And it is utterly gorgeous because of it. For such a small scale story, they really managed to nail the sense of isolation and despair in the doubt filled postwar Tokyo.Casual Shinji said:
The Golden Years of Anime
- Thread starter Soviet Heavy
- Start date
I don't feel any special attachment to the 80's or 90's eras in anime. I got inducted into the medium with Slayers: Next, and have some nostalgic bias for that series in particular, but there have been greats in every three year period since then in my opinion. They just don't stop.
Tengen Toppa and Zetsubou Sensei a few years ago, Katanagatari last year or the year before, Kotoura-san this year and Maoyuu Maou Yuusha also this year.
I like other, tropier and more "generic" things as well. I'm not in line with people who look down on trope usage as a matter of course. Tropes have been an abundant component of every good character and story I've ever seen or heard, and most of them have been played straight.
Tengen Toppa and Zetsubou Sensei a few years ago, Katanagatari last year or the year before, Kotoura-san this year and Maoyuu Maou Yuusha also this year.
Also, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai and Sukunai NEXT. Heheheh.
I like other, tropier and more "generic" things as well. I'm not in line with people who look down on trope usage as a matter of course. Tropes have been an abundant component of every good character and story I've ever seen or heard, and most of them have been played straight.
And with that ended the golden age. It was a time when anime was still hand drawn and there was little to no use of CGI. Memories is another one of those last great features, especially the Magnetic Rose story. Goddammit, Koji Morimoto, make another movie.Soviet Heavy said:
I miss the mechanical designs from back then too. Anime used to be able to have to most strange futuristic constructions, but still make them look totally believable and practical.
ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY DISS FMP. OR THE ARBALEST FOR THAT MATTER =_= I got my eye on you son...mfeff said:
OT: There are plenty of good series that have come out recently, and plenty of exciting new series which are coming out soon. Monogatari Series: Second Season, for example. No-one's making you watch the bad stuff. Just do a little research on somewhere like MAL before you watch a show.
That too. Hell even Dragonball Z put enormous effort into the designs for the F-14s that Nappa tore apart. They showed up in one episode. That was cut for filler. But just look at the detail on the jets.Casual Shinji said:
For me they have been for a long time! There is Sages point and I have another one: Every damn Anime these days is about high school kids doing some stuff.Soviet Heavy said:
Seriously get on cartdriver and check the summaries of every damn season: 99% basically start with ?Is a high school boy/girl...?.
I have simply outgrown that for the most part.
If you look back into the 90ies Animes like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Ghost in the Shell, Wind of Amnesia, Wingf of Honneamise, Samurai X (Rurouni Kenshin), Venus Wars (I could go on for hours!) there were IMO more Animes with grown ups or adults doing stuff.
I just can't relate to a 17 year old brat any more... I could be his damn father. Yea a superficial problem but the very moment the protagonist is that young it just feels old for me. I've probably seen enough of these kind of Anime to know every damn trope there might be and I've become so good at predicting plot points that it got boring.
Of course there are series like Space Brothers, Darker than Black or Black Lagoon but those are far and in between these days.
Therefore I haven't watched much Anime in the last 4 to 6 years. I read the summary and usually discard them as ?yea seen that before...?.
The problem seems to be that when a company is going to make an Anime for adults is porn/hentai. So the choices are either it is for kids/teenager or its porn. That got boring very quick for me.
You understand that there's no real "oversaturation" right? As westerners our access to anime certainly has opened up, but in Japan, where the native market for anime is, it's probably been releasing at this same pace for decades.Soviet Heavy said:
And obviously you know, nostalgia is in play here. The difference between Dragonball and Naruto is like Superman and Spider-man. Goku has a singular personality and the story just throws villain after villain at him for him to power up and beat. Naruto has main characters with character arcs that's play out throughout the entire course of the story. I'm not saying that one is better, but Naruto is not only not lacking but arguably more intricate and sophisticated.
