What is it about anime that makes it more charming and intimate than western animation?

What is it about anime that makes it more charming and intimate than western animation?

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Nothing really.

Nippon strong.

Drama, fantasy and "mature" themes handled in some kind of realistic tone.

Western animation is just one of two options, 100% humorous (South park, american dad, family guy, rick and morty etc) or kid shows that have "mature" themes diluted so either kids or adults can get it.

So in the end, you have lol wacky shows for adults or lol wacky shows for kids

That's a really subjective opinion, that I agree with.

You think SP and R&M are 100% humorous

I have to laugh at that and I dont even like those shows

Better use of silence and awareness that people are too crazy to attack or kill others out of nowhere like in the amerikanistan movies. European movies are kind of similar to Japanese movies.

>Drama, fantasy and "mature" themes handled in some kind of realistic tone.
>realistic
Name 5 anime that actually do this.

Basically this. Adult western animation can't get past "animated sitcom". And I say this as someone who likes SP and early Simpsons.
Which is a shame because the west has proven that they can make decent animation like The Maxx or Aeon Flux.

GitS, Bebop, S;G, Akira, Gunslinger Girl.

They try.

Disney makes 100% kids movies because then the parent has to buy a ticket for their kid and themselves, then buy the bd so their kid can watch frozen at home, then buy toys with those characters etc.

Theres nothing really aimed at adults, even the "adult" shows are something mostly aimed at teenage boys.

>GitS
Yeah no
>S;G
Nope
>Gunslinger Girl
Kek
So basically you only managed to give me two shows.

Odd. It seems somehow people can have different tastes.

>Yeah no
>Nope
>Kek
Good arguments, kiddo.

Oh, so you are a retard. Okay.

Japanese
>I like cute girls and that's all that matters

Europeans
>Animations must have purpose

Americans
>what the fuck is an animation? Oh Disney?

>Europeans
>>Animations must have purpose
What is this, 1920? Europe hasn't produced anything with any artistic value for decades. Nouvelle vague was the last time European cinema meant anything.

The closest you get is French faux-anime, which is only marginally better than American faux-anime.

excluding the fantasy part:
>Honey and Clover
>Nodame Cantabile
>3gatsu no Lion
>Paradise Kiss
>Nana
>Beck
>Welcome to the NHK
>Onihei
>Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Including the fantasy part:
>Mushishi
>Moribito
>Mononoke (TV)
>Ghost Hound
>Serial Experiments Lain
>Kino's Journey
>Kuuchuu Buranko
>Moyashimon

the list goes on

now compare that to all of western animation from French to American

Because adult western animation is made in harmony.

Fanservice

Western animation is objectively more charming and intimate than Japanese animation. The reason why you believe it's not is because you forget where you are; You are on Sup Forums and are therefore, to some degree, an outcast of society. You find solace in the artistic medium (of an objectively weaker art style) from a foreign country that coincidentally panders to men (of all ages) who fail with women and find themselves addicted to forms of escapism of degrees abnormal to the healthy human male. The tragedy is that "anime" is artistically weak and vastly inferior to western animation, which can be objectively shown by the budgeting, gross revenue, happiness of the workers, and regular standards of art around the world, standards given to us hundreds of years ago. In other words, the great artists of the Italian Renaissance would have vomited uncontrollably if they were ever to lie eyes on the pieces of trash that the Japanese call "animation". Take your screenshot for example; Viewing it gives me no emotion, the protagonist stands there awkwardly in front of a a girl telling him a line we've heard billions of times in mass media, and they're inside of a room of which I'm unable to even discern where it is. A nurse's office, recreational room? The screenshot is devoid of anything meaningful, and yet you say there is something intimate about it. You are delusional, and you are autistic.

That's a lot of words you used just to call one mediocre screenshot shit.

Western animation seems to focus more on making shows for young children. Their cartoons made for young adults tend to be fairly politicized and most of the characters are fugly as shit. There's seems to be terminal tumbleritis within the western animation community. Stuff like Batman Beyond and the original Teen Titans, hell even the old X-Men Evolution series have all been replaced by shit like pic related. My best friend works in the industry as an animator. He does stuff for Archer with FX. Tells me it's very hard to pitch something more akin to Anime for those studios because they don't believe it will appeal to the demographics. There are of course some exceptions like The Last Airbender and the original Clone Wars. The Last Airbender in particular was a success and was the first animated series in a long time to come out of the west that wasn't episodic slice of life comedy.

