cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/68868025
Since quite a few years back, it’s been quite commonplace in fantasy anime and manga to represent casting magic as some kinds of 2D circles or geometric figures with patterns, possibly multiple ones, as in the image on the right (Frieren). I see this idea used in almost all – if not all – anime and manga now.
It hasn’t always been that way though. Older anime and manga used other and different kinds of representations, say from blinking stars (image on the left, Majokko Megu-chan) to smoke, or even just sound effects.
I’m just curious: does anyone have any info or links to share about how this “2D representation” came about and why it’s become so popular? Cheers!
TVTropes doesn’t have anything listed as the origin, but it has a ton of examples if you want to go back in some of the media and see how far it goes back.
The reasoning they give to its popularity is that floating text is easy to animate, can be very flashy for little effort, and can be used as a plot device, with either characters needing time to draw runes, or people refining/debugging their spells, and having something observable to show off the magic power level or the effective range of spells. Basically, it’s a really cool, easy, and cheap way to make magic look badass.