Board 8 > Post an animated series, comic, or video game, and I'll tier its visual design.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Don't bother unless it has some kind of distinct visual style, don't just nominate Generic Moe Anime #3194.

I will include a brief write-up if I feel like it.

one piece

Wario Land: Shake It

Space Funeral

Duckman

ReBoot

Skies of Arcadia

Monster By Mistake

The Midnight Gospel

Metalocalypse

Jim Lee's X-Men (X-Men Vol. 2)

Kirby's Epic Yarn

An Untitled Story

Little Nightmares II

I can't name the tiers yet because I can't think of any quotes from the series involved.

S Tier

A Tier
Jim Lee's X-Men: Ah, the "classic" style of comics. It's so detailed and gross, lots of little scars and blood and everything. Even characters in the background draped in shadows are still more detailed than most characters in the middle of the panel in modern mangas. How long did this take to actually draw?

B Tier
Skies of Arcadia: Oh man, that early 2000s RPG style. God, classic.
Kirby's Epic Yarn: Nintendo is really good at coming up with unique styles for games. I haven't played any of them except Paper Mario, but hey! It is a talent they possess, and I can't think of any mainline Nintendo game that looks ugly? Having the characters just be the outlines made out of yarn is a great idea.
Wario Land: Shake It: Wario has always been an unappealing design to me, but the actual visual style is pretty good. It's simplistic, but everything is very distinctive, so I'll accept it. I don't really understand how Ashley has such a huge following for Smash, she's such a non-character.

C Tier
Little Nightmares II: The aesthetic itself I like. I like the gross-falling-apartness of the house, the dustiness and the illumination, all of that is good. However, while I know nothing about this game, but as a general rule, I don't like 'little kid in a dark environment that's a big metaphor for mental illness or whatever,' which this really looks like at a glance.
One Piece: I admit that this is super distinctive, and in that regard, it's great. But it's so unappealing to me. Almost every character looks so ugly to me... and yet, there is something to this aesthetic. I can't really explain it. I don't like it, but I also sort of do like looking at it. Random story: I was teaching in the last week of school, a student asked to watch One Piece on the electronic whiteboard, and she immediately put on an episode with an opera singer mermaid character who I can only describe as the most racist anime character I've ever seen.

D Tier
An Untitled Story: Was this entire game made in MS Paint? I don't completely hate it, but it's a little 'general retro indie' looking for me. 2007? Goddamn, must be Newgrounds or something.
The Midnight Gospel: This looks exactly like what I imagine every mid-2000s cartoon to look like. The big eyes, the big mouth, the neony colors -- this is exactly it.
Metalocalypse: This is another gross-looking show, but I'll say this -- the characters all look exactly how I imagine a metal band to look, and I can immediately tell what the series wants me to feel by watching it.
Space Funeral: Can I be honest? I'm not a fan of retro NES-style graphics. I don't hate them, but it's already an uphill battle for me. When you mix in like weird horror blood stuff and crying faces on trees, ugh. Very gross. That said, I obviously have way more sympathy for a no-budget indie game than I do for a big series.
Reboot: Reboot's the first CGI cartoon, right? Because it's not the ugliest. The colors are too bright, and there's no detail on anything, and yeah, it looks like something between an N64 and a Playstation 2 would put out, but the character designs are not THAT bad by themselves. The dreadlocks on the main character were a mistake, but that may have been forced upon them by the technohmygod there was a Netflix live-action version? This looks horrible.
Duckman: There's a genre of 90s cartoons that are trying to look as ugly as possible, and Duckman falls into it. It's not the worst (I won't say the worst one, I want to see if someone nominates it), but it's very bad. One of the notable commonalities of this genre is characters with really long faces, I assume this is calculated for maximum ugliness.

F Tier
Monster by Mistake: I don't know anything about this series, but the human characters look worse than the monster.

Comix Zone

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Bleach

Anagram posted...

Wario Land: Shake It: Wario has always been an unappealing design to me, but the actual visual style is pretty good. It's simplistic, but everything is very distinctive, so I'll accept it. I don't really understand how Ashley has such a huge following for Smash, she's such a non-character.

Ashley isn't even in Wario Land: Shake It so I feel like you just went with the WarioWare franchise?

Flip Flappers

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

probably the go-to game for "I don't remember the game but I remember it looked amazing"

Code Lyoko

Ed, Edd n Eddy

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist

Batman Beyond

Dohna Dohna (it has lewd content but holy SHIT that art style)

Mad Rat Dead

Dusk (video game)

Paratroopa1 posted...

