Forum - View topicHas the character design ever ruined an anime for you?
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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I'm not hung up on one anime style. I find something to like in most styles, from the spindly comedic art of xxxHolic or hard edged realism of Baccano or the too-pretty Ah! My Goddess and the too-cute-for-school Lucky Star as well as the typical fare found in many others. I don't much care for the big-eyes thing but I really liked Clannad and many others in spite of it.
Yet in going through my collection I came across something I really hated. In Divergence Eve and Misaki Chronicles you had a story that could have been pretty good hard-edged sci-fi/horror. Yet most of the female characters are drawn with these humongous breasts. Not just big -- about 30 percent of the character's mass is breast tissue. When the character is seated at a table the deformity is even more noticeable. I guess what bothers me is that someone thought as a male I am supposed to react positively to it in some way. And then I'm left to wonder -- does anybody like this? I almost didn't make it through the series. Anyone else have that reaction to something, and what was it? |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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I've never let that stuff bother me. I always found it weird that people let things like art and animation deter their attention from the entertainment part of the, well, entertainment. Maybe if they were walking through an art museum and didn't like the color scheme of a certain piece of work I'd understand it, but this is anime not Monet.
I mean, I'm not blind and I notice this stuff, but it's usually just me going, "Hey, they have big boobs" or "Hey, they have big eyes" and then revert my attention back to the storyline and dialogue. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yes. Yes it has. I find the character designs of Astro Boy (especially with regards to the noses) to be so hideous that I could never get into the show. I wanted to get into it, I really did, but I just couldn't.
That's about the only one though. I've disliked some character designs before, but never to the point where I dropped a show for that reason alone. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15595 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Can not think of too much, but biggest one would be when I first looked for Kanon, I first came across Kanon 2002 and found it very different to what pictures I had seen already. I felt like my eyes were bleeding within the first several minutes because of the character design, now I make sure to always look up Kanon 2006.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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To be fair, even in Kanon 2006 the characters' eyes were still too far apart. It's designs were a marginal improvement over the original series, but that's not saying much. Both look horrible to my eyes. However, since I'm not a fan of Moe the designs don't really matter to me when it comes down to it.
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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I wouldn't say it's ever ruined an anime for me, but I would say it has had a significant negative effect on my view of a series. I would never base my like or dislike of a series based on this alone, unless it's a show like Eiken, where the character design pretty much makes up the shows premise. I will give a few examples of shows that did have a negative impact on me based on character design.
I will first off agree with Divergence Eve. I mean, busty women in anime is nothing new or extraordinary, but these girls looked like they were meant for a hentai show, not a sci-fi/horror show. The fan service was distracting, and made it harder to take the show seriously. Yes, I can still appreciate the story, but this is a visual medium, and I can't ignore the ridiculous visuals regardless of the stories quality. Another one would be Gilgamesh for me. There were a lot of things wrong with the visuals in this series, but the character design was definitely a part of it. The characters just seemed strange in appearance, and there were a few times I wasn't even sure which gender a certain character was supposed to be until they spoke. In this case it wasn't fan service that became the problem, but rather the odd anime gone goth art style that just didn't work well for me. |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4640 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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The most distracting design to me is the super angular pretty boy bishonen style of something like Utena (especially the older stuff from that period). If you've read my recent posts in the "What are you Watching" thread you'll see I'm having trouble getting through the series and that style is part of it (but not the only thing) but I don't want it to deter me from finishing the show and I have watched and enjoyed a couple shows in that style.
