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.