The Time Gap of Anime

Has anyone else noticed how much and quickly that anime has changed over the years?



I am talking, not just animation detail here or the slow decline of cheesy humor as the thousands approached, but rather the overall structure of the common anime.



I have watched so many anime the past few years, much more than I ever did when I was younger. And after watching ones from the nineties, thousands and twenty-ten onward, I realize that anime went from changing for the better to declining in quality.



For instance, when anime reached the peak of its popularity, this was when it still had cheesy humor and stories did not yet feel so deep. But, they still retained a lot of charm and basically there were a small handful of anime that had some "what if" moments in them where the story felt like it could have been deeper, more detailed or that some tedious comedy scenes could have been replaced with more story. Of course, that's not to say there weren't any good anime at all in the nineties, but most of them just felt a bit generic to me.



When the thousands approached, all anime saw such an abrupt increase in their quality that was shockingly quicker than anyone probably anticipated. Cheesy humor was still there, but was much less prominent than it was before. The music also began to fit a lot better in scenes as, well, they decided to actually PUT music in most scenes. In some nineties anime I watch, it feels like they are too silent on the BGM department. Or they do that thing where you hear an intro to a scene and you feel like it will continue to play, but then it stops after the characters begin talking. But, the most noticeable change in the thousands anime was the story, delivery of humor and the animation quality. I mean you would expect digital ink to have a much cleaner look than hand-drawn which is true, but when anime got the treatment it felt like it went at least five years ahead of where it was. One in particular felt like an anime that was close to twenty-ten in terms of animation quality and this was something made around the time of very FIRST thousands anime. Not only the animation, but the story, humor and everything just felt like decades beyond what it just exited from where it is like they acquired all the recent technology to increase the quality all at the same time and hired just the right amount of writers.



And then twenty-ten felt like such a shock. I mean firstly, the main positive is that most anime looks significantly better in quality than it ever has, a great thanks of which goes to the high definition look which really makes the colors and detail outstanding. But, the downside is that it was around this time that fan service began to become noticeably more vibrant than usual. Also, every anime that has a male and female lead will have the male do something accidentally perverted and be smacked. Or, the female will just have lots of unnecessary scenes of partial or even full nudity, or "fan service" if you would. It is a rather strange drop from what the thousands introduced. Story is still really good in most, but even those are subject to fan service or making the male look perverted at least once. In fact, there is only perhaps one anime in this era I have seen that was not subject to any fan service whatsoever. When people said it happened often, I thought they were just exaggerating. In all fairness, if a scene of nudity is required to aid the scene then I do not mind, but sometimes it feels like an intro to a hentai. One anime I watched pretty much was hentai with a story, but only that one. And it was not too long ago, either.



It is peculiar to me because, well, thousands anime felt like it went a decade AHEAD. When I watch those anime, those are the ones that feel like twenty-ten if you know where to look. When the twenty-ten decade approached, I thought this would triumph the thousands just as much as they did the nineties. So, knowing it felt like a downgrade was very unwelcoming. Some in particular still feel nineties well a small handful feel like they are further ahead to even the current time we are in right now. And for whatever reason, when the real twenty-ten era came around, most anime seems to have felt like they all dropped significantly in story too. The animation in all fairness is spectacular and I have yet to see a twenty-ten anime when the anime style feels lackluster.



What is your favorite era of anime yourselves? And, does most of what I say here make sense? This is my understanding of anime, based on my perception of its changes over the years. I thought it was good enough to have its own post since I have been thinking about it a lot the past year. I do not mean to pull a huge dark blanket over those that enjoy nineties anime since I have appeared to come off as kind of a jerk against fans of the era for most of what has been said here. My main point was that it felt like anime in the early alpha stages. Due to how detailed it is, nineties anime would naturally feel like it is a step down from my favorite era. In all fairness, though, I have seen a few nineties anime that felt like ones in the thousands in quality and story. I just dislike them a bit because most of them feel out of place with their humor and stories sometimes.

The Time Gap of Anime