Verisimilitude
These two words are surprisingly often conflated. Not just by young students, but by professionals as well.
I would like to think about that a little.
Animation is, above all, a job that involves drawing a great many pictures. Twenty-four per second.
In the days of film, early animation drew every single one of those frames. One drawing per frame — each one drawn individually.
Then it was discovered that shooting each drawing for two frames did not greatly alter the movement.
Of course, if you looked closely, you could tell the difference. The motion became slightly stiffer.
But from the question of how to prevent that stiffness, technique was born. You might say it was a kind of history in itself.
When television animation came along, there were schedule and budget constraints. Beyond two-frame shooting, three-frame and even four-frame shooting emerged.
This made it even more necessary to find ways to make things look smooth and natural.
In the end, it all comes back to the same question: how do you make something look natural?
And so, when movement that closely approximated natural motion was achieved, people began calling it “realistic” — having “reality.”
However, I believe this is where the usage of the words began to slip.
“Realism” is naturalism. “Reality” is verisimilitude — the quality of seeming true.
They appear similar, but they are slightly different. This is where it gets confusing.
Animation is, to put it plainly, a fabrication. This premise cannot be avoided.
That is precisely why it needs reality.
The word “fabrication” is not the best way to put it, either — it is not the same as a fake. And for that matter, a fake and a counterfeit are not the same thing.
A fake carries a hint of malice, but this does not. Film and animation are entertainment, but they also engage the spirit.
You cannot simply call them objects.
So as a creator, it is best to be clear about these distinctions.
A story is a creation, and animation is born from imagination.
Reality is the act of bringing “verisimilitude” into that creation.
The audience does not believe it is real, either. And yet they laugh, and they enjoy it.
For that to happen, reality is needed.
Another way to say it would be empathy.
Without reality, nobody laughs.
Let me state one thing clearly.
To create reality, realism is not necessarily required.
This is an important point. If you do not pin it down, the confusion starts all over again.
Shotaro Nagashima
There was a man named Shotaro Nagashima.
It was around the mid-1970s, I think. One day, he appeared at my office without warning.
“I am Nagashima, president of the Japan Amateur Animation Association.”
That is how he introduced himself.
He was about my size — a small man. But what surprised me was that he arrived in a chauffeured car. A Crown, if I remember correctly.
I wondered what it could be about, but the purpose was simple: “I would like to talk with you, Mr. Tsukioka, and establish an exchange.”
That was the beginning of our association, and I ended up spending time with the members of the association on a number of occasions.
What I found there surprised me further.
Mr. Nagashima was the president of a construction company. Mr. Kumazawa was the president of a long-established confectionery firm. There were also doctors, postmasters, and the like.
Every one of them had a distinguished career of their own.
I attended several of their gatherings.
I never asked their ages, but they must all have been about twenty years older than me. At the time, I was not yet even thirty.
And yet, every one of them addressed me as “Sensei.”
I remember feeling quite out of place.
The reason they called themselves amateurs was that they used 8mm film. Since 8mm was a consumer format — a medium for amateurs — opportunities for public screening were limited.
That, I believe, is why they sought the opinion of someone like me, who was working professionally.
However, when I saw their work, I was surprised once again.
Mr. Kumazawa’s work was also memorable, but it is Mr. Nagashima’s that I cannot forget.
I have forgotten the title, so let me call it Trump for now. “Trump” as in playing cards, mind you — not the other association you might have.
Three Playing Cards Perform Shakespeare
Not a single human character appears in the work.
The only things on screen are three cards: a King, a Queen, and a Jack.
The King and Queen are presumably a married couple. So there is nothing wrong with them being affectionate in bed.
But the moment the King exits the frame, the Jack card slides smoothly into the bed.
From here, the tenor of the story changes.
The king’s anguish, jealousy, and revenge.
Whether this Jack is the king’s child, I cannot say. But in any case, it is fascinating.
I found myself thinking: is this not Shakespeare’s Hamlet?
Hamlet begins with the relationship between the mother and the king’s brother, and from there develops into one of the world’s three great tragedies.
Mr. Nagashima’s Trump has only three cards, so it cannot expand into a story of that magnitude.
But it reminds you that so many of the world’s great stories begin with jealousy.
Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo is the same. The story is set in motion by the jealousy that surrounds Edmond Dantès.
The philosopher Miki Kiyoshi also wrote about the troublesome nature of jealousy in his Notebook on Life.
