Yes, I think that is why anime is getting so popular in America, because a lot of directors that are now in their thirties and forties were influenced by darker comics, anime and manga early on, and now are including it in their films. Tim Burton, David Lynch, Kevin Smith, even Steven Soderberg and Wachowski brothers of "The Matrix," all watched anime and read comic books. So now, those people are making movies that appeal to their own sensibility but then are also successful.

X: Yes, Tim Burton's work is very similar to my style. It's interesting, there's a lot of originality in it and it's something different than reality. There are more mundane styles in the American animation scene. "X-Men" and "Spawn" -- both of these shows are interesting but they're artistic style is very boring. I'm sure it depends on the product, like "Spawn" is still better than some other works that I've seen. But the work of the director is so stale. If he brought it over to Japan, I could turn the animation into something more fun. I think that the problem stems from television stations. The producer of the original concept might have a fine idea, but there are many components involved, such as the business executives, who might have an older way of thinking. Let's say he used to work at Disney, so even stuff that begins as fun material ends up not being so fun because it's trying to fit into the Disney mold. I wish that they would send these titles over to Japan; I can make it more attractive and fun. Of course it could be that the Japanese people find my work fun but the general American audience might not. This is the part that I'm unclear about. I'm sure the otaku will enjoy it, but there are many more people in the United States than just that small group of people, so I wish the executives would become bolder about exploring new styles. Oh, by the way, the "X-Men" movie that was just out was great. Who was the director?

Brian Singer.

X: Yeah, the live action movie was great, but the animation is just horrible.

What about physical limitations to the animation? At fewer frames per second than, say, a Disney film, Japanese animation is comparatively limited. An American audience watching anime for the first time perceives it as stilted and unfinished, primarily because they will be exposed to a combination of action and still images and stylized movement to compensate for fewer frames per second. The Japanese visual understanding, on the other hand, is shaped by manga, which is expressive using still images.

Z: Using fewer frames is actually an optical trick to help cut costs in Japan.

X: Animation is something that uses the movement of our eye to simulate movement. Every time we blink, our minds take mental pictures of what we are seeing so that it can piece together a fluid image, filling in the times at which the eyelids close with our imaginations. Capturing fluid movement from point A to point B over one second requires 24 frames. But when you look at this type of movement, characters come out looking warped as though they have no backbones. What Japanese animation has done is cut this, sometimes by as much as a third. With fewer frames everything looks clearer and we can fill the screen with other kinds of images, abstract movement, etc. This technique demands a difference in style and, hence, story telling.

What I've noticed is that anime artists will often use stillness as a dramatic effect. They'll cut in ways to tell a more complete story rather than lose their suspension of disbelief with an awkward scene of someone walking across a room.

X: Right before characters make a sudden move in anime, there is a pause. Disney films seem to drag on because they just keep the frames going non-stop. Because we purposely stop before sudden movements, it makes the moment more dramatic. So there's a technical effect that's linked to a stylistic effect. Osamu Tezuka used this method. It might look as though it was an artistic choice from the beginning, but it came into being through innovation and using what you have to work with. For movement to look clean, what we do is stop the frame beforehand then make the character move. It looks speedier, and it would have never been realized unless we were forced to innovate. I think the techniques used to create movement are where 50% of the differences between anime and American cartoons stem from. The other 50% is this. You mention Disney over and over again, but the Disney of ten years ago is different than Disney now. We saw "Tarzan" and "Toy Story" and we thought, "Hey, this stuff is fun." Now, Disney just a little while back was unsalvageable, but the recent Disney is fun. Ironically, other bigger companies that are making animation in competition with Disney are trying to follow the Disney model, like Fox with "Anastasia" and DreamWorks with that film about Moses.

Z: "Prince of Egypt."

X: Yes, "Prince of Egypt." It's not as if I didn't like it. The design elements were beautiful and the coloring was full of richness. It was just too long. It should've just been 10 minutes long. But the one after that was horrible. The one that takes place in Mexico. What was it called?

Z: "Road to El Dorado."

X: Yeah. The story was boring, the design was bad, there's no way that film could've been salvaged. However, I really liked "Iron Giant." But it was wasted. I enjoyed it very much, but I wish that they had let us play around with the character design a little bit. A character needs to have an appealing look. More sincerity. The story and script were just fine, but the character design, again, could have been heightened.