Some trends I've been noticing in recent anime

[Calca]

-Fanservice as a whole teams to have decreased
-The detail and overall quality seems to have increased
-Haruhi is becoming a pretty good name for great girl characters
-There seems to be a rise in the "cute emotionless girl" type of character (SHUFFLE, Suzumiya, Karin, Kamisama)
-The girl mentioned above must have silver or very light purple hair
-Guys are no longer falling and grabbing a breast or somehow landing their lips on a girl's
-Overall use and screen time of any "loli" character has increased
-The ways of speaking for girls are getting more diverse (ending with desu, dearimasu, etc)
-Male characters are starting to get more believable (and have grown backbones recently ie. not many Shinji, Takayuki)
-Animes made from games are turning more to the action oriented side


Anything anyone else see?

[C.A.]

Guys are no longer falling and grabbing a breast or somehow landing their lips on a girl's

Instead they are forced to do so lol

I'm not sure if all of them are trends, but yea, more appealing male leads. Kyon, Renton are good.

Cute emotionless girls have been a trend since Rei appeared, it won't disappear for maybe at least 3 more decades lol

[uzumaki]

Originally Posted by C.A.

Instead they are forced to do so lol

I'm not sure if all of them are trends, but yea, more appealing male leads. Kyon, Renton are good.

Cute emotionless girls have been a trend since Rei appeared, it won't disappear for maybe at least 3 more decades lol

I think cute emotionless girls have been in existence long, long before Rei, and will probably never dissapear from anime if Japanese society stays more or less the same culturally....

As for the trends...I usually don't watch recent animes because they are unfiltered, but how many have you seen to say this?

[DaFool]

-Fanservice as a whole teams to have decreased

No. They just do it better now. Bra shots, anyone?

-The detail and overall quality seems to have increased

That is just KyoAni.

-Haruhi is becoming a pretty good name for great girl characters

Two shows does not a generalization make.

-There seems to be a rise in the "cute emotionless girl" type of character (SHUFFLE, Suzumiya, Karin, Kamisama)

Rei was the spigot that opened the flood. I don't know about those before, though.

-The girl mentioned above must have silver or very light purple hair

Can't argue with that. Adds to the mysterious otherworldly feeling I guess.

-Guys are no longer falling and grabbing a breast or somehow landing their lips on a girl's

I sort of agree. These seem to be common in 1997-2000 romantic comedies / OVAs.

-Overall use and screen time of any "loli" character has increased

Indeed. Because real-life women are getting fatter. Sorry, but that's the truth.

-The ways of speaking for girls are getting more diverse (ending with desu, dearimasu, etc)

I think this has been around for a long time

-Male characters are starting to get more believable (and have grown backbones recently ie. not many Shinji, Takayuki)

Yes, and I am relieved.

-Animes made from games are turning more to the action oriented side

No, its just the result of recognizing the diversity of the original medium.

Anything anyone else see?

http://www.animenation.net/news/askjohn.php?id=1330

[Tsu]

Originally Posted by DaFool

That is just KyoAni.

Don't forget Bones. And to a lesser extent, Ufotable. HAL Film's works usually look pretty decent as well, as long as they're not working on three projects at the same time.
Actually, I kind of agree with the OP. Shounen action shows and a few trainwrecks like ToHeart2 and Musashi GUNdou (though the latter is popular because of it) not withstanding, I do feel the consistency and detail in the art, at least, has in general been improving lately.

[physics223]

BONES is pretty consistent. Everything they've animated right now belongs in my top seven current anime - of course, although a matter of opinion, their consistent and wonderful animation are perhaps among the reasons why the anime they animate rank so high in people's rankings, for example, Ouran and Ju Oh Sei.

[Calca]

Originally Posted by dafool

That is just KyoAni.

I'm just talking in an overall sense not as breathtakingly detailed animes such as AIR or Suzumiya. For example, a lot of times animation gets horrible in the middle episodes. This could be easily seen in the nuclear meltdown that was Ichigo 100% but overall, I did not see anything that was too detracting from the anime.

[C.A.]

Hey, Air and Haruhi are the great works of kyoani lol, they are also responsible for FMP

So we can safely say that Kyoani is one of the best animators out there, they produce real high quality work.

Though GAINAX has also produce great animation in FLCL and Top2 in recent years.

Kyoani and GAINAX are my favourite nowadays.

[Calca]

Originally Posted by C.A.

Hey, Air and Haruhi are the great works of kyoani lol, they are also responsible for FMP

So we can safely say that Kyoani is one of the best animators out there, they produce real high quality work.

Though GAINAX has also produce great animation in FLCL and Top2 in recent years.

Kyoani and GAINAX are my favourite nowadays.

Actually I got confused with a different studio. My mistake

[DaFool]

Bones has been good also with Kurau and Scrapped Princess. I don't know of works earlier than RahXephon.

Actually you're right, they're all good. The only noticeable sucky studio was AIC, JC Staff sometimes (animationwise). I guess they all got used to the digital process already.

[MrProphet]

Gainax never produced and probably never will produce any animation on its own. If you are looking for the name of the "Gainax Animation Team", that's GONZO. In fact, GONZO was formed when Gainax's whole animation squad left them (after Honneamise, if I am not mistaken).

Scriptwriting, storyboards, character design - yes. But not the real genga/key animation legwork. That is being outsourced to other studios. For some reason, ANN lists a lot of shows as having "Animation Production" done by Gainax, but this is not true. Most of Gainax's shows were animated by J.C. Staff, Production I.G, Madhouse, Tatsunoko, well, pretty much everyone who is anyone.

