Are manga/anime/LNs falling into the same trap as western media?

[Deleted member 84247]

I don't disagree but what are we doing then?

Just live in the moment maaan~. We are having a discussion about the good ole times. Most discussions don't have a rhyme or reason.

 

[georgelee5786]

I don't disagree but what are we doing then?

 

[owotrucked]

Wrong. Solo Leveling exists. And a lot of other stories exist.

Solo Leveling was entertaining for its incredible pacing of power progression, and it swept over reddit like a storm back when chapter were released daily.

In paintings, music, poetry, the goal is artistry. In manga or novels, entertainment through story telling is the primary target and no good art or fancy sentences can save a work lacking in fundamentals. Thinking about the animation pipeline, it stands for a reason that LN gets adapted into manga then into anime because they need to trust the story as a pillar.

It's the same for games, Diablo 4's art and music design are in fact top tier product, but fails as a game.

Why should I care about it? I'm always on a side of a consumer. I don't care for his reason. Give me better art. If not I will drop your work. And if you will mention that it won't affect him, breaker is actually the only manhwa that I physically own. He lost my money.

I didn't mean that you should care. I'm only pointing out the specificity of your example. What I meant is that the carreer evolution of that single artist in particular might be a product of their personal history, and has no correlation to the industry as a whole and coincidental at most.

The artist of Shin Anhyo Onshi still delivers stunningly gorgeous webcomics like Child of the Sheath. Likewise, the artist of Overgeared has always done great. The horny author of Immortal Regis is still drawing nice booba in Jungle Juice.

However, it is indeed a good reason for you to be angry. The first chapters of a work is somewhat of a promise about the type of content that the author wants to deliver. It is kind of bait and switch to deliver shitty art after hooking people and good art.

On the other hand, when the artist starts out garbage, their improvement is only overdelivering, so that doesn't upset the audience.

---

Finally, I'd like to point out that anime and manga art has always sucked ass. It's litteraly garbage compared to the power level of illustrations and what artists can actually do. From the beginning, everyone has the understanding that manga art is simplified for the sake of fast release, which is one of the component of success that eastern manga had over western comics.

Western comics had always been colored painting like art pieces that took god awful lot of time between volume release, while manga has mostly been black and white weekly or monthly releases.

Artists that slowly creep up their time spent and quality on art are actually creators suffering imposter syndrom due to the unexpected success of their work. Like "Shit, why is there so many people reading? I have to make every panel a work of art "

SAO included; that is why only the first season exists for me. The rest is garbage, Mcdonalds level toilet escapee.

At least in the past few years, I am seeing the shedding of the "let's please virgin otakus who keep anime figures in cum jars" mindset, and finally, we are getting stories with this bullshit left at the door. Finally, there are romance stories worthy of watch. Finally, there are harem stories where the girls are not just blowup dolls that the limp dick MC never touches.

tbf SAO author wrote lewd fever dreams chapters, but he was too spineless to make it canon.

I think it's in their culture to make their public entertainment as sexually frustrating as possible and make it utterly degenerate in doujinshi. Fate started as a horny VN and dropoed all the lewd when it went mainstream.

Doujins are such a part of their otaku culture, even Bocchi's artist made FGO doujin. And the western consummers are blue balled because they aren't used to paying artists to create their horny fantasies.

But now the doujin-level of degeneracy is slowly creeping into the public, like Interspecies Reviewer and Redo of the Healer lmao.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Solo Leveling was entertaining for its incredible pacing of power progression, and it swept over reddit like a storm back when chapter were released daily.

In paintings, music, poetry, the goal is artistry. In manga or novels, entertainment through story telling is the primary target and no good art or fancy sentences can save a work lacking in fundamentals. Thinking about the animation pipeline, it stands for a reason that LN gets adapted into manga then into anime because they need to trust the story as a pillar.

It's the same for games, Diablo 4's art and music design are in fact top tier product, but fails as a game.


I didn't mean that you should care. I'm only pointing out the specificity of your example. What I meant is that the carreer evolution of that single artist in particular might be a product of their personal history, and has no correlation to the industry as a whole and coincidental at most.

The artist of Shin Anhyo Onshi still delivers stunningly gorgeous webcomics like Child of the Sheath. Likewise, the artist of Overgeared has always done great. The horny author of Immortal Regis is still drawing nice booba in Jungle Juice.

However, it is indeed a good reason for you to be angry. The first chapters of a work is somewhat of a promise about the type of content that the author wants to deliver. It is kind of bait and switch to deliver shitty art after hooking people and good art.

On the other hand, when the artist starts out garbage, their improvement is only overdelivering, so that doesn't upset the audience.

---

Finally, I'd like to point out that anime and manga art has always sucked ass. It's litteraly garbage compared to the power level of illustrations and what artists can actually do. From the beginning, everyone has the understanding that manga art is simplified for the sake of fast release, which is one of the component of success that eastern manga had over western comics.

Western comics had always been colored painting like art pieces that took god awful lot of time between volume release, while manga has mostly been black and white weekly or monthly releases.

Artists that slowly creep up their time spent and quality on art are actually creators suffering imposter syndrom due to the unexpected success of their work. Like "Shit, why is there so many people reading? I have to make every panel a work of art "

Bruh, I will be honest, I don't want to read this. You disagreed with me, right? I respect your opinion, but I don't agree with you. Can we leave it at this? I think it is called "agree to disagree" right?

