Rubenerd

A person from university asked me today why I like watching anime because he "[didn't] get it". Funny thing is I can't quite explain it myself, but in this next series of posts I'm going to try.

One of the reasons why I find anime, manga and the surrounding culture engrossing and fascinating is the same reason why I loved Magic The Gathering when I was in primary school: I adore the art. There are some extraordinarily creative and artistic people out there who generate some amazing works.

As the design of the site would attest to, my graphics design abilities are woeful, so I'm naturally in awe of such people. Suffice to say I'll be submitting material to SourceForge, Github or Google Code before I ever do to DeviantArt! Unless bad photography I nevertheless have fun with counts :).

While we're talking about this specific aspect of anime and manga, it would be as gross an exaggeration to claim they have a generic style than to say "European" is a language. There have been entire books published on specific artistic styles in anime and manga, and each series, publishing house and studio have their own signature styles. In anime for example we have Navel who are famous for their endearing, cute characters, Kyoto Animation does moe almost too well (which ends up inspiring works like this!), and Shaft is simply congruent to awesomeness.

With each passing year graphics also change, so when I watch all those classic episodes of Sailor Moon I grew up with they look quaint with a nostalgic quality. And you know how I'm a sucker for nostalgia!

And then of course there's all the fan art which the internet has helped make so easy to distribute, and decreasing costs have made the barriers to entry even lower. The amount of detail in some of their works is simply amazing, and makes me even more ashamed of my crappy site logo I've been using since 2005-ish.

Anyway that's one of the reasons, presented in no particular order. If studying doesn't take up too much of my time over the next two weeks, hopefully we'll be able to discuss this topic further good sir/madam.

Now if you'd excuse me, I'm off to put up a bunch of Bleach and Haruhi Suzumiya posters. Sure the second season of the latter sucked compared to the first, but the art is still cool :).