I always remember that shot of Nappa popping out from inside the jet.Soviet Heavy said:
And ofcourse there's also this...
Again, show me something current that has this level of quality. It's by the same guy that made Jin-Roh. By the way, was there a basset hound in Jin-Roh? Because Mamoru Oshii always puts one in his movies for some reason.
Oshii didn't direct Jin-Roh. He wrote the film (he's the creator of the Kerberos Saga after all), but the film was directed by Hiroyuki Okiura.Casual Shinji said:
Big words from a little guy. Take a picture it'll last longer.KaosuHamoni said:
Did you even bother to read what I wrote? No... probably not. As far as FMP I own it, TSR, and Fumofu... I didn't say anything "about" the series other than the design influence (as with many newer series) was on character focus and movement not the industrial design within the forms. As far as "that" anime goes... I found TSR a little lacking and cheaply made. It's action is closer to the Henshin genre.
As far as thematic and design differences I allege that this is due directly to the number of artist graduating from schools that focus on industrial design transitioning into the anime film industry having of reduced over the last few years. For the creation of Macross Plus there was consultation with the Japanese Air Force/SDF, same with Yukikaze.
Other stuff... maybe not so much. As such it is the detail work and camera angles that are going to be central in the consulted works. There in lies the subtle difference between the art works. Macross Plus is also a story that focuses on established adults. It is a matured work with more complexities in it's narrative, scene setup, musical score. There are little to no rookies in it's production.
This is very true with something like Area 88 where the world itself and it's limitations are as much a part of the narrative as the narrative. The strength of these works is in grounding the image work with the action.
I didn't say everything else was bad, just different... and began to explain what I perceived as the differences. The same could be said in the western art schools as well. Seeing a lot of high end schools pushing the "flow" and "feeling" rather than the isomorphic design. Going off what Feng Zhu has said on the subject... simply "visual library" is lacking with many artist today.
Additionally a lot of older anime is heavily influenced by Western (American) media and medium. There is no such thing as a Macross Plus without "Top Gun" having of been made.
Is the scene telling a story? Isama and Shin here have action in their scenes with nothing moving. Interestingly many anime have to use generous amounts of scene motion and post effects to generate the same sense of motion in the scene. It seems to be an issue with comic book design carrying over into a motion medium.
As with anything it stands to reason that a medium will become stale without additional influences or practiced studies in forms become common again. There is a bit of a difference though between having a pre-order for Macross Plus for months on end and simply "watching" something to pass the time. Yukikaze and Last Exile both marking the last of the anime that I "personally" counted down the days on a calendar for the next release.
Don't get me wrong though... I own a lot of anime. It is for the same reasons I would suggest Martian Successor Nadesico I also suggest Baka and Test or Excel Saga. I thought Angel Beats was great, to spite it's crippled development. Not the biggest fan of High School of the Dead, although it is well done for what it is (and in many ways scared of it's own commercial shadow)... making it a little difficult to explain why I think Vampire Rosario is one of the better anime I have seen in a long time. Flipping the coin again Bamboo Blade is one of my all time favorites... subject matter thing I suppose... well researched... and interesting could only be accomplished by focusing on "flow" and "feeling".
It is interesting to note that like Final Fantasy 13-2, Macross Plus does not exist in a vacuum. It could only exist in an established universe. Patlabor 2 is like that in many ways. Rarely do we ever just "get" a title such as these out of the blue.
If I made any strong assertion at all it was that there has been a marked shift in the fantasy genres, as opposed to spending time in grounding the world and using that world to help the narrative along. Fantasy by it's nature is easier to work with due to not spending much time or attention to the plausibility of the world.
There may be an argument in here for a discussion as to how an anime is not going to get funded unless it has all the familiar genre and fantasy tropes in it. Didn't Anno want to make Wings of Honneamise 2 and not Evangelion?
Examining the characters from both Outlaw Star and FMP we see similar setups but a change in the characters themselves... which leads me to another provisional hypothesis I may entertain.
