I’m not a huge fan of Japanese Animation (I don’t even know if I should call it Manga or Anime, or if these apply to something else entirely) but I’ve seen a handful of shows on TV, including:
Dragonball Z
Yu-Gi-Oh!
PokeMon
as well as seeing ads for other films shows in this style.
My question is: Why are all the characters always (apparently) western? That is, their skin colour and features appear to be american or European, rather than Oriental. Is it because these are aimed at western markets? But then I was under the impression that this style of show/comic was very popular in Japan, too… any ideas?
The answer is distinctive character design. Most anime is cheaply done and there’s typically one face and body for everyone with only certain characters that are dramatically different being the exception. So you’ve got to latch onto hair color and style, eye color, and clothing to tell the characters apart. That’s why they go with more western looking character designs; there’s just more easily animated variety.
I have seen plenty of shows, though, where the characters do look Japanese. Ping Pong Club springs immediately to mind. And a lot of shows have the Japanese looking people as minor characters who wander in for a quick scene in one episode.
Actually, when they want to show someone as being specifically ‘Western’, the person is usually given a large nose and an extra set of rings around the pupils (to indicate that their eyes are blue). The extra ring in the eyes tends to give them a slightly crazed look compared to other characters.
Actually, you are wrong, scr4. The originator of anime, back in the post WWII period, was convinced that western culture (and particularly American) would triumph over the rest of the world.
He was probably right. (Micky D’s in Paris).
But, yes, anime characters were and still usually are designed to look distinctively non-Japanese. Though not every anime is like this, the original designs still have that distinctively non-oriental look.
Your cites say that characters in Japanese anime are partly based on how characters in Western animation are drawn, and I agree with that. But that’s just the similarity in artistic style. In most cases, anime characters are not meant to represent caucasian characters. At least for two of the anime mentioned in the OP the characters don’t look western to Japanese viewers. (Or at least to this particular Japanese viewer.) As Sublight said, if they were supposed to be caucasian, certain stereotypical characteristics would have been added.
I admit Yu-Gi-Oh! may be an exception. The characters seem to be drawn deliberately exotic and non-Asian. That’s just one style and in no way universal.
Really?! You really don’t see Ash, Misty and Brock from Pokemon as being western? Or Goku from DBZ? I assumed Goku was intended to be a typical western ‘barbarian’, due to his eating habits and lack of social graces etc, but his appearance is the main factor for me.
you want the truth:
the ‘father’ of modern anime (cant remember his name but he did battle of the planets and some other stuff) saw the popularity of the disney style of animation particularly the feature films such as snow white and cinderella (think of the side characters as opposed to the main heros) and borrowed heavly from this. eyes are disproportionatly large and the ‘cute’ ones will have large blue/green rings. hands are usually gloved,deformed or mittened (this was because hands are very difficult to animate) and the skin is single tone with one layer of shading (thus the description cel-shading) actually skin colour is irrevelent in most of it. that particular paint was probably just the best/cheapest the could get in the 60 and by now its just become standard.
oh and about 99% of what is considered watchable anime has little or no relation to pokemon.
another factor is that most shows are developed directly from comic books and so the features are supposed to be exactly the same since the skin of the comic book guys will just be left blank(to save ink) it is assumed by the animaters that standard anime skin is required. i could clean this up and make it easier to understand but im tired so tough
I really don’t. They aren’t realistic representations of Japanese people, but they aren’t realistic Westerns either. If they look western to you, it’s because that’s the “default” race in your mind and because those drawings don’t have any distinct non-Western features.
I guess it really shows how much culture affects your viewpoint. Even when consciously trying to see them as ‘neutral’, they still appear western… weird
And actually nearly all the characters in anime are in fact Japanese (usually, the Japanese names are a giveaway, though these names are sometimes changed in English dubs). They just look Western, for most of the reasons people here have already mentioned. No one mentioned the outlandish hair styles and color, though, which is also another very common way for the animators to make it easier for the viewer to distinguish between the characters.
Heh, Just Some. True, but usually in that case it’s a (brain. not. working.) Japan-ized version of a Western name, so that Mark might become something like Marku. When you run across Tenchi, Ryo, Sakura, and Ranma (Saotome), though, you can bet they’re Japanese even though they don’t necessarily look it. Some shows definitely have a more nation-neutral cast to them, though, such as Cowboy BeBop (Spike, Faye, Ed, Jet, etc.).
I’m with scr4. Since anime is mostly done with fairly low-detail linework you can’t really make an “accurate” depiction of human features, so they usually just go for an idealized depiction. And really, once you get down to a certain level of abstraction everybody on the planet looks pretty much alike. Or, put another way, is there anybody in the world who looks like your typical anime school girl? Didn’t think so…
I’ve watched a heck of a lot of anime over the years and I’ve discovered it’s often more productive to pay attention to character’s mannerisms to tell if they’re foreign or not.
Anyway, I’m at the point where I just assume a character is Japanese, unless explicitly told otherwise.
The “Father Of Anime” is generally recognized as Go Nagai, who pretty much invented the “anime” look in his early comics work. He’s best known for stuff like Kimba The White Lion, Gigantor, and Astro Boy here in the US. He was a colossal influence on all Japanese cartoonists who came after him, and it was kind of natural that his style would be carried over into animation.
His usualy style involved extremely iconic characters (i.e. simple faces) mixed with very realistically rendered backgrounds. Huge eyes, small mouths, and weird colored hair just kind of went with the territory. I mean, come on, look at Peanuts… Charlie Brown’s head would make up more than half the kid’s mass!
It seems to me that the majority of anime characters already have the light skin, dark hair, and dark eyes that are common among the Japanese, and exceptions to this seem as likely to have fantasy coloring (pink eyes, green hair) as real coloring that is rare among the Japanese (blue eyes, blonde hair). The facial features are obviously heavily stylized and bear little resemblance to real human beings of any ethnic group. So what more should the animators be doing to make it clear to Westerners that their characters are Japanese? Give them diagonal slit eyes and lemon yellow skin?
My wife is a Japanese native and I asked her this very question. Her only answer was that many Japanese conider “western” looking people more attractive and besides, anime charachters with obvious japanese features would just look “wierd”.
Obviously not well documented proof of an answer, but there you go.
