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IFVUHg_tUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IFVUHg_tUc)

That one always gets me...

~~~
ableal
Comments there mention three later 'alternate futures' panels. They can be
found through this page: [https://boingboing.net/2009/08/07/r-crumbs-short-
histo.html](https://boingboing.net/2009/08/07/r-crumbs-short-histo.html)

------
edpichler
This makes me wonder about how complex is the world we are living today. The
large amount of niches humanity created, unceasingly. On our complex
societies, even a micro blog about "power lines in anime" have an audience,
and got a journalist's attention to create an interesting article.

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Isamu
Even before I read the link, I thought: Serial Experiments Lain.

The power lines are almost an additional character.

Also: I think this is where the X-styled hair tie started. I remember some
discussion of it at the time, and so many characters since then have had some
reference to it.

~~~
calebm
Me too :) I loved Serial Experiments Lain's foregrounding of things like power
lines... many people might find them unattractive, but good art can change how
you see things.

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shove
No one mentioned this specifically, but as someone who's dabbled in animation
a bit...

Power lines are fantastic for selling depth / perspective. The poles are long
and slender vertically as are the wires horizontally. When you parallax, it's
a nice way to have a mid-ground layer that doesn't obscure too much of the
background and naturally pokes up above shorter foreground elements.

Not saying the other thoughts re: theme etc aren't valid. Just something else
to consider.

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bitwize
It isn't just powerlines. Anime -- especially well-done anime -- has a way of
focusing on the mundane in order to establish an emotional connection to the
setting.

Thr anime movie _Your Name_ is riddled with brief, but sumptuously animated
and richly detailed, close-ups of doors opening and closing. These include
simple doors on a rustic rural home as well as the automatic sliding doors on
a Tokyo railway car.

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peterwwillis
Anime background/setting tropes:

    
    
      - cicadas
      - airplanes
      - power lines
      - traffic signals
      - artificial riverbanks
      - lush sprawling forests
      - the roof of a building

~~~
gravy
Honestly. I went to Japan just last month and the fact that all of this is
everywhere is just crazy.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
> The fact that traffic "signals, airplanes, and the roof of a building" is
> everywhere is just crazy?

What does that mean?

~~~
nkoren
Means you've gotta go to Japan, mate!

------
cgmg
To quote bitwize from this thread: Well-done anime has a way of focusing on
the mundane in order to establish an emotional connection to the setting.

For anyone who wants to understand this aesthetic, I strongly recommend
watching The Garden of Words (言の葉の庭), which is only 46 minutes long. There is
something breathtakingly beautiful about this film and other ones like it.
They engender a strong feeling of longing and gentle sadness (nostalgia?) by
bringing focus to the little things in life. It's a sentiment that tugs at the
human soul.

Look up mono no aware (物の哀れ), which may be translated as 'a gentle sadness at
the transience of things', as well as wabi-sabi (侘寂). Both of these are
central to Japanese culture and history.

Edit: I also recommend checking out '5 Centimeters Per Second' and 'Your
Name', both directed by Makoto Shinkai. To quote Ronnie Scheib's review:

Shinkai has been hailed as the next Miyazaki, and his dreamy mindscapes often
equal or surpass the anime maestro in breadth of detail and depth of emotion.
Shinkai extends the innate possibilities of the anime dynamic, reapplying its
principles of lush effects, inflated background detail and sometimes
undernourished character animation to mirror the interiority of the characters
in every nuance of their surroundings.

Some images from 5cm/s:
[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=5+cm+per+second&oq=...](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=5+cm+per+second&oq=5+cm+per+second)

------
vinceguidry
I propose a more prosaic explanation. Anime artists probably spend a lot of
time looking out their windows. Unless they're doing _very_ well for
themselves, they probably see a lot of power lines.

So the one thing they look at and study the most, is very likely to be power
lines.

------
thriftwy
I thought it's just that in Asia, they don't usually hide lines or make effort
to decrease number of individual wires.

That's what you have on street - that's what you get in anime.

~~~
donquichotte
I was told that at least in Japan, this is done because it's easier to rebuild
after an earthquake than digging up and reburying broken power and
communication lines.

~~~
kqr
Huh, cool. That's a great illustration of the two general ways to achieve
reliability. Either you make it rather hard to break in the first place (bury
powerlines underground, write software with strong type systems) or embrace
the fact that either way, it will break eventually, so maybe it's just better
to focus on making it easy to fix (powerlines in the air, write Erlang-style
software that reboots quickly in the face of error.)