Gene, ladies man, maverick rouge... a han solo archetype complete with side kick.
Sousuke, knight in shining armor, child virgin warrior, Percival archetype.
Chittery, 16 going on 23, stacked, naively worldly, dominates Sousuke in many ways, as opposed to Melfina who is small/petite child like. Both are more or less magic/psychic girls both with male protagonist doing male and manly things, just in two very different ways with very different dynamics with the character arcs or lack there of.
Then we have our middle ground... with someone like Vash the Stampede and his various female interest introduced into the narratives.
The appeal here is going to be what the production focused on as a part of appealing to the audience. Additionally how the narrative plays out to soften or resolve the sexual conflict between the love interest and conflicts introduced in the works for the characters to work through.
Not all together different than this...
Again complex characters complex narrative, as opposed to this:
or again something like this...
as compared to this...
With Macross Zero there is a decided call back to both the original Macross and a reference to Miriya (Max Sterling's love interest), to a finally that is thematically similar to Macross Plus and Charon Apple however, changed to a "surrender" of arms rather than an overcoming of the opposition with force. It works but only up and to a point, that point is our assumption as an audience as to how much relationship there ever really was to begin with.
The relationship in Zero is pretty lazy. Similar to how Cameron's Avatar sets it up. Sexual innuendo tossing in a money shot... bam... relationship. It's pretty sketchy stuff, but when you have a couple minutes in a short series... load the trope-pedoes!
Macross Zero while heavily leveraged in it's core designs from the Macross cannon has a narrative that is much more akin to Full Metal Panic. There really isn't a good better best way to handle characters. Rather a question if the characters could have arcs which may resolve any differently than in linear fashion according to how they where originally set up.
How dynamic is the narrative?
A lot of more modern stuff telegraphs it's narrative, mostly because it's narrative is either overly simple or has a lot of pseudo-complexity (usually with a backtrack story dump).
Sousku and Chittery are more or less no better or worse off than when the show opens. The tension of the relationship is still in play. I suspect it is intentional to milk the franchise for more episodic content. It is fantasy genre bordering on the comedic in the service of a juvenile love story.
Outlaw Star Melfina and Gene grow together as people through the exposition. Macross Plus again the characters grow as people/characters. These narratives are contained within themselves with a beginning middle and end.
I suspect then that what one likes is directly correlated with what one expects from the narrative both exposition and resolution. Macross deals with characters that are already career professionals, same with Cowboy, kind of in Trigun, but when we hit FMP the characters are high school or junior college. The narrative spends some time backtrack story dumping Sousuke to give him some credibility.
Thing is his mecha his mission is fantasy stem to stern. It's next to impossible to ground him in the context of a relationship unless one utilizes Chittery, which the narrative does; reflexively the team also assist in this department. The characters go about as far as the characters can go before changing the characters. Which would mess up sequels, so it never happens.
FMP like Eva, like a lot of the highschool-robot genre recycles tropes to keep the material familiar. The characters are all pretty flat without much in the way of depth by design. Story arcs are the same way, and the designs are... for better or for worse... the same way.
Seen one seen em all.
Full Metal Panic though, should win some sort of award for having one of the lowest payoff teases of the male protagonist in any anime I am able to recall. Hey I like FMP and Fumofu, Macross Zero as well, but they are no Macross Plus, nor could they ever be.
Very little is. Well, maybe this...
Oh okay. I knew he had something to do with it. The familiar character designs and all.Soviet Heavy said:
Can you believe Oshii once worked on Urusei Yatsura?
It was. A joke. Way to overreact. And if this is a competition, have you read the light novels? No? I have.mfeff said:
And no, I didn't read that monster. I don't have the mental fortitude.
KaosuHamoni said:
Overreaction? Nah. Don't get that confused. As far as a competition, you suggested research before one watches a show then assert having of read some novela which takes the narrative further than the work. Which is great but does not do a whole lot for ascertaining why anime (like a lot of mediums) have tread off down the path of derivative trope filled lazy productions.
