I’ve only ever got into anime shows for their quirky story or character personality development.
Not once was it for the design or terrible animation. If I ever do refer to breathtaking anime it would be studio ghibli but that’s about it. And even given its age, today’s anime really can’t compare. They just wouldn’t put in the work like they once did.
Not surprised a lot of kids get deep into it and then drop it fast as they grow older. Cutesy wears off when that’s the only thing going for it. It gets annoying after a while.
The scope and ambition of certain animes like Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Berserk I can appreciate. I was never a weeb, but I barely watch any anime these days. My kids got me to watch Demon Hunter (which I’ve only seen like a single movie of and didn’t see the point) and My Hero Academia which is also not my cup of tea.
Studio Ghibli is pretty good, though. I like the depth, but sometimes they are so abstract and ethereal that my brain decides I’m already asleep and I just nod off. It’s usually worth it to watch a few times to try to get everything. Princess Mononoke was really a struggle. It’s a great anime, but I had to watch it a good 6+ times before I could stay awake through it.
What about ‘western’ anime? Think Legend of Korra, or even less ‘2D’ but still highly stylized ones like Arcane.
[sad pug noises]
Fr one of the reasons I can’t get into anime very much is because of how abstract and inhuman most characters look and behave. I know there are cultural and historical reasons for the style and tropes, but it makes everything completely unrelatable to me.
So I’ll forever be one of those guys who’s like “Cowboy Bebop is great but that’s as far as I go”
Jin-Roh
I have terrible difficulties to enjoy those anime that require irreal coloured hair stiles and eccentric complements to distinguish the characters…
Recently I felt a bit of freshness with an anime, which faces I do not find “beautiful” or well drawn at all, but they were all quite distinguishable without the need of weird coloured hair… Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, despite the cartoonish style for once in a while I was glad to not see an endless amount of plain “beautiful” stereotyped faces…
Cowboy Bebop (ESPECIALLY the dub) was very much written and “acted” in a “western” style. Same with contemporaries like Outlaw Star and Big O (which is very much a referene to Batman).
In general? Rowdy Roddy Piper once said (paraphrasing) that pro wrestling is about explosive acting and emoting and film is about implosive acting and emoting. And ask anyone who has done theatre (which pro wrestling basically is)) and they’ll say something similar. Because when the camera zooms in to that single tear in Ryan Gosling’s eye? We can see it. When Ryan Gosling is on the stage behind twelve layers of plexiglass so we don’t try to lick his sweat? We can’t see that tear and he needs to make a big gesture to make it clear he is having an emotional breakdown.
And that applies to animated content. With very few exceptions (almost all short films), you can’t have the level of detail where such a subtle response will be noticed. Even the truly amazing finales of Cowboy Bebop was built on us having learned enough about the characters to fill in the gaps by that point.
So you get the very over exaggerated “acting” styles so that you know this fairly hastily drawn person is really feeling it. And that is true regardless of the country of origin for the cartoon.
If you watched cowboy bebop have you ever watched vash the stampede?
You mean Trigun? Ofc
And GitS and Eva and the other “classics”
What’s weird, classics should inspire, be based upon. Yet there are few anime going that route. I mean there wasn’t good “classics” like anime in 15 years at least as far as I know.
Look into western anime like Arcane, Avatar, DOTA: Dragon’s blood, things like that.
It doesn’t feel so… anime. And some of them have legit amazing and “grounded” character design, movement, expressiveness and such.
Add Castlevania to that list
I watched castlevania, and I liked it fine, but in terms of style/tropes it feels more anime than western anime to me.
Interesting, because Castlevania is a Japanese IP, but is written by Warren Ellis and animated by the same studio as Adventure Time, one of the most beloved series to come out of the 2010s animation boom. Meanwhile DotA: DB is a western IP that was animated by Korean Studio Mir (who have also worked on the final seasons of both Legend of Korra and the Boondocks in the past).
I got more “anime” feelings from DOTA than I did Castlevania, but I also consume more fantasy anime than the average person I think.
DOTA’s plot is kinda over the top, but somehow I feel the writing and general feel is more “western,” though looking like LoK may have biased me some. Actually this is probably a bad example.
Castlevania, the way characters move, its drawn, just the general feel of the drama feels more “anime” to me.
In terms of my opinion, maybe its more accurate to state they both straddle the line.
You know what, when you mention the movement of the characters, I see what you mean. Castlevania characters move more realistically, but it’s still pretty stylized, thus the “almost anime” feeling.
Yeah.
