Azumanga Daioh--Missed Communication?

The first chapter in Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston's The Illusion of Life, a book dedicated to the art of Disney animation and the theory and techniques behind it, deals with communication as a part of animation. Thomas and Johnston make the claim that successful animation happens with the animation "conveys a certain feeling". It is not simply enough to have a good narrative or to make the audience laugh, but there must be a deeper emotional connection between the animated characters and the audience. This is the second thing that Thomas and Johnston stress in the first chapter of their book: The audience assigns emotions to the character based on the action that is happening in the animation. It is the character's personality that makes for successful communication in a piece of animation, that is, how well the audience can connect with that character emotionally and stay involved with what happens to the character.

Here is an example clip from the anime series Azumanga Daioh.

In this scene, a group of schoolgirls are gathered around a vending machine at school while one girl buys a drink. When she makes her purchase, a paper cup is supposed to drop out of the machine and be filled with milk tea. Instead, she and her friends watch in horror as the tea is dispensed back into the bottom of the machine. Another friend comes by the machine to buy a drink, and recieves not only her cup of tea, but a second cup--what is presumed to the the first girl's missing paper cup.

Analyzing this clip using the guidelines for successful communication in animation set forth by Thomas and Johnston, I would say that the Azumanga Daioh clip is not a very good example. I did not relate to any specific character on a very deep level, even though I had no problem reading the subtitles while watching the action, so I still understood what was going on. There was very little use of dialogue, and the dialogue that was used was nothing too profound or interesting. (Although I am in no way trying to say that dialogue and communication are directly related! This may have done better with no dialogue, and there are plenty of scenes in movies where no one talks and it is visual and music only and the communication is still effective.) I understand that nothing too important needed to be said, since the main point of this scene is for comic effect. Also, this is an everyday situation, so none of the characters need to be making long speeches.

Aside from dialogue (or lack thereof) I related more to the situation than the characters in it. The same thing has happened to me at vending machines many times, and I did get upset, albeit not nearly as much as the girl in this anime. The characters themselves seemed more like personifications of stereotypes than anything else: the adorable younger friend who is cheerful and helpful all the time, the energetic and emotional friend (the one who throws a fit over losing her paper cup), the friend who's not quite all there all the time (the one reassuring the vending machine after it "lost a lot of trust"), and the older, more sensible and practical friend (the one who buys a drink at the end of the clip). I watched other bits and pieces from the show, and these stereotype personalites seemed to persist. This particular clip was funny, but it didn't communicate on a very deep level.