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WTF has happened to anime?

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1. Japan is no longer the economic powerhouse that has spare money to throw into trippy experimental ovas.

2. Talent drain - the money in anime sucks, unless they really really love anime all the same skilled animators and 3d artists work in video games instead.

3. A lot of the animation is outsourced overseas.
Yeeeeeeup.

Still love Gainax/Trigger's stuff, but you can easily tell when they're prioritizing their funds in certain areas of their shows over others.
 
How the hell does a college student earn 17k/year??!!?!

I'd like to know. For real. Seriously.

Get a job or internship.

Anyways I would argue the animation in modern anime is way better than the one on the 80 and 90s. Anime back then had better stories though. Even though I like the art of modern anime I can't stand to watch most of them.
 
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There will always be good and bad art
 
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is one of my favourite movies just for the fight choreography alone, and I still reference it when I'm boarding fight scenes on the projects that I'm on, along with Baki the Grappler & Katanagatari.

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There will always be good and bad art

Imo, you posted .. not so good art. The first .gif, to me, looks badly shaded with random After Effect filters thrown into the mix. Second gif has two distinctively different art styles that, again imo, don't mix together at all (highly detailed skybox / simple shaded character). Third .gif looks nice.

I just can't stand that plastic / shiny look.
 
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is one of my favourite movies just for the fight choreography alone, and I still reference it when I'm boarding fight scenes on the projects that I'm on, along with Baki the Grappler & Katanagatari.

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Besides feeling like Street Fighter's better when it's more upbeat and colorful, this film is still fantastic. No clue what happened with that other OVA they did based on Alpha, which is just weird.
 
Imo, you posted .. not so good art. The first .gif, to me, looks badly shaded with random After Effect filters thrown into the mix. Second gif has two distinctively different art styles that, again imo, don't mix together at all (highly detailed skybox / simple shaded character). Third .gif looks nice.

I just can't stand that plastic / shiny look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zDt40QiY_4

Watch it instead of the gif
 
I think CG is the last hope because it's still faster than hand animation. The new Naruto game just straight up looks better than the anime does.
Should be noted that good CGI is incredibly expensive. Render times are an absolute bitch, and then there's the tech issues that you can't tell until the batch render is over. It's a nightmare. The naruto games are likely much more expensive to make than the anime, and those scenes in the game aren't even pre-rendered CGI, it's all realtime.
 
Besides feeling like Street Fighter's better when it's more upbeat and colorful, this film is still fantastic. No clue what happened with that other OVA they did based on Alpha, which is just weird.

Oh, brother. That film was a confusing mess, especially with how jumbled the plot was and how weird the cuts were.

However, I did like the SSFIV short (the one that starred Juri), as that was pretty solid film with some fun fight sequences.
 
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is one of my favourite movies just for the fight choreography alone, and I still reference it when I'm boarding fight scenes on the projects that I'm on, along with Baki the Grappler & Katanagatari.

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Gorgeous GIF, love everything about it.
 
So would somone be kind enough to list the shows of the classic anime series here?

I tend to avoid anime, the art is usually a turn off for me, but the art on the left looks so much more varied and interesting and less..."anime"

Just a case of the 80s/90s character designs being rather different. I think they chose some very specific genres of anime for the left side while the right side was a bit more varied. Like why would you stick some kid's anime up against gritty sci-fi stuff?

An interesting comparison... here's a blend of 80s faces, 90s faces, and 00s faces. Odd how the chins are getting pointier as the years go by.

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Pretty much. Fate/Zero was a cool show, but it has a fair share of issues.

I feel like the Asura's Wrath anime is a good one for this discussion. Fits in nicely with the whole "nonsense OVA with a bunch of money thrown at it" type stuff.

http://sakuga.yshi.org/data/4ebb19931d67731eb5ef98ddcd6e798f.webm

The larger gallery

As far as TV anime is concerned there are plenty of examples of quality animation and art available every year. If the question is, why do they not look like the handful of amazing films or OVAs from 20-30 years ago, then you should be looking at the top tier one offs or movies that are being made now, rather than TV anime. Stuff like Sword of the Stranger or Redline hold up well.
 
Just a case of the 80s/90s character designs being rather different. I think they chose some very specific genres of anime for the left side while the right side was a bit more varied. Like why would you stick some kid's anime up against gritty sci-fi stuff?

An interesting comparison... here's a blend of 80s faces, 90s faces, and 00s faces. Odd how the chins are getting pointier as the years go by.

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The eyes are getting bigger and the noses are getting smaller.
 
Just a case of the 80s/90s character designs being rather different. I think they chose some very specific genres of anime for the left side while the right side was a bit more varied. Like why would you stick some kid's anime up against gritty sci-fi stuff?

