Wait a second… I could’ve sworn I’ve seen this before…
Well, considering my expanding readership (yay!) and the fact that this question still hasn’t been answered for me, my thoughts and opinions still haven’t changed, this is kind of related to an OH! post and I’m lazy and have nothing to post today I decided to one again post this question. It’s an interesting query which won’t have a definitive answer, but I’d like to see a few more people’s thoughts on it before I let it fade into the annals of my blog.
Words of 3 Months ago slightly edited…
Okay, I’ll admit it. I consider myself a bit of a n00b to anime, as I only really got into it around a year ago. Before then, all I had to go on were pirated fansubs portraying themselves as legitamate DVD’s, which I bought unknowing of this aggravating fact. But as I’m relatively new to anime, I’ve generally only been catching the latest series, which pretty much includes everything made after the millenium, except in some rare cases which only involve movies, OVA’s and the like. As such, I’ve been exposed mostly to the simple, cleaner style of recent years rather than the darker, gritty, more detailed style of the early 90’s and late 80’s.
This picture is courtesy of Otaking and some random anon who edited it.
Otaking pretty much says that as the older anime have a larger amount of shading and detail, they look better, whereas the simplistic style of recent years is cheap and “looks like shit”. But I think that this is all a matter of opinion and what you’ve personally been influenced by. It’s the same type of thing with anime subs and dubs; the first voice actors you hear are those that become ingrained in your mind. As you watch the show, identify with the characters and learn to recognise their voices, that’s the version of the anime that you’ve gotten to know. Introducing new voices takes something away from that, and as such it’s hard to appreciate the new Western voice-actors work.
Either that or the voice-actor choices just plain suck, but what I’m saying is this theory can be applied to anime art in general. Older anime viewers would have grown up with the likes of Gunbuster, Vampire Hunter D and Bubblegum Crisis, or will have gained some of their first impressions of anime from this, so perhaps they may view this style as better compared to the likes of today. Then again, their age may also mean they’ll have seen the changes the art in anime shows went through and will have either slowly adjusted to or rejected this (as Otaking seems to have done).
Even though I realise this, I also notice that either due to the lack of old anime I’ve seen or the fact I’ve only seen recent shows, I tend to see older art in anime as slightly worse than in more recent ones. Case and point: having seen Gunbuster 2, I went back and watched the original Gunbuster, and found it very hard to get through. This was partly due to the fact Noriko’s character pissed me off (that’s for another day) but also because after seeing the, in my eyes, amazing art for Diebuster, the more detailed but static nature of Gunbuster’s art didn’t click with me. There were only few minutes where I actually sat back and went “Hey, that looks great” in the entirety of the 6 OVA series. It left me relatively unimpressed. But does that mean I’m just biased against older anime in general and think that older anime looks “dated”?
One thing that I can mention in defense of myself and in condemnation (strong word but suitable) of Otaking’s views is Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, or for that matter, most of his films.
To me, that looks pretty simple, but does that automatically mean that it’s worse looking than older anime? No. Because there is one important factor yet to be addressed in detail: the animation itself. When I say this, I’m talking about the fluidity of the anime when it tries to portray moving objects, be they characters, animals or even something such as the movement of a piece of machinery or the subtle but ever present and traditional scene of wind blowing through a field of grass. Most of the time, what’s sacrificed in the detail of the art is made up for in the quality of the animation. Most of Miyazaki’s films (or at least the 8 or so I’ve seen from him under Studio Ghibli) aren’t overly detailed or shaded but the depth of the animation is amazing; everything feels truly alive, be they cities, landscapes, animals or the random monsters he comes up with. His work seems less about making characters faces emotional and more about making everything about the characters and the scene emotional; as a side note, background art is still art, and more recently background art is gaining greater detail and beauty in animation as the creators realise that viewers are paying more attention to subtle things such as this.
