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NEWS: Gekidol Project Combining Theater, Anime, Idols to Launch in Spring


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Billy Toplady





PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 4:44 am Reply with quote
This is completely unrelated, but "actidol" sounds like some medicine name.

Can they at least make the girls look less underaged, regardless of their actual ages? It's a bit disturbing.
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Sunny milk



Joined: 22 Jan 2014
Posts: 695
PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 7:14 am Reply with quote
Billy Toplady wrote:

Can they at least make the girls look less underaged, regardless of their actual ages? It's a bit disturbing.


Disturbing how?
If anything, there should be more underaged looking idols in anime. Being underage isn't exactly unheard of for idols.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 12:43 pm Reply with quote
Sounds good but the studio is concerning as they did the disaster Fantasista Doll, but as long as there isn't any mobile version in sight it can turn out good.

Also mature looking idols don't sell even if they are over 20 and/or act over 20.
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Rederoin



Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 1427
Location: Europa
PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 12:55 pm Reply with quote
Billy Toplady wrote:
This is completely unrelated, but "actidol" sounds like some medicine name.

Can they at least make the girls look less underaged, regardless of their actual ages? It's a bit disturbing.

I don't see how this is in any way disturbing.
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Mr. Oshawott



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:53 pm Reply with quote
The girl in the far right is really unique with her war-torn outfit. It's as if she had just appeared from a huge scuffle.
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Kikaioh



Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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Location: Antarctica
PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:28 pm Reply with quote
Billy Toplady wrote:
Can they at least make the girls look less underaged, regardless of their actual ages? It's a bit disturbing.


Creepy as it is, female characters that look like children seems to be a growing trend in recent years. And as you can see, fans are fairly defensive about it.
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Rederoin



Joined: 29 May 2013
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 3:07 pm Reply with quote
Kikaioh wrote:
Billy Toplady wrote:
Can they at least make the girls look less underaged, regardless of their actual ages? It's a bit disturbing.


Creepy as it is, female characters that look like children seems to be a growing trend in recent years. And as you can see, fans are fairly defensive about it.

>Recent trend
You must have a rather wide definition of what recent is.
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H. Guderian



Joined: 29 Jan 2014
Posts: 1255
PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 4:32 pm Reply with quote
Let's see. Recent trend...big stretch. Essentially if you want to go back in time to the golden age of anime where there were no young girls you're gonna have to get rid of color entirely. All those Miyazaki classics seem to involve kids, too. Saying we're defensive for pointing out how anime has always been seems like you're trying to get us worked up on purpose.
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Kikaioh



Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 6:17 pm Reply with quote
My point wasn't about female child characters, it was about childish-looking female characters. Personally from my vantage point, the trend made a splash when Lucky Star came out in 2007 (when it was more of a comedic-leaning art style), and then advanced more with K-On back in 2009. Nowadays we have shows with entire casts of female characters that are supposed to be in high school or their mid-teens, but look pre-adolescent. That really wasn't a thing back in the 70's to maybe the late 90's (when in non-cartoony instances, character body-types often leaned a bit more anatomical), especially compared to now, where idol and slice-of-life shows are much more of an in-genre.

And I'm just giving the new guy my honest perception of the forums, lolis/waifus/otaku culture/freedom of speech/etc. are often hot topics that people get defensive about around here.
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Sunny milk



Joined: 22 Jan 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 10:04 pm Reply with quote
First off, anime girls dont look younger now than back in the days.
These girls don't even look childish/loli themselves, and if we are going to mention recent trend, lolis (in a lolicon manner) are actually dying out from anime, and are fewer of them than ever, while ridiculously large breasted girls are here to stay, and are the majority now.
Back in the day, a good looking, well endowed mature girl had the body of a woman, not balloontits.

