First of all: Amen, Nomekop Oen.
Shooting animated films is a much different process than shooting live-action films, of course. Because motion in a cel-animated film is not composed in real/screen time (i.e. an artist spends more time drawing each frame than that frame will appear onscreen), we more readily recognize subjectivity (the human artist's hand) in the animated work, where we also have a tendency to view live-action cinema as more "real" and "objective" because motion is captured by an unfeeling, mechanical device (rightly or wrongly, depending on your favorite film theorist).
Walter Benjamin wrote of what he called "aura" in works of literature and art, etc. It's a lot more complicated than this, but for my point's sake: aura means that the artist's hand, the artist's humanity, and the artist's subjectivity can be seen/felt in a painting, for example. The world seen in the painting is mediated very subjectively through one human being's perspective and skill. Benjamin didn't much care for aura, and was struck by film's ability to be aura-less (strictly objective; although that point is highly debatable)--but he was calling for filmmakers to use film toward the ends of social justice, and animated film lie outside the scope of that agenda.
However, I happen to enjoy the aura to be found in animated cinema, especially cel animation. There is something magical in knowing that the artists' (even the tweeners') hands mediate every motion and emotion--and one marvels at the acute level of observation to detail that animators and background artists must possess. And they compose their work being mindful of a certain canvas space, whether it's 4:3 for TV screen or 16:9 for theater screen--anyone who's studied the visual arts knows the all-importance of composition!
Therefore, I find it far more offensive for a widescreen animated film to be cropped down to fullscreen to please an ignorant audience (and I'm not giving that a negative connotation, just saying it straight up). I can watch live-action films in cropped fullscreen (although I DO DESPISE fullscreen-cropping in general)...but dub Pokemon movies on video? UGH. It's bad enough that we don't get the original Japanese audio outside of Region 2 on DVD, but butchering the film itself visually is adding insult to injury. :banghead:
The dub movie DVD cuts have fared better than the VHS cuts, however--the DVD cuts use pan-and-scan to pick the "important" parts out of the widescreen frame to show, but the three VHS versions I've seen lazily leave the fullscreen frame static in the middle of the widescreen canvas for the entire film. They might have implemented pan-and-scan for the Miramax-released VHSs--I only own the DVDs for those so I don't know. But the first three movies, released by Warner Bros., look positively AWFUL on VHS. Things are off-screen everywhere when they're supposed to be on-screen. Balanced horizontal compositions are destroyed. Jump cuts are created. Mass confusion ensues. ("Mommy, where's that voice coming from??")
If I get a chance, I'll make some mock-ups of widescreen shots and the VHS-DVD fullscreen discrepancy in the dub versions, to add examples to this thread or to the debate at large for anyone who's not convinced.
Mmmkay. Shutting up now. :ksmile:
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