Though this is a random reference, you could also take a look at the segments of Clannad which were set in the other world with the girl and the robot; you can’t deny that some of those scenes were very well done and looked beautiful. He even tries to say that by extension the art from Disney is bad, citing Pochahantas (awesome movie, by the way) as an example, but I can say the same thing in rebuttal; the movie may not be detailed but the animation, as with most of Disney’s earlier feture films, is fantastic.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve used this image at least 5 times in the past week.
He writes of how more shading = better looking, but many fantastic anime directors, such as Makoto Shinkai, have begun to use variations of lighting to good effect, in their work. You even have expermental art and animation with the likes of Kaiba, which is very simple, but still looks fantastically weird. This also brings to the argument a question of style; not all anime is going to look the same. Miyazaki’s aforementioned film was made 4 years before Gunbuster, and yet the two look nothing alike as the creators of each had a different vision for their show. The same thing can be said about recent anime series and also as a lot of them are adaptations, they stick to the manga art, which in itself isn’t that detailed these days. Plus there’s also the nature of animation budget, and whether the studios want to make things look detailed or put more money into animating scenes, which I think would lead to the choice of the latter.
So, after all this, what’s my point?
What I believe is that, though I’m more prone to seeing newer animation and art in a more favourable light, this doesn’t mean that I think older animtion is “dated” or looks crap. Anime from different generations each have their own unique appeal and you can’t just claim one is greater than the other as each of the individual aspects that make them up can be appreciated by different audiences, where some might pride one aspect over another. You also have different types of animation, so you can’t just group them into “New” and “Old”.
If if it sounds strange that I barely merit the appeal of older anime, it’s because I’m biased as I haven’t any older anime (excluding Miyazaki’s) and I’d like for other anime viewers to enlighten/agree/argue with me. I personally prefer more recent styles of animation.
But what do you think? Old, new, both, or are those types of classifications irrelevant?
Grand Punk Railroad 
Irrelevant but if I’m starting on an old series, I make sure I don’t watch it with a new one since the animation clash would, most likely, ruin the experience for one or both of them.
However, animation takes a backseat to two other factors. Music (Tenmon is what perfects Shinkai’s animation) and plot. Then comes animation.
I’ve read a rebuttal of Otaking’s arguments, was it Kurogane? In any case, we should be careful in comparing OVAs and movies to tv series. The latter will almost always have poorer animation due to differences in budgets.
I’ve been following Xam’d and by the time I reached ep 14 I couldn’t deny it to myself how far the whole thing looked from the gorgeous first episode. It’s still very pretty, but it’s so far from what made me initially attracted to it.
Macross Frontier is another example. The big budget is obvious, but equally obvious is how selective they were in spending it: the ‘important’ episodes with the big CG battles. Otherwise the whole series is uneven and the character designs look hideous in certain episodes.
Otaking’s example above used Hayase Misa, but he used the Do You Remember Love movie version! Holy crap that movie’s quality was better than anything for over a decade and can arguably still hold its own today. Try looking at Misa from the original series, you’ll see QUALITY.
Digitalboy reminded me how ridiculously wealthy Japan was during the 80s. They bought so many great pieces of art (Picassos, Van Goghs), and this wealth is also reflected in a bunch of stupid movies with unbelievably awesome animation (Project A-Ko).
Following his point, sure there’s crappy animation out there (it’s painful to watch Skip Beat), but there’s so much more anime as well. I think it’ll be a far more boring environment when we can only blog about the same 7-8 anime in a season. As it stands, Gundam’s the only mecha anime this fall season. What could happen if the recession really hits hard? Would anyone bother with producing the likes of Tytania?
I’d say today’s animators have more (technological) tools at their disposal, plus the example of the pioneer works of the past, so that IN THEORY animation today can be better. That doesn’t necessarily mean they make good use of it! There’s also storywriting and plot to consider too.
“As it stands, Gundam’s the only mecha anime this fall season.”
Kurogane no Linebarrels is the other and it’s overlooked due to its annoyingly drab and shitty start. Been getting better though.
