Forum - View topicThe Best Anime of 2016
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Cam0
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Victor and Yuri in Yuri!!! on Ice have a unique, one of a kind relationship or something like that. Saying with a straight face that they are not gay is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. However I felt their relationship was left unfinished since it wasn't clear to me where they stand at the end. I personally thought YOI was just good. Not great, not decent but good. The ice skating scenes were kinda cool. They often failed their quad jumps which made it fun to watch whether they were going to nail it this time or not. However there were too many characters and too little time to work with. It got a bit tedious to have to watch the ice skating sessions of so many characters I barely knew and didn't really care about.
I don't like the "us vs. them" mentality within the viewers though. Regardless of what the writer says afterwards, the actual story is told through the anime. Anyone who watches the show will draw their own conclusion. If someone thinks Yuri and Victor are not gay, then they are allowed to have that opinion without being belittled or insulted. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5506 |
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@Kikaioh
I don't think your issue with lack of realism is related to recent Anime, as what you describe is really just any Anime, most of your examples are OVAs and Movies(or OPs), which have more freedom than TV Anime, which I believe is where your issue lies. As TV Anime has always had that floaty look as the medium is very reliant on Key Framing, there's an excellent presentation on it and how realism started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvx7p6-lABw&index=7&list=PLuPNSyztkHPqV-M4ePSmN_2BLhONu0WLg |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Oh man I've seen ME!ME!ME! dozens of times, I think that video is a masterpiece. It came to mind immediately as the other one in this vein I'd like to see more of. So good- thanks for the recommendation! 
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IchiharaYuuko
Posts: 8 |
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I somehow managed to watch a few great, some decent, and unfortunately some craptastic anime this year. So my top 5 best:
1. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable - This show is life, the third OP was even more life and the ED is my jam. This adaption was superb. By far the only anime that had me on the edge of my seat in suspense. 2. DAYS (I'm surprised it didn't make anyone's list  This was the most consistent and most touching anime I've seen in a while. As someone that doesn't watch real sports, this one actually had me cheering when they make a goal. It really deserves some love. And a side note: The second ED is the most adorable thing ever.)
3. MSG: Iron-Blooded Orphans (It's Sunrise, I'll always be biased like that :p) 4. Nanbaka (It's hilarious, it has plot, the characters are all lovable) 5. Kiznaiver (It had a good idea, and the end result was pretty good. It never got boring and I cared about the characters more than I expected to. And the OP was really really freaking good!!) Honorable mentions: - Yami Shibai (and YES ANOTHER SEASON!!!) - I like some good short horror stories
- Cheating Craft - Its' setup is so out there, it's well done in that regard. - Food Wars - I watch it for the food. The plot is fairly predictable, but it's still has some great story-telling highlights. Megumi, especially, is a well written character that resonated with me. And the food~~ There's others that could have been on this list, but I watch very little anime since last year thanks to life and also after practically rage-quitting anime last year due to wasting my life watching Rokka. It remains - for me - the worst anime I've ever seen to the end. It's negative presence still haunts me now. Top 5 WORST: 1. Big Order (Yep. No contest. I can't believe I got to episode 3) 2. Bloodivores (I wasted 6 episodes of time on this.) 3. God Eater (The art couldn't keep me watching. It was just... empty. I left after 4 eps) 4. All Out - It's only here because I gave up after the first episode. I might give it another chance, but it's not calling me and the tall blonde dude was unbearable. 5. Trickster - right up there with bloodivores, but at least I finished this one. I don't expect much from this anymore in the 2nd cour. |
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meiam
Posts: 3450 |
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You can always hire more animators to get better results, if 82 wasn't enough hire 150 or something, although at some point it feel like you should fire the director and use the money to hire a better one. I'm not saying money is essential to get good animation, I'm saying money can help get better animation. But really the problem is the hubris in deciding to animate every sequence thinking they could. Although to be fair most people seem content to overlook the shoddy animation so long as the BL aspect is front and center, so I guess that wasn't such a bad call. |
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13240 |
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Stuff like that does happen, though. If an anime character is offhandledly mentioned to be Canadian, you bet your ass I make a big deal out of it even if the show doesn't. There are so few Canadian anime characters as it is so I do give importance to them actually existing. While yes, the show being actually good is going to make the impact greater, but you can still find personal meaning in bad shows too. That's what I mean when I said it's independent of the show's actual quality.
We're not. My point is that no show exists in a vacuum. Just saying "Yuri on Ice is #1 solely because it's a good show!" is incredibly short sighted. You also have to look at the environment that it was released in, the social climate at the time and many other factors. These factors in no way lessens the validity of one's opinions, they simply provide greater understanding for why those opinions are what they are. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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@meiam The point of the chart is that more is not better, or rather having so many is an indication things are going poorly. In terms of animation, Euphonium 2 is the most excellent and most consistently excellent of the season and it had the least number of animators and animation directors by a good margin. Now of course animating the series that had so many with fewer wouldn't have improved them, but having so many animators is not without costs. Coordinating so many people takes time, and for struggling productions, that is something they don't have.
