[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]I'm not a big fan myself, I find the manga style ranges from 'decent' to 'utterly awful'. And that isn't even taking into account the unending list of annoying clichés that seem to go with the style. In part it is a victim of it's own cult success; I'll admit my perception of it has perhaps been slightly coloured by the legions of anime fanboys and fangirls who seem to devote themselves entirely to the style, without actually developing any artistic skills.[size=2]
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Japanese anime are on the other side of the coin, although in the recent years their graphical technology has greatly improved, their primary target is to generate emotions and the pictures are just a way for the viewer to get inside the artist's mind. The so called "big eyes" are the perfect example of that, the eyes are the mirror of the soul and making them bigger allows them to express emotions much easier. Usually kids have larger eyes than adults to express their emotional sensibility.
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[size=2][color="#1c2837"][size=2]I really don't agree with this at all. Manga artists are no better at portraying emotion than any other artist - arguably, they are worse, since they have to resort to distorting the character's features beyond recognition and/or adding external icons to portray them. WTF does that 'tear' thing even mean?
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Anime is much more than simple animated cartoons, it's a form of art and therefore it can be much harder to digest and you need to be open to the story, egocentric and biased people will find hard to understand what the artist is trying to communicate and they will judge everything by their own understanding, ruining the big picture for themselves (same thing as putting ketchup in everything they eat).[/quote]


It's got nothing to do with being 'biased or egocentric' - now you're simply insulting anyone who disagrees with you.

It's a cultural thing - different cultures have different approaches to storytelling. Superficially at least, Japanese storytelling doesn't seem all that different from the western style, but it IS subtly different. And to be honest, I have never really GOT it. While I can usually appreciate the message, and to some extent enjoy the story, there is that subtle weirdness - which typically manifests itself in the form of seemingly nonsensical/irrelevant plot twists - which prevents me from really enjoying them fully. However, all that is irrelevant, since we're talking about the style of the artwork itself, not the quality of the stories.

The first thing that amazed me when I discovered anime is the absence of rules, the freedom of art, you can find many anime that will probably never be allowed to be aired in some western countries.
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Care to give any examples? The only examples I can think of are the sort of things that quite frankly, make me glad those rules exist.

The story I've heard is that Ed, Edd n Eddy was the last hand-drawn cartoon.

Somewhat incorrect, although terms like hand drawn are a bit vague.

The Simpsons was pretty much the last hand painted cartoon. With the newer Simpsons, the characters are hand drawn, scanned in a computer, and then color and animated. The backgrounds are all now computer generated.

This is pretty much how Ed, Edd 'n Eddy and Bob's burger did it. Ed, Edd 'n Eddy had it's own feature, where it overlapped the hand drawn originals over the finished product to give it a squiggle look. I guess by that account, you could claim Ed Edd 'n Eddy as the last cartoon where the viewer gets to see something that was hand made in the final product, but I'm not sure that counts.

I really don't agree with this at all. Manga artists are no better at portraying emotion than any other artist - arguably, they are worse, since they have to resort to distorting the character's features beyond recognition and/or adding external icons to portray them. WTF does that 'tear' thing even mean? [/quote]

I'm not too sure why this is even a problem on either hemisphere.

Looney Toons portrayed lust as some guy howling like a wolf, stomping the ground with one foot while wearing a grimace, letting his eyes pop clean out of his skull and having his heart try to escape his chest cavity.

Both eastern and western style toons can resort to beating you over the head with the character's mood via exaggeration. Cartoon characters can express themselves in more "human" ways too if so desired, but they do not have to.

Now, if you do not relate to how a show tries to behave, that's totally fine. No argument there.

Anime is much more than simple animated cartoons, it's a form of art and therefore it can be much harder to digest and you need to be open to the story, egocentric and biased people will find hard to understand what the artist is trying to communicate and they will judge everything by their own understanding, ruining the big picture for themselves (same thing as putting ketchup in everything they eat).[/quote]

Er, I'm with Sandman on this one. These are words of bias that remind me of this.

