Anime art styles

Yes, they can vary.

I think my favorite art style in an anime is that of Great Teacher Onizuka. It's literally unlike anything else I can think of in the medium.

You know, I could have sworn we had this topic before...

[Shrug] Whatever. I'd have to say my favorite is Naoki Urasawa's work, because I like it when an artist gives Generic Cuteness the middle finger. Katsumi Enami is pretty good too, though.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is my favorite mangaka and his style is among my favorites. The style used in Satoshi Kon's work is lovely. I want Yoshitoshi ABe's babies. Naoki Urasawa is bitchin'. Inio Asano is wonderful style wise. "Overrated" though he may be Osamu Tezuka will always be one of my favorites style wise.

The guy who did Voices From A Distant Star and Five Centimeters Per Second whose name escapes me.

Makoto Shinkai

The faces in Voices made me want to choke him to death, however much I like his movies.

I agree with Aondeug vis a vis Yoshitoshi A Be's babies.

I know a lot of people can't stand it, but I actually quite love Eiichiro Oda's work with One Piece. It's cartoony and all but unique (Fairy Tail's similarities to it aside), and almost every character is visibly distinct. He used to have real trouble avoiding SAMEFACE with his female characters, but he's gotten over that to a large degree. Though he can't seem to break the habit of SAMEBODY.

edited 30th Sep '10 9:01:16 PM by Shadowtext

How about... argh, whatever that retelling of The Count Of Monte Cristo is called? Mononoke is also quite visually distinct, and Zetsubou-Sensei is just beautiful.

Gankutsuou

edited 30th Sep '10 9:30:48 PM by Tzetze

Makoto Shinkai & Yoshitoshi Abe for me. If they cooporated to make anime, it be the best anime ever.

Absolutely agreed on One Piece.

There's some great variety to be found with some fanartists.

Karaagetarou and Ichikai come to mind.

Middle to late CLAMP manga (the animes have a tendency to butcher their art). The art of Magic Knight Rayearth was a bit difficult to get into at first, for me, but I slowly learned to appreciate it. But seriously, I think the CLAMP, over the years, has produced a lot of different art styles, some better than the others, but most of it is just plain beautiful.

I mean, they can make freaking SKELETONS look pretty and sweet and elegant and sexy.

Gankutusou, definitely.

Elfen Lied and Nononono have horribly stiff styles.

Death Note always had a very polished style, and I think the artist is getting into a more varied, cartoonish style in Bakuman.

I think Vinland Saga art is an amazing blend of realistic and more heightened/anime-ish styles, especially after it became a monthly instead of weekly.

Kindaichi Case Files is an interesting case. It started off with the characters looking uniformly plump and chubby with the original series. Then, when it got into the special case files, the artist managed to blend his own art style with a more conventional anime-ish aesthetic - the plumpness and the curves were still there, but it became more attractive in a conventional sense. And now, in its latest iteration (you can see it happening in Tantei Gakuen Q too), you can see that figures and faces are getting slimmer and longer to the point of near-deformity.

....-has more to say but will stop now-

Soul Eater and Full Metal Alchemist have nice art and manage to avoid Only Six Faces.

I like Kyo Ani's "am I kawaaii UGUUUU~" style (ala Kanon, Clannad, Air and somewhat Haruhi Suzumiya). I just like big and shiny eyes!

I also quite enjoy the art of Spice and Wolf. (the anime.) It has a great balance of drawing cute girls and handsome guys without going over the top with big eyes.

Lastly, I love A Be's chatacter designs. Not a single person has an unnatural hair colour, but every character is still distinctive.

I have a particular fondness for the art in Kimi Ni Todoke. The characters have a typical shoujo look to them yet at the same time there's something about the character designs that really stands out to me.

I've also always liked the sleek look of the Death Note anime, although I have to say I don't know anything about the art style in the manga.

@Sparkysharps: We did. The title was something like "most favorite and least favorite art styles" but the last post in it must have been months ago.

My favourite art styles? let's see...

- Oda's style.

- Toriyama's style (Because it's simple and easy to draw).

- Mamoru Kanbe's Moe style. (Used in Elfen Lied's Anime).