Ashley isn't even in Wario Land: Shake It so I feel like you just went with the WarioWare franchise?

I was talking more generally at that point, I promise I did rank shake it specifically.

Dragon Quest

peanuts (comic strip)

Angela Anaconda

code lyoko

Return of the Obra Dinn

S Tier

A Tier
Jim Lee's X-Men
Dragon Quest: You might as well have nominated Dragon Ball and Chrono Trigger, but sure. Akira Toriyama knows his stuff. Not all of it is perfect, but in general, it's very good, even if no one has eyebrows directly touching their eyes.
Batman Beyond: Stylish as hell, extremely shway in general. It's a shame Terry doesn't get to be in more stuff, because his presence requires a future where you have to devote to certain things (like Bruce getting old). His villains were much crappier than Batman's, but everything else about his aesthetic is great.

B Tier
Skies of Arcadia
Kirby's Epic Yarn
Return of the Obra Dinn: God, this is a game that I hate ranking. The style is so, so good, but sometimes it's very difficult to tell what's going on because it's black and white things can get very grainy. But it somehow sets the tone of this mystery game so well that I can't give it anything less.
Wario Land: Shake It
Bleach: How is this series still so popular? I remember everyone universally agreeing that it got super bad halfway through. Anyway, Bleach to me is the best-looking 'normal' anime. It has a lot of generic anime look to it, but just enough distinctive elements to stand out. A lot of it comes down to the character designs, which, for a series that features half the cast in flowing black robes, really does a good job of making everyone stand out.
Comix Zone: I've never seen this before, what a cool idea that was way too early. An attempt to look like a comic book on the SNES? That would be difficult to pull off with modern technology, much less 1995 tech.
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron: Has anyone ever tried to make a game that looks like box art? Like, there's a sort of sameness to your generic box art that this game definitely falls into, but games never actually look like it.

C Tier
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Certain characters I like, but most of them look hideous. It's in that same area as One Piece, where I acknowledge the value of its super distinctive style, but it's just so gross-looking to me.
Little Nightmares II
One Piece

D Tier
Peanuts: Sue me. I know it's one of the canon pieces of Americana, but I've never liked the look of it. Marcie > Peppermint Patty.
Donha Donha: The art itself is okay, but the neon colors are so bad. Does anyone else use the Steam Discovery queue? Because I've been using it a lot lately, and it keeps recommending hentai games even though I've literally never purchased a hentai game before, it's very odd.
Code Lyoko: Do you know that Persona 5 meme about Haru's forehead? This is the meme, but real.
An Untitled Story
The Midnight Gospel
Dusk: I said before that I don't really like retro stuff unless it's done flawlessly. I hate using this word, but this lacks the soul of N64 games. No N64 game would render a chainsaw the way this game does.
Mad Rat Dead: Nothing about this appeals to me.
Metalocalypse
Flip Flappers: Is this because I said not to nominate generic moe anime?
Ed, Edd n Eddy: I acknowledge that the grossness of the cartoon works for what it wants to do. What I will not forgive is the lack of an Oxford comma.
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist: Literally I can draw better than this, and I've been made fun of by children for my terrible artistic skills. However, I like the goth girl. Goth girls automatically give your series +5 points, for a total of 6 points.
Space Funeral
Reboot
Duckman

F Tier
Monster by Mistake
Angela Anaconda: This is because I alluded to the ultimate bad 90s cartoon style, right? Well, you got it. I'm convinced this was an attempt to make the ugliest thing possible. Even as a kid, I remember never watching this just because it looked so godawful. It's honestly like they wanted to repel potential viewers.

Max Fleischer's Superman

Dusk isn't really going for an N64 look though, it's more Quake/Half-Life inspired.

Greg Rucka's Punisher

Ace Attorney

Bleach has its issues but it's still my favorite big dumb shonen. It's so popular still that it's getting an anime revival this year.

The character designs probably stand out because the author/artist loves fashion and wanted to be a fashion designer.

Bayonetta

Ren & Stimpy

Joshua and the Promised Land

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

paper mario

Hollow Knight

Night is Short, Walk on Girl

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

Anagram posted...

Flip Flappers: Is this because I said not to nominate generic moe anime?

I don't think you know anything about this show or what moe anime is.

Generic Moe Anime #3195