Well… Nah. There’s always time to invest in shitty but fun games for laugh and Mugen’s are definitely these (there are some that are decent, but they’re few and far between.) Play the shitty games so you can appreciate more the good ones, that’s how I think.
The bar for anime games has always been the amount of characters with air dashes. You gotta be a real tard to get all uppity over that. I think what fucks people up is that japan makes 2D fighters that arent anime; not talking about kof and street fighter either. Air dashers is too long a name for them though. Air dasher hype doesnt sound as cool as anime hype.
Marvel 3 was gonna be anime but people complained about everybody having an air dash.
So really…air dashes, thats what separates the anime from the rest.
The problem is that you get people calling games like Vanguard Princess (which has no airdash but looks hella anime) as “anime game”.
There are other engines that are better for that IMO like 2D Fighter Maker and EF-12
There’s also that new one for Unity that’s being developed, UFE3D.
@Pertho Nah it’s more than just air dashing. There’s a mix of certain mechanics ( air dashing being one of them ) and aesthetics that makes people call a fighter “anime”. But I think more people make the “anime” distinction based on the later. I.E Dev’s example with Vanguard Princess. I.E Say if GG or BB didn’t have all the air dashing and bursting etc and was more similar to Street Fighter. I think they’d still be considered “anime” because unlike SF their character designs and aesthetics are completly influenced by anime with all the usual anime tropes. Where as Street Fighter has a anime style but there’s some western influence there which I think was to make it more appealing outside of Japan. And doesn’t really use many anime tropes you’d see in GG or BB.
Fucking youngings mentioning BB all the time. Anime didn’t really become that huge a term until Melty Blood blew up. The american scene needing to talk about games that differed from regular SF style fighting games created it. The reason why the term is of some contention is because it’s been used as a perjorative by a good chunk of the community. Since weeaboos felt very protective of Melty Blood, they went on the counter offensive to get the term seen in a negative light.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter much since the hood niggas using A-groove Sakura are about as Kawaiii Desu Ne as the MB and BB players. GG players, of course, are usually not seen as anime because of the Power of Metal; kind of how nobody says Hokuto No Ken is anime because Ken is manly.
It literally comes down to the amount of the cast having an air dash.
It’s almost like people have different meanings for the same words
The day fighting games became anime…
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How do I Gambit/Cap Commando in MvC Origins?
@Pertho “GG players, of course, are usually not seen as anime because of the Power of Metal” See that’s exactly what I’m getting at. Yes most japanese fighters have some anime style to them because it is Japan. But some fighters have western or other influences that make them seem not as anime and more appealing to the west. I.E your example of Guilty Gear having a heavy metal/Rock theme. Where as fighters like Blazeblue, Melty Blood, Arcana Hearts etc have really no influences outside of modern anime hence why they’re considered full on “anime” fighters. And yet UMVC3 which plays quite similar to them isn’t really seen as “Anime” because of its style and Marvel characters which are from American comics.
Hey has anyone wondered why aren’t there other Capcom fighters featured at Capcom Cup? One would think an event called Capcom Cup you’d see a variety of Capcom fighters. I mean I likes my USFIV but why not have some third strike, Alpha 3, SSFT, Vampire Savior and maybe even Hunter, CVS2 etc? I think there are those who would jump at the chance to play these classics again on a grand stage.
GG was the first anime game. People thought of it retroactively as anime as opposed to immediately as they did with Melty Blood, Arcana and BlazBlue. On the other hand, nobody is calling Chaos Breaker, Battle Fantasia or the Fate/Stay game.
Now that I think about it, don’t think I have a recorded instance of a 3D game getting called anime. There must be some weird exception in which the word gets used that I haven’t recorded.
Edit: before people get too dumbfucky about this, I should add that the anime stuff got used a lot more to cover up why people didn’t want to play a game than anything else. This is where the confusion with the term starts to come up. So you had people hating on Arcana Heart and Melty Blood for being “anime” because they didn’t have legitimate reasons to hate the game. Kind of similar to how Skullgirls got hate for being “too anime” when only 2-3 of the characters come close to playing like actual anime characters. It also got slightly intermingled because of the communities which were playing the games. MB got really popular with actually anime watching crowds since it was easy to pirate; AH was somewhat otakuish in following in Japan. These associations were used more to discredit them than, as I mentioned, any similarities in gameplay they shared.
What’ makes a game anime in the technical sense? The amount of characters with air dash and to some extent the ABC control scheme.
What does anime mean in the colloquial sense? I hate the artwork.
What you’re looking for is context. Words get to have multiple meanings depending on the context. For the FGC though, Anime will, a good 8/10, describe a cluster of games which all have air dashes. Kind of how like mashing in wake up, out of dizzy, out of a stagger or during regular gameplay has different meanings; hell, somebody can use the word mashing to describe gameplay which seems incoherent.
This is your friendly neighborhood anthropologist saying: The only reason why a lot of people don’t like the term anime is because of its used as a pejorative. Games with air dahses need a good umbrella term other than “air dashers.” Maybe 99ers for the IAD shortcut. But yeah, if you played MB or GG after Slash, you’re probably sick of the term anime being used by dudes who didn’t know shit about the games. That’s mostly the real issue with the term anime.
regarding aesthetics at least, anime games go further back.
Difference is that they catered also to a non-Japanese audience. Also a lot of Japanese video game companies faced a crisis and had to shift their priorities. Instead of anime series for a wider audience, they shifted to a more niche audience that was guaranteed to bring them profit. But they had to change the appeal a lot. Which meant, making cheaper videogames. The games I mention below are completely different to each other, yet they canbe labelled anime. Guilty Gear and Melty Blood are one of the few exception that managed to maintain their fanbase.
Excluding video games based on popular TV series, regarding anime in the sense we talk about it today for a niche audience, there was Metal and Lace: The Battle of the Robo Babes 20 years ago.
Western release was edited.
There were titles such as Samurai Spirits. Listening to the BGM of that stage in the arcades 20 years ago, was the best thing I had heard in video games back then. Ironically newer anime series would avoid that sort of violence.
Other anime titles were popular prior to Guilty Gear.
Eg Waku Waku 7
listening to Arina’s stage BGM, a JPOP song, was unique back then.
Tech Romancer’s and **Project Justice’s **in-game scenes and story sequences with Japanese voice overs and subtitles was a blessing too
**Last Blade 1 & 2 **too
Setsuna was a badass character back then. Just before violent anime series by Madhouse and Production IG became popular in the West, that character was something totally new.
Heres a more broad question about Japanese culture / anime / movies:
What do you call the character archetype that Iori fits into? Ive seen a couple characters from Japanese video games and anime that carry that type of attitude.
Other examples are Remy from 3S, Ukyo from Samurai Shodown, Jin from Samurai Champloo. Its like a solemn, slightly vain, character that doesnt talk a lot. Is there a name / term for this type of archetype? Are there other characters that fit this bill?
They pretty much fit the “troubled but cute” trope.
I saw the footage of Double Helix unreleased Justice League game.
This could have been cool.
Even iori?
I could see that since remy and ukyo are pretty boys. Im thinking “sighing samurai”. I dont know, but their body language always seems to say “bored of whats in front if them” like a japanese strong silent type.