Forum - View topicA new era of anime dawns!
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Galap
Moderator
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As time marches on, art changes and new paradigms emerge that change the direction of where things are going. Anime certainly is subject to this. I think that a new paradigm for anime has solidly taken shape. These changes are continuous rather than sudden and jarring, so it’s not like everything is suddenly different, but I think that the change has been building over the last few seasons, and this season, it’s just slid over the tipping point. I think that the pastel, vapid moe and otaku stuff is waning a bit, and something else is replacing it.
Over the last couple of seasons I've gotten enough data points to draw this conclusion, and it was watching Wizard Barristers and its generous helpings of very nice animation, great storyboards and designs, shitty CG, and amazing music that I arrived at it: Anime right now is entering a decadent, style-over-substance phase. We have now a lot of productions with brilliant colors, inventive storyboarding, and flashy animation. I’d say the best word to describe them is ‘garish’ (though not necessarily with the negative connotation). Even Nisekoi, which in terms of plot is a very typical romance comedy, has imaginative storyboarding and avant garde imagery. Which brings me to the other part. Be they romance comedies like Nisekoi, Kaiju Scifi action like Nobunagun, fantasy like Beyond the Boundary, silly comedy scifi like Space Dandy, or pure urban fantasy like Wizard Barristers, stuff today tends not to have very substantive stories. You know what, I think I'm ok with all of this. I’d say that in general I prefer things that are deep, rich, thought provoking, and intelligent, but I can find a lot of meaning in visual flair as well. Stuff can speak to me purely with animation, storyboarding, designs, and the like. It’s also not like nothing intelligent is being made and it’s not to say that none of the things mentioned above have any interesting themes, for example Wizard Barristers seems to have a bit going on. Even recent stuff that does have substance, like Valvrave, Aquarion EVOL, or this season’s Nobunaga the Fool still has quite a bit of style too, and I think that among all these things very general parallels can be drawn in terms of the style of these visuals (now I know EVOL and the Fool are both directed by Shoji Kawamori, and those similarities are likely due to his involvement but the point stands as a general statement). I’d sort of most closely compare this era to the late 80s/early 90s, because back then there was quite a bit of style and visual flair, but I’d say that the difference is that many of those titles were also deceptively deep and intelligent, like Gall Force, Wings of Honneamise, Grey: Digital Target, Gunbuster, and my favorite anime movie Venus Wars. I’d say this era stands in contrast with the late 90s and early 00s which were much more low key and cerebral, and the late 00s and early 10s which were much more moe centric. What do you all think? To what extent do you agree with my assessment? Where do you all think anime is headed? |
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walw6pK4Alo
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I would have described a lot of 2007-2009 GONZO anime just like that, except that most of the scripts were garbage, and shows like Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo. I'm not good at thinking of on the spot name-dropping, but I'm sure there's always been tons of examples of decent to high budget but empty series. I'm also not convinced that otaku shows are dwindling, you're probably just seeing more light novel adaptations than visual novel ones, or you're just ignoring them and thus creating a blind spot. Though, I can definitely spot the difference between the early 2000s state of anime and what started happening in about 2005 and 2006. But if you aired a bunch of 2008 anime right now, like Real Drive, Daughter of Twenty Faces, Michiko to Hatchin, or Allison & Lillia, it wouldn't feel all that out of place. Conversely, something like Red Data Girl to me feels like it would have fit better back then. Last edited by walw6pK4Alo on Mon Jan 13, 2014 6:31 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 25689 |
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I agree that production values in anime have generally risen in comparison to past eras. But this whole style over substance thing? Naw. What has changed is the sheer number of shows being produced. At one time, ten to fifteen new TV titles a season was the norm. Now, thirty to thirty-five titles (or more) is the norm. I've only been watching anime regularly since 2009, but even since then I've noticed a difference. The Winter and Summer seasons used to have markedly fewer titles compared to Fall and Spring. Now it's just a fire hose 365 days a year.
