For many years i couldnt find this show but i knew i saw it sometime in the mid 80s on tv because i couldnt figure out what it was called, when someone mentioned the right name i thought they were joking but sure enough that was it.
Do you have any soviet stuff for reference?
I was under the impression that this whole style was made from a hybrid of western influence at japan and their own character stylization right at the end of the seventies.

>>3636
I miss this time period because there was a Japanese art style from the 79-84 which was more grounded and naturalistic like Ulysses 31. It more or less died out in Japan with the anime boom from 1985 onwards and the giant eyes won out. The naturalistic art style lived on with Japanese co-productions like Transformers and GI Joe, and influenced american animation of that era.

>>3636
>>3637
>>3638
Not to mention that this was a collaboration with DIC so it had a western release in mind

I am glad big eyes prevailed and Japanese animation did not become too close to Western animation styles

Disney had less cartoony styles too. And anime and manga also sometimes use styles that are less similar to what people think of when they think anime. Though your talking about manga being more similar to this isn't really true. Manga has a larger variety of art styles I'd say (though if you look at the entire history of anime it's not like there haven't been a variety of styles there either) but it's definitely not true that manga tends to be more "naturalistic" than anime and there's plenty of manga that have styles even more simplistic than you typically get in anime. In fact I've noticed anime tend to even upgrade art styles sometimes when the typical thinking is that anime simplifies styles to make them easier to animate.
>>3638
I would not say 79 to 84 was as a whole more grounded and naturalistic. Fucking Gundam was 1979 and that has a lot of similarities to Hanna-Barbara cartoons in terms of style. People like to pretend that the "mature" OVAs they watch were representative of anime at the time.

>>3638
79-84 anime still had giant eyes. Compare something like Braiger to the 1981 Spider-Man cartoon. Even Ulysses 31 had massive eyes compared to contemporary Western cartoons.
>The naturalistic art style lived on with Japanese co-productions like Transformers and GI Joe, and influenced american animation of that era.
Even still, those cartoons have more Westernized character designs. GI Joe kinda looks and feels Japanese, but a lot less than Transformers and MASK, which were meant to air in Japan as well. Stuff like the Police Academy cartoon and Real Ghostbusters, which weren't at all intended for Japan, are very Western-looking. Centurions was made by Sunrise, but it has more in common with Filmation shows than Sunrise mecha.

>>3636

Have you ever seen the pilot for this, It looks like future boy conan but in space.
The japanese clearly originally wanted it to look more like the shows they produced back at the time and the more "westernized" natural look for this as a final product had to come from the french and their input.

>>3717

One of the weirdest things i noticed in comparison is the shows they made during those years is the cartoons produced for america usually have higher quality to them than the shows they produced domestically for themselves, all studios not anyone specifically.
If you look at the tv anime during those years and compare them to what the were making for people here youll see what i mean.

>>3719
It's a cultural issue. Western media values variety and originality, so Western cartoons and comics will have reasonably varied episodic and overarching plots each time. Japan tolerates series consisting of 50 near identical, generally low stakes episodes with the same general overarching story because it's easy to make that kind of show look deeper than it really is if you include depictions of PTSD, death, grief, teen angst, and sexuality as well as social commentary and dark endings.

>>3732

I dont think you understand what i meant.
Here is an example, there are others but this will do.
Ulysses 31 came out in 1981, compare its animation to any other tv anime made in japan during the same year. The quality of its animation during its run is quite high which is why you dont see people posting terrible inbetween frames or bad "quality" images from it when it gets brought up.
Compare it to something like GoLion(before it was Voltron) which came out at the same time but was produced for their domestic tv market.
Both has similar natrual character design style but the animation quality between them is vastly different.
You see where im going with this?

>>3733
That's also a cultural issue. Western animation prioritizes fluid motion while anime prioritizes detailed frames and will sacrifice fluidity if necessary. Western companies will want something fluid and full of motion if they want a series to succeed here.
Ulysses 31 has really high quality animation because in the early 80s, TMS had ambitions of being as well-respected and famous worldwide as Disney. In pursuit of that goal, they did good work on their global projects. Many of the other TMS 80s cartoons (namely Visionaries and Galaxy Rangers) also have really good animation.
Toei cartoons made for the West often had good animation because the Western companies always gave them more money than they'd allot for their own anime. The most prominent example of this is the Transformers movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was also true for the other Sunbow productions. GI Joe looks better on average than even Zeta Gundam.

I’ve never seen Ulysses 31, it was Tadao Nagahama’s last work before his unfortunate passing correct?