Yes, He didn't really say "Anime was a mistake", He said "Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people". But that doesn't make for a snappy title. So anyway:
Contextualizing Miyazaki's "Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people"
So most people in the anime community have probably heard this before. It gets tossed around every time amateur writers/bloggers have to make broad analysis of the industry, why modern anime is bad etc. But devoid of context this quote turns out to be rather misleading. The quote is part of translated pictures of an interview of Miyazaki published by
Soranews24.
The full context of the quote is as follows:
Clearly the quote is specifically in reference to drawing/character design and not stories or tropes in anime as one would immediately assume! This interview was published in various outlets with a similar headline, "Hayao Miyazaki says the anime industry’s problem is that it’s full of otaku" so this might be a case of people reading just the headline and running with it rather than read the actual body of the article.
But Miyazaki has criticized anime writing before right? Yes he has! “Today, I rarely watch any animation that amazes me or makes my heart pound with excitement” This quote was seen in the essay
Nostalgia for a Lost World which can be found in his essay collection
Starting Point. But this essay was published in
1979! Perhaps the kind of anime that appeal to Miyazaki are those from the very infancy of the medium.
But is the industry full of otaku? Well Miyazaki may be out of touch but in the absence of any hard statistics about Otaku population in the industry we don't really have any grounds to doubt him. Instead, just as a semi-analytical exercise, lets take a bunch of well-known anime industry personalities and examine their backgrounds to classify them as Otaku or Notaku(Not otaku) based on the kind of anime they've made:
- Hideaki Anno, director of Evangelion among other anime: Huge Otaku
- Hiroyuki Imaishi, director and founder of studio Trigger: A lot of his work is inspired by Mecha anime of the past so Otaku
- Masaaki Yuasa, director and founder of studio Science Saru: He started out working on kids shows like Shin Chan and Chibi Maruko Chan so let's say he is a Notaku.
- Tsutomu Mizushima, prolific director of comedy anime: He has a similar background to Yuasa working on kids shows to begin with so lets put him in the Notaku category.
- Mamoru Hosoda, movie director: He worked on Digimon and other Toei poperties aimed at children so he's a Notaku too.
- Makoto Shinkai, movie director: he used to work for a game company and did the opening for the VN Ef series but his influences and interests weren't in media aimed at otaku so let's not put him in either category.
- Naoko Yamada, anime director: She wasn't much of an anime fan at all before joining KyoAni, being into film and photography instead so Notaku.
- Akiyuki Shinbou, director and founder of studio SHAFT: Most of his work is on Otaku properties and the first show he worked on was Urusei Yatsura which is very influential among Otaku.
- Mari Okada, writer of several drama anime: She used to be a hikkikomori and started out working in the games industry so maybe we can consider her "someone who can't stand looking at other humans" as Miyazaki said? This Otaku classification is in no way intended to be mean spirited by the way.
- Gen Urobuchi, once famous anime writer: Started out writing for Nitroplus VNs so Otaku.
That's enough people, so what was the purpose of this exercise? Miyazaki's "that’s why the industry is full of otaku!” statement is true but as you can see there are also plenty of prominent Non-Otaku working in the industry. It's also to consider if the
Otaku = bad line of thought is really something to give credence. Do the Otaku creators listed here do a poor job at their work? I'd say a lot of Otaku in the industry do have the ability to create interesting and human characters.
As for Miyazaki's actual criticism of drawings/character designs not looking like real people, well stuff like strange fashion and wild, oddly colored hair are something we've come to expect from anime. But with the freedom animation provides it would be a shame to restrict it to what would be considered 'realistic'. That isn't to say that any otaku who wants to draw waifus can easily enter the industry. The anime industry has punishing schedules, drawings that aren't up to standard are rejected by the animation director and it does attract talented artists from top universities like Geidai as well as from all around the world. To become an animator you need genuine skill and passion for animation.
Ultimately rather than Otaku, perhaps the greater threat to anime as an art form is overproduction. An increasing number of anime are greenlit every year promoting other source media, with harsh production schedules that often lead to subpar products. But this has been talked about by people far more knowledgeable than me and this piece of writing has gone on long enough. For now all I hope is that this will inspire more nuanced criticism of the anime industry.