I made two assertions...
Pointing out the difference between industrial design in older anime than the newer stuff.
The result comes through in how one goes about animating the scene, Macross is well known for it's energetic scenes which give the vehicles a sense of physical weight and inertia. There are also generous use of reflective surface and dynamic shots.
FMP uses a lot of flat angle shots which in turn fire up the scene with post effects and light show stuff. The presentation is closer to that of something I would expect in henshin anime or comics. The artist are pretty good at character animation, not really industrial animation and presentation. Face forward shots, 3/4 view shots, back shots; the camera does not work around the form or work much in perspective... mostly cause it is hard to do.
Older stuff made the conscious attempt to work anime "like" one would work a camera in a practical effect shot. Newer stuff I maintain treats the camera like a cell in a comic.
It comes into effect when the work attempts anamorphic perspectives such as this:
My second assertion which was more of a hypothesis is the treatment of characters within the exposition as not having much in the way of an arc. To give the characters an arc would imply the characters change, to change the characters hampers the ability to derive more sequels from a franchise. So production companies don't do it. Again in the works that are treated like "film" there is an effort to get more out of the image work in service of the narrative.
Newer stuff ain't about that. Not in the least.
This guy seems to get it for the most part.
Anime treated like film is clearly considered a medium of artistic expression by several directors, anime treated like comics... are just animated comics. Anime like video games in many respects have the same issues when they are considered as artistic mediums. They are often times not taken seriously by the companies that produce most of the bulk of the product on the marketplace.
At the end of the day there are just not that many people out there in the world that can "make" a Macross Plus. It's on a different level. I have not seen much emphasis within the field itself to try to go back to that or take it further... money isn't there, interest is low, skill is low. The fundamental shift from science fiction to science fantasy pretty much ends the attempt.
Old stuff was getting away from comics, new stuff can't get back to comics and fantasy fictions fast enough. Just how it goes.
This whole mentality of "They don't make em like they used to" just wears me out. Somehow music and anime seem to generate a lot more flak that say western TV and film. Like with most things, the longer the period of time, more the bad content is forgotten by the public, and thus people create a nostalgic bias when recollecting the past. Whilst I enjoy Bennett the Sage's reviews, here he sounded more like an old man condemning a new generation for trespassing on his lawn.
gigguk and other members of the PodTaku podcast have several times decried the end of the Golden Age of Anime. Only they're not talking about the 90's. No, their golden age is from roughly 1998 to 2006 (somebody else in this thread mentioned that same time period). Hm...four different people who agree on this point. Either they're right, it's a coincidence, or...they're all the same age.
When you think about it that way, don't you feel kind of manipulated? Like, you enjoy things because of when you watched them rather than because of their content?
I look at things and say that we're currently in "an era that doesn't appeal to a Western market". The early and mid 2000's appealed heavily to a Western audience. The high-profile stuff was action (Bleach/Naruto/One Piece, all great shows for a 10-15 year old) and thrillers like Death Note and Code Geass. Then there were Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Outlaw Star, which were 90's anime but didn't come over here until the very early 2000's. Then there was the low-profile stuff...the guilty pleasures. PodTaku noted that the early/mid-2000's were the era of harem anime, not to mention an (un)healthy helping of fanservice shows like Ikki Tousen and Sekirei.
The current era is very self-referential, so not as appealing to us Western folks. Madoka Magica, and Bakemonogatari, for instance, both rely on turning and twisting your expectations (in very different ways). Steins;Gate not so much, but it's pretty heavily steeped in otaku culture. Then the guilty pleasures of this era aren't harem and ecchi shows, they're moe and slice-of-life comedies like K-On!, Lucky Star, Nichijou, Tamako Market...wait, I'm just naming Kyoto Animation shows, aren't I?