>pretends that budgeting, gross revenue, happiness of workers, and regular standards of art weren't mentioned as supportive items of evidence

What's wrong, too mad to look at the facts? Let's take one item for example, happiness of the workers. Average animator in the US makes about 60,000USD, while an animator in Japan (maybe) makes the equivalent of about 30,000USD, assuming he works full time. After reading interviews and listening to their workers, you'll see they're unhappy too. This is just one piece of evidence of the incompetence of their entire industry, not only because their financial structures are incompetent, but because they are shit artists themselves, and they deserve it. You mad to hear the truth?

>.05 cents was deposited into your Disney shill account

I look at the wages part in a different light
They aren't technically workers, they're hobbyists who happen to get payed
And don't give me that bullshit about Italian painters, they'd be in awe
DaVinci would probably be amazed at it, Raphael would spend days watching moe

It's just made differently. There's no magic trick to it.

>they get paid more, therefore their work is better

Are you being serious right now?

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Hand drawn animation.

Old western animation was based as fuck.
Even the last 2D hand drawn movies like El Dorado, Treasure Planet or Prince of Egypt were fucking based

3D is good sometimes, but it often falls into uncanney valley territory and it loses it's novelty when every new fucking animation movie/show is made 3D or if 2D, in Adobe Flash. It's sterile and too perfect.

You don't get shit like pic related from western animation anymore

Not that user, but how exactly does the happiness or pay of the workers determine that Japanese animation is shit? How exactly is it relevant?
The same goes for budget and gross revenue. Is western animation great because a lot of money is tossed at it? Or because it's marketed to tonnes of people?

Even a lot of Japanese 2D animation now falls in the squeaky clean, "inorganic" category. Present day A-1 pictures are the perfect example of this, they're way too "clean" and lack the "rawness" of the anime of the 80s and 90s. I can't explain it in the right terms, so I hope you get what I mean.

>El Dorado, Treasure Planet or Prince of Egypt
Well, they're great but they expose what high quality Western animation is like most of the time: it's either Disney, or some other studio trying to be Disney.

Kek, where the fuck is this from?

Western animators getting paid more is just one piece of evidence of their superiority among dozens of pieces, but you keep pretending I say one or two things when instead I've said many. Gross revenue, standards of art, growth of their industry domestically and in foreign markets - did you know that there are many besides myself who've theorized that the industry would have already gone bankrupt altogether without the foreign market? Some Japanese producers are quoted on this. But you keep pretending I'm saying only one thing.

At least you acknowledge I'm saying more than one thing. An objective thing you cannot deny with Western animation is that it reaches more people (and their hearts, lets be honest). It is objectively superior in this way. However, you could say Japan offers superior responses from the human psyche, but my argument would be that this is the exception for their rule, not the standard, which would render OP's statement false because he generalizes it. Mushishi, SEL, Kino's Journey, etc. mentioned here are EXCEPTIONS to the Japanese standard of art, so overall, Japan's tastes for art is still vastly inferior to the west. Japan's "standard" for art is escapism for the sake of taking money from the otaku's pockets. In my opinion, the Japanese industry can be saved from their inevitable bankruptcy if they condemn the otaku, but they cannot for many more multiple reasons which I won't get into.

Remember the golden rule of shitposting? Ironic shitposting is still shitposting. The Japanese anime industry has been shitposting (creating degenerate shows for otaku) for decades now, and they're about to get their dues for it soon.

Not him but the dude looks like Chris Redfield, but RE is still Japanese
The thing is, what ruins it are the guns, just give them a machete, dagger, sword, or simply have them fight unarmed and it would have been pretty great

You keep saying that reaching a wide audience is good, but in reality it's awful
It means pandering to the lowest of the low, the absolute bottom of the barrel to try to reach everyone
All the artistic masterpieces of old weren't meant for the general public, they were meant for a very restricted group of people, like anime
Did you know that most people 200 years ago couldn't even read?

