What do you like more….The concept? Or something that exists because of the concept?

One barrier people have to get past is art. That is, they dislike the art of a certain media and will not look into the media because of that reason.

This is the case for me in relations to western comics, and western animation. I have gotten much more used to Japanese anime style art. I hardly watch Western cartoons because I do not find the art appealing, though I am trying to break through this barrier of considering the animation style: “stupid art”.

Of course sometimes the barrier is more specific. For instance, many people will not look at the work of Nobuyuki Fukumoto because it is very different from the usual shounen, bishoujo, style.

Ultimately, there are two problem with labeling art as “good” or “bad”.
1. People have their own opinions.
2. Certain art is designed for different things.

To use Fukumoto’s art style as an example, it does not try to be “moe” or “appealing”. Fukumoto’s art is designed for the serious stories he makes, often filled with gambling and psychology.

On the doujin scene, many (American) newcomers are critical of “unrefined” art style of Umineko and the original Touhou games.

In the case of Umineko, there are those who saw the Umineko anime first and thus the visual novel art clashes with them. Whilst of course they fail to understand that Umineko began as a sound novel, the art is not the main focus.

But moving away from that excuse, I personally do not think the art by Ryukishi07 is “bad”, the coloring is not like more commercial games, but compared to the art from the Higurashi doujin games, his art is has improved and has good proportions. The art is good enough to give us an impression of what the characters look like, the expressions show us what the characters are feeling.

For Touhou. One blogger (can’t remember which one) said that Zun is a “great concept artist”, and this is absolutely correct. Zun’s art gives the defining features of the characters. It may not be the greatest art, but it gets the point across. We know that Reisen is a girl with rabbit ears, wears a suit, a skirt, and has a moon badge on her chest, that’s the concept.

So I would like to hope that people who don’t know this philosophy that I’m preaching, will learn about it from this post. And for those who already have it in their heads, just understand that you are not alone.