Your Favorite and Least Favorite Manga/Anime Art Styles Plus Examples

This thread, but with manga. And anime.

My favorite is Naoki Urasawa's for the attention to detail. Also, the style used in Revolutionary Girl Utena—granted, it looks kinda odd, but it's charming. :3 Also: Yotsuba&!.

Least favorite...probably xxxHolic, along with much of CLAMP for the noodle people weirdness.

So...artwork. Discuss. =D

I like Akamatsu's art style, especially in Negima. Also I like Shuichi Shigeno's artwork for Initial D. The human characters look odd but the car designs are so well drawn.

Kiyohiko Azuma's art style. Especially the Yotsuba&!-era stuff. I like how clean it is.

Also Death Note has a pretty cool style.

edited 30th Jun '10 8:04:02 PM by Sporkaganza

My favorite style is Kentaro Yabuki's (example). Unfortunately he mainly draws perverted stuff now.

Least favorite would probably be anything older than 2000 (or around there).

edited 1st Jul '10 12:01:55 PM by Soliferrum

I dunno, I've always sort of dug the 90's anime styles. Martian Successor Nadesico, Princess Nine... to a lesser extent Neon Genesis Evangelion...

Well, a bunch of older styles are good. Just some like the lesser known mangas have horrible styles.

Point.

Kosuke◊ Fujishima◊ Makes◊ Everything Beautiful◊ ...◊ Everything.◊

Clothing, men, women, everything, a work of beauty. God's gift to the anime and video game industry if I ever saw one.

I generally like a more realistic style (Darker Than Black and Witch Hunter Robin being good examples), but I've also liked some that are relatively realistic, but use a sort of "paper doll"/stylized way of depicting characters- like Samurai Champloo and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (never thought I'd compare those two, but they have some similarity in that way).

Ones I don't like- I pretty much stay away from the very cutesy "moe" style (like K-on for instance).

I tend to like "clean" character designs, which is something I can't really describe but can only cite through example: K-ON, Toradora, Durarara. (Although I've only really watched 1 out of 3) Does that make sense?

Overall...Rebuild Of Evangelion is beautiful, in it's characters and backgrounds, ditto DRRR!! (biased Latia is biased), I was suprising pleased by Clannad's style...so, yeah.

I've only seen screencaps of Okane Ga Nai, and I despise it. It's...not too terribly bad overall, except for really weird size issues, but...the uke is absolutely unforgiveable. You'll see what I mean.

I'm a little iffy on Dear S as well (click that link and you'll see what I mean.)

EDIT: D'oh! How could I forget? I love love love all of Satoshi Kon's stuff. Realistic, Generic Cuteness averting peeps with highly detailed backgrounds with the occasional burst (or not-so-occasional in Paprika) of Deranged Animation.

So, in a nutshell, I enjoy highly detailed not-so-Moe art, except when I like not-so-detailed Moe art. Oh, lol.

edited 30th Jun '10 8:36:42 PM by Latia

Deranged Animation is always great. Sometimes I wish anime series could have higher budgets so we could get more of that.

I like Naoki Urasawa's art style for the ridiculous amounts of variety entails. I mean, he draws ugly people; he draws average-looking people that actually do, in fact, look average; he draws fat and skinny people; he draws middle-aged people who actually look middle-aged; he draws people with big noses, small noses, straight noses, upturned noses, aquiline noses and all other sorts of noses; he draws people with round, square-, oval-, or heart-shaped faces. When I first discovered his work, I was all, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OF MY GENERIC CUTENESS AND ONLY SIX FACES-CONSUMING LIFE?

As for least favorite? Itaru Hinoe. I'm sorry, but my brain refuses to recognize this◊ as a human girl. While there is a slight improvement from Kanon to Clannad (the nose and mouth no longer seem to be between the eyes instead of under them. Mostly) the female character designs are still too far into the Uncanny Valley for me to enjoy the series.

edited 30th Jun '10 8:43:13 PM by Sparkysharps

^Definitely my least favorite anime art style as well. Those series and everything that looks like them just looks... eghghhhhhhhhh

Another art style I do like: Kimi Ni Todoke. Something about it I just love. It's different from generic shoujo art, somehow. I think it's the way the eyes are. I like that.

