Can someone help me understand the appeal of the anime style among so many young artists? I'm an old dude and I'm kinda unsure why this specific style has gotten so big lately. I don't know if any major Western artists in my generation (gen X) who started learning how to draw with this style.
>>7715372Pyw
>>7715372Japan has the best art culture, plus anime has cute girls.
>>7715372It's just cute and expressive, strikes a good balance between cartoony and realistic. Without breaking the art direction or particular style of a comic or show or movie, it can be silly, or deformed, or very serious and the switching between all of these things are seamless and easily readable.
>>7715372People who grew up post-90s mostly grew up with Anime as Saturday morning cartoons. By that point western cartoons had largely become relegated to cheap children's TV exclusively. Anime has a much longer shelf life and the most popular shows are for teens-adults, not small kids, so it never ended up with the same childish connotations that western cartoons have.
>>7715391All of that makes sense, but isn't true of the Disney style as well? Or the American superhero comics style (Jack Kirby etc)? I find that many of /ic/'s most experienced artists lean into the anime/manga style to some degree or another. Sometimes it's just 20%, like the eyes and head shape are stylized but everything else is naturalistic. But it definitely feels like there's a generational gap and I'm not sure why.
>>7715394Okay, that makes sense, but I notice that many artists who are good at strict naturalism also often stylize their figures in the anime/manga way, even in contexts that are far from cartoons.
>>7715395>Disney styleWhich one? There is no unified "Disney" style, you have modern Pixar style, late 90s early 2000s realism (think Iron Giant/Titan AE/Atlantis The Lost Empire/Treasure Planet), and classic Disney. Pixar is soulless slop and the other two are extremely niche.>American superhero comicsThey've stagnated for half a century thanks to Hay's Code, the Marvel and DC duopoly, and the MCU which is funded by the military as a form of propaganda.Anime is more relatable, even to westerners.
>>7715395>it definitely feels like there's a generational gap and I'm not sure why.Japan has been the leading animation and comics country since like half a century. People got tired of just reading super hero comics or mickey mouse.
>>7715396That's moreso just anime being anime. Especially in the 80s and 90s, anime had very detailed hand painted backgrounds. The art style is just fairly realistic in general, especially compared to western cartoons. Human proportions, very little exaggeration, often a calm almost slideshow-esque cinematography style, typical japanese naturalism, it just lends itself well to blending seamlessly with realism. It's gotten a bit flanderized as of late, but it still holds on to a lot of the old grounded design principles.
>>7715396Here's an example of what I mean.
>>7715400Okay fair enough, but everyone was copying the classic Disney style when I was a kid. Hell, even manga started out as Disney-influenced.>>7715405I get all that, but something must motivate artists to stylize their characters this way instead of just using straight naturalism.
>>7715395>but isn't true of the Disney style as well? Or the American superhero comics style (Jack Kirby etc)?No. With western cartoons that do deformed gags or facial expressions the characters at rest are already weirdly designed. There's no balance. Lack of balance also reflects on the story, so think of something like like Ed, Edd, and Eddy, the anime version of that show would have some great serious slice of life or coming of age moments little breaks away from the comedy that give us character development and story arcs, the art would have been more relatable and eye catching, again balanced between cartoony ad realistic, especially when it comes to the female characters, the anime version of Nazz (the main love interest of the show) would be visibly feminine and attractive, she still be talked about till this day, girls would cosplay her, guys would wear her face on their shirts or use it as their profile pictures online. Western cartoons tend to be consistently one thing, often times comedic even when they are telling a continuous story. Something like Batman Beyond or Static Shock would come off as too serious. Both of those shows are very good but they fail to capture the audience's imagination with their serious plots and atmosphere. Both of those shows have teenage male protagonists, juggling saving the town/world and maintaining their normal life and relationships but the shows can often times come off as preachy, like after school specials on how bad drugs are and what to do if you're being bullied by a gang, if the character is a minority there's always an episode on racism, just too much real world stuff that ruins the escapism people want to feel while being entertained.