Avatar’s obsession with realistic body movement is an exception, but even if you look at stuff with heavy fighting like DCAU, it feels more “grounded” while anime feels more “dramatic.” These aren’t the exact adjectives I’m looking for, but maybe you get what I mean, and Castlevania and DOTA both veer towards the middle.
My biggest issue is that I’ll start one highly rated anime which is serious and artistic, and then the moment I invite friends over Netflix decides to fill my recommendations with a bunch of boob service thumbnails.
Netflix decides to fill my recommendations with a bunch of boob service thumbnails.
I agree with this so hard. There are anime shows I’d love to watch with my wife but the ridiculous amount of “fan service” even those seem to have makes it a nonstarter.
Really? Do you have some examples?
Because otoh, when I think of highly rated anime, there’s barely anything like this that comes to mind. I’m thinking of stuff like Fullmetal Alchemist, Hunter x Hunter, Frieren and Spy Family, for example. Neon Genesis Evangelion is a better fit, admittedly.
Shows like One Piece, JJK and whatnot may be different, but personally, I don’t think too highly of them, anyway.
There’s some anime I’ve watched and loved but I had a revelation two years ago about why I was so put-off by the cutesier stuff. My niece was a toddler and we were goofing around with Snapchat filters. She was loving the anime filter and it dawned on me…
…Adult women in a lot of anime have the mannerisms of a literal children. And it certainly didn’t help the ick factor when I also realized these are the characters a lot of weebs want to fuck.
Ew ew ewwww. If an anime with an adult cast is described as kawaii, you cannot convince me to watch it.
Dorohedoro is definitely one of the stranger anime I’ve seen in recent memory and even they managed to fit noses on their characters. Caiman also technically has a nose, I guess, or at least he’s got nostrils.
I’d also strongly recommend it and it’s supposed to get a second season at some point.
Caiman also technically has a nose, I guess, or at least he’s got nostrils.
Acktshully, he’s got a snout, but technically has a nose because of the guy in his mouth 🤓
The adaptation is very solid and faithful, it makes good decisions like cutting mostly irrelevant parts and going for a baroque style for the backgrounds instead of the chaotic, nearly organic style of the manga, which is easier to animate. But if you haven’t already, don’t wait for the anime, read it, it gets crazier (and makes sense strangely).You know what anime has noses and distinctive designs?
My GOAT, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
But if you wanna talk unrealistic body standards…
I don’t go to anime for body standards bro 😭
Between the anime women who’d get two black eyes if they went for a light jog, Goku’s muscles somehow not ripping out of his skin whenever he got to a new level of Super Saiyan, and whatever the hell is going on with glorious skinny legend Lelouch Lamperouge and the length of his limbs, JJBA might be on the more “attainable” side of anime bodies, especially Part 4 onwards.
I’ve watched a lot of anime, and Code Geass character designs were the worst I’ve endured.
Side note: I don’t recommend Code Geass, I think it’s on par with Death Note for the most contrived intellectually-mastabatory power fantasy. If you stop to think about what’s happening you’ll realise none of the characters are making rational choices.
I…disagree with most of your comment 😭 But I know Clamp’s character designs are an acquired taste. (Imo they always look better in manga form than in anime)
Lelouch/Code Geass is most anime watcher’s first introduction to “revolutionary anti-hero” protagonists (I was one of those people), so I think people recommend it out of nostalgia. Also there are some twists in the story (iykyk) that are really good and I think it’s dismissive to just Cinemasins them away.
But adults who want space wars and political drama would probably prefer Gundam and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, depending on their preferred pacing.
In my opinion, if animation isn’t making characters look and move in stylized manners then it isn’t as fun. It’s why Turning Red was more enjoyable to look at than things like Frozen (which looked stylized but the characters move realistically).
This could turn into a thread of its own of people just recommending stuff, but I’m curious if you’ve looked up any of the current more popular series like Chainsaw Man, Dungeon Meshi (aka Delicious in Dungeon), Jujutsu Kaisen, and the recent Netflix animes like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Terminator Zero. I’d say all of them feel like the late night anime that was aired on Toonami back in the 2000s.
I also recommend the movie Redline to everybody because it’s such a visual and audio treat. It’s like if Hanna Barbera had hired somebody like Studio Ghibli to make a Wacky Racers movie.
Hayao “I hate weebs almost as much as life itself” Miyazaki
Holy crap haha! What a quote. Certainly made his point of view clear lol
TBF he is a renowned asshole. He has publically called the work of his own son “an insult to life itself”.
That’s a bummer. Frankly most creative (or other) genius tends to come with a LOT of downsides from everything I’ve seen, so not too surprising. A creative legacy like his is not built on reasonable takes, lol. That’s no excuse for being a jerk of course, I don’t like jerks.