But my point here is not about narrative theory.
It is about the reality in Mr. Nagashima’s Trump.
Not a single human being appears in this work. There are no buildings. There is only a bed and three cards.
And yet, it has reality.
Quite powerful reality, at that.
That troublesome emotion everyone has experienced at least once or twice — he makes you feel it with just three cards. No card magician alive could pull off that trick.
I think that is remarkable.
There is no realism. But there is reality.
It is the kind of reality that lurks in the human psyche.
It may not be the kind of thing that moves you to tears. But you cannot help empathizing.
Reality in Commercials
This brings me to my own work for a moment.
I am someone who makes things with pictures, so the question of reality is always on my mind. I think I am more sensitive than most to gestures and small movements.
I was around fifty at the time, I think. I was making a series of TV commercials for a major supermarket chain.
They held sales every month, and the commercials were meant to serve as announcements for those sales.
Japanese commercials are typically fifteen seconds long. To be precise, the client’s logo takes up the final two to two and a half seconds, so the actual content is barely over twelve seconds.
Image-driven commercials still offer some room for creativity, but information-heavy ones are honestly not the most exciting genre.
The agency suggested: “We would like you to use a cute animal character.”
I made more than ten spots in total, I think. Let me tell you about one of them.
Since the character speaks, syncing the narration to the mouth movements is naturally important.
This is what is known as pre-scoring — recording the dialogue first, then animating the mouth to match.
This, too, is one of the techniques for creating reality.
We went into the recording studio. There were child voice actors from the production company — a boy and a girl.
I was in the adjoining control room with the engineer, giving direction.
I was listening through headphones.
The first take was no good.
We moved straight to take two.
During a phrase being read by the girl, a faint sound slipped in — the tiniest sniffle. A barely audible sound.
Normally, you would redo the take immediately. The engineer assumed as much and was already preparing for the next one.
I rushed to stop him.
“Do not erase that take!”
The producer, the agency people, the staff around me — all of them had the same look on their faces: “Why?”
I played the tape back several times.
The sound was faint, but it was definitely there. I was relieved. Inside, I was shouting with joy.
I asked the engineer to raise the volume of that sniffle just slightly. Place it right at the threshold — where you almost notice it but are not quite sure.
Then we copied it to a cine tape and measured the exact position of the sound.
From there, it was animation work.
A sniffling motion is not a dramatic thing. So I practiced it several times in front of a mirror.
The area between the nose and mouth moves just barely. I captured that faint movement.
It took about four drawings, I think. A split second, but it produced exactly the effect I wanted.
Among all the spots in this series, I thought it was the best one.
At the screening, the staff loved it. There was laughter. I thought, “This one will work.”
But just before it was set to air, it was stopped.
A complaint from the client. The reason: that sniffle.
“We also sell food products, and we do not want to cause any unpleasant feelings.”
That was the comment.
In the end, the animation was left as it was, and only the sound was removed in the studio.
I felt no disappointment. If anything, I was satisfied — because I had managed to approach reality with just four drawings.
Sniffling is something everyone does every day. Whether that feels unhygienic is a separate matter.
It is said that around three thousand commercials air in Japan each day. No one remembers all of them.
But a moment that makes you think, “Wait, what was that?” — that lingers in memory. I believe reality is what creates that moment.
One More Commercial Story
This, too, is about my own work, but let me write it down.
It was around 1995, I think. I was making a lot of commercials at the time.
The job was for a personal computer manufacturer. I will call them Company F.
At the time, market share stood at about 40% for Company N, 18% for Company F, and 15% for Company A. Company F was lagging a bit behind.
They wanted to fight back.
Working under copywriter I, I contributed the animation.
The rival had already secured government offices, educational institutions, and schools. Company F decided to target the home market. The personal computer was, in a sense, a machine that had appeared out of nowhere, and it carried a cold image — all apps and jargon.
The commercials were aimed at fathers who still could not figure out the internet. Domestic little scenes from family life.
The characters had a touch of human warmth, with just a hint of playful sensuality.
The copy was well crafted, and the campaign became a talking point. Sales climbed. Company F was closing in on Company N.
We made about two spots a year, around ten in total, when the order came down to stop.
The reason: “It is damaging the corporate image.”
I later heard that the CEO’s wife had not approved.
These were simple line-drawn animations — no nudity. They did not violate any broadcasting ethics codes.
It was purely a matter of feeling — of atmosphere. The wife had sensed it with precision.
