Are Western H-Games just generally worse looking than Eastern H-Games?

[Oir]

The title is provocative just to be provocative but I don't really think that since everyone has their own preferences and it's all subjective. I'll say that I'm subjectively partial to eastern art styles (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, what-have-you). I see games that get recommended here all the time where the art is just not that great in my eyes. If I were being even continuously provocative, I'd say that there seems to be a lower bar/expectation for good art in western games.

Just browsing the games on this site by weighted rating, I see stuff like this on the front page:

Good Girl Gone Bad
Superhuman
Red Sting
Rise of the White Flower
The Fairy, The Succubus, and the Abyss (not on front page but saw it recommended as a "classic" )

And I think to myself that the artwork is below-par and arguably just bad. It's not just a stylization thing - the splotchy or absent lighting, the weirdly stiff poses/faces, all of it. I feel like if that level of refinement/polish were in an Eastern game, they'd get zero attention. For example, on the front page sorted by weighted rating, filtering for Japanese games, you get stuff like:

Monster Girl Club Bifrost
Pronant Symphony
Teaching Feeling
Black Souls (This one's a weird example because of how stylized it is but whatever)
Oba-Sans Saga

I personally feel like the majority of these games have far higher polish/refinement in the art, style-withstanding. A lot of the eastern games here aren't even really my cup of tea but I see the art is much better.

To people who prefer Western H-Games, do you look at these comparisons and prefer the Western Art? Do you consider it to look better? Have I just cherry-picked/picked unlucky examples and there are gems out there with outstanding art? I'm not trying to start shit, I'm genuinely curious about what you all consider good 2D art in Western Style (I'm talking 2D here just because 3D is it's own thing imo). Maybe you could give a recommendation for really good looking Western Games?

 

[Trickstar]

Yeah western art and games look far worse than eastern ones. Daz is ugly as fuck 99% of the time and unless you go above and beyond with it you wont even match even subpar koikatsu or honey select 3d counter parts. 2d art is similar as unless its super well drawn and tons of work and effort put in to make it look better it wont match even mediocre anime style drawings.

 

[Meaning Less]

Eastern art for sure has better standards, even the shittiest games usually have good looking art, probably because the anime and manga industry is huge there and lots of artists try their hand at it, but it is also pretty standardized into the "anime" style.

The positive side of western 2D art is that it also offers more variation, you have traced art like Eva Kiss but you also have toon style art like Akabur inspired by disney stuff, and you even have those doing a nice job with anime style as well like School of Lust.

Here are a few other mentions and examples of good looking western art:
Innocent Witches, Taffy Tales, Behind the Dune, SexNote, S.H.E.L.T.E.R, Warlock and Boobs, Summertime Saga, What A Legend, Milftoon Drama
These are just a few examples to show how varied and unique looking they can be, which is a big plus in my opinion when it comes to western stuff.

So in general I enjoy both, eastern art for their higher standards and western art for their variety, the only stuff I'm really not a fan is all the 3D stuff that plagues western games but that is obviously another topic.

 

[Sphere42]

I think it's mostly a stylistic choice, and possibly also tied to the most popular local fetishes. Japanese designs, especially for major characters, tend to be "artsy" and complex and elegant. A detractor might call them overdesigned, cluttered and messy. By contrast Western designs seem to favour BIG and bold shapes exaggerating a few key features to highlight them while caring comparatively little about supporting elements. Otherwise known as balloon bimbos, square guys and stick figures. This affects how the art is drawn on a technical level as well, if the heroine's sword needs to fit a floral crest, heart-shaped gem and two cat faces into the hilt that necessitates a lot of shading and detail compared to Obelix or Power Girl. If you draw Japanese characters poorly they look really bad right away. And if you try to draw a plain "realistic" character in the Japanese style they tend to look extremely bland, boring yet still unrealistic because of the base proportions.

Regarding games specifically I believe we are seeing a lot of selection bias as this is a Western site. Anyone who can technically complete a shitty Western drawing and load it into Ren'Py might post it here, but by the site's rules Japanese games must either come with an official translation (a high-quality international product developed by a large studio) or be translated by dedicated fans (who enjoy that particular game for a reason). Compare the popular Western pinup artists (DandonFuga comes to mind) to some random scribbles on Pixiv or old Flash games not made by Zone and you'll see a completely different picture.

