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Jul 2021

Hi!
I know that there are a lot of comics drawn in an Anime style. Personally I prefer the old-school non anime style. My own comics is drawn non-anime, and I'm sure that is one of the reasons it is having a though time getting subscribers.
My question is, why does people love the Anime style so much? I mean, the proportions of the eyes and noses are so non realistic, and yet you can't deny the success of it...

On that note, this is my non-anime comics, if you want to check it out :blush:

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There are 57 replies with an estimated read time of 14 minutes.

Most likely it's because of the appeal it has on people since it tends to lean into the cute category (well part of anime does that). Some people would rather see cute yet unrealistic characters do things than realistic-looking (and maybe not so appealing) characters.

Why are people always asking this question about anime art styles, but you never see anyone say "how come people like disney art so much?" which also features characters with big eyes, oversized heads, small noses and mouths and smooth faces.

People like manga-derived art because simple, cartoonish facial features rather than highly realistic ones makes the characters more like symbolic representations of people rather than specific people so more people can relate to them. It's easy to read a character as "you" or somebody you know if their face isn't detailed enough to clearly represent a person other than you. But unlike other cartoon styles, which have a cutesy, silly feel or a childlike appearance that can make it hard to tell a serious story with them, or a romantic one, manga characters, like Disney film characters, are proportioned close enough to a real adult human that you can see them as "cool" or "sexy", allowing them to perfectly balance on that line between "this character is appealing like a cartoon!" and "this character is cool and badass like an action hero" and "This character is beautiful, I could fall in love with them".

It's just a really flexible style- or more accurately family of styles that share some similar traits and come from common ancestry- for visual storytelling that's easy to read, easy to relate to and appealing to look at.

There's a lot of popular comics that don't have an anime style like lore Olympus, or even classic DC comics. It's mostly up to personal preference.

Actually, anime style is just a very general description of what is popular recently, if you have read manga and manhwa for a long time, you should be able tell that more of korean style comics has been taking over than Japanese anime style. Or maybe it's just me.

Personally I have preferred this kind of style over western style because of the details. When I see a lot of western webcomics, they're pretty plain without a lot of details. For example, your comic. It's not bad, but it's just too flat for my liking. Something like this (below) is very visually appealing to the eye. The majority of these comics are translated from korean, so the art is different/new to what a lot of westerners are used to which could also be why it's growing in popularity.

lol this reply is all over the place, the adhd is strong with this one.

Ah yes, I can see how that would be puzzling...after all, everyone knows that all comic readers get into the medium looking for realism; the notion that they could enjoy any art style that isn't 100% based on reality is completely nonsensical...[/s]

Maybe. I think a much bigger reason is probably the genre...cute romance, anime or not, tends to do best on this site; everything else is pretty hit or miss (mostly miss...). And your comic doesn't appear to be cute or romantic, so...

Like other people have said, it fits a very specific artistic niche, blending fantastical and grounded elements. And of course, it's also associated with a specific entertainment niche: animated stories marketed to teens and young adults, but with actual effort and creativity behind them, and various interesting settings.

Anime became popular worldwide because no other medium was really competing with them in that department, and even now that things are slowly changing, the legacy remains. As they say, don't hate the player; hate the game. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

BRUH.
Looking down on a drawing style you're not doing won't make your art look better. It won't make you look cool either.
Maybe you're frustrated, I dunno, but don't go in the easy path of being hateful.
Also not talking for anime (I don't know enough about that), but there are so many mangas that are drawn in a realistic way.

Both art styles are interesting, there's not one "easier" than the other. You can think anime/manga is the easy way to draw but really, I think you have to know very well how real anatomy works if you want to draw anime/manga (or even cartoon) characters that look good.

In terms of literary genres, which do you think is more popular? Fiction, or Non-fiction?

The anime style (and perhaps anime itself) has become so popular to both the West and Asian markets generally because it capitalises on what is attractive to humans. One of the biggest identifying factor of what makes anime style anime are the unnaturally large eyes. In real life, humans are generally attracted to others with big eyes. That in itself is a whole other essay, but basically it is linked to neoteny. In other words, people are attracted to people with juvenile or child-like traits. Someone that is cute most likely will have neotenous features. Anime exaggerates this. Anime also exaggerates human expressions and emotions, both in realistic and unrealistic anime.

As you know, Japan is a very culturally rich country. If the narrative has a Japanese background then that also adds an exotic factor to why it is popular. WEBTOON is innately a Korean company and have adapted their format off 'manhwa'. I would argue that modern manhwa was derived from Japanese manga during the Japanese occupation of Korea. In this case for the comics, Korean culture and narratives would be more relative here.

