Cheap Japanese Animation Thread

[schwarz ritter]

As much as I love anime, there is something that's always bothered me from the start: ever since I watched Digimon when I was three, I noticed something quite peculiar. Care to guess? If you did, you most likely noticed one of these things:

-The characters seem to only move their mouths and nothing else when they talk. They just remain still, their mouth flaps being the same "Up-and-Down" motion with no sense of vocabulary articulation whatsoever.

-Excessive use of keyframes.

-Cheap CGI.

-Background characters have no detail whatsoever, and characters that are far away are equally undetailed and their features are completely unrecognizable.


Like I said, I love anime, and I don't mind any of this stuff because...well, I've grown used to it. The style is great and all.
But then, what bugs me off, is that there are people that actually say anime has better production qualities than Disney.

Huh.

I never thought 12 frames per second was "superior" quality than 24 frames per second. How ignorant was I!


Anyhow, I'm interested in your agreements/disagreements and whatnot. And I'm not sure if its in the right section. Hopefully, this won't get locked and instead be moved to its correct place.

Godspeed. Gotta pawn Feddie scum in UCGO.

[Dark Duel]

I may be a little biased because I'm of the opinion that Disney hasn't put out a decent animated feature (by which I'm referring to CONVENTIONAL animation, not Pixar's CGI stuff) in at least a decade or so, and seems perfectly content to re-release the same old classics every couple of years (kinda like George Lucas).
However...

actually say anime has better production qualities than Disney.

Generalizations like that annoy me to no end, simply because to make a blanket statement that X is better than B when talking about such a broad subject implies that it is 100% true 100% of the time, which is quite simply false.
The production value of anime is going to vary widely from series to series, depending on all sorts of different factors. Ditto Disney cartoons. Or ANY cartoons for that matter - the production value for, to use one example, The Lion King are probably much higher than, say, South Park or Beavis and Butthead.
The same holds true for anime - compare Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex or the Rebuild of Evangelion movies to something like, say, Pokemon and there's going to be differences.

That said, I do think you're right, that there are a lot of times cases of really, REALLY obvious cut corners in animation - it's not by any means exclusive to anime, but it tends to be particularly obvious in many anime series.

[schwarz ritter]

I completely agree: I hate generalizations myself. That's why I used it as an example. The same goes for people like this:

http://www.animesucks.com/

They're pretty much losers with no life who are sad with themselves for not making any money themselves.

As for the cut corners: I think Justice League tended to do a lot of that in the last episodes. But even then, at least the mouth flaps tried to articulate the vowels as closely as possible, so you don't notice it so much. But in anime...its as if it were done like that on purpose.

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

I completely agree: I hate generalizations myself. That's why I used it as an example. The same goes for people like this:

http://www.animesucks.com/

Wow, those are some disgusting haters. They do know that Star Wars and Star Trek and Twilight fans can be just as bad if not worse?

As for less than stellar anime... well there are several episodes of Macross that come to mind. Anyone guess which ones I'm thinking of?

[schwarz ritter]

http://www.animesucks.com/

Wow, those are some disgusting haters. They do know that Star Wars and Star Trek and Twilight fans can be just as bad if not worse?
)

The guys who made that site are losers: they actually took time to download anime images...edit them...and spend who knows how many hours of their lives to make all of those rants.

Disgusting.

I've never had experiences with Star Wars and Trekkies because, well, maybe I've been lucky enough to only encounter the "civilized" section of said fandoms lol. But Twilighters....dear God, the Twilighters...

[Seraphic]

You might want to be careful throwing around a link that contains NSFW images.

[schwarz ritter]

Oh crap....you're right. Sorry. Just wanted to show the most offensive example of disgusting hatedom to make a point. But yeah, I'll be careful next time

[Cardi Doorl]

You can edit your post above to note that the link has NSFW content while you're at it.

In any case that site, aside from being ancient (no updates since '03!) is some really obvious tongue-in-cheek trolling that would've been hilarious to high-school Cardi. You're not seriously outraged by it, are you?

