Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Heavyarms55 I'm not a fan of Toriyama's most common style, but for me DQ never felt "Toriyama style", it always felt like he intentionally made it a very different thing than his more signature styles, maybe because it's not "his." I don't meant to say DQ is "generic" but doesn't feel particularly Toriyama, anime, or Japanese in general to me. It seems more like Nintendo or Level 5, a "generic" cartoon art style that isn't region specific. I'm surprised people think of it as "anime" art style. FF is way more anime styled than DQ. Yet that's the popular one in the West....

@StableInvadeel I'm wholly convinced Sailor Moon is single handedly responsible for the overall impression of Anime in the West.... shiver

@JaxonH I think by "super Japanese anime style" what you really mean is "really really low budget artwork" I think that's the "anime style" that most are pointing and laughing at when mocking anime (well, that and the fetishistic clothing on female characters...not that Western bikini armor is much different.)

@Therad Never played Don't Starve, I love the Civ games, or at least used to, I bought it on Switch and never really had time to do anything with it. That's really a strategy game though, not a sandbox like MC. But with the sandbox, I just can't get into "just find something to do without any actual goal." And would the kids really be that cool with it if there was no internet, were no tubers, and they just got plopped in the grassy field and were told "do something."? That kind of leans on my thinking that it's designed on social virility, not it's own merits as a game.

GODDDDDDD FIRE EMBLEM'S MUSIC IS SOOOO GOOD. CHAPTER 12'S MAP THEME IS ABSOLUTE PERFECTION. BEST OST OF THE YEAR BY FAAAAAAR. OFFICIAL RELEASE PLEASE????????

@NEStalgia Anime is a huge non-descriptor. Hell, I can point at things from a game like Dark Souls of all games and tell you there could be a ton of anime-inspired aspects to the games - big freakin' swords, incredibly slick and choreographed animations, direct inspiration from things like Berserk, the works.

Some styles are more subdued than others. For example Zelda (in Skyward Sword/BotW as the most apparent) takes that subdued approach compared to Fire Emblem/Xeno, which all veer into anime territory a bit harder.

As for Minecraft and the popularity of it though, the creative/survival aspect is something you just have to enjoy. I don't like Minecraft/Terraria much, but I still see the appeal, and mods can further change the game up. There's a lot of game to those things.

Hell, IIRC Minecraft was cited by Miyamoto that it felt like a game Nintendo wanted to make but couldn't because they didn't figure out how to make building fun, or something along those lines.

@EvilLucario I'm not sure "slick and choreographed animations" are words I'd apply to Dark Souls.......

Yeah, BotW definitely has anime inspiration/styling at points. I can see it with SS as well (personally I think that's Aonuma's influence.) But prior to that Zelda was really very "western" in art styling. Very likely on purpose, under Miyamoto's watch. He's always had a very Western styling.

I think you need to enjoy creative for MC. Survival would be every game ever. But survival with no purpose, goal, or even visual target of interest seems lacking comapred to most games. You see a town in the distance, you go there, there's stuff. In MC, you may stumble into a town....and there's not much of anythign going on there....it's all generic sameyness. And I suck with creative unless I'm make-shifting something for a purpose (which DQB seems to encourage.) I don't build pretty. I build crude and functional. I'd have made a great Soviet brutalist architect.

@NEStalgia Maybe not Dark Souls II because that game's animations as a whole are very lackluster, but Dark Souls 1 and III all have extremely detailed and well animated attacks for bosses. Especially Dark Souls III.

I'd say Zelda has always had some anime inspiration though, ever since LTTP. The Oracle games also showed that off pretty well. It really only grew more and more after Skyward Sword, but I'd argue that it did incorporate some anime styling into itself.

@EvilLucario Hmm, I definitely don't see it in ALttP. That seems Western in all ways to me.

@NEStalgia, I never got where the idea that anime has "cheap, low quality animation" comes from, unless maybe it's related to really old stuff like Speed Racer.

Growing up, before I had any specific biases, I always thought shows like Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, InuYasha, the various Gundams & the like always looked quite a bit better than western action cartoons of the era like Justice League & Samurai Jack.

EDIT: as for ALttP (as well as the older FE games), it's art was representative of how anime looked at the time, IMO.

