Glad to see you back! Great variety of examples of films. Also appreciated the analysis of the various reasons one can have such an emotional reaction. Grave of the Fireflies is a good example of the power animation can have for eliciting emotional reactions. (Incoming SPOILERS) If I remember correctly, in Roger Ebert's review he points out the sequence of watching the little sister slowly die would nowhere be as effective in live action because we'd be thinking in the back of our heads that we are watching an actress playing the role "pretending" to die. Whereas in animation it "crystalizes" (I believe that was his word for it) the ideas being conveyed, that as an audience we're more purely engaging with concepts compared to performance. The fact that it's the *concept* of the little sister starving to death is what's so heart-wrenching and why it's so effective. That observation Ebert made has since stuck with me regarding the power of animated story telling vs. live action. Incidentally, I think I remember reading that it was a combination of Grave of the Fireflies then Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which got Ebert to take animation seriously as a storytelling medium, which wouldn't be surprising if that were true given the quality of those films.
Glad to see you back! Great variety of examples of films. Also appreciated the analysis of the various reasons one can have such an emotional reaction.
Grave of the Fireflies is a good example of the power animation can have for eliciting emotional reactions. (Incoming SPOILERS) If I remember correctly, in Roger Ebert's review he points out the sequence of watching the little sister slowly die would nowhere be as effective in live action because we'd be thinking in the back of our heads that we are watching an actress playing the role "pretending" to die. Whereas in animation it "crystalizes" (I believe that was his word for it) the ideas being conveyed, that as an audience we're more purely engaging with concepts compared to performance. The fact that it's the *concept* of the little sister starving to death is what's so heart-wrenching and why it's so effective. That observation Ebert made has since stuck with me regarding the power of animated story telling vs. live action.
Incidentally, I think I remember reading that it was a combination of Grave of the Fireflies then Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which got Ebert to take animation seriously as a storytelling medium, which wouldn't be surprising if that were true given the quality of those films.
Thank you I appreciate your feedback. Very interesting