>I can't explain it in the right terms
- static line weight
- the timing of the movement is different because the illusion of weight and inertia isn't being applied to moving parts
- digital coloring and effects, having so many options leads to homogenisation of palettes and a lack of contrast
- background art is unnecessarily softened and muddy

Am I understanding correctly that you measure the worth of a medium by the amount of people that enjoy it? I realise (and think we agree) that entertainment is the prime purpose of both eastern and western animation. However, I think that western animation's popularity (in contrast with Japanese) is mainly a matter of there being more westerners than Japanese. As much as I hate to admit it, the West has become a fairly monotonous place, where most people will settle or aim for the American standard in most things, including entertainment. And I might be wrong, but I'd say this is less the case in Asia, which means there is a smaller audience for the cultural preferences of the Japanese. That's why I'd say that the success in numbers (be they people or dollars) is meaningless. It's not better, there are just more people who like that sort of thing (I know this may sound odd, but I hope you get what I'm saying).

If you're using popularity and budget as a primary metric, Shrek 2 is objectively "more touching" than the vast majority of animated works
The OP's phrasing is retarded, but the best works of both the west and east are often exceptions

The new residen evil movie (not the hollywood one) vendetta I think is called

>"masterpieces of old weren't meant for the general public"
>Fast-forward hundreds of years, the greatest masterpieces of art are known to everyone, because they're inherently good.

Logic has defeated you.

Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about. Do you realize that what you're essentially saying is that the bigger a country is, the more successful it will be in whatever it does? If that's the case, why aren't India, China, and Russia ahead of the US in terms of power, influence, etc.? It might not last forever, but they're not right now, why? Because population doesn't matter when it comes to success, the "smartness' and diligence of its people matter. And in regards to this topic, western animators that make up their industry are just more competent as a whole than the Japanese.

I don't disagree that exceptions are where the true masterpieces lie, (art which breaks the norm and has great value), but let's not fucking pretend Shrek isn't a great character, cunt. I fucking loved him as a kid, everyone did, not because EVERYONE did but because he was fantastic, didn't give a shit, was fucking hilarious (onions and layers and shit), and was badass fighting dragons n shit. Don't be a cunt because of your bias, and remember where you are.

>static line weight
Could you elaborate on what this means?

>the illusion of weight and inertia isn't being applied to moving parts
Why isn't this the case anymore? You'd think computer animation would aid in making this easier, right?

The masterpieces are masterpieces because they weren't meant for everyone
Modern products aimed at a general audience are not even comparable
Saying something is good because many people like it is a fallacy

This. Modern anime looks like shit. Digital coloring was a mistake.

OP picture looks like crap. Boring background, boring characters. And most anime looks like this nowadays, like someone took a photo and photoshoped it adding some light and blur.

>If that's the case, why aren't India, China, and Russia ahead of the US in terms of power, influence, etc.?
First off, Russia has only 140mil inhabitants, so that fits poorly into your list.
Furthermore, I think you may have missed the part where I painted the West (meaning NA and Europe) as a monotonous blob. Which means you're already looking at a population of around 800 million. Then there's the issue about advancements in technology, which adequately explain why China and India are still behind, yet catching up. Of course, you could argue that Westerners were always better at things, allowing them to make those advancements, but that seems overly simplistic to me.
Lastly, I think you kind of missed my point. I didn't even mean (though it's true to some extent) that large populations will always achieve more in every thing. I meant that in this case, culture/entertainment, the success of a certain style cannot be adequately measured in numbers alone (though maybe in percentages), as cultural differences will make different populations like different things. This, however, does not mean that a medium liked by fewer people is worth less, just that there are fewer people attracted to that style.

I mean that there is very little variety in line thickness and they're always smooth and aliased because nobody felt like changing their line tool from the default setting.

>Why isn't this the case anymore?
Either the animator doesn't know how to, or simply doesn't because it's easier and he at no point receives any feedback about it. I'm not saying all animation is like that now but it's evident there has been some kind of a shift. Lots of stuff these days where you can't tell where the beginning and end points of a motion are, and the objects behave like they're made of cardboard.

So much autism in one post

Western animation wasn't always so bad. Disney himself did incredible work. It's the jews that took over the company later that ripped the soul out of it. Lots of old shorts and movies had nods to mature audiences as well as things to keep kids entertained.

