In the Industrialization part of the animation, from 2:10 to 4:00 it is almost a reflection of the Showa era (from December of 1926 to January 1989), the period that the Tezuka Osamu lived (1928-1989).
“The dominant foreign model for Japanese aesthetics in Showa era was European, both avant-garde and traditional. Japanese arts remained strong, but their significance fluctuated greatly as the nation experienced periods of nationalism, war and defeat. In the current era of economic renewal, the threat to a distinctive Japanese culture is not Western dominance per se but international pop aesthetics and commercialism.”(J. Thomas Rimer (1990) Vol. 119, No. 3, Showa: The Japan of Hirohito (Summer, 1990), pp. 265-278 (14 pages).)
Tezuka Osamu is a Japanese mangaka, animator. He was recognized as the God of manga by his innovative manga structure based on Disneys’s cinematographic techniques. He was able to illustrate short stories and simples vignette to a long and elaborated comic stories which lead to a story graphic adaptation of the literature Crime and Punishment. His famous works are New Treasure Island (1947); Kimba, Jungle Taitei, Astroboy and Ribbon no Kishi in the decade 50; Black Jack (1973-1984), Buda (1972-1983), Adolf (1983). From the 70s, his themes were starting to focus around a strong social significance, for example MN (1976-1978) which talks about the politic corruption, homosexuality and chemical weapons. In the end he passed away in 1989 due to a stomach cancer.
Character design
The characters designs have some similarities with Disney’s characters. On one hand, it is the exaggerated shaped on the human body structure, the fat parts are round, curvy and wide distance between opposite lines; and the skinny parts are straight, descriptive lines to point out the bone stretching out of the skin. For example, in the second image from the last line in the Jumping’s character compilation screenshot, the taxi driver and a policeman are having a discussion. The most perceptible difference, apart from the clothing and coloring, is their face features, the driver has lot of curvy lines, specially the chin, a casual clothing which gave an impression of a loose person toward the rules; and the policeman has more structured face anatomy and a formal costume which illustrate a strict and a responsible character.
On the another hand, the way of portraying the animals’ expressions are almost identical as well. Both of them personified their expressions to catch easily their feelings, especially the eyes, a pair of ovals with a small dot as the iris, leaving some blank for making flexible eyes signs. In case of the birds, their eyes in the reality are in side view when they are looking to the front, however in Disney and the animation, all their features are in front view from both sides to capture their expressions, in those cases, are surprised by sudden apparition of the jumping character.
Social aspects reflected on the building’s windows
From 2:52 to 2:58, the story are framed in building’s windows showing people’s daily routine, working life, troubles and history advances. Through the windows, the scenes are mainly people working engaging some troubles in the middle, however the troubles are getting more stressful and depressive as long as the camera is going up, starting from physical aspects (toilet in the third and fourth floor), continuing with working pressure, discussions and ending with relationships problems.
The group of windows are settled three by three except the first two floors, almost of them illustrated the main and important happening in the middle (the toilet problem in 3rd,4th floor, the for sale sign, animation company workers, international yakuza, robots, etc). On the other hand, the two other window are random or descriptive vignette to enrich the floors content and to portray continuously the happenings (for example, the water leaking in floor 3 is connected with the bathroom problems of the 4th floor; in floor 19th, the characters were so pressured that one of them suicided, then on the next floor the foot on the left window is the suicided man, and on the middle he has a couple of people crying for his death).
The green-blue monochrome tone is not only representing the color of the glass, it also marks the mood. By using its contrast color (light creamy yellow), it separate the windows’ frames and the building structure. The cold color tent to depressive plus the structured framing with the lack use of colors, it makes more repressed, monotone, boring, people locked by their troubles, works, worries.
The building story framing structure remind me to a comic vignettes. In the animation is more simplified due to the fact that it just a few seconds and the camera moving was so fast to observe their contents. Moreover, in the animation, there were separations in yellow between the windows lines to catch the storytelling more easily.
Jumping travelling
The background scenes are connected continuously during the animation by the jumping. Those places also lead the drama of the film. It starts in a peaceful, calming place, then it is followed by the industrialization highlighting a healthful evolution. As long as it is going forward, the scenes are jumping to dangerous places (the jungle), ending up in the hell where the protagonist got involved in a war bombing. However, the character return to the first place connecting a loop with the beginning, indirectly, it portrays the rise and decadence in a era, metaphorically, the Showa era in this case.
The colors are flat purposely, as the director mentioned on his Jumping interview that he wanted to focus on the jump and not get distracted by any harmonic colors.
The animation overall, the characters design and animation style are similar to Disney’s works, but the drawing style (marked thin black lines, shading lines, flat colors with no obvious light contrast) are near to American comics.