@Luffy:
I've never really thought of the art of Negima as anything short of fantastic.
bwahahahahaha
Engorging backgrounds,
Alright if you're gonna want to come off as above Bill the "can't explain his distaste" guy you so pinned him as, you're gonna want to know terminology yourself.
great designs,
At the end of the day a lot of this is subjective, but this part sure as fuck isn't.
But I suppose I never considered the "soul" of the art.
How does someone never "consider' this. The soul of art, music, movies, etc is like instinctual of humans to latch on to and regard. How can a person have no fucking idea about that and just drool at absolutely bland technical efficiency?
The little things here and there which speak of the author's own character. And I can see where Zephos is coming from when they call the art itself bland. I can appreciate that point of view, heck I even find myself agreeing that on PURELY artistic terms…yeah I always found everything a bit too fabricated. Like a cold, heartless, souless factory mass-producing goods. So basically not enough grit.
It has nothing to do with grit. Finely tuned things can have lots of soul.
I'm a big Kraftwerk fan for instance.
I'm sorry but I find it a bit too idealistic and narrow-minded especially when you're not even considering how the WHOLE PACKAGE comes together.
We're not discussing the story here. That's another argument. If you want to convince me why a fruity looking bland festival about a kid falling on panties and using magic too gay for a Harry Potter book is something I should waste my time reading then go ahead and do that some-other time.
We're talking art right now.
And while I appreciate how a more soul-bearing style would be more someone's cup of tea it doesn't mean they should act all elitist and chalk anything less as automatically inferior and not worth attention.
lol at anyone calling what is essentially the punk rock manifesto elitist.
Elitists more often than not tend to be the fans of pure technique, rather than the artists or people who decry that attitude.
With that said I reject the notion that Negima doesn't have soul. The thing is unlike with other series you can't tell that from the art.
So did you just concede the art being souless?
Cool.
Even in the art it is apparent. Setting aside the art technique itself and its high proficiency but little character, the art direction is a different matter. It shows a lot of thought and insight. Take this example
You can't separate those from art direction lol.
You build a crude picture out of poop you can't start talking about how nice it's details are.
I don't know about you but I find the direction to be fantastic.
Alright, again with the terminology.
You don't even have art direction in comics. What the hell are you referring to with that.
Great perspective,
…..who fucking cares??? What is a great perspective?? You're asking me to care about the design of the cup when I'm fixated at the contents.
dynamics, progress between panels, a firm understanding into the action and location of the individual characters.
Congratulations Ken Akamatsu! You can draw comic book!
ken: this is happiest day of my life i draw comic book
the academy claps, many firework
comic book is drawn, it occurs
ken: here is new comic book, i made it work look
whole world: it works! he make comic book that works
akamatsu sr.: i am proud
president of japan: you are great comic book man to make comic book
If that's not expressing yourself in some way…
No, it isn't. God, I can't even believe you were so condescending to Bill on the other thread about his "inability" to talk about art.
This is definitely not an author who doesn't care at any rate.
No one, including me, ever accused him of not caring. We accused Kishimoto of not caring post-timeskip.
Ken Akamatsu can clearly make a working comic book, and cares about it working. He is not halfassing.
So what next?
Now be it an art style (probable) or lack of talent (less probable) or not caring (extremely improbable) it works.
Are you…..really so amazingly low on standards that this is your idea of greatness??
Conclusion: It works.
WELL SLAP THE HENS AND FEED ME TOXIC WASTE, NO COMIC HAS EVER WORKED BEFORE
Simple character art with great backgrounds combined with a story you can easily immerse yourself with…it works.
![](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/Demescus/30ufocl.gif)
Now you can hold the art itself against the whole package,
The style? Why yes, yes I will.
that's up to you but I think one should be a bit more open minded about things especially if one has never read the actual material (the good parts not the terrible beginning bad parts).
Good story will not change bad art.
And would have to be some sort of MEGA good story to make it worthwhile then in so massively visual a medium as the comic book.
Are you willing to make the claim that Negima can interest me on the level of ….accounting for how visually unappealing it is, say....Vagabond?
At the very least, that along with the feel-good shojoey atmosphere of the series give a sharp, scintillating contrast to some of the more gruesome scenes like these:
! http://3.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/71/20-186.0/compressed/MSN_ch186_pg18.jpg
! http://1.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/71/27-246.0/compressed/lmsn_c246_02.jpg
! http://2.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/71/35-318.0/compressed/nmahou_sensei_negima_ch318_02.jpg
Are you fucking trolling me??
Are you seriously fucking trolling me?
Did you seriously call these, ESPECIALLY the first and third ones, gruesome??
Jesus christ, can I get a non delusional person to defend this series against me?
I feel like I'm arguing against fucking Ao Kiji with his North Korea propaganda opinions of Slam Dunk here. That's a really bad insult in case you didn't know.
To frame the issue, my point is that while the art is bland, it does not mean the series itself doesn't have heart.
Again it would appear you're conceding the art to being now bland.
I doubt that one who truly reads the series, one who constantly immerses himself into the story can ever really say "This author is just doing this for the money, he's not having any fun at all, he doesn't care about this series".
Funny how I'm not saying that even now.
One other point which I've intentionally not mentioned until now. The designs own.
No, no, no, no, no no, no. No.
First of, I wanna put this here in case people thought that terrible anime shot (which totally messed up the color schemes, Chisame and Natsume with green hair, Yuuna with brown hair wtf!?!)
Yes because the colors of the identical girls was truly my issue with the image.
! http://4.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/71/01-001.0/compressed/MSN_v01_c01_030_031.jpg
Wow that first girl had a good design, but all the rest looked exactly like her with slightly different hair and degrees of eye opening.
Maybe you see a huge difference, maybe you don't but I think we can at least agree that it's better than the fucking awful anime. It's simple but there is rather good effort in distinguishing the characters
No, there isn't.
It's literally a near identical body with different hair and doodads.
They're like Sonic recolors.
Even the closely overlapping ones have well expressed their differences.
If you have to bring up the personality you are already defending a poor design.
Whether the art itself looks bland or not is another issue entirely.
I'm a better character designer and I'm a failed art student.
I literally have better character designs in Coronation day. And most of those are just crude chariactures of old avatars.
Of course let's not get into Akamatsu's awesome designs of monsters, Negi's dark forms and powerups in general and his impeccable fashion sense (though he has kind of a fetish with gothic lolita when it comes to Asuna but I suppose that's Evangeline's doing). Again,you can hold the art against the designs but calling them terrible let alone Naruto level?
Naruto still has better designs. And used to have pretty cool ones on occasion.
! http://9.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/71/30-274.0/compressed/cnegima_274_15.jpg
That's exactly how YuGiOh monsters look. In fact I'm pretty sure that's Zorc.
! http://8.p.s.mfcdn.net/store/manga/71/29-265.0/compressed/rmsn_265_08.jpg
lolll, the first one may have looked like a generic YuGiOh monster but at least it looked interesting, what the fuck was this supposed to prove.
I'm starting to think you have really bad tas-
! http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/3991/03kc6.jpg
Get the fuck out.
ARE.YOU.FUCKING.KIDDING.ME.
ARE.YOU.FUCKING.KIDDING.ME. ARE.YOU.FUCKING.KIDDING.ME.