8 ms·

Japanese Animation and Video Game Website Layouts

34 points by jakerocheleau 13y ago

fuzzywalrus 13y ago
Its like web design in reverse...
- jakerocheleau 13y ago
  That's a very eloquent way of putting it :)
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    Do you think these layouts are still used because they're better for the target audience, or because the Japanese are more averse to change?
    - jakerocheleau 13y ago
      I am by no means an expert of Japanese culture. But from what I can tell, web designers would rather portray the custom animations and glossy menus that you can only achieve through Flash. That is why so many websites are coded strangely, and most of the game/anime websites are using a Flash intro. I think it's a little of both TBH. I do notice that Japanese designs like to kind of go their own way. Maybe the Flash layouts are more "exciting" and so it sells more products? This is a great question. It is understandable that it may be easier to add custom renders & graphics of the characters. I would love to speak with somebody from Japan or someone who understands the culture to gauge their opinion.
      - newman314 13y ago
        I think it's more what they know and the current state of evolution of web design (for that country). I suspect it's also partially the language used where there's differing information density. http://www.tofugu.com/2012/05/01/why-do-japanese-people-talk-so-fast/ http://www.tofugu.com/2012/05/01/why-do-japanese-people-talk... Take a look at a typical Chinese web site say Alibaba. Contrast www.alibaba.com vs. china.alibaba.com.
        snogglethorpe 13y ago
        Take that article with a huge grain of salt though, because the writer seems almost entirely clueless about the subject (which doesn't stop him from pontificating of course)... and more to the point, the general conclusion seems simply incorrect. Japanese has a huge amount of variation in information density, depending on politeness, etc. Other languages can vary too, but not to the same degree in my experience. Informal, colloquial, Japanese can be extremely dense because by default much is left unsaid (whereas in English there are many cases where one states the obvious explicitly -- "I agree" instead of "agree" etc). This is particularly true for written Japanese because of its ideographic content, which is extremely dense, but it's true of spoken Japanese too. Japanese is famous for having many homonyms, and one of the reasons it has so many is that words for many things are short, disambiguated by character in writing, or only by context in speaking. However when one is being polite ... Japanese polite forms (and there's a big range of them) can be absurdly verbose. So, which form do you consider when talking about the "information density" of a language? I dunno, but most people don't use highly polite forms in everyday speech, and much speech is pretty informal (among friends, family, etc).... and in Japanese, informal speech is generally very short and blunt, more so than English. [Japanese can sound pretty "busy" because of the staccato nature of its pronunciation, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's actually more information there...]
      - unsignedint 13y ago
        One possibility is that Japan is a country with 2.1% of IE6 users (source: http://www.ie6countdown.com/ http://www.ie6countdown.com/) might be playing some part of this. (Although, my hunch is most of that 2.1% are in an office environment...) Another thing I noticed in years of dealing with Japanese people (although, I'm from Japan, my time in the US is longer) is they certainly do have some obsession with grids -- to the extent they make graphing paper out of Excel to create a document. (Ugh, I hate these documents!) Many of those websites are table styled as well. (Another pet peeve! Use CSS!)
        w1ntermute 13y ago
        > they make graphing paper out of Excel to create a document I hate that shit too! They use Excel for the most pointless reasons. I've gotten all kinds of documents as Excel spreadsheets when a simple word document would have sufficed. It might be too much of a stretch, but maybe this has something to do with so much time spent in childhood writing on 原稿用紙 making Japanese people prefer "grid-like" organization.
        unsignedint 13y ago
        You have a good point of there. Japanese does not have kerning, so it is the grid base to begin with. This and the fact that pictgraphical might be contributing relative acceptance of more texts. This is actually funny, as I was constantly making jokes in the past with my peers, where western people write very comprehensive documents with too much information, that Japanese counterpart often won't bother reading.
        w1ntermute 13y ago
        > where western people write very comprehensive documents with too much information, that Japanese counterpart often won't bother reading. Yeah, I've run into that problem in the past. I have to make a conscious effort to simplify anything I write (or say) in English in order to ensure that Japanese people understand it. They usually won't tell me if they don't understand something, whereas I'm the opposite when it comes to Japanese, so that I can optimize my language learning.
newman314 13y ago
There's also http://www.dannychoo.com/ http://www.dannychoo.com/ aka that Storm Trooper dude...
angersock 13y ago
Not going to lie...this is so much cooler than the boring pastels and usability-tuned shit we have. It makes me wish that the frontpage of Amazon or Heroku had more <blink> tags. EDIT: No, seriously, all the pretty happy colors and little cartoon bros and errything. It just seems so happy. ^_^
- jakerocheleau 13y ago
  Hey that's Japan for ya!
mathrawka 13y ago
One key difference about web design in Japan versus the US is that Japanese consumers feel more secure with a lot of text on a page. Here is a good example of how you need to have different designs based on your target audience: http://www.chatwork.com/ja/ http://www.chatwork.com/ja/ http://www.chatwork.com/en/ http://www.chatwork.com/en/
- angersock 13y ago
  Opened the first one and was like "Wow, TLDR the template." I wonder how dense the actual verbage is, in the original. For example, I know that localization to German from English can be a real pain; as an example, game developers will find UI elements for menus no longer can contain the long words that their old titles translate into. For anyone that reads Japanese, is this page actually saying a lot, or is the language just taking that long to encode a word/concept?
  - btn 13y ago
    It's difficult to compare the two because they describe different aspects of the product. The English page has testimonials, pricing information, and some miscellaneous FAQ; the Japanese page has comparisons with email and Skype (the FAQ and pricing are on separate pages). The Japanese page describes the product's features a bit more succinctly, as they forego the tabs (Group Chat/Mobile/Files/Tasks) for a flat layout with a single paragraph describing each.
  - scriby 13y ago
    Japanese is generally more compressed than English. For instance, consider "dragon" vs "龍". The exception is when polite/formal language is being used, in which case it can get more lengthy. Instructions and descriptions would generally use more polite language, where navigational elements would be more pithy. If I was to offer a theory on why the Japanese tolerate more text, I would say it's related to higher "skimability". It's easier to pick out symbols within a block of text and get a general feel for what's there vs. words in western alphabets. If this is the case, we would also expect Chinese websites to be similar, and I think that's the case. Or, it could just be a design trend. For instance, usage of the color pink is much more prevalent in Japanese design.
furtivefelon 13y ago
It's all games, western games are also much more graphically intensive: http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3 http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3 http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ http://www.callofduty.com/mw3 http://www.callofduty.com/mw3 Not too sure why this surprises anyone...
- btn 13y ago
  Indeed. Comparable sites (video games, video game companies, and TV shows) in English follow very similar design patterns. That said, there are some major Japanese sites with absolutely mind-boggling design ("Rakuten" springs to mind...)
  - valgaze 13y ago
    Interesting samples & discussion on (sometimes "busy" & hectic) Japanese web design: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/25/1712256/the-puzzle-of-japanese-web-design http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/25/1712256/the-puzzle-o...
- jakerocheleau 13y ago
  This is a really great comparison. I would love to write an article on this someday comparing the Eastern/Asian media websites along with Western/American media.
msc-o 13y ago
it's interesting how it's the complete opposite of what japanese design is known for...clean minimalism. but I find that the marketing in Japan tends to reflect the emotions that are generally repressed in their daily lives. the beer ads for example are colorful and wild with joy...imho.

