Ask John: What Makes Anime Art Distictive?

Question:
What makes anime drawings special? Is it the eyes? The face? Or the overall look of the anime character?

Answer:
After some discussion here in the AnimeNation office, we’ve concluded that the distinction between Japanese art and Western art is not intrinsic to the art itself but is a matter of perspective and awareness on the part of the observer. It’s common for observers that look at anime to not notice any difference between a Tenchi Muyo character and Bugs Bunny. Obviously there are overt visual differences, but an uninitiated observer is unlikely to be able to distinguish which piece of art originated in Japan and which in America. The experiment is more profound with Japanese art by creators including Yoshitaka Amano and Ryoichi Ikegami (Crying Freeman). With no previous knowledge of these artist’s styles- Amano’s ethereal painting and Ikegami’s brush and charcoal “realistic” style- the average American wouldn’t be able to identify these examples as Japanese or European or American art or be able to distinguish the different cultural origin of this art compared to works by a Western artist like Jean “Moebius” Giraud or Frank Frazetta or Bill Sienkiewicz. The ability to recognize “Japanese” style opposed to any other type of comic art comes from experience. Fans that have watched and examined anime extensively tend to pick up subtle distinctions between Japanese and Western art, but only because of experience and training in doing so.

There are subtle distinctions between Japanese character design and Western emulations of anime characters, but these are distinctions that only a trained eye can spot. And the “trained eye” comes from experience and lots of time spent watching anime. It’s not overt cues that anime fans use to distinguish Japanese from American art, but rather very subtle impressions and the Japanese use of curves and soft angles.

Not all anime characters have wide round eyes. Katsuhiro Otomo, for example, commonly draws characters with distinctly thin, small Asian eyes. The square-jawed face shape of characters including the Colonel of Akira and Talos of Crusher Joe compared to rounder face shapes like that of Tenchi Masaki suggest that facial shape alone isn’t distinctive of anime either. Wild hair doesn’t work as a distinction because there are an uncounted number of anime characters that have very simple hair or even no hair at all that are still distinctively “anime characters.” Color clearly doesn’t work as an identifier because black & white pencil sketches still display a marked Japanese style.

What typifies anime characters is the general impression that anime characters give. And that impression is made by the difference in the sharpness of angles used by Japanese artists. This is difficult to explain or point out. It’s really something almost subliminal that’s picked up visually. Anime characters have a certain “flow” and softness to their body shape. Even what seem to be sharp angles are virtually always, on close inspection, smooth bends. This gives anime characters a sense of softness and warmth and fleshy roundness. This characteristic exists in Japanese anime art styles of all types- from the brush stroke calligraphy style of Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf & Cub to the watercolor of Yoshitaka Amano to the angular characters of Akira Toriyama to the smooth roundness of Hayao Miyazaki’s character design to the virtually minimalist look of Crayon Shin-chan. American attempts to copy this style are coming ever closer to exactly replicating it, but to the exacting eye, American attempts continue to overcompensate by making “manga style” characters either too round and almost fat or not plump enough and employing too many sharp, hard angles and straight lines.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Share your opinion on this difficult question at the AnimeNation Forum.