These days, anything made west is either made for actual babies, capeshit, or repulsive calarts spawn for tumblr-types. Not to mention there's no actual talent for animation and drawing left, just monkeys using CG, flash, and other tools

>Disney
>Rotoscope Shit
>Good
>Actual animation
choose only one

Not anymore. It's obvious that their main target audience are young Millennials. The kind of people who draw fanart and ship characters. But because children also watch their shit they can't afford to make it too risky.

You are retarded. Only very few things in old Disney movies were rotoscoped. Usually just human characters. In Pinocchio for example the only rotoscoped character was the Blue Fairy and she appeared for maybe 5 minutes.

...

I actually like the look of early digital coloring despite how much people rail against it, it's just done in a low resolution which makes it harder to watch on today's hardware.

Modern anime's problem comes from stylistic choices and filter abuse

Because you are a weeaboo

Pretty much

>and filter abuse
Everything must be covered with orange. EVERYTHING.

I hate how modern anime characters look. I think I enjoyed Steins;Gate mostly because the main character looked different.

Cinematography, at least in terms of TV. Western cartoons tend to just show the most obvious ways of doing a scene at ugly, flat, repetitive angles. There's little attempt placed there to utilize the framing in order to boost the effect of individual lines and instead scenes are clearly someone blindly throwing character models onto the screen with no regard as to how the moment even could be constructed. While anime tends to be generic with how the frames are composed, it at least tries. Stale over-the-shoulder shots still has more effort put into it than the same scene of the characters at 3/4 portrait.
In terms of films it's the marketability that nulls it. They usually try their hardest to make films that will hit the four-quadrant demographics in order to appeal to everyone. While this isn't a bad thing per se it also makes them feel less personal and unique than something aiming at a specific niche. When you only have around 2 hours it's harder to do any given element exceptionally well when you keep adding elements in order to make the entire crowd happy.
Obviously there's exceptions for both but frame composition and focus are really important for making something feel intimate.

Westerners have no souls.

For me, it's probably the voice acting. since i'm neither Japanese or an English speaker, foreign languages are like charms to me. just hearing the lines delivered right and with emotional accuracy makes me happy.

>ines delivered right and with emotional accuracy
>EEEEEEHHHH???
>BAKA URUSAI HENTAI!
>ONNI CHAN PLESASE FUCK ME

That too. Shit, anime like Katanagatari, S;G or Tatami Galaxy get instant brownie points just for being drawn sightly different.

Even Ping Pong, which is kind of hard to appreciate, becomes much more appealing just because of the difference

Same.

But English has the worst emoting of all languages. Just under Chinese. Americans don't have emotions.

>Yeah no
Yeah yeah
>Nope
Yep
>Kek
Lel

Your turn.

Shot composition, directing amazing background music, artstyle and character design.
Anime aesthetic > cartoon aesthetic. Albeit some Sup Forums creations come close to it in form of samurai Jack, Adventure Time, and the closest to get it - Wakfu from France.

Japan has actual voice actors instead of failed actors

I hate how girls sound in most anime. It's so fake.

Flavor-of-the-month shows are at least delivered with cute and appealing voices

You are fucking stupid, get out of this website

>cute and appealing
Only for otaku and weebs.

>Western animation wasn't always so bad
Western animation is still good though. Way better than japanese animation anyway, even in shit shows.

>cute and appealing
Hahahaha

You don't hang out with many teenage girls I reckon

Nothing, weeaboos are just pedophiles in denial.

>Western animation
This term alone is wrong. There is more to "Western" animation than American TV shows and mainstream theatrical movies.

>There is more to "Western" animation than American TV shows and mainstream theatrical movies.
Once again, maybe in 1920. Nowadays Europe matters fuckall in terms of mainstream media. Do you know what the most popular "French" movie/franchise of the past decade was? Taken. Yeah, bet you didn't know it was French. Because all Europeans can do nowadays is copy America, or copy Japan.

"Western" does mean "American" nowadays.

Differing taste in certain cliches and tropes.

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Variety in story and artstyle. Anime is it's own entire medium because so many different types of stories exist, whereas western cartoons are really more of a genre due to the limited view westerners have of cartoons. Like that other guy said, lol wacky kids sows or lol wacky adultrs shows. Anime can be anything from lol wacky kids shows to porn to romance to examinations of the human psyche. There are some more varied western shows, but these are the exception and not the rule. Anyone can find their specific niche in anime, even you grumpy 70 year old grandfather.