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Starbuckets
 Posts: 87 |
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VoidWitch
 Posts: 157 |
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I love how you chose Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey and not Ready Player One or Transformers for example.
Look, I love to analyze and dissect and I'm all for "digging deeper", but I would never randomly ask strangers (!) to examine the way they interact with media. (Unless they are specifically asked for my opinion or an advice) That's an asshole move. Some people just want to enjoy the show.
So this is also your "personal experience". You don't actually have any data. What you are really doing here Vaisaga is playing a dress-up game. You came to ANN forums to "help" people be more critical of media and talk about psychology under the pretense of talking about anime.
This is not a "Know about your biases NOW!" seminar. These are not psychology or mental health forums. No one cares about your courses. You are not a savior that came to rescue people from their ego. You are not some enlightened guru. You are fantasizing. Get over yourself. You think that you are asking "uncomfortable" questions and that's why everyone gets "defensive". It's not just your questions. It's your insufferable, pretentious attitude that rubs people the wrong way. You are that annoying philosophy student that doesn't know when to shut up. "It's a good thing to expand your thinking...." "I studied psychology and in general I like to help people." aka "I'm like a really good person and I'm just trying to help you" (You are not) "I suck at sports so I emphasize intellectual pursuits instead." Why is this important? To underline the fact that you are not some jock? "And it's not YoI fans that are unaware, it's most people in general." Are you here to make them aware? Really? "According to my courses..." Uh-huh? "...being able to identify and separate one's biases from a critical evaluation is a more advanced mental skill. I try (and often fail) to put that into practise and encourage others to try as well. " "I learned a new thing! Lets go blow some people's minds!"
LMAO
Why should people care? Where is this coming from? What beliefs made you think that you are in a position to suggest that? You want to help people? Don't be a preacher. Make them care. Make them come to you. Last edited by VoidWitch on Sat Dec 31, 2016 12:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
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Well, my point of analysis isn't particularly the technical level of the animator per se, but for the sake of the discussion, I would have to consider Miyo Sato the best japanese animator (well, she isn't particularly far), the paint-on-glass style is the hardest style of animation to pull off, and this woman is one of the few (if not only) capable of doing that so masterfully in Japan. But I'm not interested in that. What you seem to imply is that this "experimental" animation (it's not particularly experimental) is easier to produce because it lacks the restrictions of natural laws. While that does seem logical in the sense that the replication of real-life movement is particularly hard, the trick of a lot of modern animation is actually almost an opposite approach to the same objective of realism. While realism asks itself "How precise can I make it?" a more abstract approach will ask itself "How can fantasy feel lifelike?" Let's take the Mob Psycho 100 8th episode, Yutaka Nakamura's scene (I'm sure you've seen it). The cut starts showing Mob, and it shows that his power is rising as his clothes and hair go up, then we have three impact frames that show his eyes glowing red and then he goes completely white, with the intention of portraying his rage. But 4 seconds in, the characters disappear for almost six seconds, and all we see is a blob of fire moving up through the building, making stuff burn up. If you don't know that increased speed creates heat, you may think that Mob is using some sort of fire power, however, when the camera manages to catch up to the characters (because they stopped in mid-air, until then the camera literally lags behind them), the fire completely disappears and you realize that somehow Mob could go so fast that it burned stuff on his way. One impact frame shows us that his opponent is trying to retaliate, and a second one, when he punches Mob, demonstrates that his full power is totally useless against Mob. And then Mob slowly pushes him downwards, and they become a fire ball again, now you're sure that it's actually his speed because it looks like a meteor! When they accelerate, the camera plays with us because it moves faster than the actual characters, since the "meteor" recoils back a little before breaking air barriers, increasing its speed. Then they stop completely, You see the fire disperse, and you can see energy being built up again for what's obviously the final strike. And when it hits, it instantenously will show you that the scale of Mob's power is Cosmic-like, but small, because you see the shock wave only covering the building, and just after that the windows explode. Was any of this real or even possible? No, most of it is physically inaccurate even, but it goes out of its way as much as possible so you can feel that, within your suspense of disbelief, there was a certain sense of realism here, it's actually just mimicking it through timing and camera, so it wants to encapsulate the "perception" of real movement, instead of actually replicating it. It's a different way, certainly, and you might not like it, but I don't think anyone can do that as easily or that realism has any particular better craftsmanship, in this cut Nakamura didn't just go wild as he pleased, he had to take into account the background, the position of each shot and how the audience would perceive the timing of each impact frame. Just as much work any realist animator has to put into very detailed movements of objects and bodies.
