Scene Comparisons-Lupin vs Basil's clocktower fights+How Miyazaki spearheaded a renaissance

For the life of me, I currently can't find both two characters from a Western Cartoon and Japanese Anime to compare in terms of personality, appearance, occupation, etc. 

And I love those comparisons. It's just fun to find characters from each side of animation and compare the two. I haven't done that since comparing NIMONA to Ryoko Hakubi back in January 7 2024

"It's not that Maverick-San can't find two characters to compare to, Tenchi. I'm sure He'll find some characters to compare to in the future."

Always supportive as ever Ryoko... 

In the mean time, how about I compare two similar scenes from one another.

The first is the Clocktower fight from the 1979 film CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO.

In the climactic fight scene, Lupin fights with Count Cagliostro inside the clocktower's gears.

7 years later, Disney released their film THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE

So what's the comparison?

Both CAGLIOSTRO and MOUSE DETECTIVE feature clock tower fights.

But there are two differences.

One is that Lupin actually fights with the villain from within the Clocktower's gears.

I love the high color contrast in these CAGLIOSTRO screenshots. Excellent use of dull colors for the backdrops and vibrant colors for the characters. That's how you do proper color contrast in cartoons. None of that PASTEL CRAP....

In MOUSE DETECTIVE, Basil doesn't even fight Ratigan, until much later but I don't have screenshots of the entire fight.

Instead, Olivia bites Ratigan, allowing Basil to escape in the meantime.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

But the main difference is the cinematography.

Cagliostro had shots with a fixed camera,

Over the shoulder shots, 

Gears animated in perspective,

and sound ambience.

Which I can't embed at the moment so do yourself a favor and watch the CLOCKTOWER FIGHT on Youtube.....

MOUSE DETECTIVE on the other hand had CGI gears... sort of.

The CGI gears were actually wireframes made on a Vector Graphics program.

The animation was planned first,

Then plotted on animation paper with a Line Plotter.

The Plotted CG Line Art animation was sent to the animators to animate their 2D Characters overlaid on the CG Line art via overlaying another piece of animation paper over the line art.

Then both the character and CGI were Xeroxed onto transparent acetate celluloid.

Then painted on with acrylic paint 

before be taken to camera department alongside the Exposure sheets.

And give us the final result

A similar technique was used for some vehicles in Rescuers Down Under such as Mcleach's bushwhacker but that used an all digital system instead of the HP Line Plotter method.

But the similarities of Cagliostro and Mouse Detective's clock tower fight scenes is actually legit.

True Fact:

Michael Peraza, the layout artist for Mouse Detective, was actually inspired by Cagliostro which is why he directed the BIG BEN CGI sequence. Sort of a homage to a film he saw screened for employees back in the 80s.

So in retrospective, while we should all be thankful for Mouse Detective for kickstarting the Disney Renaissance of the 90s, in reality, we should have been thankful towards HAYAO MIYAZAKI for spearheading the wonderful film that saved Disney Animation and led to a second golden age in the 90s.

"Call me Chaotic Good for saving Walt's company with my Influence back in the mid 1980s."