That's not what he is saying. He is saying that past years of anime are not objectively better than current years of anime. He is saying you are overly emphasizing the best entries for a number of years and comparing it to each year's output.
The truth is every year is variable, with some being better and some worse, but the overall pattern does NOT show that older shows are better as a trend. It is either equal or newer seasons being better overall due to art and tech progress.
Peace.
The best years of the industry are vastly superior to the modern era in both the sense that the best shows are better and there were far less shows being made so the average is better. There's probably more bad isekai shows alone being made this year than there were total shows in 1995.
EDIT:
1995 has Evangelion and Gundam Wing out of 17 total TV shows airing. Let's say all the other ones are dogshit, sorry Fushigi Yugi and Gunsmith Cats and Slayers, I never watched that shit, whatever. So 2 out of 17 are great (or 1 out of 17, if you're being mean to poor old Gundam Wing).
There were 222 TV shows aired last year according to my quick math on Wikipedia. This means there need to be what, a dozen-ish Evangelion-level shows and a dozen-ish Gundam Wing shows to match 1995. Or you need to argue, equally implausibly, that the average show is now vastly superior and so it rescues 2023, despite the fact that the average show airing now is titled something like Reborn As A Pedophile In A Fantasy MMO.
Last edited by Y; Sun, 10-20-2024 at 01:09 AM.
I'm judging whether a year is good or not by the amount of great anime that released during that year, yes. Like every normal person would do.Originally Posted by shinta|hikari
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
And what we are saying is that if you do that, recent years are similar in quality to those farther in the past. We still get amazing shows now. Of course I cannot convince you of this, so just treat it as another opinion, just like how I treat yours.
I do agree with Y that mathematically, the true average of shows has declined just because of the sheer amount being produced. This is allowed by technological advancement as well as just the enormous increase in the anime industry due to global popularity. That said, due to the same technology, the shows now are generally better animated with better coloring because of new tech and automation. I would not say art because we know there are a lot of garbage isekai shows that are being produced with almost no budget.
Peace.
Why would you convince me of what is an opinion?
But hey, let's play your game: I also think that OBJECTIVELY the quality has gone down. What's changed is your own standard, because you'Ve given up on demanding better. Because you know it's not getting better anymore.
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
What's that question, considering you are trying to do exactly that yourself?
What unit of measure do you use that has any objectivity to it and is not entirely subjective.
There are changes in the industry, advancements perhaps from the perspective of the executives who were able to cut costs and fire in-betweeners. Not advancements in the sense that things look better. Technology does not make a show look good inherently, no more than spending 300 million dollars on CGI automatically makes a modern blockbuster better looking than Star Wars or Terminator.
They are especially not "better animated", as "better animation" is almost always a function of just having a large production budget, talented artists and lax deadlines. It has little to nothing to do with technology.
Untrue. Drawing and coloring are now all done digitally, whereas before they were done with pencils and many layers for coloring and shading. This has made things much easier and more detailed. Heck, even our screens can now depict detail that simply did not exist before prior to new technology. In fact, we are remastering old works by using similar tech to make them look better because old stuff really does not hold up to our current standard.
Compare the Evangelion anime versus the Evangelion movies. Compare the original Fate Stay Night to Fate Zero or Unlimited Blade Works. It's not that they didn't want to or have the budget to make the newer, better looking versions. They simply did not have the technology for it.
Another example is Miyazaki's works. Yes, his art and animation are incredible. But the older works are not as good in those terms as the newer ones (Porco Rosso vs The Boy and the Heron). Then compare it visually to the newer Makoto Shinkai works, which have amazing visuals, especially for view and environment shots. I don't think those visuals are even possible using exclusively pencil art.
Last edited by shinta|hikari; Sun, 10-20-2024 at 02:20 PM.
Peace.
There is nothing about technology that enables "more detail". That's just a function of what *I* said: money, time, talent. There are Renaissance painters who put the reflection of the whole room the subject is in in the person's eye or on the side of a vase or whatever. Now you can do that with CGI, but that doesn't mean modern CGI shows look as good as the works of Renaissance masters.