34 points by jakerocheleau 13y ago

fuzzywalrus 13y ago

Its like web design in reverse...

jakerocheleau 13y ago
That's a very eloquent way of putting it :)
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  Do you think these layouts are still used because they're better for the target audience, or because the Japanese are more averse to change?
  - jakerocheleau 13y ago
    I am by no means an expert of Japanese culture. But from what I can tell, web designers would rather portray the custom animations and glossy menus that you can only achieve through Flash. That is why so many websites are coded strangely, and most of the game/anime websites are using a Flash intro. I think it's a little of both TBH. I do notice that Japanese designs like to kind of go their own way. Maybe the Flash layouts are more "exciting" and so it sells more products? This is a great question. It is understandable that it may be easier to add custom renders & graphics of the characters. I would love to speak with somebody from Japan or someone who understands the culture to gauge their opinion.
    - newman314 13y ago
      I think it's more what they know and the current state of evolution of web design (for that country). I suspect it's also partially the language used where there's differing information density. http://www.tofugu.com/2012/05/01/why-do-japanese-people-talk-so-fast/ http://www.tofugu.com/2012/05/01/why-do-japanese-people-talk... Take a look at a typical Chinese web site say Alibaba. Contrast www.alibaba.com vs. china.alibaba.com.
      - snogglethorpe 13y ago
        Take that article with a huge grain of salt though, because the writer seems almost entirely clueless about the subject (which doesn't stop him from pontificating of course)... and more to the point, the general conclusion seems simply incorrect. Japanese has a huge amount of variation in information density, depending on politeness, etc. Other languages can vary too, but not to the same degree in my experience. Informal, colloquial, Japanese can be extremely dense because by default much is left unsaid (whereas in English there are many cases where one states the obvious explicitly -- "I agree" instead of "agree" etc). This is particularly true for written Japanese because of its ideographic content, which is extremely dense, but it's true of spoken Japanese too. Japanese is famous for having many homonyms, and one of the reasons it has so many is that words for many things are short, disambiguated by character in writing, or only by context in speaking. However when one is being polite ... Japanese polite forms (and there's a big range of them) can be absurdly verbose. So, which form do you consider when talking about the "information density" of a language? I dunno, but most people don't use highly polite forms in everyday speech, and much speech is pretty informal (among friends, family, etc).... and in Japanese, informal speech is generally very short and blunt, more so than English. [Japanese can sound pretty "busy" because of the staccato nature of its pronunciation, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's actually more information there...]
    - unsignedint 13y ago
      One possibility is that Japan is a country with 2.1% of IE6 users (source: http://www.ie6countdown.com/ http://www.ie6countdown.com/) might be playing some part of this. (Although, my hunch is most of that 2.1% are in an office environment...) Another thing I noticed in years of dealing with Japanese people (although, I'm from Japan, my time in the US is longer) is they certainly do have some obsession with grids -- to the extent they make graphing paper out of Excel to create a document. (Ugh, I hate these documents!) Many of those websites are table styled as well. (Another pet peeve! Use CSS!)
      - w1ntermute 13y ago
        > they make graphing paper out of Excel to create a document I hate that shit too! They use Excel for the most pointless reasons. I've gotten all kinds of documents as Excel spreadsheets when a simple word document would have sufficed. It might be too much of a stretch, but maybe this has something to do with so much time spent in childhood writing on 原稿用紙 making Japanese people prefer "grid-like" organization.
        unsignedint 13y ago
        You have a good point of there. Japanese does not have kerning, so it is the grid base to begin with. This and the fact that pictgraphical might be contributing relative acceptance of more texts. This is actually funny, as I was constantly making jokes in the past with my peers, where western people write very comprehensive documents with too much information, that Japanese counterpart often won't bother reading.
        w1ntermute 13y ago
        > where western people write very comprehensive documents with too much information, that Japanese counterpart often won't bother reading. Yeah, I've run into that problem in the past. I have to make a conscious effort to simplify anything I write (or say) in English in order to ensure that Japanese people understand it. They usually won't tell me if they don't understand something, whereas I'm the opposite when it comes to Japanese, so that I can optimize my language learning.

