I usually don't like the way how they animate their shows. If I finish their shows it's usually despite the animation.

Former director Shinbo got a reputation of animating his anime in very unorthodox ways. People usually like it or don't like it. After Shinbo left, his protege continued the tradtion and the style is still going. A lot of my enjoyment of anime comes from the artwork. I collect artwork after all. Personally, I like seeing nice artwork of the characters and the scenery. But SHAFT often doesn't animate in a way that makes the characters and background look good for my taste. They use a lot of stills and often use unusual angles of the characters. They might show the characters in closeups from the mouth down or in silhoutte only. Maybe they show only one of the characters from very far away. They might only show objects...real life objects. They might focus only on the character's stomach or the background is a single color.

For me, it's pretty distracting and it can easily detract from the story. It's hard to tell what's really going on because they're showing all this weird stuff. It's just not the kind of artwork that I prefer.

I do kind of like their Maria Holic Opening though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L49mJLk_w1U

EDIT:

Oh...by the way. A lot of anime on SHAFT anime lists list anime where they were not the primary studio.  If you look up anime from the last six years or so where they were a primary studio you'll see similarities in the way they were animated. Some of them are more unorthodox than others. Bakemonogatri and Ef were on the unorthodox side while something like Natsu no Arashi was "more normal" by comparison. You still had the unusual camera angles however.

Edited 2 times by Terence T T Jan 8 11 10:45 PM.