The modern Berserk show uses far more technology than the 90s OVA, and indeed has objectively more frames of moving animation than that show which was largely stills with camera movements suggesting motion, but you are just going to get derisive laughter from me if you suggest it actually looks better as a consequence. It looks like fucking shit.
No problem: End of Evangelion looks a *lot* better than the Rebuilds.Compare the Evangelion anime versus the Evangelion movies.
I've never seen either of these films but this is a good example: for me, that is. He started storyboarding the film in 2016 and it released in 2023, a production time of seven years, it was the most expensive film ever produced in Japan, and was hand-animated by the most talented Japanese animation studio and director ever to exist. Money, time, and talent produced this film, not the hottest new CGI workstation.But the older works are not as good in those terms as the newer ones (Porco Rosso vs The Boy and the Heron).
Is this now the "hot takes"-thread?
Because while modern technology is surely helpful in the mass-creation of anime, I would absolutely disagree that anime per se look better now than in the past. The Ranma 1/2-remake is the perfect example. Does the remake maybe have more details and a cleaner look? Sure. But it also looks less "alive" and has less personality. The same is true for pretty much all older, hand-drawn anime. And even though I love the Evangelion Rebuild-movies, the issue with them is that what you're calling "better animation" is also very clearly noticable to be computer-assisted animation, whereas the original anime, whether it's End of Evangelion or the TV anime, have a more coherent, believable style of animation.
I'd say the best animated anime from old compared to new are all in all on par, but if I had a choice, I'd like to have hand-drawn anime in HD.
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
Yeah sorry my posts are only sort of related to the topic, I haven't seen enough shows per year even in the years I was actually watching anime to organize a list like this.
I wasn't specifically talking about CGI but other tools in general that aid in drawing, animating, and coloring, but you guys clearly see "better animation" as something different than I do, and that, in the end, is a matter of preference.
Let's agree to disagree. Have a good day.
Peace.
I didn't mean it negativelyFeel free to keep posting, I like the topic ^^
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
I'd like to hit this from two angles.
One, I don't think we really differ that much. Asuka fighting the mass produced Evangelion series in EoE looks better than any action sequence in Rebuild, right? The animation is more lavish, it's more elaborately choreographed, the Evangelions and the huge blades they wield are imbued with weight in a way that virtually nothing in Rebuild is (or in the entire rest of the industry for that matter). It looks astonishingly good, as good now as it did 25 years ago or whatever.
Do you really think that Asuka and Mari fighting the skeletonized Eva series in Rebuild 4, for example, is a match for this sequence because technology improved? I don't mind this setpiece, it's just not in the same ballpark. If you think it trounces EoE that's wild.
The other angle is, yes, art is subjective, but saying that Miyazaki's new movies look better because of improved technology is not a subjective assertion, it's an assertion of fact, and an untrue one.
Whatever you say.
Peace.
No.One, I don't think we really differ that much. Asuka fighting the mass produced Evangelion series in EoE looks better than any action sequence in Rebuild, right?
You may say it's cooler because she does all kinds of fatalaties or whatever but that has nothing to do with how it looks in general.
Rebuild 1.11 against Ramiel is way more gorgeous. When he melts away the mountain between him and EVA01 for example, it's something EoE couldn't hope to achieve.
Btw, that doesn't mean EoE looks bad, that specific scene looks great, among others, the show also has lots of weird ones though that look pretty derpy, even back then.
Just like how Rebuild has lots of weird stuff among really great scenes.
Why focus on good examples vs bad examples btw.
Use bad vs bad or good vs good.
The uglier shows of 199X look way more horrible than the uglier ones from today.
Even the uglified Hazurewaku (or something like that) show that aired last season, with garbage 3d CGI in it for no reason, is looking better than for example Slayers from the 199X years. But we don't even have to compare 2 different shows.
2009 Slayers is looking better than the old Slayers too and not due to low resolution, but due to how it was animated in general. (movements, detail etc.)
When you go to the prettier ones like Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell, then there is only the case to be made that someone prefers handdrawn over digital art.
