Why 90s anime destroys new Gen anime

Whether its our #1 knuckle head ninja or our very squishy pokemons it always hit. If you watched alot of old animes there was always this fuzzy cozy feeling we get while watching them.

Whether it was late at night and you’re quietly watching Detective Conan solve a case or when you invited that one friend over and you both binge Yu-Gi-Oh discovering new Monster Cards or when you just had nothing to do on a weekend and you would practice your shinobi hand seals. You were overwhelmed by this feeling Let’s face it anime is just not the same anymore.

Personally i love the art style of older anime like evangelion, FLCL and GTO I really enjoy the creativity put into their stories and less emphasis on action even though in my opinion they had better action and lastly just the overall vibe of it. I like how it makes me feel when watching it at 3 am (I know you can relate too).

Lets go back a bit..

First off lets look at how those old animes were made. They were done traditionally by a method called cell shading and over a few period of years a new tra-digital method would be developed combining traditional and digital tools that gave the coming anime like Cowboy Bepop and Akira that sweet background detail that gives them their distinctive look that new gen anime does not quite have.

Adding hand painted backgrounds onto a moving image really sold the realism of what you’re watching. In real life, when you're moving, distant objects like mountains or the horizon appear stationary, even though you're aware they're far away. Anime often replicates this effect with backgrounds, especially older animes as go into serious detail as animators were more passionate working on older animes.

Today anime is all digital compare to 90s where everything was cell animation which was way harder to produce. It became really easy to make anime as technology kept on advancing. But it had a downside. As it was becoming easier to make anime many companies started producing garbage anime with barely any plot. Most anime now days revolves around some girl that needs saving and then conveniently gets saved just in time by the protagonist or just any issekai (literally a remix of the same thing).

These companies keep wasting their resources on garbage anime with no plot, character development This is why I despise some new gen anime from the bottom of my heart, not because it completely sucks but simply because it does not live up to its potential. But there are good anime in this era. Companies would rather waste their resources on garbage and produce garbage anime every month than using all those resources to make anime with a well built plot.

In the 90s animators where underpaid. But even today animators are still underpaid even though we have efficient methods now animators are still underpaid even though there is bigger budget in anime than ever before and technologies to make it way easier than before *sigh*.

Okay look I’m not saying new anime is BAD or anything like that, I’ll definately still watch JJK, My Hero Academia & Ninja Kamui.

But there’s just something “off” about new anime to me that I can’t quite put my finger on. Some of it looks quite good, like Samurai Champloo, for example, or the previously mentioned My Hero Academia, but there’s simply a hint of perfection to it all that I really dont like. Colors aren’t supposed to be that perfect, shadows are way too clean.

I think it’s the imperfections in the process of older anime production that actually contributed to their timelessness. From the unrealistic proportions in One Piece to Naruto’s wobbly animations when you look closely at some fight scenes they’re not perfect but we love them just fine

Newer anime, in comparison, simply looks mass-produced, once in a while though you get someone who seems really passionate about what they’re doing and you get something like Chainsaw Man or DOTA not sure the latter qualifies as anime but if you love elves and dragons definitely give it a watch.

And really, it’s not like anyone’s trying to do away with the older stuff, or like anyone’s trying to be lazy (at least I hope not). It’s just that you physically couldn’t replicate the look and feel of older anime which required all sorts of physical frames and filters on a computer.

Animation is easier and more accessible, which means that overall quality will drop, and anything worthy of watching will become harder and harder to find amidst all the garbage animes out there. That’s just fact.

Maybe all this talk about older anime being better is just because i am getting old and not catching up with the time? The older animes are what I grew up with and they will forever have a special place in my heart. I am more familiar with it, the way they present stories, their fight scenes and their very unique and imperfect styles. Human have a tendency to stick with things that they are familiar with rather than fully embracing new ideas. I know i am guilty of this.

Okay i will stop here for now. I hope you enjoyed my little rant about about how much i love old animes xD. Thats enough for now PEACE!