From our side, the “playful sensuality and humor” had been calculated and deliberate. It was, in the end, a matter of the heart.
As with the supermarket commercials before, the things I make tend to get pulled. This was the third time, I believe.
Ethics and Reality
As it happens, I once served on the ethics committee for the game industry. The issues that came up were almost always about sex and violence.
Games, like films, have ethics codes.
But those codes are written in words. And words have their limits.
Where is the line?
That was always a matter of debate.
Take shooting games, for example.
In the old days, when a character was shot, a few black dots would scatter — no problem there.
But as PC performance improved, blood became realistic, even acquiring a viscous quality.
At that point, it was no longer pleasant to look at.
We would ask the developers to tone it down a little. But they would push back.
“Tell us exactly where the line is. Give us numbers.”
Pixel count? Area ratio? Show us.
The debates never quite met in the middle.
The sex side was even harder.
Why do they create such content? Because it sells. Because the public demands it.
But at the same time, there are voices worrying about the effect on children.
Both sides are the same public.
I sometimes think: is it not far more frightening when people stop feeling anything at all upon seeing a death on the news?
On Disney’s Reality
Among Disney’s works, I am fond of Pinocchio.
Pinocchio is the story of a puppet who rescues his creator, old Geppetto, from inside a whale.
Pursued by the whale, the two flee on a raft. But the whale rams them, and the raft is blown apart.
Then the shore. After the waves recede, Pinocchio lies face-down, his long nose driven into the sand, half his face buried.
Every time I see this scene, tears come. To be precise, it is the scene that follows — when the Blue Fairy appears and Pinocchio is “brought back to life.”
Let me shift the subject slightly.
From around 2010, the refugee crisis in Europe was growing dire. Strict policies restricted entry, and people continued to be turned away.
Still, they kept coming. They crossed the sea in flimsy boats, and news of capsizings was constant.
In 2015, footage emerged of a young boy washed up on a Turkish beach. I saw it on television. At that moment, I thought, “Pinocchio.”
A child of about five — the same age as Pinocchio — lay in exactly the same position, alone on the shore, arms hanging at his sides. He was wearing what appeared to be new clothes — a shirt and shorts.
Surely he had been carrying the hope of reaching a new place.
When I saw it, I could not stop the tears.
The scene from Pinocchio had overlaid itself on that image.
I wished the Blue Fairy would come.
Pinocchio was made in 1940. This happened seventy-five years later.
The footage is said to have moved European politicians. There were reports that German Chancellor Merkel shifted her refugee policy. The EU’s stance shifted, too, toward a policy of greater openness.
Images have power. The power to capture fact and truth.
And yet, Pinocchio is a fabrication.
Still, it brings tears.
This cannot be explained by reality alone.
Pinocchio travels, endures hardship after hardship, and at last learns where home is.
He finally returns, only to find the house empty.
He learns that Geppetto, along with Cleo the goldfish and Figaro the cat, has set off on a journey to find Pinocchio himself.
It is the accumulation of those emotions that gives rise to empathy.
And that leads to the final miracle.
Reality generates empathy, but empathy alone does not become profound emotion.
The Reality of Sensuality
The Japanese word iroke — sensuality, allure — is a rather complex thing.
When we speak of a man’s allure, it gives you pause. But when it comes to a woman’s allure, many people immediately picture sexuality.
Here, though, I want to think about it in terms of pictures.
Sensuality has been one of art’s motifs since ancient times.
Take Kitagawa Utamaro, for example. Woman Blowing a Glass Pipe is well known.
Yet I do not feel it strongly in his work. I feel it more, actually, in Suzuki Harunobu.
In Europe, there is Gustav Klimt. He is known for his depiction of skin, and I share that appreciation.
Fujita Tsuguharu’s “Fujita white” is also famous. It is the reality of skin tone. But perhaps because Fujita was Japanese, I think he sought that quality even in the lines he drew.
Renoir painted women constantly, but while there is beauty, I do not feel much sensuality.
His paintings are the kind you can hang in the living room without worry.
There are beautiful nudes everywhere in the world. Accurately rendering the nude figure does not guarantee sensuality. So what is sensuality, exactly?
Sensuality in Animation
Animation originally began as something for children. So there was no thought of expressing sensuality.
Disney was probably the model for that.
However, there are exceptions in animation.
One is the French animated film The King and the Mockingbird (originally The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep), directed by Paul Grimault.