He is infamously eccentric. Maybe no-one ever set his talent aside for long enough to teach him manners. And it was probably too late to do that ages ago.
But he also has humanitarian ideas. Looking at the messages his movies convey, it’s clear to me he wishes people the best.
Yet he vilifies so much of the real world and the people in it. And it just feels like a refusal to even try to understand.
Well… I mean… Have you watched his movie?
From Up On Poppy Hill is a beautiful movie. Earwig is garbage though.
I was thinking about the Earthsea movie, which was the only one he had made at the time of the comment by his father
Ah well maybe that’s what inspired him to make a good movie
I know.
But that ain’t how you mentor someone.
And it’s not just his son.
The man denounces Lord of the Rings, and western culture in general:
(I am), anti-jeans, anti-bourbon, anti-burgers, anti-fried chicken, anti-cola, anti-American coffee, and anti-New York, anti-West Coast, Disneyland go back to America!
He’s known to feel disdain for people who embrace modern technology. He’s said people using touch-screens look like they are making “strange masturbation-like gestures”.
He’s admitted to getting “fed up” with seeing people read manga in public, even before smartphones existed.
The man seems incapable of giving constructive criticism, or just generally being pleasant. When commenting on the passing of Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy and a formative figure for manga in general, he said:
I’m assuming there will be a loud chorus of other people mourning his passing, and I do not intend to add my voice to it.
He’s a genius. And obviously has profound thoughts and ideas about the world as the plot-lines of his movies illustrate.
But he also has a hateful streak which he doesn’t seem to even try controlling.
I mean the sheer brutality of his comments is something to behold…like, maximally insulting with very few words. Speaks to his genius in a weird way.
The man denounces Lord of the Rings, and western culture in general
That’s horrible!
(I am), anti-jeans, anti-bourbon, anti-burgers, anti-fried chicken, anti-cola, anti-American coffee, and anti-New York, anti-West Coast, Disneyland go back to America!
No, he’s right apart from Lord of the Rings.
No, he ain’t right. This guy denounced katsu chicken. One of the best Japanese dishes. Sure, it’s only been around for 100 years, so it isn’t traditional, but it’s still great.
It actually sounds like he and Tolkein would get on really well
Honestly yeah
Edit: misunderstood the comment I was replying to
The insult to life itself comment was about generative AI. I think what he said to his son was something like “he’s not an adult and he should quit”
After watching what he did to Earthsea, I see his point tbh
edit: Posted by mistake
You can go far enough but Cowboy Bebop is still the best. Not because of it’s graphics.
Counterpoint: 1963 anime girl
To be fair, the boy is the exact same shape, which I would describe as a weeble wobble with the limbs and head of a kewpie doll 😂
Well, they are robots, so it makes sense!
Ahh yes I forgot, all robots are descended from the original automaton; Sir Weebilus Wobbilus of the Kewpie dynasty.
Apparently the ones in Japan are, at least.
source of the image is Golden Boy, the dub is incredible
Came here to see who else knew the source… STUDY STUDY STUDY STUDY STUDY STUDY
I was just about to say “I seem to recognize this single frame, it’s Golden Boy isn’t it?” Lmao one of the best animes ever.
I watched it for the first time last week, I watched it dubbed on accident, and I’m so glad I did.
👃🚽
If you know, you know
I’m actually in the medical literature as a rare case of a guy who didn’t know even though I knew
I’d forgotten how much of a stranglehold Ryoko had on me as a youth until a few years back. The hyper possessive attitude was always very appealing to me. I think it only made me uncomfortable because it made Tenshi uncomfortable on the show. (When I was younger I had a difficult time realizing when I had a crush on people/characters.)
Women aren’t dogs yo
Except for female dogs, but that’s not what I’m talking about here
Female dogs aren’t “women” -___-
That feels misogynist.
Misdogynist
You FERFs make me sick.
Sure, but that’s not a woman, that’s a drawing.
Comparing the evolution of art styles to the evolution of dog breeds, doesn’t strike me as problematic.
Ce n’est pas un pipe!
This is puppy girl erasure!
She can give a dog a bone for sure!
One of the reasons I turned towards manga more.
Cause its all this inbred focused grouped to hell and back pile of grey goo to me now.
Its all the same looking crap (for the most part) and I am not willing to treck the desert anymore to find the rate oasis.Meanwhile modern anime women
I actually really love Birdie Wing.
I’m not one to shame others for their appearance but groin hair extending to the outer hips is a bit odd.
I was eating
You’re going to need to pick the hair out of your teeth afterwards.
