Thoughts on Recent Anime Trends.

I'm finding it a touch annoying that half of the stuff getting posted is crappy anime drawings. No wonder my stuff ends up on page 15 after 5 minutes. I've been here two days and I've already found something to be annoyed about, how typical!

-Someone on DeviantArt

Sadly, I think I have arrived to the point where I, to a degree, agree.

I love the anime art style. I adore it. I love the variations within the style and the style's ability to combine simplistic cuteness with overwhelming, cutting-edge detail. I enjoy the range of emotions it permits and I just love looking at the multitude of character designs out there.

However, I also feel that many artists, especially novice artists, also use the style as a shortcut and a crutch. I myself have even fallen into the cycle of recycling the same faces over and over again. And this tendency eclipses the true masterworks out there and degrades the style. Now, a lot of people think it's just trendy or too simple or too "easy." Creating something is always easy; the hard part is, I think, convincing people that it is art. That's it's interesting or ground-breaking or original or revealing. I believe people should do whatever it takes to be an artist, but falling into a cookie cut, mix-and-match style will run into into a plateau. I always try to break into a new style; once I see that I've fallen into a "trap," I try to find a new style. I've gone through so many. @_@; And I'm still trying. But not doing so degrades the style and belittles highly talented artists who prefer to stay in it.

It's not just novice artists either: I can hardly watch new series now because many of them look too "cookie-cut." There's not much new, innovative stuff anymore and it's sad, really. Because of anime's worldwide popularity, I think many of these people whip up series to make money. Many series have potential but they do not fully utilize that potential. A lot of recent shows seem so half-assed. And I miss hand-painted cels a LOT for some reason, The insanely saturated colors sting my eyes. :P There aren't anymore good sci-fi series anymore. No characters that break the mold. It almost feels like almost every new character out there is a clone of some anime archetype.

Sigh. Where have all the good animes gone? ;.;

In other news, I am returning to Deviantart myself.