Exploring Animation's Multi-Dimensions

Imagination defined as the “in-between space connecting two places outside of the usual way” (Sousanis 93) combined with McCloud’s “iconic abstraction scale” connects the two animated clips of Hiroshima as instantaneous symbols of both concepts and senses. Sousanis explores the theory that “imagination pervades our entire existence” (Sousanis 91) by saying that imagination is limitless and essential to interpretation and structure of our reality. This is a universal connection between people since it is what causes both our division and attachment as humans, including the reception we can create and attain through cartoons. McCloud writes that “words are the ultimate abstraction” (McCloud 47), which curiously enough, is something both clips lack. Instead, the cartoons and sound (sensory receptions) from both clips are simplified after the bomb is dropped in order to make a universal symbolic connection with the audience. The audience watches the characters enter a silence and “sensually stimulating” world that dismembers their identities in order to portray a raw and widespread sense of gore, death, and destruction.

In the beginning of the clip titled “Animation Depicting the Hiroshima Bombing”, there is an American warplane dropping the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima where the American soldiers are drawn realistically in order to objectify their otherness and symbolically show that they are foreign to and removed from the situation that is about to occur. Additionally, McCloud’s scale:

• complex —> simple
• realistic —> iconic 
• objective —> subjective 
• specific —> universal

is primarily displayed throughout the clip in the black and white shots of the characters/objects right before they are dismembered. The little boy goes from being a specific and detailed drawing to a more universal, conceptual image to invoke a pathological resemblance and reaction from the audience. 

This also ties into Sousanis’ concept of stories containing a dual nature, like how a 2D door can also be drawn to become 3D, because of the symbols that can be interpreted, whether intentional or not. In the beginning of the clip when the plane opens up to drop the bomb, there are several frames from the clip that draws out a silhouette of an eagle (a globally recognized American symbol). Whether or not this interpretation is “correct”, it allows the theory room to grow.

The second clip titled “Hiroshima A Bomb attack Animated” makes a similar connection with McCloud’s and Sousanis’ theories, but it has a more specific storyline and obvious symbolic connections through the agent of storytelling. Before the bomb drops, there are several scenes of a little boy innocently playing with a paper plane. At the end of the clip, after Hiroshima and its people are gruesomely destroyed, there is another scene of the little boy and his paper plane alluding to the innocence of the victims of Hiroshima using dark irony. The connection between the paper plane and American warplanes is also what McCloud refers to as “de-emphasizing the appearance of the physical world in favor of the idea of form,” because it makes the paper plane place “itself in the world of concepts” (McCloud 41). It is an example of “objects of the physical world being able to cross over with the life that is lent to them” (McCloud 41) both in the context of the clip and the emotional ties of the warplane along with the paper plane’s symbolic purpose to the audience (aside from its context). The multidimensionally symbolic clips combine both the theories of McCloud and Sousanis to showcase the depth a cartoon is able to convey.