Forum - View topicNewer anime visual appearance.
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ultrakevin
 Posts: 2 |
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Hey guys, long time anime fan and new user here, though I have lurked for a while. This topic has probably been brought up plenty of times on here before, but I couldn't find it. Anywho, like I said, I've been an anime fan for a long time and unfortunately I have been having a hard time getting into some of the newer anime series, and I can't quite pinpoint why. Thinking about it a little bit more, part of me thinks that it has something to do with the transition into the HD era of television.
I feel like most current anime appear too... bright and flat, I might say. While some newer series I have seen take advantage of this (Gurren Lagann, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Hellsing Ultimate) I feel that far too many just look kind of lazy. The lack of shading on characters and backgrounds makes things look flat, and this seems to happen a lot lately. Also, the brightness visualized in many current running series just makes the lack of detail in the art that much more apparent, and also makes it feel too cartoony, and not in a good way. Less visual noise in current series isn't bad, but I feel like in a way that kind of lent to the charm of anime back in the day (can't fault them for this though). I was wondering if any of this has been an issue for anyone else here, and to get any other insight on the matter. I feel like HD anime should be a blessing, not a curse. [EDIT: Made your opening post a little more legible via paragraph breaks. -TK] |
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Cam0
 Posts: 4937 |
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Aside from a select few, how many old animes actually had great attention to detail? Nowadays we get a few pretty high quality animes every season, but ofcourse they manage to cram several crappy animes there aswell.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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^
Only the OVAs really had the great shading. Most television Anime I've seen from the 80s and 90s look just as flat (if not even moreso) than today's shows. I think OP is getting HD and art style mixed up. HD has little to do with how "flat" something looks. The art style of Anime is indeed different from ten years ago and is probably the actual cause of OP's worries. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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Anime sure has changed in the decades I've been watching it. Years ago, watching how anime was produced had me feeling for those who'd have to flip through paper, ensuring everything matched up, then artists tracing the images on cel and another group to paint them individually. A 10 second animation would take days.
Now, an "artist" merely need scan an image and use the "paint bucket" fill tool to create the next otaku fap material in minutes, throwing on arbitrary detail such as "shadows" to give the stick figure "depth". While shadows do certainly help, what I truly miss are elbows and kneecaps, now gone from today's anime character which is comprised of nothing but hair and eyes. Not that I'm disgruntled by it, as I do enjoy the bright colors, but I do miss the finer things in anime that simply can't be funded to produce, evidenced by how fast these series are now produced. It's not going to surprise me in the least bit if anime starts moving into the CGI-3D world, and we'll thank Miku Hatsune for it, as the number of sales this mascot has generated puts everything else to shame, financially. Heh. This brings me back to an episode in All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: Ryuunosuke: "Hey, what happened to your yukatas?" Nuku Nuku: "We had to change. It would be too expensive to animate them." Yep, that's pretty much why we have nothing but cookie-cutter characters today rather than art style. But hey, if it sells pillows, it's not like too many people have an issue with it. |
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SuperVegetto
Posts: 40 |
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But the style is better now |
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Cam0
Posts: 4937 |
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Hmm.... feels like it needs the sort of "I can feel the amount of love the artist put into drawing this character" appreciation I don't have.
It also means they can focus on other things like making striking fighting scenes or everyones favourite jiggling boobs. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18571 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Okay, I'm going to have to do some investigating on this when I get home today, as this is something that I've never noticed before.