So you still have a small number of "deep, rich, thought provoking, and intelligent" titles - that number was ALWAYS small. It's just that instead of having one of those and nine other weaker shows, now you have one or two of those and thirty odd weaker shows. I challenge anyone who drags out this tired, "anime was better back in the day" to list ALL SHOWS listed in any "old" five year period. Don't cherry pick the tiny number of classic titles - List. Them. All. Then come back and tell us how things were deeper, richer, more thought provoking and intelligent back in the day. |
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walw6pK4Alo
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Another thought occurred to me: I don't really think they produce wacky low budget screwball comedies like Tonagura, Love Get Chu, Gargoyle of the Yoshinagas, Kamisama Kazoku, Karin, or Inukami anymore, or perhaps the change to HD and the need to make shows appear better had changed my perception, or I just don't watch that brand of series anymore. Or maybe those shows are relegated to shorts. Like you could compare Tonagura and B Gate H Kei, but the way they look still feels different. Like looking at my score for Karin, I doubt I'd give the show a 9/10 if it aired today...or if I had only just watched it now.
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4648 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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A little strange that you would get that from watching Wizard Barristers when, apart from integrated CG, it's just the same thing Umetsu's been doing for 15 years or so.
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danilo07
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Well this is interesting topic ,so I am glad you brought it up.I read anipages recently and saw Ben Ettinger's review of "Anime Mirai" projects.Basically he was lamenting the fact that almost every anime that came from this project was badly written but well animated.To paraphrase his words he said that Japan does not need to train animators but writers.To an extent I agree with his thought,the number of technically well made anime is much bigger than the number of well written shows.We are really lucky if we get two intelligent shows in one season,but just this season alone we have numerous shows that look fantastic or at least experiment with it's visuals.Whether the quantity of "deep, rich, thought provoking, and intelligent" shows has decreased from past is hard to say,since it requires good deal of anime knowledge.I do think that the quantity of the shows that are "deep, rich, thought provoking, and intelligent" has more or less stayed the same,but the attempts at being that type of show have decreased.Late 80s and 90s were full of crappy OVAs created by people who thought they were creating something deep and brilliant.Heck I have seen Koichi Ohata interviews and he speaks about "MD Geist" like it is revolutionary piece of work.
There definitely has been an increase in experimentation with visuals which is the consequence of computerization and trying to stand on market more(also Bakemonogatari's and Madoka Magica's financial success probably contributed to that trend). I would just love to add how I consider writing to be tad overrated,what is really important is that your anime looks pretty.
He has been largely inactive these couple of years,only to pop up right now. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I don't agree with your assessment Galap. I think you're cherry-picking a handful of titles and trying to make sweeping generalisations with them about the state of the anime industry.
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Galap
Moderator
Posts: 2354 |
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@Blood-:
I think that the "It's the same, there's just more stuff now and the bad old stuff is forgotten." argument is almost as tired as the "They don't make anything good anymore." argument. I'll say that I can't go through and list literally every show (well I guess in theory I could but it wouldn't be meaningful because I haven't seen anywhere near the majority of shows from either then or now, so my judgments on a lot of them wouldn't be very meaningful), and if you'd say that my position that there were more better things would require such an exhaustive search to back up, so would your position that it has all remained the same. I don't think such an exhaustive search is required though; I think that people can make their cases based on a sample. I will say that I think the difference is threefold. First, I'd say that we maybe get 1-3 of those really intelligent productions per year now, whereas back in the day we got 3-4. In relation to how much stuff is out there it's not a big difference but 3 shows is a hell of a lot more than 1. Second, I'd even say that the lesser works, or things I didn't like as much had more things going for them than things I'm not into today. Third, the counterargument seems to rely on saying that the only things that are remembered from the older eras are the better things or the classics, and I must say that I've seen a good amount of stuff from back then that hasn't been remembered or never was really known about, and a lot of them are of very high quality as well. @walw: I agree about your assessment with the screwball comedies. I'd say that we've definitely drifted away from that. I was always pretty neutral on those (I like some, and most I'm not really interested in), but yeah to see something even like School Rumble today would be kind of weird. @Danilo07: I remember that article. It's good stuff. I myself have been saying for quite while that, to use the words I've been using all this time, that the art department is ahead of the writing department. I also do agree in a sense with what you're saying about the number of "deep, rich, thought provoking, and intelligent", but I'd say that I personally find a lot of those attempts to be such (and I'll say with extremely high confidence that there were more of those) to have been successful where others would not. I guess that may be part of why I said what I did in the part of this post directed at Blood-. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 25689 |
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@ Galap - you prove very nicely why these types of discussions are pointless. You claim there are only "1-3" of the type of shows you are referring to these days compared to "3-4" of days of yore. You are simply pulling arbitrary numbers out of your ass and not even bothering to use specific titles to exemplify what you consider a quality title. All you are really saying is, "based on what I've seen, there seem to be more shows I dig from the past compared to what is being made now." Sure, okay. And so what? That describes your world and no doubt there are others who would agree with you. But without any kind of common definition of what constitutes a quality show I don't see the point of this discussion (or the countless others just like it that inevitably start up like clockwork).
