No, it's not "nostalgia", some things got worse with time
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4 random examples and the most recent is from 20 years ago? This is weaksauce OP.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but surely you can make your point more convincingly than this.
All this communicates is "I do not like the art style Key Visual Arts used in their visual novels 20-25 years ago." Which wasn't a novel sentiment even when I saw it posted all over 4chan more than a decade ago.
Like the other guy said, if you had focused on remakes and otherwise tried to make better 1 to 1 comparisons, this would be more than "Old Man yells at 20 year old visual novel."
"Am I kawaii uguu~?"
I have been looking for that video again for 15 years, PLEASE tell me you know its name. Trying to find it with that phrase has never helped me. :(((((
You're going to have to be more specific.
Unless you just mean this one that I found by typing "uguu," clicking the first link, and scrolling down slightly. It is 17 years old, so maybe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT2GRpwwS8M
Its a specific meme from an anime where the girl's eyes have gotten so big she looks legitimately retarded. Its a common response to pointing out how bad moefication/cuteness has gotten for anime (despite it being from like the mid 00s).
Hm. Not video but the one that comes to mind are those infamous Kanon (2002) faces: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuGcYgyWYAYoSF1.png
Yeah its the one on the left is what I assumed he was referring to. Guess you found the answer.
There was a sort of joke dub made about one anime, or several, with this artstyle and someone doing a very silly voice asking "Am I kawaii? UGUUUUU."
If you think 4 images is not enough, it's because you lack pattern recognition to instantly related those 2 styles with the 90's and 00's.
Kanon came for Steam, with the exact same graphics, in 2024.
Oh wow, two games made by the same company with the same artists a few years apart have a similar art style. What a shocking revelation! Tell us more wise sage! /s
Or you could place a timeline of games in the same series on a timeline and do one to one comparisons of sprites or CGs. Or at least games made by the same company.
If you think a game that came out in 2004 is in anyway reflective of the current state of the industry, you're more demented than Biden.
Furthermore, you're criticizing games that are classics. Games that are old and yet fondly remembered as influential to the medium as a whole in spite of their derpy art style. At this point, they've stood the test of time. Everyone knows they look a little dumb, but the hold up, and are charming because of it. Furthermore, the art style is so distant from the current state of the industry that you may as well be complaining about how all the kids are int disco these days.
You are not saying anything insightful or meaningful. You're either retarded, or have such a skewed perspective of time that I expect you to start complaining about how you can't smoke on airplanes anymore next.
Take me to your time machine so we can go back to 2005.
Meanwhile Rance (1989) looked like this and this
You make a meme about VNs getting worse with time and you fill it with this? Seriously? Clannad, despite the whacky art style, is one of the best VNs of all time.
The 2000s was very much still in the heyday of the industry with all time classics being released every year, often multiple per year. Hell, FSN, one of the best and most popular VNs ever, also came out in 2004, the same year as Clannad.
VNs getting worse is not a thing that largely occurred between the mid 90s and mid 2000s, it was really the 2010s where the number of amazing titles started plummeting. And while subjectively speaking you could point to art as one of the contributing factors, I would argue the much bigger contributor is a lot of the best studios closed up shop and stopped making them.
Most of the best VNs out there have a more modern looking moe art style than the works on the top part of this meme, but nothing like the derpy style of early Key works that gets clowned on even by major fans of Maeda's stories.
Maybe that's why it says "art direction", because it is about the art specifically.
The original run of Higurashi's hilariously bad paperdolls exist, and you go for Clannad and Kanon? And... You sound like a dementia patient: "Oh, they don't make things like they used to. This supermodern newfangled iPhone 3 just doesn't look the same as my good ol' iPod, I don't know why they released it last week" "Uhh, iPhone 3 released two decades ago grandpa." "Shut up! I'll have you know that yesterday, in the Vietnam war, I beat up plenty of upstart kids like you!"
Coke hasn't been the same since they stopped using glass bottles and cane sugar!
OG Higurashi at least looks incredibly unique. It almost feels wrong playing the modern remakes of them with their more normal models.
Damn, that three year difference from 96 to 99 just completely changed the entire industry and separated an entire generation with a nostalgia filter.
The moefication of the industry is an issue, but you've done such a bad job at calling it out that it almost feels like a double psyop to defend it.
I also noticed you picked two gameplay shots for your "bad" games and went with almost all CGs for the "good ones." Which is a revealing deception considering Yu-No looks like this in gameplay. Which looks pretty close to Clannad other than the "thick line" style having fallen out of fashion.
Basically, you are a retard of such a level that it only makes sense that you are a liar to be this dumb.
Funny, I thought this was going to be about "modern remakes," considering what "modern" Yu-No looks like.
Now that I think about it, that was Nagi Ryou, wasn't it? They REALLY need to stay away from "remakes," after the soulless showing that's already occurred. (YU-NO, Langrisser 1&2)
the funny part is that to a non-japanophile all of this looks like weird trash
Calm down Mamoru. We all know the PC-98
wasis the best.Those clannad bug eyes filled me with disgust
Uhg. The giant desu anime eyes will never not draw bile in my throat.
Uh, yeah, every decade in Japan brought different visual styles. Different ideas of cute, different ideas of sexy, different guidelines of what's acceptable to present. 2020s don't look similar to the 2000s, 2000s don't look similar to the 80s/90s, etc. Hell, you can almost tell which decade something came from by the visual style if you're waste-deep in manga/anime. Different generations like different shit. It's like getting frustrated that a 90s manga doesn't have all the over-the-top page-shitting detailed effects of a 2010s anime.
Economics may play a factor too in paying high quality artists, the top two existed or were in development around the beginning of Japan's permanent recession, the bottom two were made some time after. Said recession also probably changed the outlook on life of many men/women and thus changed what kind of stories they wanted to make. Evolution of computer technology also made the hurdle for standalone or small groups of artists to make their own VNs much lower.
The hatred of moe is a fossilized argument in the weebspace at this point. The common anime styles have shifted that one could find other things to complain about.