There was a thread on 4chan’s /a/ last night where somebody asked about anime where mouths are animated. Which was to say given more than just 2 frames of flapping open and closing to indicate mouth movement, and instead look like syllables are being formed. I did a quick look through what I had at had, and only two really did. And unsurprisingly one was Mononoke (the other was the occasional scene in Lupin III part 3 – Monkey Punch’s designs really call out for it).
Here’s an example from the avant sequence of episode 11. They are cropped to fit on the blog without resizing as I didn’t want some of the differences lost in the resize.
Now, it’s all still limited animation (only the mouth is moving in this shot), but with just 7 different frames, a much more realistic talking animation is achieved over the typical 2-3 frames of flapping hole in face. It’s also cool they bothered with 2 of the frames that are similar to 2 others in the sequence. They probably could have dropped them, but keeping them there makes it a more subtle performance.
Epilogue: That thread about mouths devolved quickly into a flame war about explosion animation and episode 4 of Gurren Lagann.