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Answerman - Why Does CG Anime Have Such Low Frame Rates?

Today, everything is digipaint, and of such technological quality that it looks consistently better than cel and paint.

Just Passing Through wrote:

Today, everything is digipaint, and of such technological quality that it looks consistently better than cel and paint.

I wonder how many cels you either own or have seen in person. I think you might be judging this based on the video technology at this time.

Yes, when compared to CG shows released now, the video quality of the image is far superior to what was being shown in the 1990s. It often looks grainy compared to the new stuff. But if you held a cel with a background against the CG video image, you'd get a clear picture of the quality involved in making cels. Were there lots of bizarre inbetween images in cel based series? Yes. But these also exist in CG as well. What you're criticizing more is how the show appeared when aired and less of the actual skill used to create cel based anime.

Regardless of the type of CG, using lower framerates is a conscious decision rather than a technical limitation. Take series like Fireball (2008) and Karen Senki (2014); Both used different types of CG yet neither displayed issues with motion judder.

The recent anime Show By Rock featured the type of CGI most common in U.S. CG tv shows like Star Wars Clone Wars, Transformers Prime, and Beware the Batman, and there wasn't even a hint of motion judder.

And then there are Japan's budget busters: Final Fantasy The Spirits Within (2001) and Final Fantasy VII Advent Children (2005). Despite each being well over a decade old they still feature the pinnacle of Japan's CG capabilities and have aged remarkably well. Spirits Within decided to go for high realism while Advent Children was essentially all sakuga. Both had budgets and allotted man-hours that broadcast anime could never touch, but again, this is the apex of Japanese CG.

In the U.S. cel-shading is not used much anymore, but when it is used, there is hardly any motion judder or framerate drops, for instance the 2009 series, Iron-Man: Armored Adventures was all cel-shaded.

Justin wrote:

A fast action scene might be animated on 5's

I think Justin meant "animated on 1's" (i.e. fast frame rate)

Yasuo Otsuka and Makoto Nagasawa began experimenting with framerate during the heyday of Toei Doga (though traditional animators like Yasuji Mori played with framerate in a more minor capacity as early as Hakujaden) and their experiments bore fruit during the transition to television. Rather than animate steadily on the 3s, Japanese animation ranges from 1s to 4s at the drop of a hat. The idea is that by producing more drawings for slower arcs of motion and fewer for the fast parts, the eye is tricked into inferring movement that wasn’t actually there. This is impressionistic motion, more representative of how the eye sees movement in real life than the ideal form found in traditional animation.