[schwarz ritter]

Nope. Not at all. If I would, I'd be a loser myself

[tHeWasTeDYouTh]

Gundam Seed with the cheap Archangel CGI killed it for me, I would also watch Pilot Candidate back in the day, lol at the cgi

I actually bough all of the Macross series(first one that came out) and lol at all the reused footage, like every battle, I guess back in the 80s they thought no one would ever notice

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

You mean Macross 7? That's usually the one lambasted for overuse of stock footage.

[tHeWasTeDYouTh]

You mean Macross 7? That's usually the one lambasted for overuse of stock footage.

nope the original, the freaking space battles are almost ALL THE SAME footage. The ONLY TIME the animation gets good is when the Earth gets bombarded, the animation jumped up and looked amazing and after that the next episodes was reused!!!

[DerZocker]

Gundam Seed with the cheap Archangel CGI killed it for me, I would also watch Pilot Candidate back in the day, lol at the cgi

I actually bough all of the Macross series(first one that came out) and lol at all the reused footage, like every battle, I guess back in the 80s they thought no one would ever notice

Yeah, and those ugly plastic colorpallettes^^'. It's even more baffling when you consider that it came right after the gorgeous looking Turn A. And hell, even the cgi effects in Char's Chounterattack or even Galaxy Rangers fit way better with the animation than todays cheap money-saving tricks www.med-hilfe.com

[Geoxile]

Even Gundam Unicorn uses cheap CG. Every time the Unicorn transforms I want to facepalm. Macross Frontier was just CG fest, horrible. It seems like these days the only Japanese studios that actually produce high quality CG belong to game companies.

[tHeWasTeDYouTh]

Even Gundam Unicorn uses cheap CG. Every time the Unicorn transforms I want to facepalm. Macross Frontier was just CG fest, horrible. It seems like these days the only Japanese studios that actually produce high quality CG belong to game companies.

the Gundam Unicorn CGI for some reason looks ok to me but the biggest thing that pisses me off is when they have derp background animation

in Episode 5 of Unicorn at the end when the General Revil appears and full frontal is about to shoot at it the ships looks so freaking bad and the federation mobile suits are all copy pasted and look like crap

damn I hate when I notice stuff like that

[the Gatekeeper]

Speaking of Gundam Unicorn: I know episode 4 gets ragged on a lot, but remember the scene when the Zeon remnents take down that submarine? (Dolphine something?) Wasn't the commander just standing there clutching that subway-esque pole like a statue as that other dude was reading off the damage?

Also on the subject of Unicorn: Is no one going to reference the scene in episode 3 when the Unicorn's "mouth vents" looked like they were drawn with a mechanical pencil? Or did I just break some kind of unspoken rule?

If you look back at the original Full Metal Panic! some of that animation can look pretty cheap at times. (Or is that not what we're talking about.)

Another one from Gonzo: Gatekeepers. The mechs looke horrendous at times. (Most of the time.)

Lastly, on the subject of "animesucks.com," I have to deal with these kinds of people at school every day! (Thank you summer vacation. Damn you August.) No amount of reason can sway their blind hatred. A few Star Wars fanboys (And one who likes a certain type of pony) who think all anime is hentai and/or that mecha is a "poorly written genre." Reason? Because it just is. (I've tried a healthy debate, and ended up failing each time.)

Disgusting.

You said it shwarz ritter.

Sorry for the rant towards the end......

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

That's funny, since I'm a Star Wars fan and I like anime just fine. Well for the most part.

[the Gatekeeper]

That's funny, since I'm a Star Wars fan and I like anime just fine. Well for the most part.

Please understand I wasn't making any kind of blanket statement, (then again, you never said that I did) I'm aware that not all Star Wars fans are extremely hateful. (Like most groups.) It's just, at my school anime is almost heresy to some. (A very loud, opinionated some that happen to cite Star Wars as an example of superior media.) That being said, while I do not like Star Wars, I have no real problem with Star Wars fans... Unless they are the ultra-elitest buch like the ones at my school. (If I wanted to pull a George Costanza, I could tell you that I'm best friends with a Star Wars fan.)

But back on topic: While it in no way hampered my enjoyment of the show, I remember that one episode of Dai-guard (I forget which but it had the "rocket punch") in which the Dai-guard fell over and it just looked like a still image rolling backwards. That was odd to see. (I'm not actually sure how many times that happens, because I haven't seen the show all the way through.)

Here's another one: The fourth episode of Gun X Sword (I love that show), the Dann looked badly off model. I just assumed it was because they blew the budget on the (El Dorado) first three episodes Gonzo-style, although Metal Blue utalized some pretty obvious CGI. *shudder* (Dann still looked pretty good that episode so I can accept it.)

[Ryujin]

Reason? Because it just is. (I've tried a healthy debate, and ended up failing each time.)

One suspects that they do this as a pre-emptive defensive maneuver to avoid bringing up certain elements of SW & being revealed as hypocrites--as an SW fan myself, I know full well that the SW franchise is rife with turkeys, then and now. Take the conclusion to the Legacy comics, for example--now that is just plain bad writing. Or if you want to avoid EU material, just mention Ewok Adventure, Battle for Endor & E-E-E-E-Ewoks. Or, for a sharp kick in the nuts, the Star Wars Holiday Special while gently reminding them that denying its existence would also be denying Boba Fett's screen debut.

Anyways, to keep in topic, episode 13 of The Third: Aoi Hitomi no Shoujo. Or, wasn't the MC a girl in the previous episode?!? The preview alone stopped my marathon viewing cold in its tracks.

[the Gatekeeper]

Reason? Because it just is. (I've tried a healthy debate, and ended up failing each time.)

One suspects that they do this as a pre-emptive defensive maneuver to avoid bringing up certain elements of SW & being revealed as hypocrites--as an SW fan myself, I know full well that the SW franchise is rife with turkeys, then and now. Take the conclusion to the Legacy comics, for example--now that is just plain bad writing. Or if you want to avoid EU material, just mention Ewok Adventure, Battle for Endor & E-E-E-E-Ewoks. Or, for a sharp kick in the nuts, the Star Wars Holiday Special while gently reminding them that denying its existence would also be denying Boba Fett's screen debut.

Well, ya see, thing is I usually don't get the chance to argue at all. It's pretty much just them crapping on anime and telling me to shut up everytime I offer some kind of counter-arguement. According to them I "hate everything that's good," when in reality I only pointed out the Empire's apparent lack of a logistics (Would it have killed them to put some kind of mesh over the Death Star's heat-vent thing? How about multiple force-field generators for the second one? A multi-generator system gave me enough trouble in Zone of the Enders that I just gave up and came back the next day.) department, but they take it as heresy.

Anyway: I'm not really sure if this counts, but Gatekeepers 21. For an OVA (or OAV, but what's the difference?) the animation can be pretty bad at times, of course, I still enjoy it.
Here's an example: When Kikai Shogun shows up, his head is rendered in CGI and is "mouth" moves up and down like a nut-cracker when he talks.
Another one:

Spoiler

When Reiji gets his artificial leg blown off in the last episode he obviously can't stand up on both legs, but during the heroic second wind scene he does! And then he's quickly back on one leg. Can the gate give back things that it has taken from its users? Apparently so.

Multiple times in the original Full Metal Panic! the Arbalest is shown with that badass mouth-knife thing, even though it got lost earlier. (Why in the hell was Arbalest's head-unit built with those clips if the blade never gets replaced after it gets lost?)

So we count all of Transformers G1 right? (Blue Optimus Prime and Soundwave being drawn as Sideswipe that one time.)

To cap off this post I'm going to mention at the end of Char's Counter Attack and assumed since this is Mecha Talk, that we've all seen it.

Spoiler

At the end, when Amuro was holding Char's escape-pod, why did it appear so huge? Dramatic Emphasis? Nu Gundam probably could have held it like a flipping poke-ball! But it didn't.