- Kishimoto's style.

- Sadamoto's style.

- The Soul Eater style

edited 4th Oct '10 7:51:31 PM by LSSJ2Gohan

I really liked the art syle for Darker Than Black. It managed to handle realistic/anime/cartoony looks all very well, and probably had the most consistent art I've seen in a weekly anime.

I do like the style of One Piece a lot. I like the low-tech feel of the drawings, and the overall visual style, save for the samebody problem mentioned above and how Art Evolution kicked in for several characters around Enies Lobby.

I really liked the art syle for Darker Than Black. It managed to handle realistic/anime/cartoony looks all very well, and probably had the most consistent art I've seen in a weekly anime.

You can thank BONES's infinitely deep pockets (post-FMA) for that. I personally like their character designs for Eureka Seven and Xamd Lost Memories.

Seconding Mononoke. I don't get headaches from Gankutsuou either.

My favorite manga style has to be Kouta Hirano's. The OVA looks meh though.

Seconding Naoki Urasawa. That style is the only thing that relates Yawara and Monster, which is pretty amazing.

I liked FLCL's design, for odd reason.

SZS's various random ass designs grab me, especially the Hellboy-style one.

@Anarchy: Tell me about it. It's kind of jarring to see that one Code Geass ending that featured their illustrations and realize that most of the cast don't really look like their artwork.

I seem to enjoy the "generic animesque style" such as is displayed in recent Fire Emblem games.

I'm not really a fan of Akira Toriyama's style (Dragon Ball Z, Chrono Trigger). It just doesn't seem smooth enough for my taste.

Also not a huge fan of CLAMP's art style, though they make good stories. I really like Magic Knight Rayearth, but I still think the characters' eyes are too big.

Revolutionary Girl Utena's style just grates on me badly for some reason. I think it's because it takes some accusations against CLAMP—gigantic eyes, thin features, and spindly limbs on Noodle People—and turns them Up To Eleven.

Also not a fan of the moe aesthetic. Or the Puni Plush style (especially not Lucky Star's particular variant of it), but I can stand that, at least much more easily than the gigantic-eyed sympathy-bait moë style.

The eye size in Stellvia Of The Universe is about the limit of my tolerance of eye size not distracting me from the rest of the plot.

And yeah, I think Sailor Moon also features excessively large eyes. Not quite enough to annoy me thoroughly, but enough to make me notice it too often.

Neon Genesis Evangelion seemed to feature relatively realistically-drawn characters...until I realized that all their waistlines were too high and too narrow. Guys and girls alike—look at how high Shinji's pants are, and how thin Misato's waist is.

edited 15th Oct '10 8:44:55 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

I really like the art in Tegami Bachi, especially the backgrounds. It's like 75% of the reason why I like the series so much. Unfortunately, the anime wasn't nearly as good art-wise (but I guess that's not too uncommon).

Oyasumi Punpun has ridiculously amazing art.

I like the art in K-ON!, but that has more to do with the animation in the anime being really good, as opposed to the actual style, though I like the style too. The manga's art isn't nearly as good though.

The art style of the Ore Imo anime is really nice. The way the hair is shaded also reminds me of Angel Beats!, but I think it looks better here than there.

As for art styles I don't really like...

The covers of shoujo manga almost always have craptacular art on them, but it's often a lot better looking in the actual manga, so I guess I won't count that, plus that's not one style anyway.

Hm... Oniichan Control has an art style I really don't care for. The faces look really weird when seen in profile, and I don't like how the eyes are drawn, usually. Also, it frequently resorts to random blotches of shading for its backgrounds, which is pretty ugly.

edited 15th Oct '10 2:14:45 PM by DYRE

I Like Kazuki Takahashi's art style really well, even if he tends to often make his characters hair style some of the most rediculous in the medium. His monster designs are also pretty good too.

I Tend to like Masashi Kishimoto, Tite Kubo, and Eiichiro Oda's styles rather well in that order ot best to worst, Though none of them are close to being that bad.

Mnemosyne has a rather interesting art style too.

edited 15th Oct '10 3:19:45 PM by Demongodofchaos2