Shows like Violet Evergarden exist, Arcane exists and who knows how many movies from the typical studios that made good stuff back then and still do it today.
Just like with computer games, there is a reason why people that come to the media for the first time don't watch all the classics (I'd argue they drop the media alltogether if you just recommend the classics), seems like either animation isn't timeless or it wasn't that special to begin with compared to stuff that releases today.
And just like it is with computer games, people that want to argue that games in the past were better are just absolutely insane.
Games that throned an entire genre would now be considered absolute garbage and people would complain if they had to pay more than 10€ for it, which is basically the equivalent of 5€ 20 years ago when they used to cost 40+€.
And I'm not talking about computer graphics here, I'm talking about features - or lack thereof
WC3 pathfinding and unit selection cap, for example?
Get that garbage out of here. Imagine a new title releasing like that and the rage on the forums and the screamers that want the devs to be killed for that.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Mon, 10-21-2024 at 02:51 AM.
What about that shot in particular is impossible? It's a five-second shot of the mountain being destroyed by a laser. This is a staging difference, not a technological improvement, unless you are asserting it is somehow impossible prior to the advent of modern digital filmmaking techniques for animators to draw a laser melting a mountain.
Why is it important what was possible or impossible back then.
The fact is that EoE couldn't hope to achieve that, or scenes like that would've been implemented with the same kind of quality.
They weren't - and it would look completely different as well to the point where a comparison would then again be completely moot.
You are somehow confusing what's technically possible with what is affordable to make and animate.
That's why you see the heat emitted from the engines of the military flying machines-things in a close up in Rebuild while in EoE they look like they work on invisible magnetism and the engine is basically suggested by not colouring that part at all.
https://imgur.com/a/7PZ8968
If a show can't afford it, it's not in there, if technology makes it affordable, it's in there.
Thus the quality of the product increased, through technology.
The earlier example you used about how artists were able to paint the reflection of a room on a vase or whatever is pretty irrelevant.
Animation is an industry, you get X hours per project. Back in 1995 as well as in 2024.
Digital Art made it possible to complete stuff faster, with better/same quality due to how the tools assist the artist.
And it's not only that, you ignore the fact that stuff like resolution is a thing and thus all kinds of details that previously perhaps have been actually drawn (or could have been) are lost on the device it copied onto.
Shinta is 100% correct, factually, because that's just a thing and something that's still true today in many cases, most notably in computer games for example.
But even in movies, and in anime as well.
On top of that, you can actually zoom in on digital art and get pixel perfect detail, you can't do that when actually drawing with a pencil and if it has to be coloured, it gets even more messy.
It's physically impossible to achieve the same detail digital art allows you to, even if you go out of your way and say that artist work like people that assemble a rolex watch.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Mon, 10-21-2024 at 03:53 AM.
This is actually a perfect example of what's the problem with modern anime versus older ones.
You're totally right that the worst anime nowadays look better than the worst anime back then. BUT: More older anime look better than the majority of the better modern anime. Modern technology made it easier to raise the average quality, but it didn't help elevate the ceiling, and that's a problem. Why? Because too many anime studios are content with this technological average and stop trying.
I can tell this by looking at some modern anime that I actually liked, very much even, but have shit animation, which shouldn't be the case. Stuff like "Honzuki", "Spider Isekai" or "Kokkoku" shouldn't look as shit as they did and probably wouldn't, had they been animated 20 years ago. But "thanks" to modern technology, studios saw that they could achieve an "acceptable" result and simply stopped trying. And that's why, even with all the technological benefits, the number of truly breathtaking looking anime series is very rare, mostly limited to singular scenes that some nerds will call "sakuga" just because it's not shit for a couple seconds.
The biggest issue for older anime to compete with the best modern ones is their format. 4:3 instantly looks "old". But zooming in to turn it into 16:9 makes the linework too obvious, too thick, and thus looks bad, too. Instead of remaking anime like Ranma 1/2, maybe someone should remake older anime by expanding their detail from 4:3 to 16:9. Just draw in the left and right side, lol.
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
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