Present-Day Anime Animation

[Neon Streak]

I'll admit; I'm not a big fan of Anime, but there is something about it that I've noticed and I want your opinion on it.

Have any of you noticed that most Animes nowadays seem rather...bland? As far as animation goes, characters don't seem to be as expressive as they did back in the 80's to the early 2000's (In other words, they don't do the signature exaggerated faces that Anime is well known for.), and the atmosphere is kinda dull and too real-world-like.

What do you guys think? Has Anime lost it's charm, or am I not looking hard enough?

[Gors]

Anime, like any other thing, will follow trends depending on what people are willing to consume. So, old gags and old styles might not be the profitable thing.

The current trend of anime highly caters to the kawaii aesthetic which Japan is fond of - the neotenized characters in their 18s relate to many Japanese people who don't want to be responsible adults, having romanticized views about high-school and such (the fact of having too many high-schooler characters in anime is a multi layered thing: it's the most relatable thing and situation, and it is also a sexual fetish)

One can blame the lack of exaggerated faces and stuff on this reason, as they lost space to Kyoani style of drawing. Even action series still focuses on relatively young people, where an adult would make more sense (most anime protagonists are younger than me, and I'm 23 years old).

Briefly speaking, the current style is what people like, because it is cute, sexy, rentable, the most relatable and a better scapegoat for real life.

For more stuff to read about Japan 's notion of kawaii, i suggest you googling burikko-ji, hikikomori and the suicide rate in Japan.

(i didn't expect it to get dark this much)

[Helmo]

Also a bunch of animation companies (like Toei) pay like shit and make animators rush out their animations and as a result there is a bunch of garbage being produced.

Look at the new Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball. It looks horrendous...

[Skyla Doragono]

^ that right there is the major issue.

The demand for animated shows in Japan is so high right now that there is literally not enough time for quality check. Animators are made to work ridiculous hours for shit pay to produce a subpar product that "may" be fixed by someone else for the DVD/Bluray release. It's utterly ridiculous.

[psychospacecow]

Plus, the general trend in animation as a whole has been a more simplified style. While you certainly do find good quality hand animated projects to this day, it simply isn't as easy to make money with.

Its just cheaper.

[miyabi95_]

Same with western animation. I was rummaging through this playlist on YouTube and couldn't help but notice how exaggerated everything was back then.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...WehSbzvJAo

If you want something more unique this day in age, you should probably watch independent animations (or experimental, which are *exponentially* more complex and weird). Coming from around the world, they're really interesting to watch - there's something completely new and different in each video.

[[robo9]]

I guess I'll be the shill that plugs One Punch Man then

[Skyla Doragono]

I'll give you that. OPM is the first anime I've seen in awhile that looks like it had some dedication put into it.

[NICKtendo DS]

Space Dandy's awesome too.

[miyabi95_]

There are the two Little Witch Academia films from Trigger - they have a bit of nostalgic Miyazaki-esque atmosphere if you ask me.

[Dolphman]

Speaking of Studio Trigger. I own Kill La Kill on DVD, but have yet to watch it still. I'm not familiar with any of their other shows though.
But I personally hate intentionally bad animation, like Trigger's two infamous series they've brought out. I cringed just at looking at the footage.
This is one of the reasons why I never watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The second reason being due to me finding it overrated.

I also read a good animation study for expressions by comparing the Disney Witch Hazel with the Looney Tunes Witch Hazel as examples.
Obviously, the Looney Tunes witch is considered the better example to study from due to how awesome Chuck Jones was with expressions.

[miyabi95_]

I recommend watching any anime before the eighties if you want something where the expressions aren't too over-the-top. But anything passed that decade will more likely have better details and smoother animation.
I'm about halfway through Kill la Kill. Yeah, it picks a lot of fun at typical shounen anime, but the story is still pretty enticing to me. I also gave Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt a try, but it was a bit too raunchy for my taste.

[Dolphman]

You know what I miss in cartoons in recent years? Wild takes. Something that was a staple in animation, but you rarely see them anymore.

I guess this is the same with the lack of wacky expressions in anime. Heck, I even wish anime did wild takes like Roger Rabbit above.
The only ones I can think of that do are the characters in One-Piece, and Capcom characters like Blanka and some of the ones in Darkstalkers.

[Kosheh]

You know what I miss in cartoons in recent years? Wild takes. Something that was a staple in animation, but you rarely see them anymore.

I guess this is the same with the lack of wacky expressions in anime. Heck, I even wish anime did wild takes like Roger Rabbit above.
The only ones I can think of that do are the characters in One-Piece, and Capcom characters like Blanka and some of the ones in Darkstalkers.

Wild takes are still a thing - the character just isn't as exaggerated or the character's proportions are completely different (like in One Piece)
It's probably for two reasons:
1) Wild takes are usually a gag performed from a 3/4 view angle (that not-perfect horizontal plane that shows off a character's face but not completely side-facing) which is actually a perspective rarely seen in modern animation. Most modern animation has broadly different camera focus.
2) Going off of above, most characters in modern cartoons are modeled in either Flash or CGI. I'd assume it's incredibly difficult to animate a wild-take and when you do, it's STILL a gag that ONLY works from that angle. Any other angle would actually look kinda creepy. It's actually a lot easier to do the gag by means of traditional animation, actually!

oh also

3) I think in animation nowadays, a lot of the storytelling's moved away from slapstick comedy so it's actually a lot more difficult to include the gag in the first place unless you're directly referencing classic slapstick humor :/ (of course, One Piece seems like it could actually pull it off given the silly proportions and superpowers that characters have)

that was 3 oops

but yeah, I miss them too >:

[Kriven]

You see Wild Takes in Spongebob from time to time, although whatever creative team is behind the show now doesn't utilize those traditional gimmicks nearly as much as the late 90s/early 2000s team did (which I think had a lot of the same folks who worked on Rocco's Modern Life, which also used that style).

I don't know if this is "Anime" specific, but I'm saddened by how kind of similar a lot of cartoons are these days. There's a few shows on right now that are probably among the greatest cartoons ever made (Stephen Universe, for example), but most of the shows are this similar-looking Regular Show-knock-off deal. It's almost like flipping stations shows you segments of the same cartoon (assuming the network is even playing a cartoon... even Cartoon Network tried to drop the animation thing a few years ago). I miss the variety. Part of that variety was maybe because when I was a kid networks played both contemporary and vintage cartoons, so growing up I could turn on Nickelodeon and see Rugrats, Spongebob, Catdog, Fairly Odd Parents, Hey Arnold, Animaniacs, Rocko, Invader Zim, Danny Phantom, Teenage Robot, The Last Airbender, and so many other shows which were being broadcast on the same station despite there only being new episodes of (for example) Spongebob, Jimmy Neutron, and Danny Phantom. The other shows were still there, and if you didn't like one that was okay, because it would be over in half an hour and meanwhile, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Fox Kids, Kids WB, or Discovery Kids were likely playing one of their twenty programs that you did like. The shows were different, and you had options. It isn't like that anymore... The network's are relying on the same circle of modern programs and most of those just aren't very good. And that's the network's which still play cartoons, like I mentioned earlier. I don't think Disney Channel has any animation these days? (It looks like they all moved to Disney XD, which isn't a regular cable channel).