It’s nonsense. It’ snot on the decline, just a shift to different styles done with different tools. To give an analogy,
People complain about food now sucking due to industrial processing replacing good old hand made food. But the progress of science also leads to new discoveries in flavour science, nutrition, hygiene etc.
Btw, comparing Byousoku is unfair lol. But seriously, look at just this season for example, we already have fantastic artwork like Kurozuka, such shows appear like once every few years back in the 90s. Back now, we get them at least once a season, and most lkely more than that.
i cannot really complain about anime art because i can’t draw for shit. to me, a representation of sucky anime art woud be windy tales. as long as the story’s decent, that’s fine with me.
what actually gets to me is that the stories are the ones that are starting to suck. everything just gets recycled for the sake of a guaranteed hit over telling a good story. i don’t mind if stories are not totally original but if they lack “something new” for me to get excited about, no thanks.
Anime art on the decline? Nah. I think it’s more like a case of younger anime fans being “spoiled”, or old/new fans being jaded to certain types of art/animation, for various reasons. And it’s also as tj said.
I’m not much of an art elitist, so I guess you can take this with a grain of salt? Though thanks to that I can enjoy shows without being too nitpicky on the aesthetics (or the lack thereof) aspect XD
I can’t disagree, the animation now is better in most of the new anime. Exceptions are Mr. Miyazaki’s movies, which are still better then the most of the new stuff. I must say I didn’t notice whether the backgrounds in old Ghibli-films are detailed or not before you pointed on that. Indeed, the amazing backgrounds in Howl’s Moving Castle are better than the ones in Porco Rosso. Though even these are drawn very very good.
The sad thing is that hand-drawn animation is very rare, while the CGI’s are looking weird yet.
Recently I tried to end up watching Vandreed, which I dropped for 4 years. I was surprised how disqusting the art and the animation in these relative old series are.
Is anime art in decline? To answer that question you have to define what you consider art and what you consider good art. The definition will vary significantly among people.
As you mentioned, character design is only one aspect of anime. The Otaking comparison is extremely biased due to many factors as many people have pointed out already. Note that he is only considering details in character design. This is a very limited focus and does not encompass all aspects of anime as an art form. Moreover, highly detailed drawing does not necessarily mean better character design. Thus, an argument that character design of recent anime “looks like shit” is false.
It is interesting to note that Snow Queen that Hayao Miyazaki admires greatly was created in the 50s, and still has better animation, direction, art direction, and voice acting than some of the more recent works.
Of course as the technology advances, it becomes easier, faster, and less expensive to produce art without limitations of the past. Such progress in technology will allow artists to express themselves in new ways. However, it is a double edged sword…
In the end, each person has a certain taste and will react accordingly, regardless if it is new or old work.
I’d actually have to say overall quality of animation throughout a tv series is a times laughable, and sometimes even pathetic. They might have a good starting ep or two, but after that, animation for most series go downhill and back up for a big finale. I haven’t seen a complete older tv series, so I wouldn’t know if this is a new trend, or if its always been the trend. What I do know is that the amount of shitty frames are numerous in between an anime’s start and finish, with good eps being far and between.
As for otaking’s opinion on anime. Well, all I have to say is, it’s not exactly a bad thing to get viewers to be more knowledgeable about japanese terms, or culture in general, seeing as some animes are heavily referenced with respect to japanese culture. As far as animation goes, I can’t refute that older titles had more detail, but imo, every generation has their gems and crap. Kyoani has produced animation that has truly astounded me, as have Makoto Shinkai. For me, I can just connect to this new style better, and associated with lifelike more so than older titles. Also this generation just have more crap due to the fact that there’s just more animes being produced in general (always easier to produce crap than gold).