>>7715418>cont.But then we have anime shows that are also serious but the stories are so far out there, no reasonable person would fail to see the genius level of playfulness involved. Stuff like Cowboy Bebop, or Samurai Champloo, or Gantz, or Death Note are all serious, mature, well written stories but they don't sacrifice the fantasy elements, and despite being mature, they maintain a youthful spirit within the story telling. Disney veers too far into being cute and childish. Jack Kirby's art is too stiff. Again western cartoons tend to have no balance. There are two western cartoons that actually understood all of what I'm typing - The Boondocks, and Avatar The Last Airbender - They employed the anime style within both the story telling and art and it worked extremely well, AND they represent extremes, with The Boondocks being way more western or American in its story and world building, and The Last Airbender being more eastern or Asian inspired.
>>7715419>Jack Kirby's art is too stiffAnd just to reiterate, from my very first reply here >>7715391the stiffness and lack of expressiveness is the main issue. Teen Titans on Cartoon Network also tried to strike a balance and did it pretty well because of it.
>>7715415anon, the artist just painted "TV chinese". You're conflating it with anime stylization, but it's just an asian beauty standard
>>7715372It's just better
>>7715372Because most people in modernity have been turned into children by design and cartoons are for children.
>>7715372its a fetish
>>7715372Anyone who cared about drawing during the last 25 years (age 40 and younger) has been impressed by anime/manga at some point. You’re just living under a rock
>>7715372what other drawing styles are there, currently, in popular media?western animation has been relegated to children slop or edgy "adult" humor brainrotamerican comics are still american comics, but somehow worse (?)euro comics are still going strong, but I don't think they have much of a direct cultural impact; some of your favorite artists' favorite artists probably love them, thoughanime/manga can look really good and is often attached to interesting worlds and compelling stories in a variety of genresso yeah, no shit, that's what people growing up in the last 20/30 years have consumed and have been inspired by
>>7715437before anime got popular, young artists would copy disney and superheroes.
Cartoons in the west were never respected as a serious art form even though in the 90s and early 00s we had great cartoons that could be called seinen. They were enjoyable by kids, teens, and adults. Think of all the justice league stuff. The kids cartoons were great too and beautifully animated, we will never get an Ed Edd n Eddy ever again. Eventually the market shifted and got efficient at making more money with less effort thanks to a group I cannot name, and cartoons became either only for toddlers (cheap generic crap with no soul) or for twentysomething year old trannies (horrendously animated but good stories) or for retards (generic dude makes pedophile joke)
>>7715556>>7715496>>7715418>>7715405>>7715395I'm not going to be a weird elitist and pretend that anime in general became "worse" or something like western cartoons and comics did through the decades, in the 1970-2020 period japanese animation was more or less the same in terms of quality, some shows were better animated some worse animated but overall they were all okay in respect to their time period.That's not really what this complain is about, what really happened is that after 2020 anime stopped feeling..."special and exotic" if you guys know what I mean.Like take any random old show, doesn't matter from when in the past, Heidi, FMA, Angelic Layer, Ojamajo Doremi, Candy Candy, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, Nanoha Lyrical,Soul Eater etc. - it always felt like you were watching a specifically Japanese media, something deliberately drawn/written by a Japanese mind and for a Japanese viewer.Nowadays after around 2020 anime doesn't really like that at all, it feels soulless and made for some universal global audience. Stuff like Dandadan, or that Kagurabachi manga it doesn't have that same "specifically made in Japan for Japanese viewers" vibe to it.It's just kinda boring to watch or read post-2020 japanese media when it doesn't deeply feel specifically Japanese in its idiosyncracy and its nature anymore.
why are you idiots responding? you really think a clueless old guy not interested in anime waltzed his way to /ic/ of all boards instead of /a/ where they’d kill him had he post the same thread?
it’s just another east vs west thread
>>7715563I don't mean to use this as a lazy thought terminator, but I'm pretty sure that's just because you're here and now experiencing all the slop while you can pick all the good cherries from the pastit's actually interesting that you picked 2020 as the cutoff date, because I'm pretty sure I've been having this exact conversation since the late 2000sgranted, the capacity for producing soulless slop has definitely increased, and will probably be overwhelming once AI starts replacing more and more people in the assembly line
>>7715372A lot of the modern comic art is ugly or dogshit. I'm not a fan of a lot of the modern anime/manga art either but I feel that the mid tier is more appealing on the Jap side of things.
