Ask John: Is Chibi Dead?

Question:
Is chibi dead? I have been watching a lot of new anime on streaming sites like Hulu, and I don’t recall seeing any characters take on a chibi appearance. Maybe I’m just watching the wrong shows. I still notice weirdly drawn eyes in reaction to something, or that anger symbol on a character’s head. Haven’t seen any giant sweat drops off to the side. Or, like I said, chibi.

Answer:
The Super Deformed or “chibi” approach to anime seemed to be most prominent in anime from the 1980s and 90s. Primary examples of anime to exploit squashed, mis-proportioned characters included the SD Gundam and SD Kamen Rider anime franchises and the 1991 CB Chara Nagai Go World OVA series. SD character appearances also memorably appeared in 1985’s Highschool! Kimengumi, 1994’s Magic Knight Rayearth, and in the omake segments of Fushigi Yuugi. The American fascination with “chibi” character renderings also seemed to reach a pinnacle in the early 2000s before waning. Outside of the American fan fascination with “chibi” during the height of the anime boom in America, SD character designs and super deformed anime have never been especially prolific in Japan. The “chibi” concept in anime has always been used fairly sparingly since it emerged in the early 1980s. While its evident prominence on American fan websites has diminished in recent years, “chibi” character designs and anime actually haven’t declined at all in anime. Contemporary examples include the 2007 Macross Fufonfia and 2009 Suzumiya Haruhi-chan no Yuutsu web series, 2010 SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors TV series, 2011’s SKET Dance SD Chara Flash web anime, last year’s Naruto SD: Rock Lee no Seishun Full-Power Ninden and Litchi DE Hikari Club television series, and even last month’s Fate/Zero Café motion picture. Characters periodically turned “chibi” in the 2009 Sora no Otoshimono television series and even more “chibi” than normal in the 2012 Yurumates television series. The frequency of SD or “chibi” designs in anime doesn’t actually seem to have changed much since the 1980s. American observers, however, typically don’t encounter “chibi” illustrations plastered all over the web the way we did in the early 2000s, however, when the fascination with “chibi” character designs seemed to dominate much of the American otaku community.

From Sora no Otoshimono episode 10: