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Fr one of the reasons I can't get into anime very much is because of how abstract and inhuman most characters look and behave. I know there are cultural and historical reasons for the style and tropes, but it makes everything completely unrelatable to me.
So I'll forever be one of those guys who's like "Cowboy Bebop is great but that's as far as I go"
Hayao "I hate weebs almost as much as life itself" Miyazaki
Holy crap haha! What a quote. Certainly made his point of view clear lol
TBF he is a renowned asshole. He has publically called the work of his own son "an insult to life itself".
The insult to life itself comment was about generative AI. I think what he said to his son was something like "he's not an adult and he should quit"
After watching what he did to Earthsea, I see his point tbh
edit: Posted by mistake
That's a bummer. Frankly most creative (or other) genius tends to come with a LOT of downsides from everything I've seen, so not too surprising. A creative legacy like his is not built on reasonable takes, lol. That's no excuse for being a jerk of course, I don't like jerks.
He is infamously eccentric. Maybe no-one ever set his talent aside for long enough to teach him manners. And it was probably too late to do that ages ago.
But he also has humanitarian ideas. Looking at the messages his movies convey, it's clear to me he wishes people the best.
Yet he vilifies so much of the real world and the people in it. And it just feels like a refusal to even try to understand.
Cowboy Bebop (ESPECIALLY the dub) was very much written and "acted" in a "western" style. Same with contemporaries like Outlaw Star and Big O (which is very much a referene to Batman).
In general? Rowdy Roddy Piper once said (paraphrasing) that pro wrestling is about explosive acting and emoting and film is about implosive acting and emoting. And ask anyone who has done theatre (which pro wrestling basically is)) and they'll say something similar. Because when the camera zooms in to that single tear in Ryan Gosling's eye? We can see it. When Ryan Gosling is on the stage behind twelve layers of plexiglass so we don't try to lick his sweat? We can't see that tear and he needs to make a big gesture to make it clear he is having an emotional breakdown.
And that applies to animated content. With very few exceptions (almost all short films), you can't have the level of detail where such a subtle response will be noticed. Even the truly amazing finales of Cowboy Bebop was built on us having learned enough about the characters to fill in the gaps by that point.
So you get the very over exaggerated "acting" styles so that you know this fairly hastily drawn person is really feeling it. And that is true regardless of the country of origin for the cartoon.
If you watched cowboy bebop have you ever watched vash the stampede?
You mean Trigun? Ofc
And GitS and Eva and the other "classics"
What's weird, classics should inspire, be based upon. Yet there are few anime going that route. I mean there wasn't good "classics" like anime in 15 years at least as far as I know.
Dorohedoro is definitely one of the stranger anime I've seen in recent memory and even they managed to fit noses on their characters. Caiman also technically has a nose, I guess, or at least he's got nostrils.
I'd also strongly recommend it and it's supposed to get a second season at some point.
You know what anime has noses and distinctive designs?
My GOAT, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
But if you wanna talk unrealistic body standards....
I don't go to anime for body standards bro 😭
Between the anime women who'd get two black eyes if they went for a light jog, Goku's muscles somehow not ripping out of his skin whenever he got to a new level of Super Saiyan, and whatever the hell is going on with glorious skinny legend Lelouch Lamperouge and the length of his limbs, JJBA might be on the more "attainable" side of anime bodies, especially Part 4 onwards.
I've watched a lot of anime, and Code Geass character designs were the worst I've endured.
Side note: I don't recommend Code Geass, I think it's on par with Death Note for the most contrived intellectually-mastabatory power fantasy. If you stop to think about what's happening you'll realise none of the characters are making rational choices.
I...disagree with most of your comment 😭 But I know Clamp's character designs are an acquired taste. (Imo they always look better in manga form than in anime)
Lelouch/Code Geass is most anime watcher's first introduction to "revolutionary anti-hero" protagonists (I was one of those people), so I think people recommend it out of nostalgia. Also there are some twists in the story (iykyk) that are really good and I think it's dismissive to just Cinemasins them away.
But adults who want space wars and political drama would probably prefer Gundam and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, depending on their preferred pacing.
Caiman also technically has a nose, I guess, or at least he’s got nostrils.
Acktshully, he's got a snout, but technically has a nose because of the guy in his mouth 🤓
The adaptation is very solid and faithful, it makes good decisions like cutting mostly irrelevant parts and going for a baroque style for the backgrounds instead of the chaotic, nearly organic style of the manga, which is easier to animate. But if you haven't already, don't wait for the anime, read it, it gets crazier (and makes sense strangely).
This could turn into a thread of its own of people just recommending stuff, but I'm curious if you've looked up any of the current more popular series like Chainsaw Man, Dungeon Meshi (aka Delicious in Dungeon), Jujutsu Kaisen, and the recent Netflix animes like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Terminator Zero. I'd say all of them feel like the late night anime that was aired on Toonami back in the 2000s.
I also recommend the movie Redline to everybody because it's such a visual and audio treat. It's like if Hanna Barbera had hired somebody like Studio Ghibli to make a Wacky Racers movie.
Look into western anime like Arcane, Avatar, DOTA: Dragon's blood, things like that.
It doesn't feel so... anime. And some of them have legit amazing and "grounded" character design, movement, expressiveness and such.
Add Castlevania to that list
I watched castlevania, and I liked it fine, but in terms of style/tropes it feels more anime than western anime to me.
Interesting, because Castlevania is a Japanese IP, but is written by Warren Ellis and animated by the same studio as Adventure Time, one of the most beloved series to come out of the 2010s animation boom. Meanwhile DotA: DB is a western IP that was animated by Korean Studio Mir (who have also worked on the final seasons of both Legend of Korra and the Boondocks in the past).
I got more "anime" feelings from DOTA than I did Castlevania, but I also consume more fantasy anime than the average person I think.
DOTA's plot is kinda over the top, but somehow I feel the writing and general feel is more "western," though looking like LoK may have biased me some. Actually this is probably a bad example.
Castlevania, the way characters move, its drawn, just the general feel of the drama feels more "anime" to me.
In terms of my opinion, maybe its more accurate to state they both straddle the line.
You know what, when you mention the movement of the characters, I see what you mean. Castlevania characters move more realistically, but it's still pretty stylized, thus the "almost anime" feeling.
Yeah.
Avatar's obsession with realistic body movement is an exception, but even if you look at stuff with heavy fighting like DCAU, it feels more "grounded" while anime feels more "dramatic." These aren't the exact adjectives I'm looking for, but maybe you get what I mean, and Castlevania and DOTA both veer towards the middle.
My biggest issue is that I'll start one highly rated anime which is serious and artistic, and then the moment I invite friends over Netflix decides to fill my recommendations with a bunch of boob service thumbnails.
You can go far enough but Cowboy Bebop is still the best. Not because of it's graphics.
I have terrible difficulties to enjoy those anime that require irreal coloured hair stiles and eccentric complements to distinguish the characters…
Recently I felt a bit of freshness with an anime, which faces I do not find “beautiful” or well drawn at all, but they were all quite distinguishable without the need of weird coloured hair… Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, despite the cartoonish style for once in a while I was glad to not see an endless amount of plain “beautiful” stereotyped faces…
In my opinion, if animation isn't making characters look and move in stylized manners then it isn't as fun. It's why Turning Red was more enjoyable to look at than things like Frozen (which looked stylized but the characters move realistically).
Jin-Roh