With the anime medium as a whole, there’s a diversity on how people score, with each individual varying from small tid-bits to drastic changes! Reading different reviews and opinions, seeing how much each person takes in consideration each aspect of a show is really interesing; however, I beleive there is one concept that is overlooked while discussing titles which is the visuals of the show. Anime is a visual media and by that the visuals should be equally as important. But how much importance should we give to visuals and what makes an anime visually spectacular?
Starting with the later, what makes an anime visually spectacular? First of, the visuals should be used to enhance the experience of the viewer. Even stories that holster fantastic writing can become easily forgettable because of its lack of visual presentation, reversely a bland story becomes a memorable art work because of it’s visual presentation. One can divide visual prsentation into three aspects: General artwork, direction and style.
General artwork, or art-style and animation quality, should be considered the most imptorant concept when delivering first impressions and conceptual ideas. When a industry shows inadequate skill in their delivery for either art or their character design the likelyhood of an individual, such as myself, of continuing drastically decreases. The animation quality in correspondence to the pacing of the show can deal a deadly blow, if there is too much happening, in a particular scene, it can be overwelming to watch. When considering examples of this problem, a lot of action scenes suffers from this “too much” factor and makes the scene not as engaging. On the other hand, if there is too little happening it can make your viewer bored, a lot of slice of lifes suffers from this “too little”, when the characters are just talking and nothing really happens on screen.
Furthermore, in artstyle as a whole there are a plethora of material that can speak to the viewer through character design and the colors used. A simple and clean pallet of colors can set the tone for a fun action and adventure, where as a vivid palette of warm colors can set a heartwarming romance and a dark palette can make you prepared for a more somber psychological ride. It may sound simple but there are a lot of shows that mix tones or ignore emotional toning and this is a huge error. Setting the mood, for any story, improves the enjoyment. Anime companies have stagnated their artistic creativity by sticking with bland moe styles. On the other hand, when a company diverges from these standard styles and take an obscene or surreal attribute to their art they differentiate themselves and make the anime stand out. When considering character facial apperance and outfits, I believe, should be an extension of themselves, it’s possible to say a lot the personality of a person by the way they dress and how they look, this leads to a great “show, dont tell” usage.
The second aspect, the direction, or how the whole story is told to us through particular visual presentation and timing of scenes. Using this aspect they can show the viewer detailed character reactions to an event or different emotional changes through subtle character recognitions. Character building using these subtle details helps our subconcious pick up on emtional triggers that our logical brain overlook. In the end, the directing is how you percieve the general artwork and the tiny details that enchance the experience.
Lastly, I believe for a show to be good a specific style is not needed; however, for a show to be considered great, or that masterpeice 10/10, it’s a must. But what is style? When you actually try to think about it, it’s kinda vague, most studios have their own style they use in almost every single show, does that mean every show has a style? Well, no. I’ll use the definition of the dictionary to explain my point in this one: “a particular kind, sort, or type, as with reference to form, appearance,or character”
When relating the definition of style to anime it simply means when the show feels particularly unique in it’s presentation. It is when you get your general artwork and take it into another level, you upgrade it. You use its visual not just as way of presentation but as a way to increase the value of the theme, story and characters. An example would be the use of surreal presentation to tell a story full of metaphores. Furthermore, the delivery does not need to be complex, it can also be used to tell a story apart from the main story with the use of symbols as representation and themes. Style is purelly artistic expression and creativity.
Now that I talked about what makes a great visual presentation its time to get to the most important part, when you take everything I talked about and evalute it’s importants in your eyes. The importants varies depending on the viewer. An example is if you are a person that likes story and character building more than visuals. Each person has a different way of viewing things, some care more about certain parts than others, it’s natural. However, through this paper I hope I have enlightening you in understanding that visual apperance is quiet important.
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