What an overgeneralization.
There is no such thing as an "anime"-style characterization. Even among the big three Shounen series (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) the way they each handle characterization is completely different from each other, and it gets far more various when you start looking into the more niche titles.
In fact, people should just stop using the word "anime" when they really mean "cartoonish" or "exaggerated". It's just incredibly silly. Every time someone uses it as an adjective I have to roll my eyes and it colors my perception of the rest of their post.
No seriously though, the only place where you tend to see these sort of archetypes found in FF13 is in anime. It is a very Japanese methodology of defining how a character acts. The only american cartoon I can think of where people act like Rikku or Vaan or Vanielle is the powerpuff girls, it's just not a common archetype here, and it's SUPER jarring if you aren't used to it. So much so that when it takes characters who are supposed to be straight men like Sazh or Snow, they come off as being almost over the top in their respective tropes. I don't think the japanese prospective on Snow is being a gigantic idiotic meathead. I don't think the japanese prospective on Sazh is Super Bernie Mac. But that's how they come across.
And I don't want to say exaggerated because that still requires a frame of reference to compare it to. If I say it's an exaggeration to most north american or european scifi, It greats a parallel that doesn't really work. If I say it's an exaggeration to most japanese scifi, it doesn't work because it's a parallel that's too close.
There's nothing wrong with emulating the general archetypes found in anime, but for the most part, the same people who can't make it through something like Code Gaess are the same people who are going to be bothered with how the characters are handled in FF13.
So yeah, it's fuckin' anime as hell. And like i said early, that's not what hobbles the characterization for me, but I can see how it can be for a lot of people.
wont buy unless there is some new stuff in this game which there is zero hope for?
I wouldn't count on it. Any new content will come from modding and there's a good chance that it'll be so difficult, no one will bother.
