Ask John: Do Americans Hate Ugly Anime Characters?
|Question:
Ishinomori Shotaro, Matsumoto Leiji, and Nagai Gou are (at least occasionally) fantastic and trail blazing storytellers, yet none of their modern works have ever taken off in North America, either in the fickle fansub community or the commercial market. I blame this solely on the fact that all of these men draw round kitschy characters that don’t strike Americans as “pretty” or “cool.” Imagine, just for a moment, if Haruhi or Wolf’s Rain or Hellsing or Bleach or any other substantially popular anime franchise in North America had character designs by one of those three men. I can see American interest in the franchise capsizing instantly. If Air Master had originally been drawn by Oh!great or Peach Pit or even Takahashi Rumiko it could have been a potential modest hit, even with incomprehensible dubtitles. But the unattractive art design of Air Master simply doomed it from the start. Anime titles with “ugly” character designs simply don’t appeal to American audiences.
Answer:
I would truly like to believe that America’s otaku community is considerate enough to perceive anime on more than its most superficial level, but rationally I have to admit that, to a large extent, that’s not the case. Judging anime on its visual appearance isn’t an entirely unjust approach. Anime is principally a visual medium so its aesthetics and animation quality are important components. But anime is also a narrative art and often a very personally representative art. So consideration should be given to its literary component; and reference to its creator’s style and intent should be applied to criticism. I’m certain that a significant percentage of America’s avid anime viewers critique anime on first impressions and appraise anime on its most overt and superficial characteristics. If an anime is stylish and cool, it’s good. Anime that are ugly or don’t have the crisp, sharp detail associated with modern works hold little appeal for average contemporary Americans. It’s clear to me that attractive character designs alone aren’t enough to satisfy America’s otaku community, but it’s difficult for me to gauge exactly to what extent “ugly” character designs dissuade American viewers.
Satoshi Urushihara is universally recognized as one of anime’s premiere character designers, yet his Legend of Lemnear, Plastic Little, and Front Innocent OVAs have never been especially respected in America because of their shallow stories. Popotan has gorgeous character designs by Akio Watanabe, but got widely panned as being a disposable exploitation show. Nobuteru Yuki’s character designs for the X anime have been stunning, but the X anime has been perceived as confusing and ineffective by American viewers. So character design alone doesn’t necessarily ensure American success. However, the Tenjho Tenge anime overcame terrible narrative structure, obvious animation shortcuts, and an absent conclusion on the strength of its stylish character designs. Attractive character design and sharp animation certainly helped Gundam Seed attract more American viewers than watched the prior American releases of G-Gundam and Z Gundam. The current Japanese Cross Game anime is enjoying a bigger American following than any prior Mitsuru Adachi adaptation, I suspect, in part because the character design for the Cross Game anime more closely adheres to conventional, popular anime styles than the distinctive character designs of previous Adachi anime adaptations like H2, Slow Step, Touch, and Hiatari Ryoko. Stylish character design doesn’t ensure an anime’s success in America, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
Conversely, it’s difficult to decisively say that “ugly” character design, or character designs that are noticeably different from the median of mainstream anime deter American viewers because most of the American anime releases typified by unconventional character designs have other, additional characteristics that have contributed to their dismal American success. Air Master does indeed have “ugly” character designs that may have turned off some American viewers. But the initial American release of the show was also hampered by widely reported flaws in the American commercial DVDs. So the series’ character designs weren’t the only reason consumers avoided the DVD release. The same situation applies to Initial D. The Initial D character designs require some acclimation. But numerous American Initial D fans boycotted the DVD release to express their disdain for the drastic alterations Tokyopop made to the English language version of the show. So it’s difficult to tell if the failure of Initial D in America was caused by its character designs or by its controversial American DVD release. “Apocalypse Zero” (Kakugo no Susume) has notoriously hideous looking characters, but the show also revels in outrageously offensive narrative content. Likewise “Ping Pong Club” has unattractive characters, but it may be just as much the series’ grotesque shock humor which scared away viewers. Leiji Matsumoto’s distinctive character design is immediately identifiable as one which most American anime viewers aren’t very fond of. American releases of Matsumoto anime including DNASights 999.9, Captain Harlock: Endless Odyssey, Captain Harlock: My Youth in Arcadia, Harlock Saga, Galaxy Express 999, Interstella 5555, Gun Frontier, Galaxy Railways, Queen Emeraldas, Maetel Legend, and The Cockpit have not fared especially well in America. But it’s difficult to say how much Matsumoto character design style contributed when other factors including the age of the anime, poor promotion and distribution, and the necessity of being familiar with the “Leijiverse” to fully appreciate many of these series also repressed their American sales. Despite being a Madhouse production, Peter Chung character designs made Alexander Senki look distinctly un-anime for countless American viewers. Likewise, Dead Leaves didn’t seem to reach Manga Entertainment’s lofty peak of anticipated success possibly because its character designs caused many Americans to think of it as “not anime.” Yet in both of these titles, unusual character designs are coupled with unconventional storytelling. These two titles don’t look like stereotypical anime. They also don’t feel like conventional anime. Takashi Nakamura’s character design sense certainly contributed to the cold American reception of Tree of Palme and Fantastic Children, but considering the structural and narrative content of these two works, it’s doubtful that they’d have been tremendously successful in America even with alternate character designs.
