Why is anime limited in animation?


Like when you watch a character talk in anime you'll notice he/she is not lip
syncing the words he/she pronounces: their mouths move up and down and appear
to be looping. This limited animation technique is 'looping' from talking,
running, walking, etc. So why is it Japanese animation is limited?




Please see the latter part of the answer to [Is intentionally producing a
lower quality TV release unique to
anime?](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/16668/is-intentionally-
producing-a-lower-quality-tv-release-unique-to-anime/18560#18560):

> American cartoon viewers are very particular about the quality. My friend
> who is a key-frames animator for _The Simpsons_ told me that there is one
> animator whose entire job is just to animate the mouth movements, because if
> the mouth movement does not perfectly match the voice actor's words, the
> fans generally feel that they cannot suspend disbelief. In contrast, anime
> in Japanese does not always bother to **record the voice actors' voices
> first before animating** , since Japanese fans do not care much whether the
> mouth movements exactly match. . . . American viewers are used to watching
> mouth movements like in _The Simpsons_ and Disney films which are perfectly
> aligned.

This is not a case of anime being "limited" in a negative sense of slacking
off, cutting corners, or being too rushed, but rather, Japanese viewers are
not at all bothered by mouth movements which do not perfectly align with the
voice, and therefore do not expect that out of animation production companies.
It is **a cultural difference** , so it does not make sense to label the
Western style as "better at" animating.

Anime can precisely match mouth movements to the voice **when it is desired**
to do so (see the opening theme song sequences of _Ao Haru Ride_ and _Ore
Monogatari!!_ for examples), so the companies have the required skill to do
it. It is just a matter of preference that they often do not.

Because Japanese viewers are not particular on this point, it allows the
production company to begin animating the cels before the _seiyuu_ (voice
actors) finish recording their lines. This gives the anime industry more
**flexibility in the timeline of production** , as compared to non-Japanese
animation which requires the script to be finalized and the voice acting to be
recorded before the mouth movement animation can begin (in other words,
multiple aspects of the production of an anime episode can occur at the same
time). A benefit of this flexibility is that _seiyuu_ have the **freedom to
ad-lib** lines in the studio on the spot if they come up with something they
think might work better than what is written in the script that was handed to
them; even if the mouth movements have already been animated to basically
match the line in the script, improvisation is still possible. Some fans enjoy
buying anime scripts and comparing the original script to the final product,
so they can discover which parts the _seiyuu_ contributed.

Historically, anime was drawn by hand, so looping, panning, overlaying cels,
etc. were more utilized in older titles (since animating a whole episode's
worth of cels took a lot of man hours) than in current anime, which is
predominantly computer-animated. If you watch older series such as _Ashita no
Joe_ or _Ace wo Nerae!_ , you can see very impressive and creative
alternatives to animating many frames per second, an art form which has
largely diminished with the advent of computers. There is a remarkable and
arresting charm to some of the classic animating techniques which were
developed in order to stylistically or realistically convey the scene or the
character's emotion in less frames. The looping mouth movement is one of these
early innovations.