I first saw it when I was in middle school.
The king in this film is nothing like a Disney king.
He is short, pot-bellied, stubby-legged, and cross-eyed.
And yet, strangely real.
The way he returns to his chamber and pours a glass of wine — in that gesture of the hand, you glimpse the refinement of an aristocrat.
His sharp eyes brim with suspicion, reminding you of a certain president’s gaze. His swaggering walk carries the movements of a man burdened by a complex.
This is not live action. It is drawing and movement created by animators.
And yet, the reality is extraordinary.
I believe this king’s performance holds its own against any flesh-and-blood actor.
Then there is the shepherdess. Her movements have sensuality.
Running barefoot across what appears to be a marble floor. The suppleness of her arms as she balances, the softness in the movement of her hands and feet.
I find her sexier than any Disney princess.
Animation moves. So it may have a slight advantage when it comes to expressing sensuality.
There is an anime by Toei Doga — their first feature-length film, Panda and the Magic Serpent (1958).
Its heroine is Pai Niang — the White Snake spirit. She is, to my mind, the only character in Japanese animation who possesses true eroticism.
Pai Niang is the spirit of a serpent, or perhaps a supernatural being. In Chinese folklore, stories of animals and humans falling in love are extremely common.
These tales usually end in tragedy, but Toei’s version was rewritten as a happy ending.
A very similar story is Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
For the two to be together, the woman must become human — and the conditions are cruel.
She must surrender all her powers and spiritual abilities.
Pai Niang agonizes over this as well. And the poses and writhing movements of that anguish are what make her so sensual.
Her eye movements, too, are not to be missed. You could call them bewitching.
Think of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring — those famous eyes. Combined with the slightly parted lips, innocence prevails. But it is a magnificent painting.
The animator who created Pai Niang was Akira Daikuhara, the ace of Toei Doga.
Having looked at France and Japan, let us turn to the other great animation nation: America.
Disney has no such works, but there was “one animator of the New York school.”
That was Ralph Bakshi (born 1938, of Palestinian origin).
His films include Fritz the Cat, Wizards, Hey Good Lookin’, The Lord of the Rings, Fire and Ice, and many others.
As a child of the hippie generation who championed free love, his debut Fritz the Cat depicted the squalid atmosphere of a cat society to the fullest.
His later works increasingly used rotoscoping — essentially the same as motion capture — lifting the movements of live-action actors directly. So the motion was that of real human bodies.
He directed voluptuous female performers in unrestrained poses and action sequences.
The line drawings carried more sensuality than live action ever could.
You might call it a feral sensuality.
Toei Animation: a bewitching, otherworldly sensuality (Japanese allure). Paul Grimault: a healthy, vital sensuality (French allure). Ralph Bakshi: a wild, untamed sensuality (American allure).
With a word like “sensuality,” there are many flavors indeed.
Japan (Asia): sensuality through line. Europe: sensuality through color.
It seems that sensuality is viewed and understood differently across cultures and regions.
What Is Sensuality?
Sensuality is not only about outward appearance.
Breath. Pause. Presence. Life.
That is what it is.
The movement of a line, color, gesture. A sensation held in memory.
All of it is rooted in the body.
Expression and Reality
Eroticism, too, is a form of expression.
Why do people seek it?
Because they seek “verisimilitude” within fiction.
Reality is not only external. It emerges where technique and spirit overlap.
Photography, 3D, AI — they are getting closer and closer to the real thing.
But that alone does not produce reality.
Some say AI’s technology will catch up. But as long as AI cannot possess skin, that seems an impossibility.
A line drawn by a human hand carries momentum, languor, suppleness, hesitation, sensuality.
Reality is not about reproducing the external world. It is about making people feel the reality that exists inside the human heart.
That is, you might say, the expression of life itself.
When a person empathizes, a process begins — one that moves toward profound emotion.
(If I were to force the purpose into a flow chart:)
Reality — Empathy — Identification — Emotion
I believe this sequence exists even in a single picture.
The legendary directors of the past — Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi — were famously said to spend an entire day on a single cut.
What they were after was something small, something subtle. It was reality.
Perhaps it was something in the dialogue — in the words.
So tell me, AI — what do we do about the things that cannot be put into words?
This is also a record of my own memories. I wrote it for the young people of today, at a time when the dawn of the AI era has thrown everything into confusion. There may well be errors in my recollections — please read with that in mind.
Sadao Tsukioka