An interesting comparison... here's a blend of 80s faces, 90s faces, and 00s faces. Odd how the chins are getting pointier as the years go by.

8BjcbkD.jpg

The 90s eyes on the right look the most normal to me.
 
Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood looks fantastic, some of the Bleach fights(Ichigo vs Grimmjow and Naruto(Kakashi vs Hidan and Kakuzu) fights are amazing, Gintama looks pretty decent. Dragon Ball Z fights were much more boring than today fight scenes, Samurai Champoo, is also looking great, and I could write much more, but that would be a never ending list.
 
Who's the company that animates this?

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Can we just have like....all the anime made by them? XD

After watching Shirobako, I'm curious how the hell the people behind this anime can make movie anime like quality here.

To be fair, the CGI doesn't look good.
 
I haven't watched anime for a couple years so last week one of my friends told me to watch a show called High School DxD? He said it was the best action anime ever.......

Fuck him

You will actually learn to love highschool DxD, trust me.
Also this actually has nothing to do with the thread.
 
From the constant comparing of OVAs and movies to TV series, this thread can be boiled down to: "Why don't anime TV series have the animation budget of OVAs, movies per episode?!"
 
My problem is that the overall designs have went down. Why are there so many schoolgirls everywhere or prettyboys? There are very few that I see that makes me go, whoa, that's cool.
 
G A R D E N O F W O R D S

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Ehhh, while the backgrounds and stuff are gorgeous, the human characters are always lacking in Shinkai films even though I loooove him.

I think ufotable just sets a bar very high for themselves, so they can do things that look amazing... but somehow, at least IMO, their backgrounds don't usually mesh well with the characters normally.

My problem is that the overall designs have went down. Why are there so many schoolgirls everywhere or prettyboys? There are very few that I see that makes me go, whoa, that's cool.

Odd criticism but I think if you want to find anime that makes you think "woah that's cool" you need to look harder. As far as schoolgirls and stuff, it tends to be because the main characters are in high school so... yeah? I do think older protagonists are a lot rarer nowadays but I think that must be related to the audience not being interested in them or at least not buying them after they air. Unfortunately, there just isn't much room to innovate or take risks nowadays.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39K8r9Lt3wk

If you're not impressed by this then I'd like to know where you got your standards from.

This shows how widely different people can process things. This does nothing to me, i still find the CG generated backdrops not fitting in, sterile and emotionless.
I think, from a art directional standpoint, for example, that Samurai Champloo is massively superior. That show has far less detail, but it all fits together and features an coherent emotional package. To be fair i have only watched what you linked from Fate/stay night.

If SC used CG fx, i didn't spot it and they then did it well.
 
If I had to guess, digital animation led to less work, but less impressive visuals and the internet led to much much much weaker anime sales so decreased budgets.

It probably doesn't help the US side of things that there is no primetime anime option to develop younger viewers either.

Personally it's not the style of animation that bothers me so much as the tone shift of the last 10 years or so. I think that things move in cycles though so hopefully we'll get back to the grittier side of things soon... well if anime can survive given how awful sales have been.
 
This shows how widely different people can process things. This does nothing to me, i still find the CG generated backdrops not fitting in, sterile and emotionless.
I think, from a art directional standpoint, for example, that Samurai Champloo is massively superior. That show has far less detail, but it all fits together and features an coherent emotional package. To be fair i have only watched what you linked from Fate/stay night.

If SC used CG fx, i didn't spot it and they then did it well.

I think for the most part, TV anime just doesn't do 3D CG all that well and when they try to implement it, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Even some movies that try it don't really do it that well. It was subtly used in Hosoda's Wolf Children for some water effects and flowers and I don't think I noticed it all that much when I watched it.

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Personally it's not the style of animation that bothers me so much as the tone shift of the last 10 years or so. I think that things move in cycles though so hopefully we'll get back to the grittier side of things soon... well if anime can survive given how awful sales have been.

I think anime will be okay, but we probably won't see too many "original works" and instead (like we do now basically) see lots of manga/LN adaptations of whatever's selling. The biggest change I have seen from the mid 2000s to now is probably more of a focus on light novels and 4koma manga either with heavy fantasy/romance elements or slice of life/comedy with much less emphasis on anything else. I don't know if we'll ever get back to the gritty side of things but I think we are overdue for something "new" in the industry but it'll probably take a unique light novel or manga to do it. Maybe one's already out and just not adapted yet?

I've always been really impressed at just how many anime series they can push out a year and wondered how they can keep the output going like this for the last 20+++ years with new shows every season every year.
 
To be fair, the CGI doesn't look good.