------
jamiewildehk
It's a beautiful trope that immediately ties you to the location. The shots of
trains passing is another - you can tell the train type and company being
detected often with a scary level of accuracy. (fd - haven't lived in Japan
since 2008)

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itsjustme2
I don't see how this is much different from the establishing shots, panoramic
shots, still life shots, etc. that exist in other genres as well. That being
said, I do see these types of shots less often in modern non-anime film and I
appreciate how anime has been carrying this tradition. Lots of classic films
also have a taste for the scenic and contemplative, and it's one of the things
I love about them.

~~~
jcl
I think anime's predilection for establishing shots may be due in part to its
manga roots...

In "Understanding Comics", Scott McCloud analyzed the transitions made between
panels in various works, and he found that sequences of transitions between
different views of an environment (what he called "aspect-to-aspect") were
common in manga but were nearly absent in American or European comics. I
believe he attributed this to the fact that manga typically has higher page
counts than other comics, allowing the authors to invest more in setting up
scenes.

------
hulkisdumb
My guess is that + all the other reasons given, they just look artsy and
pretty especially against the sky as a background

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rhn_mk1
Not directly related, but this made me think of general role of power lines in
art.

When they are drawn or painted, they are valuable: they obviously carry a
message, someone took the time to draw them.

On a photograph, they are considered something to avoid, or an eye sore to
erase. Perhaps because often photographers want to convey what they _perceive_
, not what they _see_. I can say that about myself - I tune out all the
utilities from a beautiful piece of architecture like banner ads from an
interesting website. But when it comes to taking a photograph, they come back
with full force, often leaving me hopeless.

I wonder if there exists a way for a photographer to embrace and love the
"ugly" signs of civilization. Perhaps give them a compositional role?

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kazagistar
The best creators will innovate these sorts of flourishes, picking things that
are thematically and tonally consistent and have a real purpose. Then other
creators will copy them, as an omage to the original work in order to ground
themselves in the artistic movement they wish to belong to. This is how we end
up with such a distinct anime aesthetic; a slow accretion of unique elements
forming a distinct culture as multiple generations of artists influence each
other in blatant and subtle way.

------
lemoncucumber
Brought to mind this post for artists about how to accurately draw power
lines: [http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2016/05/what-artists-
need-...](http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2016/05/what-artists-need-to-know-
about-utility.html)

------
nice_byte
Because that's literally what Japan looks like? I've been to Tokyo and Kyoto,
there are power lines/wires hanging everywhere. I don't know for sure, but I
assume they don't have this infrastructure hidden underground because of
earthquake concerns.

------
lhorie
Ironically, one theme that is becoming quite popular nowadays in
manga/anime/light novels is "isekai" (i.e. main character gets transported to
another world, typically a medieval fantasy similar to LoTR)

------
swayvil
Because they are graphically striking, lush.

Also they are magical objects. A visible shout of power.

Speaking as an artist, it's low hanging mangos on a silver platter. Of course
we're gonna do them.

------
blattimwind
To highlight the location using archaic and outdated infrastructure? I mean, a
two-prong 115 V outlet would be kinda hard to see in comparison, no?
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
walshemj
100v in japan at either 50hz or 60Hz depending on where you are!

------
nalerica
This is absolutely correct. I am a lover of anime and approve of this
statement

------
rootsudo
Really, the conclusion: "There's many powerlines in Tokyo."

Well, no duh.

------
bischofs
I dont mean to be terse, but why is this article on the front page?

~~~
nvarsj
Probably because groups of hackers and anime nerds have a fairly large
overlap, esp for those who grew up in the 90s/00s. I spent many nights as a
teen watching classic anime (Robotech aka macross, etc) on kqed (bay areas pbs
station).

------
justaman
Power lines are awful. They are an eyesore that destroys an otherwise
beautiful landscape. I hope we can start putting these underground soon.

~~~
crims0n
I agree but underground lines are often 2-4 times more expensive than above
ground - for that reason alone I don't see them going away in our lifetime.

~~~
MiddleEndian
Many urban areas in the US have them buried. None of the places I've lived in
Boston have visible power lines but most of the surrounding areas do. It's
nice to not worry about weather being a threat to your electricity even if
it's more expensive to maintain under standard circumstances.

