But Fire Emblem was ALWAYS Anime...Right???

I'm sure you've all heard by now the often used remark on engage's Art Direction being to anime as the aesthetic is compared to the astoundingly popular worldwide phenomenon that is genshin impact and yeah while it's admittedly easy to make that comparison and it's something that I myself can see since I play that game that all said I'm not someone who is very well versed in anime at all I generally don't like watching the new anime stuff and I just don't like watching anime I guess I'm especially not that familiar with the evolution of modern recognizable anime tropes and I can only really at the moment view the evolution of Fire Emblem and Anime within the Fire Emblem purview rather than a more broader understanding of how anime Trends have developed over time in fact I'm actually writing and reaching out to other way more qualified anime historians for a video explicitly about fire emblems anime influences which will come later down engages life cycle so what else can we glean from looks to anime and is looks to anime even really a bad thing but first if you've been supporting my content for a while and you want to support even more please check out my patreon link below hang out get behind the scenes videos exclusive q and A's and Discord chats and get to know my private community in case you didn't know I just moved to cities and it's been streaming and expensive to get the essentials furniture and so on so any contribution to help soften the blow of the move would go a long way I will also be live streaming engage on my streaming Channel and I stream several times a week so if you want to catch me live check out my streaming channel here on YouTube now let's get started with the video if you've seen my content you may have noticed that I say precedent a lot contextually this has to do with things Fire Emblem has done in its insanely diverse history already justifying its return in another entry we haven't seen capture or a good ranking system in Fire Emblem since Fates and genealogy respectively I think they are both great ideas and they should come back so maybe it might be a shock to hear that I don't think Fire Emblem engages substantial pivot to very colorful Moe designs is that big of a deal to me I mean it's mostly not that big of a deal to me edelgar did not translate that well into this style I think she looks god-awful but I think many of the Emblem characters look good in this art style engages colorful cast and super pretty environments and dynamic animations are great that is why I'm fine with the direction but it's definitely not because Fire Emblem has always been anime a catch-all statement that oversimplifies the history of fire emblems anime influences making this art Direction fine and immune to criticism system I've never really understood or agreed with this sentiment all that much and while I've only recently started to work on my Fire Emblem and Anime influences script that catch-all defense has become one that I feel is pretty factually wrong in my opinion Fire Emblem has always maintained some form of realism while adhering to some kind of fantasy anime standard katsuyoshikoya Fe Force artist and mayumi hirota Fe 5's artist designed their characters with his perspective when working for kaga the Fire Emblem genealogy of the holy war fan special Roundtable discussion was a 1996 interview featuring shosokaga fire emblem's Creator designer and director answering questions about fe4 in it hichiku tsukumoto one of the panelists and interviewers comments on fe4's intentions with regard to Fan appeal tsukimoto but I also appreciate how genealogy of the holy war doesn't go out of its way just to try and appeal to fans kaga I want to shape this game according to my desires instead of trying to appeal to the fan base that said I also like to watch some popular anime series such as Gundam and legend of the galactic heroes which feature complicated Human Relationships even so as the game's Creator I tried my best not to push my own trivial interests onto the player too much while they are still present I tried to keep them to a minimum I think I took a huge risk with this game with regard to the emotional attachment to the characters fans would gain while playing the game but even then I wanted to shape this game according to my own desires I didn't want to sacrifice that for the sake of appealing to the fanbase we can extrapolate two key points here number one his anime influences are the Gundam series and legend of the galactic heroes number two kaga did not want to sacrifice gameplay and characters to appeal to fans but instead to fulfill his own desires let's start with number one in the early 90s what would be some anime influences from either series that he would borrow for his own work these series embody a lot of that balance that I mentioned above their sci-fi animes with dramatic War Stories there are lots of guns and lasers and explosions in different colored hair but there is a very clear and serious groundedness to it in either series many characters are dressed in uniform their body and facial proportions resemble real humans and ask for references that kaga himself pulled like the shadowy cultist lopterians who work to resurrect the Earth Dragon loptus led by manfroy who