The one thing I do agree with is that the format/media preferred by good artists seem to differ. In the West they mostly seem to do image sets and commissioned drawings, mostly via Patreon nowadays but also via Deviantart/Hentai Foundry and Paypal previously. At the same time Meet&Fuck somehow maintains a massive portfolio of shitty games copied from Japanese ones, originally traced over with much worse art, until they finally got a somewhat passable style together which I have not seen 1:1 in still images. Meanwhile many good Japanese artists' names seem to pop up on a game CG rip eventually.

TL;DR: stylistic preferences, English-only site rule, good Japanese artists get hired by studios while in the West they stick to independent Patreon work.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I think GGGB and ORS look great while Black Souls looks very messy and not pleasant to look at. And don't get me started on the censorship. In all, I think western games are more likely to look very amateurish, but anime characters end up looking too samey to me. I'd say Akabur games, Seeds of Chaos and Behind the Dune are some of the top-tier western 2d games, aesthetically. Actually, I like retro-looking games like Simply Mindy and Naked Ambition even more.

 

[SharkVampire]

It's funny that you mention the art, but to me the biggest disadvantage of Western works as opposed to Eastern works is the gameplay. Probably 80% of Western games are novels with minimal player involvement, while Eastern games pay a lot more attention to gameplay and give the player a lot more variety.

As for the art, I see typical problems in both Western and Eastern art. For example, there are so many games in eastern art where the male characters are replaced by silhouettes or simply look like mannequins. And I haven't even mentioned the censorship, which I think screws things up beyond recognition. Also, Western games more often, in my opinion, show more explicit sex scenes, while Eastern games pay too much attention to foreplay, and sex itself is kind of sidetracked. Western art is very much dominated by 3D models, which in itself is not bad, but it also gets boring if you want something different, without looking at the Asian market. And as here was already said, that hand-drawn games require a lot more skill than working with 3d models, therefore the choice of games less and, accordingly, it may seem that the Western works look worse. In any case, I can enjoy both.

 

[Gwedelino]

Western art is very much dominated by 3D models, which in itself is not bad, but it also gets boring if you want something different, without looking at the Asian market. And as here was already said, that hand-drawn games require a lot more skill than working with 3d models, therefore the choice of games less and, accordingly, it may seem that the Western works look worse. In any case, I can enjoy both.

I agree with that, and I would say that some people like me also have an "uncanny valley" effect with 3d arts which make it generally very difficult to appreciate games with 3D arts, so mostly western games.

Usually 2D games have a better look on eastern games.

 

[zapzero]

It's funny that you mention the art, but to me the biggest disadvantage of Western works as opposed to Eastern works is the gameplay. Probably 80% of Western games are novels with minimal player involvement, while Eastern games pay a lot more attention to gameplay and give the player a lot more variety.

True, I personally don't mind the artstyles differences either.
What really gets me is how many of recent so-called western "games" are really just graphic novels using a game engine.

Something about ease of access to cheap/free 3D assets and a new wave of low effort but opportunistic devs really led to an explosion of low quality 3D VNs in recent years.

Which leads me to appreciate devs who actually put in effort to make branching choices(with various consequences) like Pale Carnations or games like realistic(ish) character responses like Rogue-like.

 

[obibobi]

Just browsing the games on this site by weighted rating

That doesn't really mean too much, some games that I consider absolute stinkers show up that way for who knows what reason, could be niche audience appreciation or review inflations.

If you click on likes, you will see much higher quality, at least in terms of presentation.

The other important factor is that in terms of western games, this site gets everything, including all the garbage, eastern games will tend towards what people cared enough about to translate.

Then the last, but critical point, Japan has a more open market for erotic games, they aren't as restricted, so you can actually get teams working on games, here it is mostly solo devs.

 

[Jofur]

Western art is very much dominated by 3D models, which in itself is not bad, but it also gets boring if you want something different, without looking at the Asian market.

To be fair I think to some degree that also rings true to a lot of Japanese games. While anime and manga have a decent amount of different art-styles, in a lot of porn games they tend to stick fairly close to a "generic" formula and most games tend to look fairly identical(especially RPGM games). Not as bad as seeing the same DAZ models in multiple games of course, but I still think western drawn stuff has the most variety overall. Even if they are not as technically impressive.