There are examples of anime that have performed well in America almost exclusively on the strength of their character designs and visual appearance, like Tenjho Tenge, Wolf’s Rain, and Afro Samurai. But I’m hard pressed to think of anime titles that didn’t achieve American success solely because of their character design or visual characteristics. I have no doubt that unconventional character design does discourage some American viewers from sampling certain anime. But while attractive character designs can turn a mediocre show into a major hit, I’m not convinced that unusual character designs alone can entirely doom an anime to failure in America. Basilisk performed quite well in America despite half of its cast being hideously ugly. Unfortunately, the best example of anime anime achieving American success despite unconventional aesthetics is Crayon Shin-chan, which required extensively rewritten and “Americanized” dialogue to convince Americans to look beyond its atypical character designs.
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That’s not entirely accurate a letter. Cutey(ie?) Honey and even Devil Lady have a bit of a following here. But yeah, in the case of Go Nagai, American fans are turned off by sideburns nowadays, and they prefer androgynous and asexual men like Aaron Carter. [Did you hear how he beat Shaq? =p http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oITCug7v7Q ] But there’s always hope, as that Twilight guy is the scruffiest we’ve gotten in recent years, while Shia’s the first successful teen idol with a trimmed Jew-fro; plus the screening of the LA Cromartie at AX actually had a lot of people; so maybe those Aryan emo elves are slowly going out of fashion.
Plus, Death Note ripped the hell out of Devil Man’s artwork; so eventually, people are going to make that connection and give the original a shot. I wish Go Nagai didn’t allegedly cancel Verotik editions of the manga, though, because those were friggin’ awesome. The only singles I would have paid for back then, too.
As for Ishinomori, well, I’m guessing the real reason Cyborg 009 didn’t take off as well as it should have is because Tokyopop published it in the the chronological order of how it was published in Japan, rather than the chronological order of the story, and it’s really confusing, since certain characters show up who don’t make actual appearances until later on in the series. The American edition of Astro Boy suffers from a similar problem, but since that series has a bigger fanbase, it could get away with that format. [Though if Tokyopop was a smarter company, it would have slapped a “From the creator of the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past manga” on the cover of 009, since that’s the one Ishinomori manga which has been well received in the U.S.]
OTOH, that 009-1 thing seems to have done ok for ADV and FUNimation, which makes me think someone should license the manga for it, and see if it works out any better. The anime for 009 would have definitely benefited from a similar modernization. I don’t think making it “pretty” would have made a difference, since Zoom, the closest thing we’ll get to a Hollywood 009 movie until Peter Chung’s version, had some good-looking actors, and it still bombed. What would have helped is if it didn’t look like something “Saturday Morning Watchmen”[Youtube it.] would be parodying. The Japanese don’t care, since they’ve been going for those types of team shows since Gatchaman, but American fans like their heroes to stand out a bit more. I think that’s where 009-1 succeeded better.
As for Matsumoto’s Tetsuro, well, if he’s good enough to be “recycled” into a South Park character, he’s good enough for anime fans. And anyone who doesn’t think his women are hot doesn’t have any taste in women, period. Still, the fact that FUNimation just picked up his classics GE: 999 and Harlock indicates there is an audience for his older work. I think the problem with how his stuff was sold here before was that companies were releasing the remakes and variants of his older anime, and so it ended up confusing newer fans who might not necessarily be familiar with the characters.
Finally, there’s Air Master. While it’s true the women on the cover weren’t the most attractive of the bunch, I think the fact that the covers didn’t exactly let you know what to expect from the show is what hurt it. Ikki Tousen makes it clear it’s an action/comedy series. Air Master’s covers just feature a pissed-off girl on them, which isn’t exactly bankable here. Also, to be fair, Oh! Great’s not that “great” here, in terms of popularity, if a “PG version”[as Toren Smith puts it.] of Tenjho Tenge can’t cross over to shojo fans. Air Gear is probably more successful in the U.S. because of its similarity to typical shonen fare which is popular here than the actual artwork.
Oh, and last time I checked, Peach-Pit is not actually popular, or RozenMaiden and DearS would have been enough to save Geneon. Plus, if hot chicks were enough to make anime and manga and hit, then Masuzaku Katsura would be bigger in the U.S. than Ken Akamatsu.