What Justin Sevakis says about this in the most recent Hey! Answerman column makes this unlikely, though. While artistic styles have definitely changed over the years (many series can be dated to within a couple of years based on certain stylistic and technical elements), saying that certain artistic characteristics apply to everything is a massive stretch. Amongst current series that I'm watching, for instance, Blast of Tempest looks nothing like Maoyu, which looks nothing like From the New World, which looks nothing like Kotoura-san. That's part of what keeps me interested and involved in new anime series. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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Here, let me help: The girls of Clannad. Note the missing kneecaps. The girls of Dirty Pair. Note the elbows and kneecaps, in that they actually have them. Today's girls have legs that look this this: || Those belong to Haruhi... I think. I read what Justin wrote, but if you would have told me 10 years ago today's anime characters would look like Flash images, I would have laughed at the notion. Looks like I was wrong, too. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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I've never really understood the notion that animation quality has gotten better over the years. People's ability to animate doesn't really seem to have gotten better (or worse) since the 80s. Sequences from the 80s wow me just as much as sequences from episodes that aired last week. Sure, styles have changed (even animation styles, in addition to art styles), but quality really hasn't. Plus, quality and style are much more affected by the quality and style of the individual animator than any general trends in time anyway.
The only thing I don't like about newer stuff is the 3DCG. That's a completely different medium, and I don't think it has a place mixed in with traditional animation. Plus, that medium just doesn't interest me at all. I can barely even tolerate Pixar stuff, which is the best that CG animation has to offer. |
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Mesonoxian Eve
Posts: 1858 |
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But the quality has changed. It's cheaper, by leaps and bounds. What today's anime can do that yesteryear's could not is give us patterns which can be animated. Clothing with intricate designs can be done today, whereas they could not in the 80s/early 90s. This is why most anime characters back then wore solid colors. I don't hate today's styles, but for me, I can easily see how we went from well crafted characters to Barbie plastic replacements (almost literally, if we count the figure merchandising). Is it a fair exchange? To me, it is, though I would really love to see the little details put into today's characters. If they look good now, they can look gorgeous with just little effort. I mean, what's the cost of adding a freaking kneecap, anyway. 
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Once again we have discussion where modern anime are portrayed as all of a piece. As Key says, any examination of the variety of programming out there shows a much wider array of art styles than the OP claims. As an example, take a look at the opening of episode 9 of Chihayafuru 2 where we have elaborately detailed trees and leaves and mottled shadows on the characters. It reminded me of Ashitaka's ride through a forest early in Mononoke Hime. Like most Madhouse series, Chihayafuru has quite detailed character models, particularly when it comes to facial features.
Budgets vary greatly across anime productions with predictable consequences for what appears on-screen. I suspect things like the stagnation of the Japanese economy, the evaporation of the overseas anime market, and the shrinking numbers of Japanese children and adolescents are more important influences on how anime are produced than the transition to HD. Last edited by yuna49 on Tue Mar 12, 2013 10:12 am; edited 1 time in total |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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OVAs and movies, which number in the order of hundreds. I'm still turning over rocks and digging around for things I haven't seen, and there's an untold mass of things that haven't come out on DVD, let alone BluRay, that have no raws or fansubs on the net. I'm honestly shocked how they could pump out so much material from 85 to 91.
I believe the grain and whole analog production process makes older things feel more "warm" and "lively" than what you could describe as the sterile feeling in HD digitally colored anime.
Not sure why you're singling out one type of show here, flat expanses of single colors is exactly what Yuuasa does. |
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Ezreal
 Posts: 3 |
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The art style often reflects the tone of the show. The "bright and flat" anime we see nowadays are usually light-hearted slices-of-life (OreShura) or comedies (Humanity Has Declined). The serious anime typically have more detail put into the art and animation. |
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ultrakevin
Posts: 2 |
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I think that this hits the nail on the head. I don't mind the style, it's just that it seems to be 80% of current anime airing today that are slice of life or comedies, which aren't really my cup of tea, so I feel like I'm almost falling out of the anime hobby. The moe style seems extremely popular, and as someone put it, is low on detailed art that people love in anime (not saying that it's bad, though). It seems like we don't get too many series that are content-filled serious anime, unless someone can point some out to me that I am missing. Thought about checking out Steins;Gate, though. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7995 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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^Psycho Pass and Robotics; Notes, maybe From the New World too.
The only one I really see as being too bright is the recent, OreSura. The female lead's white hair was giving me freaking snow-blindness every time she appeared on screen. Otherwise, no, I don't see this as any kind of widespread problem. It really depends on what kind of show you're watching and who animated it. |
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