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Does anyone know what happen or understands my issue?




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#878819



Joined: 10 Jan 2018
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 4:26 am Reply with quote
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Last edited by #878819 on Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18138
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:23 am Reply with quote
Although I don't share your preference, you're definitely not alone. Others in these forums have expressed similar sentiments.
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9812
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:56 am Reply with quote
Anime, like any other popular medium has evolved over the last thirty or more years. Part of the change has been technical as new ways of creating it become available and part is a change in the audience and their preferences. If you look at other areas such a popular music you will also see major changes with time. That is just the way the world works. Since you prefer "old school" anime that is the bad news.

The good news is that now, more than ever before, much of the old school anime is available for you to watch, either on disk or to a lesser extent streaming. It is probably easier to watch an old school show now than it was when they were new.

My advice is to watch what you want and ignore the new stuff, find like minded people and discuss it with them. They should be easy to find, just look for forum posters who are decrying the "death" of anime. Wink
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TheAnimeRevolutionizer



Joined: 03 Nov 2017
Posts: 329
PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:35 am Reply with quote
#878819 wrote:
Does anyone know what happen or understands my issue?


Ah, this sentiment. Yeah, I share this too.

Where to begin.....

So the kind of techniques they used back in the day before the turn of the century can be centered down to them using a light table and various translucent and transparent cels, and to the use of painted backdrops. I'm sure you know the latter, but they have a certain flair to them, don't they?

The use of such lighting is something that I've discovered to be rather near natural and does give anime from the time an authentic feel to it. It's much like how the sun's light reflects off of everything outside or even to night scenes where the moon or the city is depicted: there's a harmony to it all. Not that CGI is awful, but I could tell with anime into the 2000s that much of the effects had an "uncanny valley" feel to them that didn't mesh well, and especially for darkness scenes.

Take for example the Rurouni Kenshin episode A Devil of Vengeance: Makoto Shishio's Plot. Nearly every scene in that episode is set in the dark, but it uses coloring and lighting extremely well to help set a mood of desperation, unease, foreboding, and awe, as well as to highlight a major theme. The color blue I'm sure you know is representative in Japan and Asia as a color of death and closeness to the afterlife, and in some cases, represents demons and the infernal. Not only did that make the initial half of the episode gloomy and death defying, it also set up a feel that this was if it was a part of hell itself, and not just a fire and brimstone place, but something more gruesome to confront. Even the lighting was merely used to shine on the swords to convey a sense of danger. Later on, the use of candle light and bringing back everything into color came to communicate that there was hope and everything was coming back down to normal. This was artistic as much as it was ingenious, and this was brilliant for an extremely pivotal and vital episode.

Why this this all come crashing down? well....

So there was an episode of Pokemon the anime back around 1998/1999 where the episode Electric Soldier Porygon was extremely infamous when it aired due to sending 500 children to the hospital for inducing epileptic seizures. The culprit was a scene where an explosion portrayed in nothing but flashing blue and red in split second intervals took up nearly about half of the screen and was portrayed for a period of a few/nearly ten seconds. If you ask me, I'd hate looking at that too. Since then, there was a ton of regulations and restrictions passed to not allow such scenes in anime to ever occur again, and this included throwing out the use of light tables and lighting techniques, although I remember that Answerman said that this was only loosely enforced and you could still have them around. Still, this is what lead to the death of light table anime lighting.

I want it to come back too; anime I feel was always meant to be bright and colorful. Granted it's what I grew up with, so plenty of younger and new fans would probably get epilepsy from watching anything before the 2000s. But still, I do know what you're talking about. The use of lighting in anime into the 2000s feels extremely dull and stale, and again, invokes an "uncanny valley" feel where it attempts to replicate real lighting but you know for a fact in the back of your head that it is fake and are completely repulsed by it. If you ask me overall, I'd say that anime has suffered greatly artistically on that ban on light tables, and it's a great loss.
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Heishi



Joined: 06 Mar 2016
Posts: 1314
PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:56 pm Reply with quote
I'm don't really know.
Does anyone care what I think or feel somber about?
Nope. Sad
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Usagi-kun



Joined: 03 Jul 2013
Posts: 877
Location: Nashville, TN
PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 10:25 pm Reply with quote
Sorry about your depression. Sad

One thing I love about anime is the feeling I get watching it--I guess euphoric? It can be so much more fun than boring old daily events, going to school or work, or often potraying teenagers and youth solving problems without the weight of adulthood responsibilities and oppressive conformity in place by social society.

The latter has been less of an issue and even annoying for me as an adult. I have grown kind of cynical other than deliberate escapism into these type of shows.

Animation standards and practices are always going to change. In broad terms, some of these changes you are talking about aesthetically have changed with the audience itself. There is that old adage of anime vs. cartoons, one being 'for adults' and another not. Another thing you bring up is the way technology has changed, not just cg, but fantastic new technology--I think as humans are always going to look for the next bigger, better things.

So, three things:

1.) I think the audience has changed from adult-only, more friendly and inviting to younger groups who like fast-paced, bright, colorful, bouncy, but still with a good, really good story.
2.) We are getting closer and closer to overcoming the uncanny valley, where media must be as close to visual reality as possible.
3.) (And this goes for me as well because I am a 90's kid) I think it is harder for us, and any after us, to understand the principal application of older animation as we are facing different social, political, and psychological connections. The world is now referred to as global. This does not indicate a simplifIcation or complication of anime itself, but it is an attempt to adapt and provide for a larger hunger for uniqueness, artistic experimentation.

All variations of the same answer, and with more philosophical than technical answers, I'm sorry. Just don't lose that feeling you feel when you find a story or interpretation you love. One important thing about being global does offer a chance to connect with many, many more people across these same connections.

You are not alone and you do matter. Mania can make you paranoid and feel so small, but with great anime, we all can escape into vast worlds of exhilarating, breathtaking scope, or laugh together at some across the board, really, terrible attempt.

Or hentai. Or futanari. Y'know, the boat may always float, whatever.
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Gatherum



Joined: 14 Feb 2012
Posts: 773
Location: Aurora CO
PostPosted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:23 pm Reply with quote
#878819 wrote:
Okay I'm young, dump, and appertanly a manic depress person, but I do have a question about anime over the years.


...Eheh.

Like, if this is true, I feel for you and all, but how is this at all relevant to your question?

To answer said question, aesthetic appeal changes over time. Current trend is towards cute, shiny shit--not that there's anything wrong with that.

Do you need any help?
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Kruszer



Joined: 19 Nov 2004
Posts: 7981
Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:07 pm Reply with quote
There's these things, I believe you may have heard of them, they're called computers. They happened, specifically easy to use graphic and animation design software was created for commercial and personal use. Animation became something that was much less time consuming and was now easier and cheaper to produce which practically quadrupled the amount of anime studios in existence and the number of shows produced per television season. Naturally, this also quadrupled the amount of great stuff as well as throwaway crap shows in the medium.

I don't really share the penchant for cell animation personally, but I don't dislike it either. Anyhow, I rather like digital animation with all the colors textures and effects that it can do. I think modern animation can look absolutely flooring sometimes.
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