However, I will agree with John that some “ugly” art doesn’t grab me, which is probably why I never bought into Umezu. I mean, his stuff would have done great if there was still a market for horror comics, like during the EC Days, or even horror novels, like during the Goosebumps days; but it’s sort of cheesy by today’s standards of torture porn. [Though I think I can stand it more than the pretentious crap from that Uzumaki author, and despite its better artwork, it doesn’t seem to do much better for Viz.]
As for Initial D, it seems to be doing alright enough here, if Justin Lin can use it for inspiration for Tokyo Drift. The likely reason it never hit big here was that it was a guy-oriented show with little female involvement. Ping Pong Club bombed, because it came out of the tail end of the Beavis and Butthead craze. Dead Leaves disappointed, because it looked like one of those arthouse things they used to tack onto an American animation anthology in the 80s. I think Wolf’s Rain did well because it successfully cashed in on Bebop. Afro Samurai’s appeal had more to do with Ninja Scroll-esque violence than anything else. As for Shin-chan, if you recall, the manga was a disaster for Comics One; and I’m betting that was because people thought it was a kiddie comic, because of the covers, rather than a dirty comedy. The FUNi re-writes of the show are still close to the main ideas of the anime; the revisions just have more blatant innuendo than the Japanese versions. But I’m guessing that the reason Shin-Chan became popular is because the re-writes have more originality and energy to them than any recent episode of the Simpsons, even though the latter show actually has a better budget.
I’ll disagree with some points of GATS’s uh, “eccentric” post. So you think that people will make some connection to the art (which I don’t see) between Death Note and devil man/lady and jump to renting/buying the old shows? Good luck for that.
Going to the topic, I think that people don’t give something like Air Master a shot because maybe they don’t like it? I watched the first volume, and while I wasn’t disappointed in it, there wasn’t much there.
I think that the person posing the question is tha all’s fair in what visiblity all anime are offered initially. I think that america is just as guilty of giving the spotlight to “pretty” movies, tv, comics, etc, while some great stuff may be cult or people might not get past the art
It’s also funny that the writer mentions Matsumoto, when most people I’ve heard or read mention his works if they are of a certain age. Ditto for Nagai Gou (Go Nagai, as I’ve heard it). I loved the shit out of Cyborg 009, but that art is an aquired taste for sure. It’s a “childish” (not even the right word) style but the show was kind of more mature. It also reminds me of something from the 70s to 80s.
So really, you’re talking about styles that speak to a certain time period. Do kids like ANYTHING their parents did? Not a lot, really.
YotaruVegeta does make a good point. A large percentage of the character design style that we may think of as “ugly” hails from a certain time period in Japan, so it may have a bigger following in Japan because its contemporary fans grew up with it while it doesn’t have any nostalgia value for Americans.
Yotaru: “So you think that people will make some connection to the art (which I don’t see)”
Import a copy of the Devil Man Amon manga, and you’ll “see” better. ^_-
“and jump to renting/buying the old shows?”
Well, they’re doing that with Tezuka, so it’s all about patience on the others.
“I watched the first volume, and while I wasn’t disappointed in it, there wasn’t much there.”
Then that means it’s perfect for today’s fandom. =p
John: Sort of like how most people like Hanna Barbera, but John K. would rather gouge out his eyes than work on another one of that company’s cartoons? ^_-
It’s partly an eye of the beholder argument, for me.
When Katsuhiro Otomo was asked why his female characters (in AKIRA) were designed atypically, he instinctively responded with: “Are you saying that my girls are ugly?”
Much of it is stylistic preference, but at its core, it’s how much a viewer can suspend his disbelief or disinterest in the superficial qualities of a character until some component of the program or film’s storytelling validates said character’s facade.
There are plenty of narratives that make this difficult to acknowledge, and there are plenty of directors that make this a struggle with every stroke of the pencil (or digital pen, as is the case nowadays)… but it is my opinion that a solid character designer knows every psychosocial pressure point of the characters they mold, after their work is done, it’s up to the director and the storyboard artists to determine how much time passes, and in what way time passes, until the viewer is granted leniency in deciphering why characters are the way they are and why they do the things that they do.
Is it to shape the program’s worldview of how a type-a woman behaves? Is it to deceive a viewer into thinking a character is cool, when in reality, he’s lost all hope in life? Is it just to appear “realistic,” merely because the thematic intrigue of the story itself mirrors an alternate historical norm? Is it to seduce an audience to suppose, even if for a split second, that every single character in the anime is pure fiction, except for maybe the dreams one lucky/unlucky little girl? Or is it to wildly and uncharacteristically frame honest, adult emotions through the lens of a child who keeps asking himself “where do the lies end and the truth begin?”