The only thing that is more recent is the simplified cutesy designs, but those are not the same as child looking ones.
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Kikaioh



Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:12 pm Reply with quote
Sunny milk wrote:
These girls don't even look childish/loli themselves


Really? Are there any otaku series from the 90's you could point out that have groups of girls that look this young? From recent years maybe Girls und Panzer, School Live, Love Live, Idolmaster, Yuru Yuri, Encouragement of Climb, GochiUsa, Kin-Iro Mosaic, Denki-Gai, Wake up Girls, etc. (not 100% sure on all those, but you kind of get the idea), and those are just the ones I've loosely heard of. I'm curious artistically which otaku series from back then you would correlate as having characters that look the same age-wise, because when I think back to teenage characters from the 90's, I think maybe Rayearth, Escaflowne, Utena, El Hazard, Nuku Nuku, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Moldiver, uh, Sukeban Deka... Sailor Moon... yeah, not too sure what kind of shows you might be thinking of that really demonstrate a trend back then, I mean for all of those the characters almost all look way older than what you normally see nowadays.
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Sunny milk



Joined: 22 Jan 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:37 pm Reply with quote
Except these girls don't look young at all, maybe aside from the glasses girls.
The only thing I see is a different and sadly simplified artstyle.

And back in the 90's the whole industry was different and I won't get into how or why (just look at the number of titles), but at least I can say that there's no new trend in the regards you claim there is in the latest decade and a half.
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Kikaioh



Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 31, 2015 12:32 am Reply with quote
So... you can't list any then? Originally you said "anime girls dont look younger now than back in the days", but now you're saying "in the 90's the whole industry was different"?

TBH, I'm surprised you think the girls in that image look old, I mean just to compare:



The image on the right is what a 10-year-old kid from a 90's anime (Tomoyo, from Cardcaptor Sakura, a Shojo anime) looked like. I mean, she almost looks older than the character on the left, don't you think? And the character on the left isn't a far cry from what a lot of modern designs look like.

I'm also kind of curious what kind of series from the early aughts you think might be comparable to what's being shown here, or that look kind of like what you see in Denki-Gai or Gochi-Usa.

I should probably mention having been an anime fan in the 90's, I remember people talking back then about the opposite, that characters looked older than they actually seemed to be (for example, people would mention how the Sailor Scouts looked 16-18 years old, and not 14).


Last edited by Kikaioh on Thu Dec 31, 2015 12:43 am; edited 1 time in total
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Sunny milk



Joined: 22 Jan 2014
Posts: 695
PostPosted: Thu Dec 31, 2015 12:39 am Reply with quote
Tomoyo looks younger than the GochiUsas, and the girl you posted in comparison looks like a mid teen rather than a little girl like Tomoyo.
Once again, I think you are confusing simpler artstyle with younger looks.

Also shoujo artstyle always makes characters older looking.
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Kikaioh



Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 31, 2015 1:02 am Reply with quote
Really...? So... you think the girl on the left looks older than Tomoyo on the right...?



I honestly wonder if there's some really strange modern disconnect when it comes to interpreting the visual ages of characters. I think it bears mentioning, the character design sensibilites for Tomoyo were pretty reflective of the 90's era --- kid characters generally looked like that back in the 90's.

I think by most normal people's standards (anime fan or no), the girl on the left looks like a little kid. Out of curiosity, when did you start watching anime...? My first experience was probably in the mid to late 80's with Unico and some other imported works, and so I'm pretty in tune with a lot of shows that came out in the 90's time period. I'm actually a bit fascinated to think that people actually see these modern character designs and consider them to be older than they appear to be. It makes me wonder how much of a strange effect Lucky Star might have had on industry perceptions (I remember back then people were confused by the character ages, until you saw actual adults in the show).

It also makes me wonder if younger Western anime fans are just unaware that the characters are purposefully designed to skew looking younger, and have just come to accept that younger looking characters are technically older than they appear. Though that wouldn't quite explain Denki-Gai, would it? The girls in that series look significantly younger than their male counterparts. How do you interpret the way the girls look in that series?
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