Also, not exactly a reason to like or hate the art style... but a lot of people have noticed that the male lead of that show looks weirdly like Luffy.

edited 30th Jun '10 8:43:48 PM by Sporkaganza

Yeah, the Key style is the one I meant when talking about least favorite.

I've been meaning to check out Kimi Ni Todoke. Come to think of it, that also fits the "realistic but stylized" idea I mentioned.

edited 30th Jun '10 8:52:07 PM by Jordan

Now that I've looked at it a few times...

I think I'd add Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny to the list of "least favorite". It feels...I'unno, sloppy? :S

It's kind of weird, but I always did like the art style of Code Geass, and by extension I guess the CLAMP art style, although I've never seen anything else they've done. They're all so pretty! Not to mention noodly. :3

edited 30th Jun '10 8:56:20 PM by Sporkaganza

Berserk is probably the best manga ever, at least graphics wise

Not a favorite, but xxxHolic was very noodly.

I have to say that I am a big fan of Totan Kobako's style in Sketchbook. Personally, I think the character designs are simple yet at the same time detailed, which for me is optimal for a Slice of Life series. I also find the style of characters to exude friendliness for some reason. While most of the manga is not actually as colorful as the examples I give, the style is essentially the same.

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edited 30th Jun '10 9:19:49 PM by LouieW

I don't really see it. Charming, but pretty generic.

I always liked the uniform design from that series though.

For some reason, I don't like the art in most shojo manga I've looked at, CLAMP stuff included. Anime, though...I liked Princess Tutu's art just fine.

The good...well, from the ones that have already been named, I'd agree with Naoki Urasawa, Satoshi Kon, Ken Akamatsu, Kiyohiko Azuma, Kosuke Fujishima, and Rebuild of Evangelion. I'm a little surprised that nobody's mentioned the classic, but still very unusual by today's standards, art style of Osamu Tezuka. And while I can't see it working for anything else, One Piece's art style works great.

As for other anime, hmm... Eden Of The East, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 (for some reason I like the simplified character designs), FLCL and just about anything else involving Hiroyuki Imaishi, Figure 17 (freaky monsters + cute kids), CLANNAD (especially the alternate-universe segments — does anyone have a reliable source for just how they did that?), Hayao Miyazaki movies of course (especially good for characters' movements), and Kino's Journey.

I'm a huge fan of Tite Kubo's art (not that this should come as a surprise). I still can't believe the dude puts out shit that pretty each week, especially when you compare it to a number of other weekly series.

Ryohgo Narita does a fantastic job also. There's something about his style that just clicks. It's noot to complicated, not too simple and really just emanates this kind of delighted glee the reader is likely echoing.

edited 30th Jun '10 9:32:47 PM by KSPAM

I can't think of anything I really hate, but stereotypical shoujo (think Fruits Basket, Vampire Knight, or Hadashi De Bara Wo Fume, as much as I like the last one) usually annoys me. It's the eyes. Hmm...I never really liked the Axis Powers Hetalia anime artwork either, though I can't really point anything out about it. Also, the style of Kuroshitsuji and Pandora Hearts- it feels a little bland to me.

I used to really hate Princess Tutu's art, but I got used to it by the end of the series.

I liked Cencoroll- kind of weird and unique. And Not Simple. Trinity Blood was pretty good, though I mostly like the style because of the ridiculous detail on the clothes. I liked the chibi style of The Melancholy Of Suzumiya Haruhi Chan and Nyoron Churuya San. Oh, and I've always liked the art of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei; it's really clean and simple (and adorable).

Edit: I don't know if this counts, but I also really like VOFAN's stuff- he's the guy who draws the covers◊ for the Bakemonogatari light novels. He's got a Flickr of his original artwork.

edited 30th Jun '10 9:37:21 PM by Tumbril

^^I don't think it's his art style. He probably just writes the novels and the illustrator is responsible for the way the characters were designed.

edited 30th Jun '10 9:33:50 PM by Sporkaganza

Figures I'd neglect to think of that. Oh well, kudos to whoever does draw it then.