Find the Anime Challenge

[Arnwyn]

You still have to provide evidence of influence to make this claim, though. If you can't point to a picture and explain what the influence is, and how it's not something just as easily derived from american comic book art and animation, it's hard to move the argument past the "Uh-huh!" "Nuh-Uh!" stage.

I also agree with this. I also think that it's very difficult for an 'art layman' to articulate their position to the satisfaction of the naysayers (and vice versa).

"I know it when I see it" is often the best you can get from a layman - and in the end it's a legitimate position (though completely unhelpful to any detailed discussion, of course). And with a person who disagrees with the complaint being the sole arbiter of what's anime or not, this thread is doomed to just go around in circles (especially, if I read a previous post correctly - and I sure hope I'm wrong - the OP tried to suggest that Record of the Lodoss War wasn't anime. WTF?).

No one is arguing that 3rd edition art is the same as 2nd edition art. But I for one don't see an overt anime influence in the new art. (The Paizo Pic comes closest, but that isn't a Wotc source)

I have yet to say either way, myself. However, don't be pedantic - Paizo is unquestionably close enough to WotC (and influential enough to D&D consumers) to be considered the same when people complain about "anime" in D&D art. That's not unreasonable at all when people make an overall general complaint about anime and D&D (which is what people are doing when they make such complaints).

[Aside: For the record, I see very little to no anime influence in D&D, except for the UDON-specific art found in Paizo's stuff - which is, unquestionably, anime-influenced (it's UDON!). But that's only in the rare Dungeon or Paizo module issue, and no where near enough to dictate a trend or even make a general statement remotely valid.]

 

[king_ghidorah]

But such claims seem to assume a direct influence, when what I see is a similarity to current comic book art, which takes some influence from anime in layout and composition, and in a few design elements.

Across the board, I still see influences that come from comics from the 80s through the present that take some Japanese elements, a heck of a lot of European influence (Simon Bisley, Metal Hurlant, 2000AD), and some ideosyncratice American elements and put them together into something both derivative and uniquely gaming-centered.

So do I win?

You guys are really doing your best to refute some of these claims. I'm no anime expert by any means but theres a lot of them out there and they all don't look the same.
The new Pathfinder series is rife with that "style" of artwork which supposedly is only "half-anime"... whatever that is.
And I believe this is kind of getting blown out of proportion. I'm sure there are some posts around here where people idly mention how "newfangled D&D art is like them Annie-Mays!" but really I think the deal is that people are complaining about the INFLUENCE of anime. They aren't complaining that Goku is in the PHB as the new monk iconic. It's just the influence.

 

[Stone Dog]

What episode did you watch up to? I think the japanese tend to insert humour even in "serious" shows to break up the drama.

This is true, but it is even more than that. It is cute and cute is a very big deal in japan. Reference the wikipedia on "kawaii." That is where I've noticed most disconnect. A lot of things in Japan seem more childish and silly than they really are because of it. Like the FMA thing. I can't stand FMA either, but that is because I don't like Edward. I want to smack him and yell "PICK A KIND OF SPAZ AND STICK WITH IT!" Jeez.

 

[pawsplay]

I think Kunimatyu's first pic is spot on: hyper-dynamic, angled perspective, simplified facial features, something about the color on the armor, etc. It's a killer pic for this contest.

Unfortunately, I cannot qualify any of the others in the same way. The last one, in particular, looks like it came out of a Legacy of the Force comic, not manga.

 

[AllisterH]

re: Big swords

This is kind of a rarity in the ACTUAL anime that it appears as well. I mean, people in the Berserk world comment about Guts sword in disbelief, you don't see the other AVALANCHE soldiers wielding Buster swords and Ichigo's Unsealed sword _IS_ bigger than average compared to other Shinigami.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

So it's not just the style of drawing the face, but the style of drawing a face more abstractly than usual, with a stand-in to represent emotions.

So South Park is anime?

 

[pawsplay]

Here's my foray:

 

[Celebrim]

So on various spectrums--such as weapon size, sense of action, and character design flamboyance--3e's art is generally closer to the bands that various anime and manga inhabit than 2e's art was. I can certainly buy that.

Good, because that's all I've been saying.

You'd get a lot more traction calling it "comic book" or even "over-the-top", or maybe just "modern".

I've been calling the art more 'comic book' for a long time. I don't consider it to be the 'high fantasy art' typical of late 1st edition and 2 edition at its best. I certainly don't think that the art is more 'modern' unless you mean by that more stylized.

as the definition is apparently so broad as to include dynamic art with interesting characters.

No, they don't mean that at all. Thanks for the strawman. They mean that the art has become more stylized and less realistic, that the character design is more overtop (buckles belts and useless decoration), that the dynamic action is rendered in an highly exaggerated way, that weapon sizes have gotten larger, facial features have gotten more promenate, armor has gotten spikier with exagerated shoulder pads, muscles have gotten more exagerrated, hair has gotten spikier, surfaces tend to be rendered in more monochromatic ways, capes have become longer and more flowing, and so forth. I'm not the artistic expert needed to definitively say which attributes are manga inspired and which are from Western comics, especially given the cross pollenation between the two, but I think the increased influence of comic book, cartoonish, anime/manga stylings is so pervasive as to be obvious to even people who aren't experts even if they can't point out or articulate exactly what they are looking at.

I think RW did an excellent job of showing rather than telling what people are saying that they usually can't articulate. I think there are even more dramatic examples - alot of the ink art from the first round of class splatbooks ('Tome and Blood', 'Song and Silence',...) comes immediately to mind.

 

[Clavis]

The biggest influence I see on the art of 3.X edition is actually modern American comic book style. Now modern American comic-book style has been influenced by Japanese manga, but is certainly not identical with it. The other influence I see is 80s-90s British fantasy illustration, as exemplified by Games Workshop miniatures. Incidentally, that GW style first showed itself in D&D with the 1E Fiend Folio, back in the early eighties. If you want to see some impractical armor and weapons, along with deliberately distorted bodies, look at the art in the original Fiend Folio (if you have access to one).

So I would say, that while 3.x editions art is NOT anime or manga style, it is influenced by styles that were themselves influenced by anime and manga.

Incidentally, with the new "points of light" thing that WOTC is talking about, I would expect to see more explicitly GW Warhammer-style art.

Oh, and I while I loved the old Fiend Folio, I tend to dislike the 3.X edition art. But NOT because its anime or manga style.

 

[The_Gneech]

Here's my foray:

This one "looks anime" to me, I have to agree. But of the ones you posted, it's the only one.

-The Gneech