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules Posts: 4648 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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I'm not really sure it helps that Gallap's argument for "recent stories with substance" (Valvrave, Aquarion EVOL, or this season’s Nobunaga the Fool) are ones I'm personally not touching with a ten foot pole. If the definition of substance is angsty sci-fi whose confrontations end in explosions, I personally don't have a problem that we're seeing less.
I've seen plenty of "substantive" and flashy stuff coexist in these past few years when I've watched anime at the highest percentage... but if you can't see substance from the works of the likes of flashy guys like Akiyuki Shinbo and Kenji Nakamura or the creators who they're drawn to like NisiOisiN or Tomihiko Morimi aren't to your liking, that's too bad. But to say that they're not "deep, rich, thought provoking, and intelligent"... yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. ...if I sound a bit tetchy, well, I get sick of this complaist too. It gets brought up constantly, but the person who wants some sort of "realistic", "deep", "serious", content like they had "back in the day" always wants something a bit different. And the "You're using an unequal comparison" is always brought up, because it's almost always valid. And here we have this new thread when the last one was started less than two months ago! ... he just had a slightly different measure for "mature" and "realistic" than you. |
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Galap
Moderator
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I agree that it's a an individual thing, and I'd definitely say that there can't be any common definition about what constitutes a quality show, Spastic Minnow's above post being case in point. I wouldn't say that the discussion is meaningless though. Well, I think it's not very meaningful if we only ever talk about good and bad with respect to time periods (or anything else for that matter). Personally I think the least interesting discussion that can be had about an anime is whether it was 'good' or 'bad' or whatever, because that's only a conclusion you arrive to yourself that's based on a lot of things about the work, both objective and subjective, and it's those things that I think are worth talking about.
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ChibiKangaroo
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Although I certainly understand Blood- and Dtm's points about the fact that these kinds of analysis are very difficult to prove, and how people don't really take the time to do the kind of Thesis level research that would be required to REALLY prove anything in regard to this issue, still I don't think it is an issue that we should ignore.
I think Galap's point about there being perhaps 1-3 really good quality anime per year is probably not off the mark. If I think back over anime that only started in 2013, I can only think of 1 anime that has been more or less universally acclaimed and consistently delivered the goods in a highly intelligent, fairly well written way. Yes, I am talking about Attack on Titan. There were other shows in 2013 that appealed to different audiences, and some of them had flashes of brilliance, but I can't recall any other show from 2013 that achieved that type of universal acclaim at the level where you expect the show to go on to some kind of iconic status... (MAYBE Flowers of Evil and Kill la Kill, but those are a good bit more disputed as to their greatness than Attack on Titan has been so I wouldn't necessarily include them). Looking back at 2012 then, I would say Space Brothers and From the New World achieved a similar level of widely recognized excellence. As for the claim that, back in the day, there were 3-4 such anime per year, I am not ready to discard that claim without doing a bit more research. To be honest it wouldn't surprise me, but I'll look into it a bit more... |
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linda731
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really interesting topics.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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It is wildly off the mark. 2013 was not a fantastic year but it was still fairly respectable. I haven't counted up all the really good titles but I would be staggered if it wasn't at least in the double-digits. My gut feeling is that it's about twenty. And before anyone accuses me of being too lenient they should check out the list of anime I've watched.
And there goes the credibility of your argument. Attack on Titan was fairly good, don't get me wrong. But it had numerous issues and was not a premier title except in terms of raw popularity. There were numerous titles in 2013 that had far better writing. Sure, they weren't as popular, but that's beside the point. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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I really don't see how that makes my argument not credible. Again, I was talking about the type of anime that receives pretty much universal acclaim and essentially becomes a "must buy" title for the vast majority of the fandom. I don't dispute your assertion that there were a lot of good titles in 2013, but those other titles were almost certainly much more tailored to specific types of people in the anime audience. A lot of those titles might have been "good" in that subjective way to some people, but might also have fit into the "style over substance" criteria that galap mentioned in his first post. AoT is one of the only anime I can really think of from 2013 that pretty much had the entire package. No it wasn't perfect, and i've already discussed the pacing problems with the show before, but I have pretty much no doubt at this point that it is going to be one of the iconic anime going forward unless they really screw it up. |
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