>>7715437>westoid>no art>no people>mo culture>no future
>>7715416>but something must motivate artists to stylize their characters this way instead of just using straight naturalism.Animation.
>>7715476I’ll rock you under with my dick faggot.
>>7715372>I'm kinda unsure why this specific style has gotten so big lately.Manga and Anime are influential among artists because they 're the last bastion of largely independent works seeing financial success. Western comics publishers have gone all-in on capeshit written and drawn by a million different people with overcomplicated neverending bullshit plots with no good entry points, so they've lost their grip on young artists.
another anon had a good breakdown but in summary, anime and manga are highly variable, and this variability both in art and story has led it to grab a larger audience than western hyperfocus slop. when was the last time you saw or heard of a western comic/cartoon that was simply a romcom? or an ecchi? what about a psychological thriller? horror? almost all western comic/TV cartoons are either action or comedy, and if theyre action theyre the typical marvel/dc style, if theyre comedy theyre the typical 'make it as ugly as possible that will be funny' style. anime/manga mixes and matches art style with story and has works across every genre.also they tend to not have any moral baggage. just look at how westerners reacted to the frieren demon debate. the west has fallen and become ugly due to its culture (or disregard thereof). the last time our 'art' was good was the belle epoque.
>>7716018modern western philosophically doesn't believe in evil. the very concept has been deconstructed to the point that there is no objective moral evil in western thought. it's all just subjective shit now, every villain has been humanized and made relatable, reanalyzed as actually victims of society, or toxic masculinity or some equally retarded bullshit. it has to be possible for anyone to become them. they can't just be objectively evil because they are objectively evil.
>>7715372anime follows some very specific design principles that are universal simplification of what's not important, exaggeration of what isthey do this in a specific way, that lots of artist found trendy but big guys isn't anything new
>If we want to make a popular cartoon series *sniffs yiddishly* we need to appeal to kids. We need to cater to their tastes. As we all know *coughs in hebrew*, little boys and gorls love snot. They love shit and vomit. Also, kids these days are obsessed with multiculturalism, *rubs shekels* so consider making a show all about smelly black toes
>>7715372It's easier for younger people to visualize and more forgiving if you mess up. Of course when you try to actually do something at a serious level and go off-script you realize that you can't skip fundamentals and it becomes extremely difficult.
>>7716080One of his sons died, anon. Give the man a break.
>>7715372Culture comes from elites to the masses. The problem with the west is that our elites gave up their inheritance and started indulging in anti-art and anti-aesthetics. This doesn’t appeal to younger people because it’s boring, over played and over intellectual.
>>7716080I'm here partially to correct the massive weebs here but anime is designed for global audiences and is probably the most dissimilar to traditional Japanese aesthetics or even transfers unique manga art styles well. The ones that stand out in-terms of art do the same techniques comic book artists in America focused on which also don't translate 1:1 in animation.
>>7716087This is an actually accurate answer. Japan has invested more money than ever into making sure they appear beautiful to the world which means no matter how many internal problems they suffer no youth has any negative impression on them.
Somehow in anime, characters suddenly going chibi with exaggerated reactions for comedic scenes don't even seems jarring while attempting that on western works would immediately look weird.
>>7716059the victim mindset (whether it's self-victimizing or portraying criminals/villains as victims) is truly booming in the west. it's pathetic and doesnt count as an excuse for degeneracy (though they firmly believe it does)
>>7716098Why is this??
>>7716098the equivalent is characters going rage mode and turning into bigheaded monsters or something.
>>7716080This is the most accurate reason in this thread.