newman314 13y ago

There's also http://www.dannychoo.com/ http://www.dannychoo.com/ aka that Storm Trooper dude...

angersock 13y ago

Not going to lie...this is so much cooler than the boring pastels and usability-tuned shit we have. It makes me wish that the frontpage of Amazon or Heroku had more <blink> tags. EDIT: No, seriously, all the pretty happy colors and little cartoon bros and errything. It just seems so happy. ^_^

jakerocheleau 13y ago
Hey that's Japan for ya!

mathrawka 13y ago

One key difference about web design in Japan versus the US is that Japanese consumers feel more secure with a lot of text on a page. Here is a good example of how you need to have different designs based on your target audience: http://www.chatwork.com/ja/ http://www.chatwork.com/ja/ http://www.chatwork.com/en/ http://www.chatwork.com/en/

angersock 13y ago
Opened the first one and was like "Wow, TLDR the template." I wonder how dense the actual verbage is, in the original. For example, I know that localization to German from English can be a real pain; as an example, game developers will find UI elements for menus no longer can contain the long words that their old titles translate into. For anyone that reads Japanese, is this page actually saying a lot, or is the language just taking that long to encode a word/concept?
- btn 13y ago
  It's difficult to compare the two because they describe different aspects of the product. The English page has testimonials, pricing information, and some miscellaneous FAQ; the Japanese page has comparisons with email and Skype (the FAQ and pricing are on separate pages). The Japanese page describes the product's features a bit more succinctly, as they forego the tabs (Group Chat/Mobile/Files/Tasks) for a flat layout with a single paragraph describing each.
- scriby 13y ago
  Japanese is generally more compressed than English. For instance, consider "dragon" vs "龍". The exception is when polite/formal language is being used, in which case it can get more lengthy. Instructions and descriptions would generally use more polite language, where navigational elements would be more pithy. If I was to offer a theory on why the Japanese tolerate more text, I would say it's related to higher "skimability". It's easier to pick out symbols within a block of text and get a general feel for what's there vs. words in western alphabets. If this is the case, we would also expect Chinese websites to be similar, and I think that's the case. Or, it could just be a design trend. For instance, usage of the color pink is much more prevalent in Japanese design.

furtivefelon 13y ago

It's all games, western games are also much more graphically intensive: http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3 http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3 http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ http://www.callofduty.com/mw3 http://www.callofduty.com/mw3 Not too sure why this surprises anyone...

btn 13y ago
Indeed. Comparable sites (video games, video game companies, and TV shows) in English follow very similar design patterns. That said, there are some major Japanese sites with absolutely mind-boggling design ("Rakuten" springs to mind...)
- valgaze 13y ago
  Interesting samples & discussion on (sometimes "busy" & hectic) Japanese web design: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/25/1712256/the-puzzle-of-japanese-web-design http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/25/1712256/the-puzzle-o...
jakerocheleau 13y ago
This is a really great comparison. I would love to write an article on this someday comparing the Eastern/Asian media websites along with Western/American media.

msc-o 13y ago

it's interesting how it's the complete opposite of what japanese design is known for...clean minimalism. but I find that the marketing in Japan tends to reflect the emotions that are generally repressed in their daily lives. the beer ads for example are colorful and wild with joy...imho.