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All too often in the West, anime becomes one of those forms much maligned as unsophisticated, lacking in depth and perspicacity; and while I can understand much of where this misconception is derived from (and there are too many examples out there to pick on one or two specifically), there are some truly notable instances of deeply psychological anime (Perfect Blue comes to mind, which I will run happily if I can ever find a decent embed). And much like Cash’s Understanding Comics piece, I thought I’d share a couple of the more thoughtful anime I’d come across.

So tonight we’ll shift gears a bit, and actually take on a love story, Le Portrait de Petite Cossette. Well. Sort of.

With a bit of a Noir feel to it, the entire run is worth a look, even if only for the slow tormented progression of obsessiveness that overcomes the protagonists.

I’ve always enjoyed how, when an anime aims for a deeper portrayal of emotion, the production becomes so singularly focused on the positive use of negative space. Very much a ‘Show, don’t Tell’ medium. And more importantly, ‘don’t Show, but give the Indication of’. Note, for instance, many of the camera angles. Frequently shooting out from behind a partially obstructed view, as the plot moves forward we may not be able to see the entire character speaking for instance, but movement and emotion are often implied by what we can see, and our minds to their dirty work of filling in the rest. That act of mental construction forces the viewer to become more engaged, less passive, and ultimately leads to a greater resonance with both the characters and the story.

I suppose you could think of it as a sort of ‘What you say is not always as important as how you say it” paradigm. The presentation colors every aspect of the whole, and sheds new light on the immediately perceivable.  And human beings are designed to be suckers for that, we’re built to asses the entire emotional impact of a presentation and value it over its direct rational content, and to base our responses accordingly. How the hell else would Bush have gotten two terms?

These again, are many of the same techniques used in comics, and while I’m convinced that no media is perfectly capable of engaging the full realm of human consciousness (no, not even Avatar. Shut up.), there’s tremendous potential for visual arts to cross that fourth wall of the stage and worm their way directly into the unsuspecting cerebellum. Whether static or moving, culturally stylized or generic, these mediums each have their own psychological tricks to play. It’s just up to a good production to exploit them.

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