As for judging by one's own understanding: That is a human trait. We learn by experience, and tend to distort new knowledge to conform to our previous understandings. I highly recommend reading up on metacognition. Start with this, as it's a really interesting read.

Care to give any examples?[/quote]

Now you've done it.

Care to give any examples? The only examples I can think of are the sort of things that quite frankly, make me glad those rules exist.

Well, Nausicaä may be an example, since Disney totally turned it inside out, to make it "more digestable" or whatever for the western dumbasses (the story was basically lost). Ever saw Satoshi Kon films?

Looney Toons portrayed lust as some guy howling like a wolf, stomping the ground with one foot while wearing a grimace, letting his eyes pop clean out of his skull and having his heart try to escape his chest cavity.

When is he last time you've been to a bar? They're exaggerations, but they are hardly inaccurate exaggerations.

I'd still consider this:

more emotional than this:

I think the anime one is more emotional in that case. But, if the emotional impact of an exaggeration is subjective, what is the point in discussing "accuracy"?

I think the anime one is more emotional in that case. But, if the emotional impact of an exaggeration is subjective, what is the point in discussing "accuracy"?

Well then what is the point of discussing art in general?

One thing that did always bug me about a lot of anime is how muddled the colors are. It's almost all single value with a pretty small range of color contrast. IT SHOULD BE NOTED that a lot of looney toons episodes are worse than others by the creators' own admission. They would create some episodes in just a couple weeks in order to spend longer periods of time on their good ideas such as:


Also bare in mind that this is a 50 year old cartoon and this:

is 10 years old.

[color="#1C2837"]Well then what is the point of discussing art in general?[/quote]

To exchange experiences related to a work for mutual benefit.

[color="#1C2837"]One thing that did always bug me about a lot of anime is how muddled the colors are. It's almost all single value with a pretty small range of color contrast. IT SHOULD BE NOTED that a lot of looney toons episodes are worse than others by the creators' own admission. They would create some episodes in just a couple weeks in order to spend longer periods of time on their good ideas such as

[color="#1c2837"]Also bare in mind that this is a 50 year old cartoon and this:
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[color="#1c2837"]is 10 years old. [/quote]

"This cartoon is older and has more color, therefore it is better!"

The attitude in your posts suggest an objective criteria of "better" or "worse". If "to each his own" is wrong, then let others be wrong and happy about it.

To exchange experiences related to a work for mutual benefit.

Looney Toons portrayed lust as some guy howling like a wolf, stomping the ground with one foot while wearing a grimace, letting his eyes pop clean out of his skull and having his heart try to escape his chest cavity.[/quote]

But, if the emotional impact of an exaggeration is subjective, what is the point in discussing "accuracy"?[/quote]
You brought up inaccuracy, then argued there was no point to bringing it up.

"This cartoon is older and has more color, therefore it is better!"[/quote]
It's better is why it's better. The fact that it's 50 years old suggests that there should have been sufficient time for the rest of the globe to realize that color and value contrast add visual interest, depth, and drama to visuals. It's not like these concepts are anything even that new.

The attitude in your posts suggest an objective criteria of "better" or "worse". If "to each his own" is wrong, then let others be wrong and happy about it.
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Color and value contrast make images more interesting. This is not especially subjective. This is an objective measure of art quality since the middle ages. It's basic composition, which is generally pretty objective as far as art quality goes.

Anybody who's been part of an art critique before knows "to each his own" is a flawed starting point for looking at art. There are tons of objective measures for judging the quality of art.

The problem is that you are comparing shit quality anime to good (or not so shit) quality non-anime cartoons. If you want to compare them, the compare Disney to Studio Ghibli or Satoshi Kon films, not Disney Beauty and the Beast to Dragonball crap. There are tons of crap western cartoons (shit, just take a look at Cartoon network now)