Art is still art whether it’s designed for a certain group’s subjective sensibilities or offends those sensibilities, and the post-Awakening games certainly have their fans. And making sweeping generalization statements about “all anime” is like saying the same about “all Brazilian music” whether it’s meant to sound Brazilian or not. Puppet shows are technically anime if they’re made in Japan and something in them is animated, and “anime-style” cartoons exist all over the world. But when I think of “anime” I think of the greatest animes of all time. Shows that stick with you. Stories that stick with you. I don’t see why anyone would use “too anime” as an insult.
As for Blazblue, so far I’ve only played the multiplayer matches. If there is a story to this I haven’t seen it.
As in cliched or lacking the kind of depth that one is seeking.
Would you prefer they call it overly mainstream, cautious, boring, clichéd, cringe, lacking depth, sanitized, leans on perversion, uninteresting – These are usually what I see people mean with this. It’s not that it’s “too anime” in that being anime is bad, it’s that bad thing is annoying and extremely prevalent in anime because it garners the studios money. And a lot - of especially japan-originated, but it’s endemic to the whole world - of shows have some degree of this problem.
ex. I’d say that having a scene where monsters perform lewd or derogatory acts to a female second lead before a male lead saves her life and thus she feels overly indebted is too bad-manga esque - and of course, was a hallmark of tons of a lot of really bad things that I read on purpose to make myself feel better about my writing chops.
ex. Sex sells is a trope, for a reason, and it’s frustrating, because it’s actively uninteresting to me and spending time on these shots makes me say oh so you have nothing good left to say which sours the whole affair.
However, as far as the topic title actually goes, it’s that the number of one-note characters is increased*, the hyper-eccentricity of characters, if I had to guess. I’ve never actually seen this complaint without the person going into detail about what they actually meant by that.
*It’s not actually! There’s just more words in the game so it’s easier to see it; but by the same token you then have ie. Sylvain who subverts this idea of ‘sole character trait’ by doing things centered around that trait.
In all honesty I think the consensus is that the late Fire Emblems feel more obviously troped compared to the earlier ones (even though tropes have always existed and aren’t inherently bad), furthermore leaning into “eye-catching” designs on games the further we go on.
With the consideration that class individuality has been replaced by mechanical versatility (in Three Houses, the only defining trait of a student compared to another one were things as their hair/face, and size, with a standardized uniform with very small exceptions, and with 3H implementing rendered characters and Engage removing any 2D stills, we have shifted into full 3D territory.) and character designs having slowly shifted from “Face mugs” to “Half-bodies” to now an entire 3D model, it is fact that the artstyle for new characters would be different.
But Engage has cranked up designs to eleven (combined with some one-note characterizations) that make people deem them too “anime-sque” or “v-tuber-like” (to such a point where while we have mega colorful female characters, we also have more tame, male characters ‘usually’, few exceptions apply.)
Here’s the real one word problem right here, and it’s the same one people had with Xenoblade 2; that the characters were so utterly attached to their archetype; their trope, as to become predictable and uninteresting.
That’s why Fates in particular gets so much flak, too, as the writing is much the same way.
Part of art is audience participation, but if that element is shallow, it taints the entire affair for anyone with more than a passing interest in it, because it’s hard to become invested in something that you already understand the outcome of well before it’s over, so it feels like a waste of time.
Might be a generalization, but with so little time on people’s hands shortening attention spans, the mainstream tropes are easy to produce, understand, and, therefor make money off of, which is why we see them so often for the short term gains, and then everyone forgets a week later, but hey, at least they made money.
Remember, marketing is a special form of psychosis, applied this way with making people think certain things are better than they are by triggering certain nostalgias; you’ve seen it before and thus familiar and comfortable with what they’re trying to sell you.
FE has always followed the anime tropes of it’s time. Eye-catchy designs aren’t anything new, either, and neither are one-note characters, considering most games before PoR barely had any characterization
Fine, I’ll bite. The origins of this phrase in particular is likely due to the fact that Fire Emblem is a long running series that is constantly evolving. This can cause older fans who are unattuned to or simply don’t enjoy the newer games to search for a catch all, sweeping statement for why they think the newer games are objectively flawed in some way. Whether the term “too anime” itself came from a knee jerk reaction or someone or out of a lashing out at the newer games due to many outside the Fire Emblem community calling the series as a whole “anime” doesn’t matter.
The point is that it’s being used as a catch all, and has been used for a long time without anyone who uses the term regularly even knowing themselves exactly what it means. This also is due to many people picking the term up from their favorite YouTubers, inadvertently turning their audience against these games.
It’s an archaic term, plain and simple. One that comes from the flawed perspective of trying to “objectively” define what makes games good or bad, when art in reality can not be objectively analyzed the same way something like a machine can. It’s about how the person viewing the art feels about it, nothing else.
It doesn’t help that this term in of itself is just further pushing away people from the community who do like anime, it feels vindictive in a way that I’m sure is unintentional. That by saying this the person is saying “all anime is like this” or, even worse still “this community is against what you enjoy, and we always will be”
Thankfully the term has gone down in use and hopefully with time it will be fully thrown out in favor of actual terms and arguments that both better explain what the person saying it is trying to get across (no matter how flawed of a perspective it is) and doesn’t inadvertently attack and turn away people who would otherwise find this community a good fit for them.
In the words of competitive Splatoon player Gem, “your worth as a community member is the amount of people you bring in minus the amount of people you drive away”
So let’s use language that doesn’t attack other people’s interests in such a direct and obvious way.
To be fair, most characters don’t get a lot of screen time period outside of the main characters.
I think much of the original draw to Awakening was that you got to see more individual personality via (voiced) battle quotes. Which meant you got to see more of a character than, say, their recruitment and death quote. Even supports have a real hard time fleshing out the secondary cast by themselves.
And then we get to 3H, which I personally thought was a great step forward for the FE series, even though at the same time I didn’t think it was that strong as an FE game, if only because of how it created a far more fleshed out world that included supports (time gating some so characters would talk about relevant plot) and, more importantly, character specific side missions. It’s a thing that games like Mass Effect had done already, but the point is that in doing so, you’re creating goals for characters beyond the main 2 or 3 guys in the army. It’s just another layer that can potentially increase depth for these ‘one-note’ characters of the past.
It’s just ridiculous the way Nintendo handled Engage’s designs.
The artist herself said she didn’t know they were designs for a Fire Emblem game, they just approached her and said “we need X characted designs, can you do it?” So she designed a number of unique characters, not knowing they should have an aesthetic cohesion, which is why the desert kingdom has a chef fighting on a horse.
Yeah, that’s not the same as characters like Ilyana and Hisame where every single thing they say is related to their Singular Trait™.
The new characters are made to be as eccentric and quirky as possible.
Like, Hisame even compares his wife to a pickle when proposing to her. Are you really saying the writing from anything pre-Awakening, barring Ilyana, is on the same level?