Forum - View topicCharacter designs that ruin everything.
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Amasa
 Posts: 340 Location: Japan |
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Why give a character unnecesarily cute or childish features to draw in the younger audience while losing members of the older audience whom the plot and message is aimed at? Not even really aimed at just more entertaining for an older audience. I'm talking Galaxy Express 999 which I just finished the first episode of and found incredible. I can tell that I am going to get irritated by Tetsurou's appearance sooner or later since clearly his purpose in the series contradicts his playful, immature character design. Isn't that a bit unfair? I don't mind protagonists being a lot younger than me, often it's unbearable to watch since there's nothing in the series that appeals to anyone older than 13 but with Galaxy Express 999 isn't there a lot more for the older viewers to enjoy? Do the older viewers want to follow a little boy who looks about 4 and as if he can't wipe his own ass by himself? I'm not talking about characters necesarrily looking younger than they're supposed to be or loli, but I mean characters that don't look like the character they're supposed to be. Miyazaki girls are all young but they're never disempowered to the viewer by their misleading appearance. Sure they're all adorable and cute but they're not ragamuffins who I'd expect to see rolling around in mud like Tetsurou. Another similar character is Saburi from Secret of the Cerulean Sand, nobody has seen this series but it irked me that he looked like such an irresponsible rascal when actually his role in the series was a lot more than I can say for most of the adult characters. Please I don't want to talk about moe, that's completely different, to be honest I don't really know how to convey what I want to say very well but I really want to discuss it. If somebody more eloquent than me would like to rephrase everything I've just said you're more than welcome.
edit: Tetsurou not Tetsuo right? |
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 830 |
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I can't speak to any Leiji works (I'm intending to actually see one, one of these days!), but in general, I'm pretty much cool with any character designs.
I'm not a big fan of Yu-Gi-Oh's designs, but that's not a show trying to be taken seriously by adults. As far as more mature work goes, I'm not bothered by things that bother other people, like the designs in Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis. I think they're actually cool and lend an interesting flavor to the serious stuff that goes down. If I had to pick one serious anime with irritating character desisn, I'm not alone in saying Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED. And any of the other shows that use the same designs, like Fafer. |
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digitalkikka
 Posts: 462 Location: Chicago, Illinois |
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I don't think I've ever really had a problem with characters whose looks or personality contradict their part in a story. There may have been a few times when I've had a difficult time believing that Character A would be capable of saving Tokyo or such, but never to the point where it's affected my take on a series.
I'm actually not too picky with character designs. I don't think it's necessary that a character look the part. I'm sure there have been a few times where I've rolled my eyes at certain characters doing really unrealistic things, but I try and not let it ruin a show for me. I think, for the most part, the designs are as they are for either fanservice or symbolism and rarely for realism. There needs to be some visual draw to bring people in and since I use anime mainly as escapism, an "unnecesarily cute" character doesn't bother me. Instead, it would probably interest me in a series  .
Hisashi Hirai is actually my favorite character designer . I'm a big fan of the character designs in SEED, Fafner, and now Heroic Age. I know I'm usually alone on this one, but I find them really attractive... which is probaby why I don't mind that everyone looks the same...
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LeoKnight25
 Posts: 319 Location: Puyallup, WA |
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I'd say Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040's designs kinda ruin the show for me. I'm a huge fan of the original BGC OVA series so, when I saw that they replaced Kenichi Sonoda's gorgeous designs with more updated modern looking Tenchi-wanna-be junk I almost couldn't be bothered with it. I have since changed my position a bit but, it still bugs me. Great Dangaioh is another one that suffers from Tenchi-design syndrome. The original Toshihiro Hirano designs in the OVA series were fan-frikkin'-tastic and then of course when a new series comes out, they have to go all modern-looking with those terrible gawky designs.
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frentymon
Forums Superstar
 Posts: 2362 Location: San Francisco |
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Tenshi na Konamaiki. The character designs completely killed the series for me.
At first it was "oh, it's just manga style, I'll get used to it", but I never did. 25 episodes in, I still was wondering why this oftentimes hideous girl Megumi (the character, not the seiyuu, hahaha) got all the attention that she did (although no one else looked much better). It was a harem comedy of sorts that completely relied on the aspect that Megumi should be very attractive and thus why all the silly males are willing to go through such extremes for her, and explains her humongo popularity which is also integral to the storyline. But she was not good looking at all, and the animation style was so strange and unpleasant to watch that I dropped the series midway. |
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dgreater1
 Posts: 307 Location: in the Phillipine's AIR space with Misuzu |
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Definitely... Windy Tales!
The story is really really interesting to me... but let's face it... the art looks like it was drawn by a staff that's still in kindergarten  I really want to finish watching it but whenever I see that artwork my mind always goes blank. One more, I don't really like Otougi Zoushi's artwork which is one of the let downs of it... but anyway, Kintarou was the total let down for it, his annoying smile makes me want to look the other way until that face of him disappears from the screen. Also, the Tweeny Witches's artwork for me is like a nighmare despite the show being a fantasy Anyway, there are also those weird artwork that I don't really mind. An example is Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san, their faces looks like they have a mumps or something... and the story is definitely for kids but I ended up really liking it for some reason
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Moros
Posts: 369 |
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XVII
Last edited by Moros on Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:56 am; edited 2 times in total |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8507 Location: Penguinopolis |
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A person who cannot even break paragraphs up has no right to criticize Leiji Matsumoto. How are you watching Galaxy Express 999, anyway? I wasn't aware it was available on DVD. |
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The Seventh Son
Posts: 380 Location: Where your missing socks end up. |
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its not even licensed.
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DKL
 Posts: 1962 Location: California, USA |
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Wait... so the designs were bad? |
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Amasa
Posts: 340 Location: Japan |
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*Confused look* Did you even bother to read what I said in my first post? Honestly, nobody can really be that shallow, right? As for your question I'll direct you to the lexicon. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I'll give you a hint: It starts with F and ends in ansubs. I always love how whenever someone wants to insult someone but ofcourse doesnt actually want to flame them they resort to "yeah well, your spelling and/or grammar is bad" I cant really think of a specific example, but I can certainly see where it could be anoying. Generally I find "cute" charaters anoying at the best of times. |
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Moros
Posts: 369 |
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XVII
Last edited by Moros on Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:39 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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I had a hard time watching Daphne at first because of the ridiculous outfits that the characters wear. I think I read somewhere a review that mentions that the character designs are amongst the worse. I actually didn't have a problem with how the characters looked when they were clothed, but as soon as they wore their almost nonexistent outfits I would have to try hard from laughing.
When I first saw Victory Gundam I was really put off by the designs. Until this point I was so used to seeing character designs by Yasuhiko and those who seemed influenced by him like Mikimoto, Kitazume, and Kawamoto. The dramatic shift in V Gundam was rather jarring at the time. Of course they seem rather mellow compared to some of the series released since then. |
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Area88
 Posts: 374 |
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Pretty much everything made after 1999.
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