Also, 2011 was the best year for anime in over a decade, so rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
Anyway, the scientific consensus *adjusts monocle* is that it comes from "to grow/bloom", although considering it's Japanese it could be a pun and intended to implicate both "to bloom" and "to burn" (I'm given to understand it's "burn" as in "burn with passion" rather than "burninate the countryside"). We tend to define moe very narrowly, as something that looks like K-On! or Madoka Magica - especially K-On!. Apparently, Japan defines it much more broadly. For example, they consider L from Death Note to be moe.
Moe moe kyun!
All that text aside, I get where you're coming from. In fact, I think I mostly agree with you, particularly in regards to fetishization. See, it confused me for a while that there were these Young, Cute, Quirky, and Innocent moe-blobs, but they weren't really sexualized (then they would be lolis, not moe, because goddammit there's a word for everything). Because, whether you like Japan's cultural exports or not, it can't be denied they sexualize everything. Eventually it clicked: it's the sexualization of the nonsexualization of a character, like some kind of recursive loop.
Then I started thinking about the fact that considering the amount of parody, satire, and self-commentary in anime, all this was probably a reaction to something, which was in turn a reaction to something else, and virtually every anime could be considered a reaction to or commentary on something previous, and I realized this cause-and-effect chain could probably be traced further and further back and you would eventually discover that all anime was actually, in some way or another, commentary on Astro Boy. Then I giggled because that was a joke.
Then I realized Western culture must be equally convoluted, the only difference being we can't even see it. That was a sobering thought.
That said, you might consider poking your nose into Fate/Zero, it should have the more mature vibe you're looking for. Speaking of Fate/Zero...
That aside, I have seen neither the original Berserk nor any of the new Berserk movies, but from I've heard, their CG is awful, whether you're a new anime fan or a classic one. I guess it's like an anime version of Green Lantern - even when you spend tons of money on something, your CG can still suck.
As for me, an anime fan since all the way back to 2007? Nine times out of ten, CG sucks. I permit only one studio to meddle with obvious CG, and one studio only...the animation gods at ufotable.
(Does not contain spoilers, but has battle scenes from very late in both Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night. Incidentally, this video is also an eye-bleeding comparison between Fate/Zero and the less...aesthetically pleasing...2006 Fate/stay night.)
When you think about it that way, don't you feel kind of manipulated? Like, you enjoy things because of when you watched them rather than because of their content?
I look at things and say that we're currently in "an era that doesn't appeal to a Western market". The early and mid 2000's appealed heavily to a Western audience. The high-profile stuff was action (Bleach/Naruto/One Piece, all great shows for a 10-15 year old) and thrillers like Death Note and Code Geass. Then there were Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Outlaw Star, which were 90's anime but didn't come over here until the very early 2000's. Then there was the low-profile stuff...the guilty pleasures. PodTaku noted that the early/mid-2000's were the era of harem anime, not to mention an (un)healthy helping of fanservice shows like Ikki Tousen and Sekirei.
The current era is very self-referential, so not as appealing to us Western folks. Madoka Magica, and Bakemonogatari, for instance, both rely on turning and twisting your expectations (in very different ways). Steins;Gate not so much, but it's pretty heavily steeped in otaku culture. Then the guilty pleasures of this era aren't harem and ecchi shows, they're moe and slice-of-life comedies like K-On!, Lucky Star, Nichijou, Tamako Market...wait, I'm just naming Kyoto Animation shows, aren't I?
Also, 2011 was the best year for anime in over a decade, so rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated.
Essentially Sage says, "Anime was better in the 90's. Now let me show you the worst anime ever made. They're from the 90's."FargoDog said:
I did a bit of reading on moe and the etymology is - actually I'm going to stop right there. This word has an etymology. That people have studied. Isn't that flipping awesome?Owyn_Merrilin said:
Anyway, the scientific consensus *adjusts monocle* is that it comes from "to grow/bloom", although considering it's Japanese it could be a pun and intended to implicate both "to bloom" and "to burn" (I'm given to understand it's "burn" as in "burn with passion" rather than "burninate the countryside"). We tend to define moe very narrowly, as something that looks like K-On! or Madoka Magica - especially K-On!. Apparently, Japan defines it much more broadly. For example, they consider L from Death Note to be moe.
