Ask John: Why Aren’t There More Anthropomorphic characters in Anime?

Question:
I’ve recently noticed that in American animation, there’s a tendency to create anthropomorphic characters, while in anime, animals can sometimes talk but are rarely completely “humanized.” The only ones I’ve seen are Dilgear and Jillas of Slayers, and they’re not even major characters. Any thoughts on why this is more common in America than Japan? And are there any Japanese equivalents to stuff like “Duck Tales?”

Answer:
I really can’t come up with a definitive explanation on why talking animals and anthropomorphic characters are relatively infrequent in anime relative to American animation. All I can do is propose a theory. It would seem logical that anime would have a lot of anthropomorphic (allow me to use the genre term “furries” for convenience) characters, based on the fact that Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of modern anime, based his work on that of Disney and Mickey Mouse. But it may be exactly because Tezuka patterned his animation and manga style after Disney that furries never became common in anime. It’s obvious through even a brief overview of Tezuka’s work, that Osamu Tezuka’s goal was to present literate, mature entertainment rather than just the simple children’s cartoons typical of Walt Disney. Perhaps, to distinguish his style from the talking animals prevalent in American animation, and to give his work a degree of “legitimacy,” Tezuka never really created “furry” characters. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Kimba the white lion cub, one of Tezuka’s most famous creations, but Kimba is an exception in a cannon of literally thousands of characters Tezuka created.

Since the late 1950s, talking animals and half-human characters have never had a genuinely strong presence in anime. They certainly have existed; allow me to cite Johji Manabe’s Outlanders, Mee-kun’s Hyper Police, Meruru of Escaflowne, Hayao Miyazaki’s flying pig Porco Rosso, Ryukia the cat girl from Villgust and Gan-chan the talking rat from the Ah! My Goddess TV series as only a few examples.

Several of us here at AnimeNation have pondered this question and kicked around a few possible answers, among them:

Various elements of traditional culture tend not to be represented in popular entertainment. In the same way that American comics and cartoons aren’t always full of cowboys and Indians, Japanese culture, with its heavy traditional religious basis in nature and animal spirits, tends not to include animals or anthropomorphic characters in pop entertainment.

American animation is very concerned with individual marketability. Talking animals easily make the transition to stuffed dolls and other merchandising while anime is often not itself merely an advertisement for its own merchandising.

As a culture, Japan prefers more “realistic” escapist entertainment than Westerners do. Even the most outrageous anime fantasies generally all focus on human characters while American cartoons commonly place animal characters in human circumstances, such as Duck Tales, Bugs Bunny and Cow & Chicken. Presumably Japanese fans prefer to see human characters in their anime, as that’s what’s popular.

If you’d like to share your own theories on this topic, visit the AnimeNation Forum.