I just can't get over the new character designs.

[Harryghost]

It's commercial art. The person ultimately in charge of the look and feel of an anime series is usually the leader of the production himself (監督, the "director"). I'm assuming either the chief director Yuyama or director Tomiyasu. Whatever the case, the art director, the animators, etc. (basically the creative fields) follow their ideas and use them as support to create their art.

Anime is expensive, and The Pokemon Company isn't just simply tossing money at OLM, the animation studio for the line of Pocket Monsters anime series. Since XY, the series has employed a sharper use of bank animation (what the west would like to call "stock footage") to keep the costs low (key animation is paid by the drawing, so drawings per episode is limited) while still allowing the series to consistently look good. The reason the art style shift happened in SM was because of a transition from Japan's typical use of limited animation (a blend of traditionally-drawn frames and digital color) to full 2D digital production. OLM has yet to fully utilize the potential of this new workflow, but the perks from working full-on digital, such as the ease of timing frames of animation, has made it even more convenient than it has ever has been for Japanese animation employees working in such a hectic industry. The new production workflow also allows potential upsales of newer episodes into 4K resolution without a reduction in image quality with ease. The art style change itself was not only to reflect the tone of the new series, but also to provide a flexible canvas for key animators to express a wider range of emotions, with motion, without being forced to stay so religiously by-the-books with such rigid character designs, i.e. have more fun with their work.

I prefer the classic art style that was done away with a long time ago, but I can understand this.

I don't blame them at all for trying out a new art style, or, heck, even trying to save their money. Yes, deep down in our hearts, everyone would want to do that. People just gotta acknowledge it. Experimenting is always nice, and a new art style is never a problem, as long as it can do justice to the characters, and complement the previous art styles as well, which for some reason, the SM art style is unable to do for Ash. I say, even James looks manageable in his new hairstyle, but Ash *sighs* he looks like a total stranger kid to me most of the time.

 

[Cresselia92]

There's nothing too off-model about that, in that shot, Pikachu's face was drawn in a three-quarter angle. Pikachu's head and face dimensions are certainly a lot more "cartoony" and narrow (i.e. at those angles, left eye shifts to more ovate shapes are less subtle), so I can see how that can feel rather jarring after being used to its wider face in previous installments. But I wouldn't say one way to draw is more correct than the other, and it's especially hard to tell which one's more "anatomically correct" when it's a fictional anime creature, much less a fictional anime human whose neck looks inadequate as support for the head.

I have taken the three-quarter perspective in mind, and even after that it’s still off. Anyone can notice this by drawing skeleton lines on Pikachu’s traits.

But that’s not limited to that shot in particular. There are many more circumstances in which the face is very awkwardly done, and many times this issue applies to other characters as well.

And of course you don’t apply realistic anatomy to fictional characters, this much should be obvious. However, even fictional characters need to follow some general rules and should adhere to their own rules, as well as follow their perspectives really closely.

Basically, fictional characters still need something like this:

Spoiler: Random Character Study

However, with many characters in SM, the perspectives tend to not match in many scenes.

The anime may be a product aimed at children, so there isn’t a particular need to be too strict, but when even the most basic rules are forgone just to add some extra frames then there’s a problem.

 

[Twilight-Kun]

The style has grown on me and my main gripe about the series has since turned into "Where's the plot progression?"

And even that has finally kicked in; now that they're used to the animation style and all the character intros (sans villains) are out of the way, maybe SM Season 2 will finally be able to show off what it's capable of

 

[ii kanji]

...a fictional anime human whose neck looks inadequate as support for the head.

This has been one of my biggest bug bears for so many years. It was one thing where I really thought "ok, the XY art style is moving in the right direction with this".
*le sigh* You win some and you lose some I suppose... I much prefer heads in proportion with bodies than necks slightly more in proportion with heads...

 

[Team Gaara]

Is there anything wrong with the animation?

It just looks "too" fluid to me. Like, some parts look half drawn and way too exaggerated than I'm used to in Pokemon~

 

[KyseL]

I grew up with OS Satoshi/Ash and I just can't go back to it now. In comparison to the SM one it looks so ugly and triangular and rigid and ugh... XY had better rendering but got rid of the little appeal he had (which sort of matches Ash's bland personality in that series).

I didn't know how much I wanted the anime to look this good until now.