>>7716098For some reason chinese and korean “anime” still can’t pull this off well. It just looks weird. I don’t know what causes this.
>>7716089lots of 90's and 2000's anime that found success in the west had similar proportions to what could be the "anglo ideal". Seinen stuff like Berserk, Hokuto no Ken, GitS were wildly popular here. So the question I've had is why haven't western artists pulled from these as inspiration? Why aren't techniques like speed lines more common? I can think of a handful of artists like Joe Mad, Ottley, J Scott Campbell who sort of drew in a "manga inspired" way but it only really extends to making the eyes larger.
>>7715563Many of the people who worked on those shows still work in the industry after 2020? Any judgement of what "feels Japanese" will be arbitrary anyway if you don't understand the language or the creative lineage behind a given work. Also it's silly to take something adapted from jump like Fujimoto’s chainsaw man and complain that the story doesn't feel “Japanese” like Urobuchi’s work who comes from VN writing.The west needs to look at Japanese creators as actual people working together instead of an amorphous entity that doesn't exist in reality. There is no Anime Inc. that controls the feel of all anime in current year. >>7715567It’s funny to realize that non-Japanese speakers in the west had these same conversations ever since anime was on the radar in the west.
I just found out that one of the board rules is "Only constructive criticism will be accepted. Rude or offensive comments will result in a ban."kek
>>7716981Probably less aging and more young demographics means that they aren't as familiar with their older works compared to places like Japan. Though I would say both are suffering from a decline right now in-terms of quality the Japanese market is more accepting of things that are "outdated."
>>7716592Even the SD/chibi art still has complexity so it's not a hard drop in quality but a brief change to another developed artstyle, just one that's lighter in tone. >>7716944Korean/Chinese cartoons inspired by anime still don't have developed enough styles so it looks uncanny. A fun exercise is to zoom in on Korean/Western cartoon model sheets and compare the line/shape complexity to literally any Japanese drawn anime settei.
>>7716981(((westerners))) for some reason see anime and cartoons as two completely different things. Like, it's a crossover you couldn't even do in Space Jam. You can't make a manga inspired comic book. They'd call that drawing a manga.>>7717059Shows aren't made by one person, however. Nor is everyone who works on a show equally talented or visionary. Just because you worked on Spirited Away doesn't make you Miyazaki.
>>7717080>Shows aren't made by one person, however. Nor is everyone who works on a show equally talented or visionary. Yeah, that is the point. Different people have different skills and collective works depend on so many factors it's insane to lump everything past an arbitrary cutoff point together as not being talented or high quality anymore. Especially when the people didn't disappear and their skills didn't get worse with more experience and them honing their craft.
>>7716981>So the question I've had is why haven't western artists pulled from these as inspiration?It's objectively a harder technique to draw in than western cartoons.Also the social pressure to conform to certain (((agendas))) is too high.Anything hard hitting that shows true masculinity in a contemporary context and the protection of cute and feminine characters is going to be problematic. Anything showing beauty in the normalcy of life, SoL's like K-On for example would never be allowed in a culture designed to destroy all normalcy.
>>7717097>Anything showing beauty in the normalcy of life, SoL's like K-On for example would never be allowed in a culture designed to destroy all normalcy.I'm fairly conservative but the vast majority of anime is porn bait and most Japanese see people watching the cartoons in Japan as weirdos. Also K-On and stuff doesn't have success because it's neither relatable to the human experience nor interesting.
>>7717105>vast majority of anime is porn bait You don't watch anime or aren't arguing in good faith.>K-On doesn't have successKek>it's neither relatable to the human experienceAny well written story with developed characters is going to be relatable in some way and tell you something about the human experience. Part of the problem is that Western people are under such psychological attack they can't relate to the human experience in the first place or see art as something more than straightforward propaganda.>interestingPersonal enjoyment, i.e. feelings, are't a good metric to evaluate the worth of art by. As a conservative you should know this. I don't need to explain this on an art board.