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zawa113
 Posts: 7360 |
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Really? Which Astro Boy series were you watching, 1963, 1980, or 2003? And who's nose in particular, the Ochanomizu/Saruta type of clearly oversized nose, the Duke Red/Dr. Tenma type that's a bit bird-like, or the normal Astro Boy/Kenichi type? I'll admit the first two are a tad off-putting to me too, but maybe I've just gotten used to them because they honestly just looked wrong in Pluto to me. I kinda like the old school feel of it though and in the Astro Boy manga, Tezuka proves he's pretty genre savvy because a lot of characters will call out his character designs themselves (such as commenting on Astro's lack of clothing). I think Giant Robo and Tetsujin 28 have some similar facial designs between them and I liked those too in an "it's old school adorable" kind of way. Anyway, as for me, Gilgamesh damn near ruined it, it probably didn't help that no one ever changed facial expressions (putting this into uncanny valley realm for me) so they all looked perpetually bored. Not that the character designs alone ruined the show for me, it had plenty of other ways to ensure that it seemed. I still finished the show (god only knows how), but it was like watching a bunch of zombie Orvilles standing around. *seems Keonyn agreed with me while I was writing this up. But as for a series I've actually dropped due to character design, it's gotta be Gankutsuou, which I think are love-it/hate-it designs to begin with and everyone's faces were fine but when it came to clothes (and sometimes hair)...not so much. The thing is, most everyone looks perfectly fine in stills, kinda cool even, but the instant they moved it was a whole new story. I think part of it had to do with the lines for the arms and stuff that were so pale that it often looked like someone's hand just strangely floated in front of them. I personally found the worst offenders to be Haydee and Monsieur Danglers who would both still hurt my eyes even in stills with Mercedes in a close third and Albert fourth. I think it was a cool idea though and I still liked how both Mononoke and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei pulled it off but Gankutsuou just kinda over killed the concept for me and made it damn near unwatchable for me. I've never actually had my eyes bleed before, but I'd imagine that this is what it feels like and for me it only got worse with each episode, never better. |
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wicked86
Posts: 30 Location: DE |
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The only time character design has been a problem for me, was when I watched Daphne in the Brilliant Blue. It bothered me to the point I couldn't finish the series.
What bothered me about was I think the way the characters heads and faces done. Everything seemed a little bit to pointy. Not to mention the final straw was I think around episode 15, the boy related to the fisherman(I think, can't really remember) I at first thought was a girl. Mainly for the reason being the only thing separating him from being a her was the voice and flat chest(since practically every female had overly huge breasts). Otherwise I don't think I find character overall to be a problem since I'm attracted to Lois Griffin(Family Guy). Something has to be really off for me to not like a show. |
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BunnyCupCakes
 Posts: 224 Location: The Sunshine State |
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@ classicalzawa: That sucks about Gankutsuou
It really is a great series (I would call it a gem among anime, actually) Though I can understand the design issue since alot of people say they get headaches and have to take long breaks between episodes. For me, it was never a problem. Though the one thing that bothered me the most was actually the shading of the noses. They always looked off and I dunno why they went with that instead of drawing regular noses with simple lines. Now, for me it has to be Escaflowne. I mean, LOOK AT DEM NOSES (it sounds like I have something against noses now lol) I never got the chance to watch it while it was airing on TV (thank gawd I didn't since I heard they edited out alot of stuff) so I was very late to the party and it was also the point where I gotten over 90's style anime. So the designs made me cringe but I eventually got used to it. In the end, it became a favorite of mine. I'm glad I stuck to it. |
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zawa113
Posts: 7360 |
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The strange thing about Escaflowne for me (oh yeah it was the noses as well, I mean they look like they could cut you) was that the same guy did the artwork for Chrono Cross which as you can tell from the intro looks pretty normal. It's like you can tell it's by the same guy, so why is Chrono Cross's normal by comparison if both of them came out around the same time? The thing is that I played Chrono Cross before I saw Escaflowne so the whole time I kept thinking "you can draw better than this, why did this happen? why did playing Chrono Cross first make Escaflowne look more strange to me?" And there were a ton of playables, not counting some of the non-human characters, they all look pretty normal and they're by the same guy. I still finished Escaflowne though but I never quite got used to the artwork after having seen better looking stuff from the same guy (especially when my basis for checking out Escaflowne was that the artwork was done by the same guy). |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7995 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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I view the character designs as a superficial factor (same with animation), so no it hasn't actually ruined anything. It has definitely detracted from my enjoyment of a series though if they look hideously distracting or too distorted from human beings like the designs for Black Jack but they can still be enjoyed for other things like the story and characters themselves.
My favorite designs are the more realistic looking stuff. Last edited by Kruszer on Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:07 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Randall Theil
 Posts: 10 |
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For me it's definitely the big, wide heads and downsy eyes of stuff like Clannad and Air.
This is what I'm talking about. I know Air is lauded for it's production values, but I just can't take it. |
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John Casey
 Posts: 1853 Location: In My Angry Center |
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You know, just about everything from those days had them noses.  You really can't deny that; it was an era thing.
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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It's one of the reasons I've never send my anime review to any "serious" website- I don't see the design.
It may sound strange, but I don't notice 'lazy animation", strange proportions of the limbs and things like that. The most funny thing was about Oban star racers- uuntil my sister told it I didn't notice that characters don't have noses. I can give graphic (and music) three notes -Horrible -Nice -Marvellous 99,9% animes belongs to second category. The only one that I really couldn't stand because of the graphic was Hana yori Dango. Funny comedy, but the way that "Bold and beautiful" were drawn made me sick and laugh. All of them seemed to have permit toothache. |
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