@RR529 No, I don't mean anime is cheap and low quality. I mean the stuff that people associate, like Jax was about "that really Japanese anime style" - I don't think that style is a particularly "Japanese style", I think it's the style of really low budget... (see also, Sailor Moon, and, yes, Speed Racer. )

Aside, it's kind of humorous how Cowboy Bebop is an example of Japanese, and Samurai Jack is an example of Western animation, in the same sentence....

sigh

"Anime" is just animation made in Japan and/or by Japanese people. That's it. There's no universal "anime look." Popular characteristics of Japanese animation mainly derive from the influence of early Disney animation (most famously on the seminal mangaka Osamu Tezuka).

With that said, there is no style that is more or less anime.

These are all "anime."

It's all just cartoons, at bottom.

@RR529 Well Anime runs the full spectrum of animation qualities, from the 60s through the 80s (maybe 90s) it had significantly less budget than western animation. Which, quite notably, was what most people in the west were first exposed to (Speed Racer, Yugioh, Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, etc) On top of that, a lot of big name Anime used to come over years after it was produced, making it look cheaper than it was (Dragon Ball aired in the 80s in JP, while it aired in the 2000s in US for example, DBZ had an 8 year gap, One Piece a 5 year gap, etc.)

@link3710, oh yeah, I understand that we got most series a little late, had differing budgets, and then you had the series like Dragon Ball which went year round (no seasonal breaks) which really strained their budget.

Most of those series you listed though were definitely post 80's (barring Speed Racer, and I'll admit to never hearing about Tokyo Mew Mew). Sailor Moon & Pokemon were 90's series (mid 90's at earliest for Pokemon), and Yu-Gi-Oh! was primarily 00's, though probably got it's start in the late 90's.

@Anti-Matter The fix seems fairly straight-forward, if a bit fiddly, so I've ordered a replacement ribbon cable and will hopefully find my tri-wing soon. Glad yours was sorted swiftly for you

@RR529 Yeah, but I suppose what I should've clarified is that those were mostly Shonen anime, and thus cheaply made. That was the point I was headed to that I somehow missed.

@NEStalgia
Sailor Moon was my favorite Anime when i was Grade 5 / 6 (1995).
I love to see their Transformation process , the Daimon looking and Sailor Moon magical attacks.
Somehow, the Sailor Moon transformation and Kamen Raider Henshin were inspired me for my Chibi Boxers, so.....

@Ralizah
there is no style that is more or less anime

Whether that’s true or not, when people say they don’t like the look of anime, it’s typically your third picture down that’s being referred to. Whether anime spans a bunch of other art styles doesn’t really change the fact certain people don’t like that look, and they’re simply trying to convey those feelings with words. Whether or not it’s technically the only style of anime, it really just comes down to semantics. That’s what people think of when they hear “anime”, so naturally, when they say they don’t like the look of it, I’m pretty sure that’s the specific look being referred to. It is for me anyways.

Why get frustrated over semantics when people know perfectly good and well what others are referring to when they say they don’t like the look of anime. People who aren’t into anime don’t know all the technical labels and words and politically correct terminology to use for that exact subset of artstyle. So why get frustrated over such a trivial thing when no ill intent is intended, but simply conveying one’s feelings and preferences? If you know what people mean and you know what they’re referring to, what else matters? Words are just a tool of communication. If the intent is known then why get in a kerfluffle over terminology. Right or wrong, that’s what a lot of people, including myself, equate to anime. And right or wrong, that’s nothing worth getting upset or defensive over (speaking to everyone, not you personally). For someone not in the know, theres not exactly a plethora of superior substitute nouns at the ready. The people who don’t equate the third picture down as quintessential anime, are people actually into anime. For most everyone else, that’s it.

And no offense is intended, of that I can assure people. No need to sigh in frustration because people who aren’t into anime don’t know all the technically correct terminology and specific subsets of anime. When I say I’m not a fan of the anime look, what I’m really saying is, I’m not a fan of the look of the third picture down, which is the look I see in 90% of media described as anime. So naturally, that’s the look I equate to the word. Be it technically too broad a discriptor or not. I’m not exactly a fan of the other three either, but I don’t really see those art styles much. It’s the 3rd one down I see everywhere, and it’s the third one down that really doesn’t appeal to me. Not that I can’t overcome that, after all it’s not that big a deal. I play plenty of games with anime art style and enjoy them immensely (and recently, I’m seeing a modernization of the art style I’m really digging- Tales of Arise and Atelier Ryza being excellent examples). But definitely no need for any uptightness over what technically constitutes anime, which I’m kinda shocked to see so many get defensive, frustrated and/or passive aggressive over, when nobody meant any offense by it.