I'm sure that description fits manga much more than it fits anime.

Most anime is about teenagers with attitude doing stuff and/or with a high school setting. The audience is clearly teens and young adults

Snow White was also one of them, if I remember correctly.

Bebop, clannad, psycho pass, welcome to the NHK, Hajime no Ippo, Baccano, 1997 berserk, Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai, Sunabouzu The Big O, samurai champloo, etc.

>the greatest masterpieces of art are known to everyone
They're known to everyone because the people who actually care about that stuff keep talking about it, because academics keep talking about it, and because museums continue to show it off. Ask a random person on the street 10 of Mozart's compositions and they'll probably just say Requiem or Ode to Joy if they're really ignorant. Ask them if they've ever read Don Quixote. People only know stuff like Michelangelo's David or the Mona Lisa because it gets constantly mentioned in pop culture.

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>Nowadays Europe matters fuckall in terms of mainstream media.
And I'm talking about non-mainstream media.

Spain
youtube.com/watch?v=4j1u6KP81R8

Ireland
youtube.com/watch?v=VrhoOzW8oF8

France
youtube.com/watch?v=RC-9eya8Yso

The majority of fiction is directed at teens and young adults, and about teens and young adults, so it isn't really that big of a deal. I said it was more varied than western shows, obviously there is still a bias towards certain story types. I There's also a large variety of different stories about teenagers with attitudes doing stuff, from sitting in a club room drinking tea all day to becoming literal gods and rewriting universes. It's also a reflection of japans own culture which idolizes youth because their adulthood is rather depressing in a lot of cases. Anime is not muh mature deep stories, but it is an extremely varied medium compared to western animation. And there's several aspects which make it less confined in certain areas than even live action western stories, such as their tendency to combine traditionally serious things and comedy instead of just seeing stories as being one or the other. Westerners can't really into the idea that sexualization, comedy, seriousness, and such can all be meshed into one show, they have a very black and white view of things. I'm not saying anime is perfect, there are still many things in anime that are more or less the same throughout, but where it is varied, it can appeal to people in ways that western storytelling fails to do.

Japanese directors approach storyboarding like live-action film with emphasis on (relatively) more dynamic angles and compositions.

Western television animation is often laid out sort of like a sitcom, or theater, where many scenes are built around a fairly neutral side view, like in pic related, with some additional insert shots for reactions and focal points.

Speaking of Disney, the blame for this falls squarely in the lap of Michael fucking Eisner for seeing Atlantis and Treasure Planet tank and then thinking, "Gosh, the reason for this must have been because audiences now only want CG, not because the scripts for these movies sucked ass! Screw our legacy; we're going all-3D!"

And then of course Western animation followed Disney, as usual.

And let's not get started on CG vehicles. (Yes, the west has resorted to it too.

Back to WestAm: say what you will about the man, I really wish more Murcan animators used John K. as a model for character designs than CalArts.

>Disney hated Jews meme

Yeah, so much that he made several anti-Nazi cartoons and later made the Sherman Brothers practically his official composers.

fuck spoonfeeders.

Muh based KINOani is one of the main culprits of this.

Better lighting and shading, even back in the pre-CG days. That's always been one the things that's impressed me the most of Japan's school of animation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

No, I meant that literally, with Eisner and Katzenberg running it into the ground in terms of quality.

Waifus and husbandos

To play the devil's advocate, anti-Nazi at the time didn't mean pro-Semitic per se. After all, it is possible to dislike people without wanting their genocide.

>such as their tendency to combine traditionally serious things and comedy instead of just seeing stories as being one or the other.

You do know Hollywood has being doing this shit for decades right? MCU sell fuckload because of this.

>There's also a large variety of different stories about teenagers with attitudes doing stuff, from sitting in a club room drinking tea all day to becoming literal gods and rewriting universes.
If you're talking SPECIFICALLY about western animated series then yes but literally nearly every single trope and genres in manga and anime can be traced back to western medias. I was surprised to learn that the infamous Mahou Shoujo genre was a western concept in the first place(Google Mary Marvel).