 

[woody554]

99% of japanese stuff is absolute horse shit done as cheaply as humanly possible. so no difference.

 

[GreenGobbo]

Eh, it's all highly subjective/personal taste based.
For my part I much prefer western art and animation to easterm styles.
They do pretty good with 3d animations, but the whole 2d anime art style is over glorified and underwhelming in my eyes. Some of it is okay. Most of it I find rather meh.

 

[sliveart777]

I think I generally prefer western art but 2d eastern art can also be very good. For 3d DAZ and blender are far better than everything else by such a wide margin that they're hardly comparable to something like Koikatsu. I've genuinely never considered any art for a game made with Koikatsu to be good.

For 2d, saying that the anime style of art is overdone is a massive understatement. But eastern anime style art still looks very good most of the time. The only issue is that I see it everywhere. Western 2d is usually more unique which makes it standout, but I do agree that the bar of quality is lower. But when western 2d is done well, I think it's much more appealing than 99% of the eastern anime style.

 

[Jaike]

Honestly, Eva Kiss's art looks much better to me than most of your Japanese examples. I don't even dislike anime style art, it's just those styles that are not my thing at all. But yes most of the Japanese examples look better than Superhuman, Black Souls is the exception. For excellent western art in anime style, check A Summer's End.

But I expect that Japanese games have bigger budgets and more dedicated artists. And more consistent art styles, in western 2d games you sometimes see three super different styles in one game, or even more if the art is commissioned from different artists. But I've also seen Japanese games with absolutely trash art that few western amateur devs would dare put in their games, or just embarrassingly wrong linework.

Spoiler: Example

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Western games have the benefit of a lot more variety in style, even if a big share is taken by furries (that can still look good tho).

 

[BlasterChief]

In the end it comes down to personal preference. Personally, I prefer a more realistic art style and often find eastern 2D art either to artsy and over the top or too fixated on ridiculous female proportions (it's not an exclusively eastern thing but it seems to be very common thing) and certain other regional fetishes. That's not to say that there aren't games with an eastern art style that I really like, or that there aren't a lot of western games that look hideous in my eyes, but I mostly stick to western games.

And since the original post included both games by Eva Kiss as examples: You can really see how she learned from her first game and vastly improved her art style (although she started outsorcing part of the work, like backgrounds, to be able to have more time for writing and development, but the characters are still done by her). Her patreon page has a few interesting posts on how she learned new tricks and techniques and how she uses them to achieve new effects. I really love how ORS's art is turning out. And when you look at eastern productions you will often find games made be professional studios that have a much higher production value than games made by single devs, while western games often include everything from a bloody amateur's first project (some even look like they have been done in MS Paint) to absolutely beautiful pieces of art.

 

[zapzero]

When I see people claim about the greatness of "variety" for art in h-games again and again, all I hear is them trying to justify for inconsistent inferior quality.

Variety as a word is good, but it is abused as an excuse so often here, it loses its meaning.

Also people like to brush aside other artists who spent decades on their trade under sweeping statements and lump them as either too "western" or "eastern", while proclaiming their favorite artist who they have a parasocial relationship, having watched them develop as some "great" individual while ignoring the efforts of countless others.

When you start to rant "how you watched one specific creator develop, their techniques grow and to the point how they outsource business", it isn't even about the quality of work or preference of one style over another anymore, it is outright simping.

 

[GreenGobbo]

Besides all art is subjective, both for the creator and the audience.
No one's opinion is better or more definitive than anothers, just as no one art style is better or worse.Trying to discredit other folks' opinions that you disagree with is as fruitless an endeavor as trying to make the ocean evaporate in front of you by yelling at it.



TL;DR Assholes, opinions, yada yada yada. You know the deal.

 

[Tauro Thurius]

I prefer Western erotic games because I dislike anime and Eastern art style in general. All those Japanese games feel like a fever dream. If you like to see noseless, blue haired young chicks in school uniforms then all power to you, friend. I personally don't agree with the title.

 

[aura-dev]

How could western art ever compete

 

[Meaning Less]

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