operates behind the scenes in yugdrill Legend of the galactic heroes has the terrorists cultists who operate behind the scenes to re-establish the planet Terra as the center of human civilization like the enemy Camus who becomes Zeke and returns as the masked Ally serious there is an enemy character in Mobile Suit Gundam named Char who returns as the sunglasses wearing Ally Quattro who mentors the youth in Zeta Gundam the former Show's sequel Kanga wanted to write a dramatic War Story with complicated human relationships and his influences were dramatic War stories with complicated Human Relationships there's of course a lot more comparisons to make between kagas fire emblems and these anime but this should at least start to paint a picture in this case Fire Emblem was influenced by anime because kaga's influences were anime but the early Fire Emblem characters weren't made to appeal to popular anime tropes like the dedes that you often see in anime these days in fact hilariously kaga didn't even know what a tsunde was until he revealed as much in his developer blog dated in 2008 a character concept memo of a Berwick Saga character as promised it was a bit rushed but I personally like her character when I was writing this I didn't know the meaning of a tsundere so if you ask me Fire Emblem wasn't always following newer anime Trends and it certainly didn't adopt them in its writing or aesthetic for the express purpose to appeal to fans kaga did as kaga does seemingly whatever the he likes the balance of being realistic while adhering to standards of anime has in my opinion been a common one in Fire Emblem for many many games if I had to guess the huge 180 in art design from the realistic hirota style of fe5 to the more colorful and cartoonish style of Canada's work on fe6 were to appeal to a newer generation of fans on a brand new portable console but even then I've always felt that balance was important for the series The teles duology is one of my favorite styles specifically for that reason it's like Peak balance the cast is so colorful and pretty and badass and cool and bright all while maintaining some form of realism in their proportions while being able to tell you a lot about them by what they're wearing what their facial expression is and what their pose is say what you want about kurohana's work on Fire Emblem 3 house is in three hopes but I love so many character designs from this game which funnily enough also Drew inspiration in its characters from Legend of the galactic heroes don't get me wrong I don't religiously follow this balance and have it decide what my favorite and least favorite art styles in the series are but personally it does play a role I can't tell you at the moment because I don't know what pop culture or anime influenced the GPA game to the teles games but I do hope I can find an answer eventually in a well-researched fire emblem and Anime video but today is not that day that said I think we should move past the fire emblem has always been anime narrative because it implies that Fire Emblem from its Genesis always wrote and presented itself with popular anime Trends to appeal to fans at the same level as when this argument really started to take off which in my experience was in Fire Emblem Awakening I personally think defaulting to this inherently dismissive and incorrect statement to defend any game's art Direction isn't isn't a good idea whether we're talking Awakening Fates three houses or engage sometimes people just aren't going to like the art style or character tropes used and that's perfectly fine people are allowed to like the things they like and dislike the things they don't if you're speaking to an old head of Fire Emblem they might just be partial to the dramatic War Story Vibe an aesthetic that kaga wanted and by contrast C engages art style as the polar opposite of what they want and that can be difficult to understand as a newer player to the series who hasn't had that same experience and may not understand why some older fans may be disappointed of this new art style at the same time being overly pessimistic against or overly defensive for engage are things I've seen and faced unfortunately and it's not fun to be caught up in that either this video was actually the beginning of a longer video about my personal thoughts on engages art design as a whole in that script I go over the positives and negatives of Ages art style and characters and it was only upon realizing after the fact that I think that this was a neat little editorial opportunity in itself so that's why I wanted to break this up into two videos engage releases in three days I still think I'll release that opinion piece within that time frame anyway so stay tuned because there might be a another art video about engage very soon and if you like this video please leave a like as it actually does in fact help this video gain more reach to New Eyes my question to you is where do you personally rank engages art style currently and did you know about kaga's anime influences let me know in the comments below thanks for watching and supporting me and as always deuces foreign [Music]

Channel: Faerghast

Views: 75,946

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Id: -OhXfDOLR_E

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2023