Yet Japan's animators are full of gloom. They fear that the future is bleak and that the success enjoyed by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, which makes his films, is actually masking a sad decline. Industry experts say that not only is there a lack of creative talent on a par with Miyazaki, but the overall standard of animators has fallen over the past decade as low pay and poor working conditions force many to quit. "Miyazaki can't be replaced, he's a one-off", says Jonathan Clements, a British animation expert, "Miyazaki isn't 100 percent of Ghibli, but when he goes, the party is over".
The creative and commercial success enjoyed by Ghibli has afforded it a unique breathing space. For other studios, however, commercial pressures force work to be done at breakneck speed and on shoestring budgets. Veterans of the industry say quality has been sacrificed as television cartoon episodes are 'made for as little as £10,000.
Many young animators rely on parental support to put them through animation schools and continue to need financial help just to afford to work in Tokyo, the world's most expensive city. Yet, remarkably, animation has little problem attracting recruits. Dozens of students pore over desks painstakingly producing page after page of drawings. Most say they are aware that pay is low but desperately want to work in the industry they fell in love with as children through cartoons such as Doraemon, the blue talking cat, and Battle of the Planets. But reality often bites as animators reach their thirties, by which time they typically earn around a third of the average pay for Japanese their age and at lower hourly rates than supermarket clerks.
Clements believes that the soul of animation is at stake. "Animation is, by definition, from Japan, but it's only a matter of time before the number of foreign contributors tips the balance, and what used to be animation becomes plain old cartoons", he says. "It may ultimately remove much of what makes animation appeal to its current foreign audience base: its exoticism".
For the time being, Japan's animation industry is
A. in a state of inactivity.
B. somewhat promising.
C. going from bad to worse.
D. seemingly glorious.
The best title for this passage may be
A. Women Adapting to Cloths or Vice Versa.
B. Who is the Arbiter, Manufactures or Customers.
C. How to Standardize Clothes Sizing.
D. Why So Few Large Size Clothes.
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
The planet's wild creatures face a new threat—from yuppies, empty nesters, singletons and one parent families. Biologists studying the pressure on the planet's dwindling biodiversity today report on a new reason for alarm. Although the rate of growth in the human population is decreasing, the number of individual households is exploding. Even where populations have actually dwindled—in some regions of New Zealand, for instance—the number of individual households has increased, bemuse of divorce, career choice, smaller families and longer lifespans.
Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University and colleagues from Stanford University in California report in Nature, in a paper published online in advance, that a greater number of individual households, each containing on average fewer people, meant more pressure on natural resources. Towns and cities began to sprawl as new homes were built. Each household needed fuel to heat and light it; each household required its own plumbing, cooking and refrigeration. "In larger households, the efficiency of resource consumption will be a lot higher, because more people share things", Dr. Liu said. He and his colleagues looked at the population patterns of life in 141 countries, including 76 "hotspot" regions unusually rich in a variety of endemic wildlife. These hot spots included Australia, New Zealand, the US, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, and Italy. They found that between 1985 and 2000 in the "hotspot" parts of the globe, the annual 3.1% growth rate in the number of households was far higher than the population growth rate of 1.8%.
"Had the average household' size remained at the 1985 level", the scientists report, "there would have been 155m fewer households in hotspot countries in 2000. Paradoxically, smaller households do not mean smaller homes. In Indian River County, Florida, the average area of a one-storey, single family house increased 33% in the past three decades".
Dr. Liu's work grew from the alarming discovery that the giant pandas living in China's Wolong reserve were more at risk now than they were when the reserve was first established. The local population had grown, but the total number of homes had increased more swiftly, to make greater inroads into the bamboo forests.
Gretchen Daily of Stanford, one of the authors, said: "We all depend on open space and wild places, not just for peace of mind but for vital services such as crop pollination, water purification and climate stabilization. The alarming thing about this study is the finding that, if family groups continue to become smaller and smaller, we might continue losing biodiversity—even if we get the aggregate human population size stabilized".
The first paragraph mainly tells us that
A. the amount of wildlife is diminishing.
B. the population of human is decreasing.
C. New Zealanders live an unstable life.
D. the structure of families is changing.