>>7717124>You don't watch anime or aren't arguing in good faith.The popular ones are flooded by fujos or coomers. Anime is popular because people who watch cartoons are primarily kids or losers and since losers no longer seek to improve themselves but rather get instant gratification most shows that are popular are about teenagers who are flirted as being gay and chicks with giant tits who shelters emotionally and physically weak protagonists for no reason. It is far from the human experience both in ideal or function and thinking anything else as being responsible for its popularity is delusional. Go to a convention if you think I'm wrong.
>>7717132>the popular ones>popular>popularityBased goalpost shifting and appeal to "popularity" in the west. >It is far from the human experience both in ideal or function Exactly what I said about modern westerners being unable to appreciate art. If it's not straightforward propaganda they can't comprehend it. They fall back to stereotypes or "critiquing" low hanging fruit because they aren't skilled to do anything beyond the very surface level of research or critique.If your lazy worldview keeps dominating the west will never make any skilled, meaningful or deep art again.
>>7717097Slice of life is for people who like to watch other people have friends.
>>7717156>Based goalpost shifting and appeal to "popularity" in the west.Read the thread title and come back. Even ignoring that most anime produced recently that makes it as TVs is mostly just porn. The only difference is the demographics between Japanese and Western animation are the audiences they pander to. Western animation appeals to brain rot kids and millennials with constant nostalgia goggles while Japanese animation panders to brain rot teenagers and weebs with inferiority complexes. >If your lazy worldview keeps dominating the west will never make any skilled, meaningful or deep art again.Tell me what about your moeslop talks about? Does it speak about the metaphysical principles that guide this world? Does it even talk about the beauty of music and how certain melodies are designed to welcome people into something eternal and beyond our flesh? No. It's a bunch of retarded looking girls bickering about petty shit and doing a rock band. None of you weebs even know anything about eastern philosophy let alone anything about Japan.
>>7717171lol.
>>7715416I think that which can't be explained by the stylistic benefits of an anime style can be explained by mere personal preference. For the vast majority of young beginner artists their love for art and drawing came about from anime. Anime just has a certain visual appeal in it's neotony and measured cartooniness.[spoiler]Personally, I think the reason why anime has caught on as of late is because it's for losers, for social outcasts, for 'otaku', and ever seen the catastrophic decline in American communities & third spaces, the increased popularity of phones/laptops/personal computers, and the killing blow of COVID lockdowns, way more people, especially young people, have become shut-ins. In pretty much every possible metric young Zoomers/Gen Alpha are more 'loserish' than their forebears in the aughts, 90s and 80s. Less casual sex, less drinking, less partying, less going out, fewer hobbies, fewer bands, fewer concerts, etc. Anime is for children, and the society has been trending towards infantilizing art in response to this for a very long time.[/spoiler]
>>7715372What fucking year is it? My art teachers were asking this twenty years ago. At least at that point manga wasn’t outselling the entire western comics industry (kids books don’t count). At this point it’s like asking why more people watch football than hockey.Also everyone from Adam Warren to Joe Mad, shit I’d even say guys like Humberto Ramos and J Scott Campbell, we’re influence by manga/anime line work and design aesthetics. Ffs the early 2000s were heavily influenced by Japanese media in general.
>>7715936Anime is not a culture but crap, describe the plot of any modern anime and reread the crap you wrote
>>7717182There is no philosophy or depth in anime, the maximum is the creation of an aesthetic image that is empty from the inside, emptiness and not art
>>7718207There are some, but those were made a long time ago and died off around the early 00s. Japanese are in general terrible philosophers but are great at engineering what's already present. Unfortunately what's present right now is mass industrialization and detachment from the human experience.
>>7718250For whatever the entire seinen demographic just got zapped from existence. Nowadays, even things that get labeled as seinen are actually just pretentious shonen. You cannot tell me that One Punch Man is fucking seinen.
>>7718258Even most seinens (at least the prominent ones) are pretty mediocre understanding of Western philosophers and Enlightenment era ones at that. That being said they are leagues better than any manga that gets adapted to an anime nowadays.
