What Anime are you Currently Watching?/Anime Recommendations

[Gunstar Green]

Moments like these remind me why I love old anime.

[Segata]

What I really like about older anime is everything was super detailed. Characters,background anything. Had a certain grit to it that worked well. A lot of modern anime has less detail and looks overly glossy to me.

[Xeogred]

I think the framing and camera perspective has a lot to do with it having a different vibe. Most 70's/80's anime generally have more zoomed out shots and you often see characters in full, from head to toe which is cool. Not so much nowadays. And even before widescreen became the norm, there was definitely a difference with the 90's stuff and on showing shots up closer and all.

And of course cel drawn anime has the best colors and "blacks" for shadows. Digital will never be able to replicate that perfectly.

Cool shot from Gundam 0079!



A shot of a cockpit at one part in Daitarn 3, look at how insane the blacks are!



Blu-Ray/HD masters of old anime is sublime. This is just a single frame shot from Super Sonic Borgman at 1080p. I have folders worth of cityscapes/architecture I've snapped from anime over the years.
(right click for full image)



Uploaded some other random shots, maybe I should start a tumblr or something lol:

Daitarn 3:




This scene was bizarre and super detailed:




More Super Sonic Borgman:

[Segata]

That is so much porn. Should put a NSFW label on that.

[isiolia]

I think the framing and camera perspective has a lot to do with it having a different vibe. Most 70's/80's anime generally have more zoomed out shots and you often see characters in full, from head to toe which is cool. Not so much nowadays. And even before widescreen became the norm, there was definitely a difference with the 90's stuff and on showing shots up closer and all.

And of course cel drawn anime has the best colors and "blacks" for shadows. Digital will never be able to replicate that perfectly.

I don't think it has much to do with being unable to do the same style today. Instead, I'd say it's a lot more to do with shifts in common animation techniques, particularly labor saving ones. Zoomed out shots, as is evident in that first screen cap, have very little detail. Showing from behind like that means no facial animation.

Different or improved tools and methods meant not needing to work around that as much, though modern animation still tends to use labor saving techniques (as it would be obscenely prohibitive to produce otherwise).

[marurun]

And even not all digital paint techniques are the same. AIC introduced an in-between generation tool to help reduce the number of in-betweens that had to be done by hand, and in 1998 or 1999 after they started using it their animation quality dropped a lot, like for the A.D. Police TV series. But it looks like they used the software for the 2005 Ah! Megami Sama!, so it must have improved a bit.

[Gunstar Green]

Another example: Dragon Ball Super's animation was really iffy at first. They started using some new color palettes at the beginning of the current arc and added a new filter to the line-work that makes it less uniform and gives it a more hand-drawn impression like DBZ. It doesn't always work but it's definitely a step up in visual quality.

I don't think the problem is digital painting itself, but its application. A lot of shows tend to do the bare minimum (just like any hand painted show that didn't have an OVA budget) but if you really want to throw a lot of time, a lot of money and a visionary artist at something it could easily equal or surpass the old hand painted cels.

It's just that for most shoestring budget works, quicker and cheaper came with the caveats of cleaner and more generic, but I think things are really starting to improve and there's loads of visually appealing shows out there already that probably could never have looked as good on a similar budget with cels.

I think cel art vs. digital art is a lot like vinyl recordings vs. digital music. The latter might be objectively better but the former has a grit that people associate positive feelings with.

In the case of sci-fi anime I think that changes in visual tropes of the genre itself have a lot to do with it. We don't really associate most visions of the future as the super-detailed, high-tech greeble covered worlds of the cyberpunk 80's as much as we used to, unless its a deliberate throwback, and there are some pretty awesome looking throwbacks in modern animation. The Space Battleship Yamato remake comes to mind as well as the modern UC Gundam stuff like Unicorn and Thunderbolt. All of the style of the 80's with all of the technology of the 2010's.

[marurun]

I think reduced popularity and market share for many non-mainstream anime (and even some mainstream anime) has slashed budgets. OVA used to sell (in Japan) 1 to 2 episodes per VHS tape at anything from $35 to $70 USD per tape, depending on the title. And an episode was typically 30 to 45 minutes. Even if sales weren't super, they were good enough, and the return per minute of animation was clearly sufficient. These days anime that aren't mainstream quickly fade from the market for all but the most devoted Japanese fans, and US companies aren't as quick these days to license anything and everything, as our own boom is long gone and US companies also have to face the facts on market share.

[Xeogred]

Another example: Dragon Ball Super's animation was really iffy at first. They started using some new color palettes at the beginning of the current arc and added a new filter to the line-work that makes it less uniform and gives it a more hand-drawn impression like DBZ. It doesn't always work but it's definitely a step up in visual quality.

I don't think the problem is digital painting itself, but its application. A lot of shows tend to do the bare minimum (just like any hand painted show that didn't have an OVA budget) but if you really want to throw a lot of time, a lot of money and a visionary artist at something it could easily equal or surpass the old hand painted cels.

It's just that for most shoestring budget works, quicker and cheaper came with the caveats of cleaner and more generic, but I think things are really starting to improve and there's loads of visually appealing shows out there already that probably could never have looked as good on a similar budget with cels.

I think cel art vs. digital art is a lot like vinyl recordings vs. digital music. The latter might be objectively better but the former has a grit that people associate positive feelings with.

In the case of sci-fi anime I think that changes in visual tropes of the genre itself have a lot to do with it. We don't really associate most visions of the future as the super-detailed, high-tech greeble covered worlds of the cyberpunk 80's as much as we used to, unless its a deliberate throwback, and there are some pretty awesome looking throwbacks in modern animation. The Space Battleship Yamato remake comes to mind as well as the modern UC Gundam stuff like Unicorn and Thunderbolt. All of the style of the 80's with all of the technology of the 2010's.

Seriously dude we might be clones. The current DB Super arc is fantastic and one of my friends and I are absolutely loving the subtle art and animation change. It seems like they simply decided to draw thicker black lines around the characters and it makes such a crazy difference. Almost looks like they sprinkled in some classic grain here and there too. It's still Toei and could be better, but I'm glad the show has looked pretty solid for the most part after a rough start. And the action has been quite good, never fully dipping into watery Naruto crap territory.

Madhouse make modern anime look just as good as the cel stuff for me. The newer seasons of Ippo and Hunter x Hunter 2011 come to mind. Those shows looked amazing.

That's a good comparison. You could say I feel the same about sprite based games of the old vs newer indie titles, that might replicate that look and have technically superior advantages, but it's hard to beat that charm of the real 8/16bit look.

The Yamato remake looked mindblowing. You can bet I took some sexy screens...

Modern Sunrise is pretty hit or miss for me and I'm behind on some Gundam, but yeah they still seem to have maximized amazing budgets. I hated Gundam 00 and didn't really think much of G-Reco, but visually they were extremely good looking and impressive.

There is a laundry list worth of issues I have with todays mecha and sci-fi, but yeah the aesthetics are definitely a big thing too. Like you said it's definitely a very different approach and focus visually nowadays. I miss the dark tones, weird architecture, moon bases, and cool ships.

[Joinjoina01]

Swat cats.. OK, how old am I?