Laser beams are cheap to animate. Some of the funniest bits in Naruto were the wacky jitsus. The dog guy who pees everywhere to negate illusion effects. The diviner who sees your chakras. Insect guy. Shadow guy. Mind-zap girl. Everyone has their own niche, and the teams evolve to exploit their niches. But then they all fall away and its just the Kicky-Punchy Show.
I saw a video essay on "The MAPPA Effect" where they talked the same way. How combat got more banal as their timelines and budgets contracted.
To their credit, FMA had a very light touch when it came to fight scenes. Lots of the show was drama and intrigue, keeping the show engaging without busting your budget on some elaborate battle scenes. The better anime tend to cling to this style of story telling, both because it makes the stories better and because it means you don't need to CGI the crap out of your show.
brains
Good god I despise the anime combat being "just hit it with a bigger laser beam until someone says uncle."
In Full Metal Alchemist, since it was science based, there was some thought to the combat and I really liked that. Power creep and its consequences.
Laser beams are cheap to animate. Some of the funniest bits in Naruto were the wacky jitsus. The dog guy who pees everywhere to negate illusion effects. The diviner who sees your chakras. Insect guy. Shadow guy. Mind-zap girl. Everyone has their own niche, and the teams evolve to exploit their niches. But then they all fall away and its just the Kicky-Punchy Show.
I saw a video essay on "The MAPPA Effect" where they talked the same way. How combat got more banal as their timelines and budgets contracted.
To their credit, FMA had a very light touch when it came to fight scenes. Lots of the show was drama and intrigue, keeping the show engaging without busting your budget on some elaborate battle scenes. The better anime tend to cling to this style of story telling, both because it makes the stories better and because it means you don't need to CGI the crap out of your show.