Most retro anime art styles feel rather outdated in my opinion. - Agree to Disagree?

[Alex Hogendorp]

I remember back in 2021 I used to rant about modern anime. Now I've gone through a total 180. Some retro anime art styles have stood the test of time while others feel really outdated. There does exist some bad modern anime art designs too but the innovative modern anime art designs tend to be spectacular and really creative while most older anime art designs kinda feel the same.

 

[Nameless One]

Well there always has been such a thing as design homogenization yknow, in fact I think that alone would make this a useless thread since even legendary animation studios ended up having the same designs for everything to a detriment (pixar). Thats why I chase after unique styles that break up the monotony or fit the anime or manga. Shit like Fist Of The North Star, Spriggan, Akira, Rurouni Kenshin, and Berserk obviously benefit from older anime design. But surreal/realistic things like Paprika and Jin Roh, not so much. It all comes down to the effort in animation and art direction. I do kind of hate modern JJBA's ugly simple backgrounds (Golden Wind despite its acclaim has the worst I've seen), but I love the story and character design animated. My favorite anime/manga come from Naoki Urasawa and he literally has the same character design principles in everything he made but the characters are their very own. Chainsawman is great but its art style downgraded since the author likely ran out of the budget or whatever.

 

[Nameless One]

In summary modern anime suffers the same issues any anime ever has within its existence. Thats why gems are sought after, or whatever you like. As for innovation; show what you mean. Almost all of it seems like flanderization to appeal to the more childlike culture the Nips mistakenly cultivated while a lot of the older ones still try to make an art style of sorts.


The major reason why people will prefer older anime is because it has less intrusions and shortcuts at the cost of being too expensive to get more than a season or OVA.
This means
1: superior shading, seriously compare it and you'll see that older anime had a wider array of colors, dark, brights, all gorgeous like a painting.
2: superior animation without CGI bullshit to try and replicate exaggerated moves like Kengan Ashura and some of baki does.
3: better anatomy
4: soundtracks
5: ambience
6: nostalgia overall
There are more things like animating things in the background with some anime BG art directors who made sunrise transitions BEAUTIFUL like Rurouni Kenshin (which is all lost in the new reboot).
A lot of old anime ended up adding to the manga panels even if they were not faithful. New anime is generally worse in terms of quality and production.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

No.

 

[Nameless One]

The shift toward digital animation also resulted in one of the best modern-ish animes looking far worse as if they were recorded on YouTube compression. This means we will never see a 4k or true 1080p cut of Texhnolyze, MONSTER, PLUTO, without shoddy upscaling as they all have compression artifacts. It got better over time but its still there, just masked better. It all feels wrong and inferior. Especially noticeable in scenes that have a lot going on or flashy lights. You cannot tell me FLCL would be as good as it is if they used digital. Gurren Lagann is also robbed of a true HD cut. You can prefer new anime. I prefer older stuff because it feels better to my eyes, I don't notice as many imperfections that bother my autistic eyes in old cel animation like I do in digital.

 

[Nameless One]

I am going to bet 325 monero that because such compression artifacts exist, and have not been eliminated or fought, this is why a lot of anime studios these days animate MANY MANY MINUTES OF TALKING before action, if not cutting action packed sequences entirely.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

In summary modern anime suffers the same issues any anime ever has within its existence. Thats why gems are sought after, or whatever you like. As for innovation; show what you mean. Almost all of it seems like flanderization to appeal to the more childlike culture the Nips mistakenly cultivated while a lot of the older ones still try to make an art style of sorts.
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Shows like Serial Experiment Lain has a design that was pretty unique in 1998, I can also say the designs are quite innovative and much better than most anime from that time. The thing is, the artist behind this as well as Texhnolyze and Haibane Renmai has this interestingly distinct character design that is defining for the artist. Most anime designs in the 1970s aren't really used anymore except for a few influential artists. Yumiko Tabuchi has been known for writing Manga such a Ringo Monogatari which in my opinion that character design feels very revolutionary for it's time and shapes the design for the anime of today. Also, I know a lot of twitter anime artists and a lot of them can create really unique anime character designs, examples being Koyamori, Ukasanagi, Zer0h. Etc. I feel as if the innovation is in the hands of up and coming anime artists but they often get ignored.

The shift toward digital animation also resulted in one of the best modern-ish animes looking far worse as if they were recorded on YouTube compression. This means we will never see a 4k cut of Texhnolyze without shoddy upscaling. It all feels wrong and inferior. Especially noticeable in scenes that have a lot going on or flashy lights. You cannot tell me FLCL would be as good as it is if they used digital. Gurren Lagann is also robbed of a true HD cut.

That's kind of one of my main problems with modern anime is that digital animation failing to look as impressive. I find it more rewarding to focus on detail with traditional animation and for series like Dragon Heaven and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou have some of the absolute best animation I ever seen for an anime. Interestingly they also have very visually appealing anime character designs for it's time. So older anime seems to be better with animation but modern anime (In the indie scene) seems to do best at creating unique character designs.

 

[Nameless One]

The artist also as you can see has his beautiful art downgraded for digital animation AND OLDSCHOOL ANIMATION. I don't care much for Lain, controversial I know but its story is horse shit that goes nowhere and essentially says nothing of note compared to Texhnolyze (and even its fucking LAIN PS1 game).

Similarly Made In Abyss was entirely downgraded artistically and say whatever about the author but he really has a great style to the manga. This is utterly lost in the anime. The softer shaded character designs, all subtleties in shading, GONE. Hard black lines, the typical digital look. The manga LOOKS and bleeds fantasy. The anime looks like another anime adaptation of a unique manga. The backgrounds of the manga are impossible.

 

[Mortan Shekelstorm]

I'm fairly certain the style evolved with viewers tastes and mainly to a reduced animation budget, less time put into detailed line work, more basic shape and colour backgrounds. Or foreign animation studios being contracted out is fairly common.

 

[Poppavalyim Andropoff]