Originality seems to be a significant problem in anime these days, and plot also seems to be another issue. Again, having not seen much older animes, I can’t tell if this has always been an issue, or if it’s just an arising issue. There’s, however, been a lot of pandering towards fans these days (ie. they’re spoiling diehard fans/sucking them dry). That’s one of the reasons why there’s a lot of rehashing of what’s been proven to be successful among fans. I guess it’s also a lot easier to make money with what’s been proven to be successful, since they’re easier to produce, seeing as they’ve got reference to work off of, and they’re more appealing to the target audience in general. However, I feel as though they’re losing the art aspect of anime in that regards though. Shaft, however, is an exception to the rule. They’re an example of a studio that’s bold pretty bold with everything from stylistic/wierd animation to just plain abstract references.
Well, in the end, I guess what I want to say is that, the new generation of anime has an increased amount of crap, most of which not worth wasting time on. However, there are still notable gems in this heap of crap which makes sitting through a season of crap worthwhile. So saying that anime as a whole is declining is far from the truth. Also, as crappy as some series are on a whole, they’d still have individual episodes that were well worth the time. On another note, seeing as anime is as much a form of entertainment as it is art, I’d say people are better off not being overly picky with what’s bad, and try to enjoy what’s good. If they can’t find anything good, well, I guess it’s time to move on. Well, that ends my absurdly long, and probably pointless rant of a comment.
@ffviiknight
I’d say that plot comes before any aspect of a series. If the plot’s not interesting, I probably wouldn’t watch it.
@ghostlightning
Perhaps the end result would be different if we solely looked at anime series or movies seperately , though I haven’t seen enough of movies to judge this.
On the one hand you’ve got the economical side of things (In regards to wealth and such) and on the other you’ve got improvements in terms of technology. It may all depend on what plays a greater role in the production of an anime. More studios means more anime which means even if Japan was just as prosperous now as it was in the 80’s, the money would still have to be spread around, going into the more popular and prominent productions i.e the ones that cater to the majority.
@animekritik
I think it depends on whether the series is good enough/has enough supporters to warrant a large animation budget.
@ffviiknight
People ignoring a show due to bad animation, bad music and a horribly irritating main character? Nah.
@tj han
See, I don’t consider Kurozuka’s artwork fantastic; sure it’s got a good animation budget but the overall tone and design if the series turns me off. But that’s just my opinion, leading me to believe that with modern day animation, it’s all about what you’ve seen as a fan and what you prefer. but I do agree, that change can be misinterpreted as decline.
@biankita
I can’t draw for shit either, but here’s a saying for you: “Those who can’t do, critique.” I agree that plot takes precedent above all else (but then why did I watch Kanokon O_O?)
@usagijen
People do need to learn to adapt to change as well as understanding other people’s opinions. Some might believe design takes precedent over fluidity, while others vice versa.
@gargron
Welcome to the Nu-Age era of anime my friend ;). I can understand your point of view, but I can’t agree that all old anime’s terrible because I haven’t seen enough to judge properly.
@Kitsune
That’s pretty much a summary of what I was trying to get across (hallelujah for complete understanding.) It’s too subjective a thing to accurately resolve due to various opinions. For me, it’s all about fluidity; if something looks smoothly animated, I’ll probably like it.
@Rawr
Ranting comments is something we all do at times 😛
It’s pretty rare that you come acroos an anime series that’s great throughout its entire run, even amazing series have their stumbles every now and again. If you think of crappy series as more of a percentage in a season, then it makes a lot more sense. Then again, it you didn’t have crap, you couldn’t distinguish the good from the bad, so in that respect maybe we need horrible series so that we can truly appreciate the good series for the gems they are.
Shows that solely pander to fanboys/girls will always exist, there’s no stopping that, it’s just the way of the unthinking majority.
@omisyth: why did you watch kanokon??? O_O and you’re wrong. the quote is: “Those who can’t do, make fun of those who can.”
@biankita
Okay, you caught me, I made up that saying 😛
i am not reading all of this text wall and dont know if it’s been mentioned but Otaking was dead lying from te get go since all the old anime from that pic are from rather high budget OVAs and not any of which looked like that in EVERY shot.
also, since it’s in my field of view right now, Kanokon is awesome. Probably the most underrated show this year.