Misused: Animesque

I was slogging through Animesque doing a cleanup of ZCEs and general examples. During one of the many rounds through, I made this ATT so I could recomment a ZCE that was unhid without proper context, and this comment by the person who unhid it made me realize something.

This trope has ridiculous misuse.

If it's not just a straight-up ZCE, it's talking about non-Japanese works copying Japanese storytelling conventions rather than artstyle conventions, not to mention things like... this:

• Very disturbingly, there was a bootleg toy being sold in a convenience store called "Evil Stick" which was in the style of a magical girl wand and had unauthorized art from Cardcaptor Sakura on it, which revealed a disturbing image of a demonic looking girl slitting her wrists. This was being sold as a kids toy.

Yeah.

I don't feel like it's worth it to continue cleaning the main page when literally three examples out of fifty over the rest of the wiki have the bare minimum worth of context.

Surprisingly there were way less examples that were about storytelling conventions and not artstyle conventions than I thought there would be, but there are/were a crapton on the main page.

Also a crapton of Animesque wicks are just casual "this work is animesque" when they really don't need to be.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Jul 25th 2020 at 8:50:04 AM

Opening. I suspect this is more a ZCE problem than a misuse problem, though.

To be fair, describing an art style is a lot more difficult than to describe, say, an event or character trait, and a lot of visual elements that are commonly associated with anime can easily be applicable to non-Animesque art style.

For example, Anime/manga is famous for using large eyes, but there are a lot of Western works that features large eyes that doesn't qualify as that. (e.g. The Powerpuff Girls vs. Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z).

Edited by Adept on Jul 26th 2020 at 10:32:13 PM

I wonder if a rename can fix the problems, and if so, to what...

Animesque Art Style?

We did have an art style ZCE cleanup thread made from Inkblot Cartoon Style.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 26th 2020 at 8:57:58 AM

Yes, but unlike most artstyle tropes we have multiple other tropes about anime and manga art quirks; Sweat Drop, Cross-Popping Veins, Face Fault, Super-Deformed, ect. It wouldn't be ideal if people just listed these tropes next to Animesque and called it a day, but I could at least make an example out of it, but they don't even do that.

In any case, I'm not convinced a rename would actually help. The problem is, an Anime-inspired art style is easily recognizable in a single glance, but I doubt many people would actually be able to articulate what exactly makes the Anime/Manga style distinct from Western works without actually mentioning Anime/Manga in the description (which leads to ZCE).

Sure, there's Manga Effects and Japanese Visual Arts Tropes, but do every Animesque-styled works use them? Not to mention, some of those tropes are actually universal.

Edited by Adept on Jul 27th 2020 at 12:32:28 AM

I like the name change to Animesque Art Style idea, actually. It would make it clear from the title that it is an art style trope, and not about storytelling conventions.

If that's the case, maybe we could turn Animesque into a trope about works of fiction heavily influenced by anime and manga?

I don’t see how this is a problem distinct from other art styles, which we already have a cleanup thread for. The concept of the trope is pretty clear, it’s just a zce problem because people don’t have a model for what context looks for these tropes.

I also disagree with OP that stuff about the plot/what happens in the work is irrelevant or misuse. Japanese Media Tropes are heavily associated with anime in the West, and part of “Western-made Manga” involves imitating typical manga premises. Obviously just having mechs isn’t enough to make something manga, but it contributes to the feel of the work and is useful example context. When people don’t know how to describe art styles they may rely excessively on these plot and genre tropes instead, which is an example context problem.

The is this an example thread says otherwise.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Jul 26th 2020 at 10:10:31 AM

Sounds like putting the cart before the horse. Does the OP wick check include enough usage to warrant that expansion?

I answered that because the description and image focus on the art style and don't really mention storytelling conventions. To me these conventions are secondary to the style at best, done to complete a homage. I hesitate to call Pacific Rim animesque, even if it was conceived and created as a Western homage to mecha and kaiju movies.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 26th 2020 at 12:02:30 PM

There were two in the wick check, but that might be contributed to the whole "everything is a ZCE" thing. On the page itself I found at least ten, from the first folder to video games.

I think that wick check might work better if it's split by category ("ZCE", "correct usage", "misuse as <foo>", "can't tell", "exempt"[indexes, administrivia pages and so]) so that we can tell how it's being used.

After mulling it over, while I still like the rename idea in theory, I don't know that we have enough solid evidence of misuse to support it at this time. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, just that we haven't done enough to show that it's a good idea.

At this point, I think the sensible thing to do is to do a thorough ZCE cleaning and then check through what's left for patterns of misuse. If there is a consistent pattern of people misusing it as a storytelling trope instead of an art style trope, that would be the time to start considering a rename.

I strongly disagree with expanding the definition to include storytelling conventions. There are already more than enough people out there who will try to argue with a straight face that any animation that includes serialized storytelling or mature themes must necessarily be anime-influenced, as if the Japanese invented those things. We don't need to be encouraging them.

Edited by HighCrate on Jul 26th 2020 at 3:53:40 AM

To be clear, I wasn’t trying to argue that storytelling conventions are enough to count, just that they are relevant context to have. The example OP linked to from “Is this an example?” outright says that it doesn’t have an anime art style, so it clearly doesn’t count. The examples in the first post don’t include that clarification, so I would regard them as zce rather than misuse.

And yeah, I agree that Pacific Rim wouldn’t count as Animesque.

Though it does make me wonder if we're missing a trope about works being similar to anime in tone, plot, etc.

Asked about that in the soundboard, but didn't get an answer. I'd say probably.

What would that even look like, though? "Anime" is a pretty broad... thing.

The Matrix is influenced by Ghost in the Shell, but you wouldn't call it anime-like... right?

Maybe if it were restricted to Homages?

Yeah, 'similar in anime to tone/plot' is too broad to ever work. If it is homaging a specific anime trend or trope, I don't see the need to make a whole new trope for it — just say Alice draws heavily from the Stock Shoujo Heroine, or this film uses Mecha, or this arc echoes the Harem Genre, or this scene uses Love Bubbles, or this story is a homage to Dragon Ball.

As for what to do with animesque, I think we should tighten and clean.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 28th 2020 at 10:00:05 AM

Seconded. Honestly part of the reason I made this thread was because this is one of the "main" artstyle tropes, and just cleaning the main page isn't going to help when it's like this all over the wiki. Having more eyes on it and more hands to help the cleanup not take five years and inform people that this is not how you describe things, even if it "ruins" it for some, is both needed and appreciated.

(Shameless plug for the Art Style Cleanup thread, btw)

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Jul 28th 2020 at 8:08:17 AM

& Thirded. We don't have "noir-esque" for things that are influenced by, but aren't quite, film noir.

Fair enough. Just figured since examples existed, but ya'll make good points.

What examples? Like an 'anime homage' episode like Recap.Futurama S 6 E 26 Reincarnation? Because I can see that being a thing (like Noir Episode, to match the film noir point raised above).

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 4th 2020 at 3:18:03 AM