 

[MintiLime]

There’s also just fatigue. If a certain cliche superhero movie was released twenty years ago or twenty years in the future, it might have a chance. But the audience is very aware of what’s being copied right now. The media is consumable at all times and everything is competing against each other. I did some English stuff in college with this movie called Johnny Eager (hated the movie btw) but it was one of the last in a long line of gangster movies in the black and white film era. People got tired of them. Politics got involved where restrictions were passed that Bad Guys can’t have happy Endings because they thought the films were glorifying crimes.

We are doing the same thing as before. It’s all cyclical, we just happen to be in the “down” part of the circle.

 

[Jemini]

I agree with all of you that there were bad animes then as well. The difference I see is that back then it was a risk to produce an anime or manga that wasn't good. It's why shonen jump did so well because they have really high standards for stories. If a company made an anime in the 80s and 90s and it wasn't good then there was a good chance that that studio would go out of business soon. Now, companies are producing at a much higher rate, increasing the amount of bad animes and good animes without many negative consequences. There's just so much that it's hard to sort through to find the hidden gems.

That's a good thing, and would actually explain what I said about the seeming overall INCREASE in quality.

You have to take risks in order to produce some of the best stuff. Yes, it produces some duds, but when you take risks the highs get higher and the lows get lower.

An example of this would be Netflix or Playstation. Both of those media platforms produced A LOT of content, and yes some of it was not good, but there were also some of the very best gems that enthralled the public in a very short period of time during those periods.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Looks like it, yes.

I found that the more the years pass by me, the more I get uninterested of new manga/anime/LN releases.

And I still enjoy the old works.

 

[Sola-sama]

No, I don't think so, and I don't really agree with any of your points.

I always say this, but people who bring this up are simply catching up and running out watching evergreen stuff. The same amount of "good" animes/mangas were produced in the 90s, 2000s, etc., as now. And the same amount of trash and sub-par stuff was next to them. You just no longer have a wide range of choices only watching the good ones as you finally caught up.

The same is true in music. "The old music is better." Nope. There was shit, conveyor belt, manufactured music for radio back then too.

Bro is spitting facts here.

In academic research, it is not fair when you compare things without the same metrics. Apple to apple, orange to orange, or people to people.

When people expressed 'its no longer the same like it was used to' or 'new animes are shit, the old ones are better', they are, as my bro Corty has said, catching up and running out watching the evergreen stuff. It's a bias that occurred because you have been exposed to stuff which has been filtered by the taste of your predecessors. If we use real measuring metrics, such as defining the timeline and the scope of the media, we might be able to produce meaningful findings, but you're here not to read my scientific rant.

Of course, you will naturally compare the content of the old media with the new ones, and the masterpieces of the new anime/manga/book/other media wouldn't be as 'good' as the ones you'd like, but that's simply because you have already develop your own taste. It is another type of bias, but this is normal since art are always subjective. The ones who reject hitler's art may have shit art taste, we might never know.

My point is, media will always evolve, and those who complaint the good old days are simply those who developed their own taste. I recalled shaming the boomers because they don't like me watching spongebob squarepants, but when I get older, I abhor the younger generations because they make cringe dance videos and post them on tiktok. Shit like this is normal, there will be no end of this.

 

[Jemini]

Bro is spitting facts here.

In academic research, it is not fair when you compare things without the same metrics. Apple to apple, orange to orange, or people to people.

When people expressed 'its no longer the same like it was used to' or 'new animes are shit, the old ones are better', they are, as my bro Corty has said, catching up and running out watching the evergreen stuff. It's a bias that occurred because you have been exposed to stuff which has been filtered by the taste of your predecessors. If we use real measuring metrics, such as defining the timeline and the scope of the media, we might be able to produce meaningful findings, but you're here not to read my scientific rant.

Of course, you will naturally compare the content of the old media with the new ones, and the masterpieces of the new anime/manga/book/other media wouldn't be as 'good' as the ones you'd like, but that's simply because you have already develop your own taste. It is another type of bias, but this is normal since art are always subjective. The ones who reject hitler's art may have shit art taste, we might never know.

My point is, media will always evolve, and those who complaint the good old days are simply those who developed their own taste. I recalled shaming the boomers because they don't like me watching spongebob squarepants, but when I get older, I abhor the younger generations because they make cringe dance videos and post them on tiktok. Shit like this is normal, there will be no end of this.

Exactly this! When I look back at older Anime, if I were to look up the year the good ones on my list were produced, I find that there is a year or 3 gap between them.

Then, when I look at more modern anime, I find that there are 2 or 3 really good ones PER SEASON!!! That's around 12 good ones per year, meaning that the good ones now are coming out at around 10-30X the rate they were in the 80s-90s. (I guess it would be better to average it and call it 20X... although that's highly unscientific and a generalization. Just ballpark numbers tossed out there.)

So, yeah. As soon as you specify a time-period and check on the year and all, that makes a huge difference.

Also, the tastes argument you bring up is definitely worth considering. Another huge difference that happened with anime produced before and after the mid 2000s is the advent of CG animation techniques. The hand-drawn animations used in older anime have a very different look and feel to them compared to modern day. One of the best examples of this would be the Hunter X Hunter original and 2011 versions. There are several scenes in the 2011 version that just have better animation, but several specific stand-out moments that were better in the original version, and that's just a difference produced by style and the huge difference in techniques of the time.