I'm no animator or anything but stuff like that gif to me is almost mind blowing to me. Especially considering most if not all the anime that have come out for the past couple of seasons or so.

What exactly is "good" CGI if that gif ain't it? Because so far, I haven't seen any better yet. 0_0
 
Not going to argue with the visuals, nowadays its full of post effects/touched up and even 3D. I would say it took more talent to make the old animes than nowadays.

Anyway, im not posting these gifs to make a point, just pure nostalgia :)

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Man, I love this anime.
 
There's more technology today that makes it so you can produce something cheaper and quicker. It doesn't automatically make everything worse, a studio can still choose to put time and effort into something, but if it isn't going to help drive sales then there's a tendency to take on a "why bother" attitude.

Side note: A whole lot of cherry pickin' going on in here.
 
Ehhh, while the backgrounds and stuff are gorgeous, the human characters are always lacking in Shinkai films even though I loooove him.

I think he upped the quality of character detail quite a lot in Garden of Words and together with the excellent lighting they end up looking quite good..

In 5cm/s and others it's quite the contrast as the characters' faces in particular have too abstract/minimalistic facial features.

However, I also think people don't give Shinkai enough credit for his actual animation. While there's rarely a sequence with tons of difficult animation, all the animation that is there tends to look quite fluid and natural. The guy can do more than just backgrounds and weather effects and considering how much of the work he does on his own it's simply a matter of workload at some point.

From wiki:
Voices of a Distant Star was written, directed and produced by Makoto Shinkai on his Power Mac G4 using LightWave, Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Adobe After Effects 4.1 and Commotion 3.1 DV software.[1][3] Around June 2000, Shinkai drew the first picture for Voices—of a girl holding a mobile telephone in a cockpit.[4]

Shinkai said the OVA was inspired by Dracula and Laputa.[5] He stated that production took seven months to complete.

It may be only a 25m video and the production values can't match up to a proper full studio film, yet, this is impressive as fuck. Creating Voices of a Distant Star all by himself within 7 months as one of his first projects, damn.
 
These one piece gifs and a lot of the others are still lacking the detail that OP is probably talking about. We've been long past anime having issues animating (moving) properly. The problem is the actual art becoming very basic and generic. Not everything has to be gritty to have detail. And not everything has to be extremely stylized to stand out. A little detail, even outright filters, on some simple art can do a lot to set a show apart from everything else.

I dont think newer stuff can compete with the classic stuff but there are some newer works that dont look like they're coming straight off the factory line.

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You are right, they could do a lot more in terms of style. Although I wouldn't complain about some more details in the background, stuff flying around etc.

The second pic has me intrigued, what show is that from?
 
The second pic has me intrigued, what show is that from?

That's from Mononoke, a horror series with a very distinct visual style. Any idea what the second row of images are from? I find those intriguing, and I don't think I've seen the anime.
 
Anime on TV has always had consistently dubious animation quality. That shows that maintain high quality animation throughout their entire run are not many. Even some OVAs like LOGH can often look super ugly.
 
Just a case of the 80s/90s character designs being rather different. I think they chose some very specific genres of anime for the left side while the right side was a bit more varied. Like why would you stick some kid's anime up against gritty sci-fi stuff?

An interesting comparison... here's a blend of 80s faces, 90s faces, and 00s faces. Odd how the chins are getting pointier as the years go by.

8BjcbkD.jpg

This is quite awesome. Do you happen to know how many faces were blended here per decade/era?
 
Speaking of Space Dandy:


Man some of those episodes have wonderful art. Overall I find most animation today to be pretty top notch. There is still lots of room for improvement sure but the padding and the obvious filler animation has really been trimmed down from the early days (not counting certain exceptions).

Speaking of movies, The Boy and the Beast is looking pretty good as well. Hope we get to see it dubbed stateside sooner rather than later.
 
Gundam 79 is coming to blu ray soon. I was looking forward to picking it up and watching it. Is this what I can expect in general?
No, not really. As a whole, Gundam 79 looks fine for its era. It's just an example to show how dips in animation in long-running series aren't a new phenomenon.
 
Hand drawn is always better.

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When it comes to animation: 80s>90s>00s

The trend where anime aesthetics in general is going is awful.

Also most modern anime look the same, you can't tell by who it's made anymore.

Haikyuu (volleybal)
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Kuroko (basketball)
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Yowamushi Pedal (cycling)
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It's hard to differentiate the 3, they could basically come from the same show, there is barely any variety in the art style. Unlike in the past where manga authors immediately stand out with their style: Riyoko Ikeda, Haruhiko Mikimoto, Hideaki Anno, Miyazaki, Osamu Tezuka, Osamu Dezaki etc
 
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