Vampire Hunter D

How important is the quality of animation to you?

I think that’s a fair question. The actual animation - - the sophistication of drawing, the color choice, the frame rate - - constitutes a significant portion of the anime viewing experience, obviously. And you can’t appreciate the positives if you can’t also account for how the overall anime’s diminished when the animation’s lacking. You can probably enjoy a good looking anime even if it has a bad story, of course, but can you still enjoy a poorly-animated movie if the story’s good?

I can think of two examples to address that…

Animation quality definitely factored into my appreciation of the VAMPIRE HUNTER D movies. This’ll probably be controversial to say, but I don’t think the original movie is that great. It was influential, to be sure, but I don't think it holds up to the hype.  A lot of that had to do with the animation looking really dated. It’s a little tough for me to me creeped out by ghouls and goblins when they seem consist of only four-frame-long loop cycles. I enjoyed BLOODLUST infinitely more and a lot of that had to do with the animation being infinitely sleeker. Then again, that could be easily chalked up to BLOODLUST having a more complex story than the first one’s pretty one-note plot, because stellar animation couldn’t save FINAL FANTASY: ADVENT CHILDREN for me. At all.

Actually, FF: AC almost deserves a rant in itself.  I rented that with A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE however many years ago and had such a bad experience with both, I pretty much stopped renting movies for more than a year. I was hoping to enjoy FF:AC simply as eye-candy and I couldn’t even enjoy it in that capacity. The CG animation looked so awesome in the trailer but by the time I got bogged down under the almost aggressively-inaccessible fan service plot, the expensive effects lost almost all their luster. I actually even prefer THE SPIRITS WITHIN.

So those are coming in on both sides of the spectrum. Bad animation hurting one viewing experience and good animation not being able to save another. I'm sure you Anime Vice lunatics have got infinite variations on the situation. When and where has animation quality mattered significantly to you?

-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Studios and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. HYBRID BASTARDS! is available  here and UNIMAGINABLE is available here for pre-order on Amazon.com.  

I like good animation, but if the story is B-shit it's no use if your animation is as perfect as Ghibli's animation....

OP, I'm so glad to find someone else who hated A History of Violence.
 
As you hinted at in the post, it's really just a factor to be taken into account with every individual anime. What I like about JesuOtaku's video reviews, for example, is that she goes into the plot, characters, music, animation style/quality, and so on.
 
That said, I find it hard to watch something with animation as bad as, say, Space Thunder Kids. Then again, that had more flaws than just bad animation.
 
@MercuryCrusader:  Some of my favorite anime are Yu Yu Hakusho (began 1990) and Rurouni Kenshin (began 1994), the era of which is as far back as I tend to go. Anything before that was original in its time but now has suffered the unfortunate effect of appearing cliched purely because it invented the cliches (some people have a similar reaction to Lord of the Rings). Then again, it's not like the majority of modern anime is a jackpot of originality, so I'm open to anything.

The original Captain Tsubasa had a crappy animation, yet, most of the people who view the original anime are right when they say it's better than the new breed... 
 
But anyway, a good animation is better, but not always the key of a successful anime. 

To me, both the story/plot and the animation make a show in my opinion. I can remember watching some shows when I was younger that had really good animation, but the story sucked and made it unbearable to watch. A great example of a show with decent/great animation but is stuck with a almost non-existant story/plot is Kampfer. The lackluster plot (especially in the last 2 episodes and the 15-minute OVA special with the Entrails Animal Dolls) killed off what could have been a great show (even though the animation was great, the story has to be decent as well).

Very important

I watched and loved the original Gundam. Also I watch Gundam 00 because it was pretty in HD. Using the Gundam series as a perfect example my order of favorites in that series generally follows older worse animated ones are better and better animated ones are worse. So basically animation quality effects how likely I'm going to watch watch the whole thing. Not how much I'm going to like it. It's like the movie 2012 I watched because wanted to see the special effects but that is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

i can tolerate watching the old stuff, and most of them are really good. Generally the quality doesnt bother me that much.

wow I am happy to see all the story first comments here.  I was distressed when I read the original post.  I hated bloodlust because the story just didn't do it for me but then I've pretty much always thought VHD was a bit overrated.  Coming from books and movies as opposed to comic books I am very much story first.  What attracts me to anime is the story the greyness the thought provoking nature of the stories.  Now if something had absolutely terrible animation I could see not watching it even if the story was great but I haven't found one like that yet.  Usually the ones with bad animation have stories I don't care about either.

I actually even prefer THE SPIRITS WITHIN.    

 
 I don't really care, but those are fighting words with some die hard Final Fantasy fans. 
 
Anyways, for me it comes to story first and formost.  I like watching allot of older anime myself and if the story good that about all I need for the most part.  I love watching older animes like Maison Ikkoku, Rose Of Versailles, Brother Dear Brother, Kimagure Orange Road, Marmalade Boy and the one movie and tv speical to Golgo 13.  (I have to confess when I see the CG in Golgo 13: The Professional  I have to turn the other way.)  I guess I could even put Utena in this category.  
 
People shouldn't be so quick to make fun of anime if it's over 30 plus years old.  I really older anime styles myself.  Something about the new for the most part dosen't hold up for me. 
 
I don't like all the bright colors they use in most anime nowdays. 
 
I did blog on the subject Whats happeing to anime nowdays.