None of those ideas are good ideas. True, the production side made quite a lot of bad decisions that enhanced the possibility of a screwed up production, and so did the creative vision of the original creators, because it was way too ambitiuous for what was actually possible to do in the right time. It goes as far as that half of the world watched a different version of what Japan saw, because the episode that went with Crunchyroll (and some TV stations) wasn't fully corrected, with glaring continuity errors. The problem isn't that there are a crapload of animators and animation directors, the problem is that all of them are working on crunch time for a weekly anime, and the outsourcing makes it an even more complicated production from an artistic point; it literally starts looking desintegrated and not "whole". It's not a usually ok-looking show with a sudden spark in animation like Ping Pong Girls, it's a show that barely manages to look like it came from the same production team. The reason why KyoAni is so praised for its production is because it uses as few animators and direction animators as possible, it has no more than 2 to 3 productions per year (it also has a better rotation of its team), so it can manage to make a TV anime look like a 13 episodes-long movie. Even while making the Koe no Katachi movie, Euphonium 2 looks marvelous, perhaps not as many highlights as S1, but full of directional inspiration and great craftsmanship. |
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meiam
Posts: 3450 |
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How does that change anything? Do you believe that this post says "yuri on ice animation would have been better if they had hired less animator" cause that's literally not what its says. The only things it says is that it's possible to get good animation with few animator, but that doesn't means the opposite is necessarily true, i.e. having many animator does not guarantee poor results. If anything the problem might just be that the studio are trying to work with many animator using management technique that work well for project using few animator, but as the post itself mentioned the anime is transforming into a model where more and more animator are dealing with smaller project. The industry is probably simply not used to this new model and has to update it's method. Another possibility is to use more time, by simply starting production earlier to avoid getting rushed. You know what that require? Money. The studio will need to keep paying it's employee without any direct revenue, meaning it'll need a good reserve of cash on hand. So here again, more money = better results. |
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Kikaioh
 Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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@starbuckets and @valhern: I think I had already mentioned that I'd seen most of Mob Psycho, and that I wasn't exactly as impressed by the animation, so bringing up examples from the show (particularly not so fluidly animated ones) to me doesn't quite help the case for the modern approach to animation. Once again, it's a show that falls into the abstract portrayal category that I'm not much a fan of, and to reiterate again, it's because the inherent lack of hard limitations to natural physical laws makes it that much easier for the animators to simply express the motion as it comes to their mind, as opposed to going the more challenging route of trying to express the motion in a way that's believable and real. While you may see it as a way of expanding the limitations of the medium, I personally sense it to be a bit more of a copout, since I don't think it's as technically challenging to effectlvely pull off. A lot of TV shows these days seem to go that route, and I often wonder if it's a budgetary measure whenever those unbound floaty displays of motion appear. To put it another way, it's like the difference between drawing a realistic human vs. a cartoon human: while both have their merits, the former is by far the more challenging to properly render, particularly in complex compositions and perspectives, simply because it's not as flexible to interpretation --- you can't fudge the look and feel and still look "right".
Not just that, but I find more realistic animation to be that much more immersive, since the look and feel comes across as more organic in the interaction between the characters and the setting, and makes me better invested in the believability of the world that's being portrayed. When a high-production moment appears in modern shows, I oftentimes feel taken out of the moment, because the ungrounded style (with sometimes jerky, unnatural human movement) seems to be in stark contrast with the physics of the world, and I'm made that much more aware that I'm watching an animated sequence. Some of the action sequences in Giant Robo (while not immensely fluid) show characters interacting with very unique background settings while trying to avoid the robots and obstacles in the show, which I think helps to cohesively establish the characters with the world that's been portrayed, even in the not so lavishly animated scenes: https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/9205, https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/12120, https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/12119 Gunsmith Cats also shows a fairly good marriage of scene flow, where props affect both characters and backgrounds in seamless ways, giving a good sense of presence: https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/17603, https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/22359 Riding Bean might also be a good example of that sort of cohesiveness: https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/28909 Slayers Try also has an example where the constant wind in the background affects objects in humorous ways that the characters take advantage of: https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/24108 I think Hayao Miyazaki once opined that he felt the modern generation of animators couldn't stand to look at humans, and I think the interpretation I got out of it was that modern animators don't care about portraying the real world anymore, or the realness of human experience anymore, but are instead more interested in portraying ideas. I can sort of see that divide in the approach to animation that seems to distinguish the older generation from modern works when it comes to realness, and I think it's interesting how today's increased production values don't necessarily carry the same degree of technicality along with them.
Well it may be true that the OVA/Movie era isn't quite the same as it once was (?), though I think even an 80s TV show like Sherlock Hound had some fairly impressive animated sequences: https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/14540 and even Escaflowne also had some neat scenes as well: https://sakugabooru.com/post/show/5268. I'll grant though, a lot of TV shows from the past had even more limited production values than what we see nowadays, though I do wish I would at least see more higher-end productions with animated sequences that were able to impress me in a similar fashion to some of the older works. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3564 Location: Finland |
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This is reeally getting out there from the original topic...
My favorite show of this year is Re:Zero, closely followed by Sweetness and Lightning(which I think is grossly underappreciated...). |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13240 |
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Hey, you asked about my biases and desires, and I answered your question. |
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Kikaioh
Posts: 1205 Location: Antarctica |
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Yeah I do kind of agree, my apologies for derailing the topic a bit to quantify my thoughts on animation production. Maybe I should consider opening a thread in a different forum to discuss it in more detail, though if anyone wants to send me any further examples of impressive modern animation, I'm interested to take a look. |
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