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Anime, huh? Do any of you have a moment to talk about our liberator, Lord Khyron Max Sterling?

@JaxonH I DON'T know what you mean, though. And that's the point. To you, an "anime look" might mean Clannad (the show the third pic is from). For a lot of people, it means Fire Emblem and Valkyria Chronicles, even if it doesn't to you. That's because there is a lot of stylistic variance in Japanese animation. And, when people say they don't like the look of "anime," they're often picturing a particular style of character design employed in some anime, so the opinion is so imprecise as to be useless when it comes to sussing out the person's actual likes and dislikes.

@Ralizah
Well, if that’s true then it just seems to be a case of needing some clarification. Hopefully my post shed some light on at least my POV, and what I mean by it (and by extension, what I believe a lot of others who, like me are not into anime, mean by it).

I imagine that, to you it seems very imprecise because you’re exposed to it so much that you see all the little differences. But to someone not into it, it all kind of blurs together and looks the same. It’s hard to elaborate on the specific style when you’re not even sure of the differences yourself. For the same reason I think a lot of FPS and open world realistic games all look the same. To people who are really into those games they see them as being worlds apart. Not even remotely similar. They’ll pick apart all the differences and they could rattle off 1000 different things that make them unique. But to me I’m like... uh huh. And I think that’s especially true for anime.

That’s not to say I can’t tell differences because even I can see there is quite a bit of variety. But that’s because I’ve been exposed to those games more and more over recent years. Five years ago I thought all of them looked like One Piece. It all looked exactly the same to me. So you have to understand, that’s what people see who aren’t into it. They don’t see the differences you see.

All I know is, either something appeals to my taste or it doesn’t. And as a general rule, anime art style does not appeal to my taste, at least, what I still perceive to be anime. The weird thing is, each year that passes by, as I’m exposed to more and more games in the artstyle, more and more of them start looking “normal” to me. And the ones that still don’t look normal, at least look more normal. The range of games that are offputting seems to shrink more and more each year. And I believe that is because I am acclimating to the art style. Which is precisely why a lot of those games you say are technically anime I don’t see as anime, because I’ve acclimated. They look normal to me now. The offputting style that used to stick out like a sore thumb, has faded. So the bubble of games that I classify as “super anime” (the degree is really important here), gets smaller and smaller. Xenoblade looked anime, but not that much. Only somewhat (as opposed to Neptunia/Kill la Kill/One Piece/Naruto/etc, which still strike me as being on the extreme end of the spectrum). Yet... I hear other people say they wouldn’t even play Xenoblade, or even Fire Emblem. And I have to assume that comes down to acclimation. Those people are where I was at five years ago, when the bubble still included everything.

@JaxonH Five years ago, though, even anime virgin you would still, say, not find the artstyle in the Fire Emblem games to be off-putting, right? You probably also wouldn't watch a classic anime film like Ninja Scroll and find the style of the art to be off-putting. I'm sure you're acclimatizing somewhat to Japanese art styles (how could you not, given how many Japanese games you play these days?), but I think the big thing is that you're learning that the stereotypes you associate with the word "anime" (big eyes, little mouth, giant sweatdrops, provocatively dressed women, people randomly turning chibi, etc.) doesn't actually resemble a lot of what you'll find in the medium. Which, I think, supports my point: there is no anime art style, and you're learning that as you broaden your horizons and continue to find styles of Japanese character design that you find to be aesthetically pleasing (or, at least, not off-putting).

To be honest, while I understood it years ago, when Westerners had very little experience with anime, I find the notion of a person being "into anime" to be very weird. Like, I don't say I'm "into books," or "into live-action movies," you know? I like some books. I like some live-action movies. And, frankly, the same applies to anime. I don't just uncritically enjoy everything in the medium. I'm "into it" only insofar as I'm open to experiencing it with an open mind.

Anyway, I don't think we're disagreeing at all.

All this just makes me wish there was a Robotech game on Switch. 😂

Has anyone put some time in DCU yet? I made a character, then got distracted for the rest of that night.