Moe moe kyun!
All that text aside, I get where you're coming from. In fact, I think I mostly agree with you, particularly in regards to fetishization. See, it confused me for a while that there were these Young, Cute, Quirky, and Innocent moe-blobs, but they weren't really sexualized (then they would be lolis, not moe, because goddammit there's a word for everything). Because, whether you like Japan's cultural exports or not, it can't be denied they sexualize everything. Eventually it clicked: it's the sexualization of the nonsexualization of a character, like some kind of recursive loop.
Then I started thinking about the fact that considering the amount of parody, satire, and self-commentary in anime, all this was probably a reaction to something, which was in turn a reaction to something else, and virtually every anime could be considered a reaction to or commentary on something previous, and I realized this cause-and-effect chain could probably be traced further and further back and you would eventually discover that all anime was actually, in some way or another, commentary on Astro Boy. Then I giggled because that was a joke.
Then I realized Western culture must be equally convoluted, the only difference being we can't even see it. That was a sobering thought.
Yeah, this one I'll buy, and it is beginning to get on my nerves. When gigguk did his "Does Modern Anime Suck?" rant, he compared Baccano! and Durarara!! - the first being pre-2006, the second post-2006, but both by the same author. Baccano! has all adult characters. Durarara!! focuses on three highschoolers. SPOILERS: Baccano! is better.Ishigami said:
That said, you might consider poking your nose into Fate/Zero, it should have the more mature vibe you're looking for. Speaking of Fate/Zero...
It sounds more like it simply appeals more to you. It seems like you have the same problem with modern anime visuals that people who like records have with digital music.Casual Shinji said:
That aside, I have seen neither the original Berserk nor any of the new Berserk movies, but from I've heard, their CG is awful, whether you're a new anime fan or a classic one. I guess it's like an anime version of Green Lantern - even when you spend tons of money on something, your CG can still suck.
As for me, an anime fan since all the way back to 2007? Nine times out of ten, CG sucks. I permit only one studio to meddle with obvious CG, and one studio only...the animation gods at ufotable.
(Does not contain spoilers, but has battle scenes from very late in both Fate/Zero and Fate/stay night. Incidentally, this video is also an eye-bleeding comparison between Fate/Zero and the less...aesthetically pleasing...2006 Fate/stay night.)
That's the show with the aliens coming to earth right? (Vaguest possible answer ever)Casual Shinji said:
Personally, I'm really enjoying a lot of the new series.
Toradora! is one of, if not the, best series I've seen. Black Lagoon is amazing, Spice and Wolf is intellectually stimulating, etc. The list goes on.
I've been hunting for series for the past couple years and haven't been at a loss for content in all of that time. Granted, my internet data limit has been most...annoying.
I firmly believe it's a matter of taste and whether or not you can accept that particular shows are designed to cater to a particular audience. There are plenty of series available that can appeal to nearly every taste out there. Just take the time to look.
Toradora! is one of, if not the, best series I've seen. Black Lagoon is amazing, Spice and Wolf is intellectually stimulating, etc. The list goes on.
I've been hunting for series for the past couple years and haven't been at a loss for content in all of that time. Granted, my internet data limit has been most...annoying.
I firmly believe it's a matter of taste and whether or not you can accept that particular shows are designed to cater to a particular audience. There are plenty of series available that can appeal to nearly every taste out there. Just take the time to look.
The thing is, I like or liked anime for the same reason I like animation in general.Dr. Cakey said:
And when it comes to pure animation, current anime can't hold a candle to the 80's and 90's. Even Hayao Miyazaki said that the art of traditional animation is dying in Japan, because it pays for shit and people interested would rather seek their fortune elsewhere.
That doesn't mean all current anime is shit, it just doesn't have the abundance of movement and life it used to have. It doesn't have anything that can measure up to the works of Katsuhiro Otomo and Koji Morimoto.