BTW, I agree that the "cute emotionless girl" was a cliche almost a decade old, but I would say that the most prevalent "silver-haired deadpan loli" achetype was spearheaded by one Ruri Hoshino of Nadesico fame.

Ruri pretty much set the stardard for deadpan lolis and almost every other since then has been a clone of her's. 8)

As for good animator studios, I would have probably named Production I.G as the very best until recently. Until recently, I.G had a policy of not doing any TV-series, and focusing on OVA/Movies (they had BeeTrain and XEBEC daughter studios for that). In this they were godly. But, alas, they've broken that tradtion and for some reason a lot of their TV shows suck, despite having very high budgets and pretentions of grandeur.

J.C. Staff has a tendency of cloning their characters. It's like they have one set of character designs that they resuse time and time again, thus making all of their shows very generic and look-alike. Studio Pierrot and Studio Sunrise are too preocupied with long-running money-making franchises that lose steam once they get the ball rolling, so whatever quality animation they might squeeze here and there doesn't really get counted toward the grand total. BONES is definitely good, but their strenght is mostly their creative side. Their genga/douga teams do solid work, but I wouldn't call it groundbreaking. Same can be said of Madhouse: exceptional animation here and there, but somewhat skittish and uneven on the whole.

The main problem with all of these studios, in my opinion, is that they outsource too much of their work. Outsourcing in-betweening to Korea is a standard, but what if you outsource key animation, like Madhouse did with Tenjou Tenge? That's crazy, in my opinion, and is bound to produce nothing except an animated disaster. So, as a rule, whichever studio has the funds and the workforce to do most of the job in-house (or outsourse to Japanese studios only), will probably have better animation than other outfits. This is irregardless of the talent others have: if you outsource, you sacrifice quality. Case in point: Studio Ghibli.

Kyoto Animation is a very good studio, but it is also a very young studio. They have several gems under their belt, but they have, what, 6-7 years of real independant work, at most. While GONZO is pushing 15 years and GONZO had created some amazing animation in their days before they got rich and started throwing money around without thinking. Alas, of the Gainax/Gonzo equasion, Gainax got all creative talent, while Gonzo got all the technical talent, and it shows.

I realize that a lot of fans have short memories, but be patient and give KyoAni enough time to screw up. You might be thinking AIR and Suzuharu right now, but KyoAni also did work on Tenshi ni Narumon and Inuyasha and I wouldn't call that exceptional in any way. So, give them time, they'll turn into GONZO soon enough...

Who do I think as the best animation studio in Japan right now? Studio 4C. I'll leave it at that.

[Calca]

Oh yeah, here's another one.

Anime recently seems to be heavily concerned with Alice in Wonderland type allusions (Gakuen Alice, Kagihime, Rozen Maiden etc.)

[Mephisto2k]

-Guys are no longer falling and grabbing a breast or somehow landing their lips on a girl's

thats not true. its just that they stop grabbing their breast in the end or that the girls land with their ass on the boys face. But this device is still used often. it just happened in the recent episodes of Suzumiya Haruhi and ouran host club. The boy falls down and land on top of the girl but without laying directly on top of the girl. In both series another character enters the room and a misunderstanding is made.

However i also noticed that emotionless loli little sister charcter type with this wierd hair that seems to be increasing.

I dont think the fanservice have decreased.

And of course the overall animtionquality is getting better as there is technical advancement. of course animes look better today that 20 years ago same as there is a positive trend from now and 2 or 5 years ago.

[physics223]

Story quality, however, is another thing. I'd take a Hiatari Ryoukou or Touch remake ANYDAY than a season of Himawari, for example. But if they remade Hiatari Ryoukou, followed Ergo Proxy's design of Real Mayer for the girl and perhaps Vincent for the boy (without the cross-eyes!!!), set it in a relatively modern place ... I'm GOING TO WATCH IT LIKE CRAZY.

Not that I'm saying Himawari's bad, just that I hope story quality increases with anime's increase in number.

[Tsu]

Originally Posted by physics223

Story quality, however, is another thing. I'd take a Hiatari Ryoukou or Touch remake ANYDAY than a season of Himawari, for example.

Himawari! is a more of a comedy with some romance thrown in, whereas the two Adachi series are more romance series with some comedy thrown in. You can't really compare them with each other in terms of story quality, because they have different focuses and use different methods of storytelling.

[physics223]

I'm just comparing them in general, however ... although the proverbial apples-oranges argument can be invoked, I'd say that story quality in those two are better than Himawari.

Now if only someone had the wits to remake Adachi's works ... I'd gladly see a more beautiful Kasumi and a more handsome Yusaku anyday.

[nixie]

-Twins are the hots now. D:

-Frequent usage of butterfly symbols. (holic, loveless, zega..)

-of course, more shounen-ai stuff around.

[Radiosity]

Originally Posted by nixie

-Twins are the hots now. D:

Not just now (twins have always been teh hawt), but it certainly seems more prevailent than it used to be.

[shinga]

Originally Posted by physics223

Now if only someone had the wits to remake Adachi's works ... I'd gladly see a more beautiful Kasumi and a more handsome Yusaku anyday.

Agreed, in my opinion, Adachi's works have created what are in my book some of the best anime of all time. However, the chances of that happening are unlikely, since that trend as a whole seems to have died off with the 80s (besides Suzuka)...

Perhaps with the Touch live action movie that came out recently, some studio might come up with the brilliant idea of remaking such a wonderful show...

[DaFool]

incestuous themes as well

I agree Studio 4C is among the best studios. However they are an acquired taste, common only among jaded veteran anime fans, as well as the general animation industry. After all, their works are purely festival-grade (which is a good thing imho). I believe they also do some work with mainstream series, but their style in those cases generally disappear since they were subcontracted, I guess.