Awesome anime art style

Viewers unfamiliar with anime may think that all anime look the same; Such a sentiment could not be further from the truth. Like any visual medium with a long history, anime has developed an impressive list of unique, recognizable art styles.


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Every style of anime, from the gritty realism of iconic seinen people to the crisp designs of old-school shoujo series, has its time and place. However, some styles of anime art have become eye-catchers for fans, especially in their worst form. The medium will look more attractive without excessive use of unfavorable or inappropriate techniques.

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10 chibi

All characters have appeared in the Isekai Quartet.

Cute and heavily stylized, Chibi’s art style is an eye-catching, minimalistic visual aesthetic that exaggerates the characters’ features. Chibi designs are easy to recognize by their disproportionately large heads and short, stubby bodies. In the anime, Chibi’s art style is most commonly seen in comedy spin-offs, such as Isekai Quartet or Toradora SOS!

Related: Top 10 comedy anime that need a new season

However, this folk art style has countless drawbacks. When a show tries to cover something even if it’s serious, its chibi aesthetic turns it into gimmicky farce, too cartoonish to convey any underlying themes.

9 mo

Kamichama more funny face more

One of the most versatile and easily recognizable styles of anime art, moe aesthetic is distinguished by its focus on cute, attractive designs and perfect character proportions. Most Kyoto Animation shows, eg K-On! And Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon MaidI mastered the art of Moe’s aesthetic.

However, moe’s art style can also go wrong when creators take the urge to make their characters too cute. Alien designs for Kamishama Karen, Aiken, And air Show how a seemingly cute art style can turn out to be laughable.

8 Kodomoc

Yo-Kai Watch Yo-kai Keita and friends

A direct translation of kodomomouke is “made for children”, which refers to the genre and aesthetic of shows aimed at a younger demographic. Technical similarities between such chains as Yokai Watch, BeybladeAnd digimon It is impossible to miss.

Related: Top 10 Children’s Anime (Kodomonumuke Anime) of All Time

Unfortunately, the stigma attached to satisfying the children’s market leads to series recurring in both their plots and visuals. Kodomomouke’s art style is simplistic, lacking in detail, and often close to series-matchy, with the rare creative outliers spitting things out for those who enjoy the magic of children’s animation.

7 Clamp

Yuuko and Watanuki from xxxHolic.

Most studios and creative groups within animation develop a unique art style for their work. While some distinctive visual styles, like Trigger’s dynamic angular designs or Ghibli’s magical aesthetic, are popular for being good, CLAMP’s signature look is hard to appreciate.

Not every series produced by the creative group features disproportionate numbers of xxx hollywood And Code Geass. But questionable character design sensibilities are a staple of CLAMP’s art style. Hopefully it looks like more CLAMP shows card captor sakura And Chubits instead of X And RG Vida.

6 Animation Masaaki Yuasa

Ping pong and animation

Similar to the studios, some anime directors are known for their distinctive artistic styles. Of all the notable characters in the medium, Masaaki Yuasa’s visual sensibilities are the most controversial.

Its like Animation ping pong, tatami galaxyAnd Ino Oh, appearing distinctively sketch-like and minimalistic, intentionally stylizing the characters to appear coarse and unappealing, unlike most shows. While some fans adore Yuasa’s visual aesthetic for its uniqueness and fluidity of movement, others refuse to view his titles based on art style alone.

5 Shoujo

Vampire Knight -1

Like any other genre, shoujo anime comes in many-faceted art styles. However, when most hear “shojo aesthetic,” a distinct style pops into their heads, and associations with it are rarely good.

Older shojo titles, eg Vampire KnightAnd skip beat, tried so hard to make their characters dreamy and cute, which backfired. Much of the older shoujo looks awkwardly unrealistic and unnecessarily detailed, which often limits character movements and gives shoujo anime its notorious rigidity.

4 Yaoi

Junjo Romantica's main pair, Usami Akihiko and Takahashi Misaki, are flirting

Back when BL anime was still commonly called yaoi, fans began to notice a disturbing trend in the visual presentation of these shows. Most of the old-school boys’ love series not only share the same toxic themes and relationship tropes, but also the same obnoxious art style.

series like Junjo Romantica And Okan Ja Nai He shares a similar love for mismatched character designs, muted color palettes, and the juxtaposition of exaggerated female characters with silly male characters. Fortunately, today’s BL anime scene has left these stylistic trends in the past.

3 General anime

Asuna, Yuuki and Kirito at Sword Art Online

There is hardly anything more redundant and frustrating than watching performances adopting the same generic art style more and more. The advantages of today’s technological development allow studios to produce more animation than ever before.

However, when most seasonal animations look quite the same, one begins to wonder if visual quality has been sacrificed for quantity. The flat, big-eyed, expressionless character designs of most modern anime make it impossible to distinguish the protagonists, while aspects such as background art and unique movement dynamics lose all priority in the overall anime art style.

2 Rotoscope animation

Still image of Flowers of Evil.

A rare technique for anime, rotoscoping refers to the art of tracing animation over motion picture footage to produce the most realistic effect. However, there is a reason this unique art style has not found its place in the anime.

I’ve seen a few experiments with rotoscoping fans, namely evil flowers And A case here and Alice, were heavily criticized for their superhero imagery. The aesthetic mismatch between anime style and photorealistic animation proved that rotoscoping may not be an appropriate direction for the medium.

1 CGI

Berserk 2016

The anime community hates no creative decision as much as choosing to use CGI instead of traditional animation. Unfortunately, fans have good reasons to question CGI in animation.

The CGI renderings are smooth and good-looking, ie Scramble Triangle And monsters, is a novelty that most of them have not trusted for a long time. However, anime fans have had to deal with weird parables berserk 2016 hand shakers, And Knights of Sidonia Since this technology was introduced to the medium.

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