Title. This also includes Western animated series in addition to Japanese anime.
Arcane by far. Gorgeous art style, great colors and composition, great fights. It’s going to be hard to beat it considering how huge the budget was.
Check out the Corridor Crew episode on it. A lot of what we love was actually due to budget limitations! Like the super detailed backgrounds are digital paintings as opposed to being fully 3d.
They cut a LOT of corners but not in a bad way. Limitation breeds creativity and Riot absolutely nailed it
Well yeah, the line has to be drawn somewhere, but it’s still super high budget compared to any animated series out there. They spent roughly 10 million dollars per episode! High budget anime would usually spend something like 1 million dollars per season. One punch man season 1 reportedly spent $80k per episode. The difference is massive.
It not being fully 3D doesn’t mean that it’s of lower quality.
For example when consoles got powerful enough to draw 3D backgrounds you could see a significant decline in background quality, since you can have a higher quality 2D background for a fraction of the resources.
I didn’t mean it was lower quality! I’m saying a lot of things we praise were due to budget limitations. The show looks awesome
I think Frieren is especially beautiful, like just look at this shot
The attention to detail they took for such meaningless shots was wonderful. There’s a shot of Frieren crossing a stream then turning around to help Fern up the small ledge in an early episode that was so exquisite and unecessary but also completely necessary for the character development—just not stuff you expect in an anime series. If they had less of a budget that scene would be Frieren and Fern bobbing up and down without any additional movement.
Also the first dragon fight featuring Stark is so beautifully animated. I don’t think many people register how gorgeous that show is.
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Cyberpunk 2077, and Arcane had some great visuals. The demon slayer swordsmith village arc also had some incredible artwork and animation in it
Edit: I Mean Cyberpunk edgerunners
If you meant edgerunners you’re right. If you meant 2077, you are also right. 2077 has some of the most beautifully crafted first person npc interactions of any modern video game. Phantom liberty made it even more incredible. Edgerunners got me back into anime after a good 15 year hiatus and now I have been thoroughly brainrotted. (Everyone needs to watch Kill La Kill and turn off your take-this-serious filter then ride the wave)
Haha yes I meant edgerunners, I even looked up the title before hand and still mixed it up. Though you’re right, both the show and the game have great art.
Kill LA Kill was the one with the alien outfits right? That show had some great parts, it was silly and absurd, though a little on the salacious side for me, especially considering how young the characters were.
Obligatory shoutout to [email protected] if you want a more anime-focused discussion. Of what I have watched (or seen enough of to make a judgement) there are a couple standouts. Note that I haven’t really watched much western animation in recent years.
- Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End - [email protected]
- The Apothecary Diaries
- Heavenly Delusion
- Delicious in Dungeon - [email protected] - This one is done by Studio Trigger, so it is a bit stylized, but I adore the animation in this series
- Jujutsu Kaisen - I haven’t watched this, but I have only seen tremendous praise for season 2’s animation (despite the studio’s working conditions)
- Demon Slayer - another show I haven’t watched, but have seen plenty of gorgeous clips
Wildcard answer would be Star Wars Visions. Each episode is done by a different animation studio, so it can be up to personal preference as to which ones you like, but there are some great showcases in the show.
Edit: If you care a lot about animation quality, I would recommend checking out the SakugaBlog. It goes into deep dives on Japanese animation. For example, they did a whole running series on Frieren (link to the first article).
Jujutsu Kaisen: … (despite the studio’s working conditions)
Hey now, it’s high quality BECAUSE of those working conditions. That show was made with blood, sweat, tears, and a lot more blood. /s
I think Demon Slayer looks quite good.
Basically anything by Studio Trigger is worth watching for the animation alone, I think they’re one of the best I’ve seen recently.
I also think modern One Piece has some really incredible moments during the Wano arc.
After one piece of the Netflix one piece adaptation I finally hunkered down and watched the anime from start to (the current available dub c. Jan. 2024) which was about middle of the Wano arc. That show obviously was and is janky as fuck but there are some sequences in the Wano arc where I literally was like “that was some awesome and amazing fucking work” Especially when the former retainers did their initial invasion of Kaidou’s castle. (Been a while but that sequence of the three or four samurai’s initial invasion is honestly some of the coolest art I’ve seen in any anime, up there with randomly finding adult swim and watching the Cowboy Bebop opening back when I was 12)
Scavengers Reign was pretty great because it uses suggestion of detail more so than actual detail. It lets the mind wander while watching and draws you in even more.
MAPPA has some great ones. Chainsaw Man was great.
The Apothecary Diaries looks amazing.
Demon Slayer, maybe I’m not as prolific with my anime repertoire but damn that art is gorgeous
Hells Paradise.
