Sight & Sound & Anime – All Anime

March 12, 2023
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Sight & Sound De Facto reveals the greatest anime of all time

by Miles Atherton.

at the end of last year, sight and sound Magazine’s “Greatest Films of All Time,” the legendary pair, respectively collected in the top 10s of hundreds of world-renowned critics and directors, hit newsstands with drastic changes from their 2012 incarnations. relatively obscure belgian film Jean Dielmann, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels claimed the top spot among 250 critics’ picks, while Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Moved up one rank to lead the Directors Top 100. But the most interesting trends in the world of film were obscured with these preliminary lists: rise of anime,

Recently, the top 10 lists from each of 1,639 critics and 480 filmmakers were published in their entirety (source: sight and sound, I excitedly took the opportunity to sift through and scour these data over the past few days and found that animation is finally bubbling up in the throes of critical and artistic conversation surrounding cinema, specifically animation from Japan. in the last rendition of sight and soundIn the poll, only 4 animated features were mentioned by at least 3 critics or directors in their personal top 10 lists. For 2022, that number jumps to 27 movies, 11 of which qualify as “anime”, including 4 of the top 5.

Anime has become increasingly popular around the world in the last decade. There are countless anecdotes about the rapidly growing reach and notoriety of the medium since the last sight and sound Surveys were conducted, but none as stark as the fundamental capitalist truth of the matter: The anime industry has more than doubled in revenue over the past ten years, with much of that growth coming from international sources ( Source: The Association of Japanese Animation). Thus, it’s no surprise that anime is finally seeing an impact, even though animation only occupies 2 spots on the critics’ top 100.

So if anime is doing so well in a big way, why is the medium slowly losing its value on this list? Anime has hundreds of millions of fans around the world and its recognition as a worthwhile art form is becoming more common, as evidenced by circumstances such as the record-breaking standing ovation Mamoru Hosoda received for the premiere of his latest feature at Cannes Is. Rangili, but in a world where movies are like boss baby Named by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of five films that represent a year’s best offerings in animation on critical darlings. Your name Or a silent voiceThe delta between the quality of anime’s best works and their global recognition is quite palpable.

Even with a UK-centric perspective, Sight and Sound is often considered the most authoritative of all “top movie” lists, or can be at least as subjective a work. While there are easy arguments as to its methodology or inherent biases, how the “sausage” of the list is made is perhaps more compelling than its final product. Personal Top 10 lists offer a rare insight into an artist’s “favorites” as they come together for this particular crowd. Examining the 100+ critics and directors who have dedicated a spot to anime on their poll is a worthy attempt to understand where the medium has been and where anime’s place in the film canon may end up. But rather than briefly discuss: what exactly did these critics and directors pick on?

For anyone familiar with online aggregators of critical reaction to art like Amazon’s IMDb or even Rotten Tomatoes, the list of the most popular anime of all time contains a few surprises. Hayao Miyazaki’s works have demonstrated immense resonance in the public consciousness, and his relevance seems to grow with each year. What is a delight, however, is that 3 of the 4 films presided over by the late Satoshi Kon have been included, with the likes of Otomo, Anno and Takehata being left out entirely from all previous editions of the list. Was.

All told, regarded as a list of the greatest anime films ever made, it is not fundamentally different from other outlets’ more specialized efforts, with 6 features similar to Paste it And time upalong with 3 Empire, Some notable exclusions on Sight & Sound’s uncredited anime rankings are the works of Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell only viewed 2 ballots), Mamoru Hosoda (who wolf cubs), and Makoto Shinkai (Surprisingly Passed), each of whom can be found on contemporary lists of anime’s greatest achievements in cinema.

Princess Mononoke has been cited as one of the best films of all time by many directors, including Tarkovsky’s Solaris.

Interestingly, UK critics were 54% more likely than those from other countries to include an anime in their top 10 list, which is the largest group of anime honorees in the Sight & Sound pantheon. While the sample size for critics from Estonia and Japan is too small to draw definite conclusions, they are proportionally over-represented in the anime list.

While animation from Japan may rank highest on both sight and soundare the latest lists of, they are not the only ones. Even the most notable Disney musicals, Pixar favorites and stop-motion fantasies were completely neglected on this pair of 2012 movie lists. Maybe none crack the top 250 this time around, but as mentioned earlier, they are starting to crack through:

Anime’s significant dominance within the category of animation is even more evident than I would estimate, accounting for over 60% of all ballots cast in the latest sight and sound public opinion. Notable individual films outside the world of anime include Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 Fairy-Tale The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Disney’s Pinocchio And Imaginationand the mighty French and Iranian co-production Persepolis From directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Parnoud.

The United States overwhelmed non-anime animation categories, but Soviet director Yuri Norstein was praised for three separate films, tying him with Pixar’s Pete Docter as the best-known animation director outside Japan. .

One final thought before we go: in a world where we only value the opinions of those with remarkable taste and distinction (i.e. 8% of critics and 5% of directors who have included anime in their top 10), what if sight and sound Does the list look like a total? I have tried to answer this:

In this alternate universe, four of the top 10 are anime, unsurprisingly. Is this a better list? Maybe not, but it has a certain allure that I just can’t help but embrace. In addition to their top 10 favorites, critics and directors who included at least one anime film in their lists were:

• 2.5 times more likely to join star wars
• 2.2x more likely to join math question
• 1.7x more likely to join tree of Life
• 1.7x more likely to join ikirubut 67% Less willing to add tokyo story

There have been times in the past decade where I’ve seen the public’s slow adoption of animation as a serious medium, with critics’ pace of acknowledging achievements in storytelling I consider myself one of the key I see as Factor. but if it sight and sound Poll is any indication, animation, and anime in particular, has come a long way in only ten years.

Miles Atherton is the Chief Marketing Officer of Anime Ltd., with over a decade of experience in the anime industry and barely three years as a father.

March 12, 2023