What does confuse me is that Tapas was originally an American owned company (although now owned by Kakao Korea), but has way more Korean style comics than the international version of WEBTOON. This is interesting to me.

Anyways, I hope I have answered your curiosity in a deeper sense!

-Leon

Darthmongoose explained it well and I very much agree with them! Scott McCloud talked about this in one of of his books

The theory is, realistic styles emphasize the otherness of a character which makes it hard for readers to relate to them. If you look at some anime , villains/ intimidating characters have more realistic facial proportions compared to the MCs. We dont need to empathize with them but we do have to dislike them.

Having looked at your comic now I have to ask.... Do you honestly look at your drawings of women and think "these are realistically proportioned women."?

Like.... Your women have what appear to be, at a glance, roughly 15 inch waists, tiny ribcages, massive orb-shaped breasts that no real woman could achieve without significant cosmetic surgery, necks approximately 1.5 times the length of a normal woman's neck and extremely long legs. They both have inflated "bee sting" lips that are bright red like they're wearing lipstick in this post-apocalyptic zombie world. You tend to draw just the nostrils on the nose, making the noses in your work actually appear smaller and less detailed than a lot of manga influenced artists (particularly artists like me whose work is more shounen manga influenced than shoujo).

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but you should be aware, your style is just as stylised with proportions as manga influenced styles, just in a more traditionally American way. The features you exaggerate are ones that make the women more like sexual objects, exaggerating the length and shapeliness of the legs, the smallness of the waist compared to the hips, the size of the breasts and the redness and fullness of the lips. You're just exaggerating different features.

Actually for me it's more like the relation of visual elements to the genre.
It's not like I don't like non anime comic style, but looking at the realistic proportion and facial expression to me gives off a more mature and 'masculine' vibes to me, like it was aimed for male audience most of the time. Also that if a comic is drawn in the marvel/dc style I will assume that comic as something serious, mature, intense/action packed and realistic. -- why? because of the design and visual elements.
Like most people in this thread mentioned, realistic characters are really close to realistic people so it maybe harder to relate to them or imagine them in that character's place because they assume the character is based on someone's existence. Cartoony style on the other hand tend to give off a vibe that plays at reality, and more imaginative I guess? like in terms of visual elements, they tend to give off something fun, silly, cute and childish vibes so a serious story with them tend to be more of either a plot twist at the end or serious/mature elements aren't meant to be taken seriously(like what you will feel if you rewatched tom and jerry from your childhood and then as an adult)
As a creator, and in terms of an art style, I chose it because anime/manga style is actually very flexible to work with ( that's the appeal for me) and has a lot of different range to match a certain genre, and may be tailored according to the target audiences too. For example: I noticed shonen anime tend to have bright colour palette and lively eyes, the protagonist are more expressive in terms of facial expression which shows that the MC is young, seinen have muted and dark colour palette and serious eyes, and the expressions although expressive, more realistic in a sense to match the environment and theme I tend to notice tend to have strong shadows and linework too tones too. Shoujo have a lot of cute and innocent elements their tones have a lot of sparkles in terms of screen tones which make it give off a more girly vibes, josei have more of an elegant and mature elements, the use of tones although minimal tend to be more on emotional -- which means that through looking at the elements you can have a rough idea on what will the story is about.
And There's also the factor of aesthetic and design elements to consider too, like if you have been reading different materials for very long, you can actually tell the difference in terms of art and design style between a western style comic ( which also has a variety of art style btw), a manga, a manhwa, and a manhua (yes these three aren't the same and their design and visual elements are actually different in terms or general art style) and in the end, cultural differences plays a huge part in terms of storytelling,
In terms of proportions. although not as realistic, the proportions actually have a certain count to match the world. like for example facial proportion to body proportion actually, if you will notice, they have a certain 'count' to match the head to the body. The facial features also have counts which still matches the standard facial proportion in realistic drawing as well but that is for another discussion --- each art style has their own visual aspects and each has their own 'appeal' so i guess this isn't really more on which art style is better, it's more of a matter of one's preference after all.

Heya! Manga artist here whose read some of your comic awhile ago. Others have given you really wonderful, detailed answers so here's mine, which is rather simple:

This style

Makes me

Feel Good

And Unleashes My Creativity

:heartbeat:

I wouldn't trade it for anything! (Even though I can do realism just fine, my heart and style is with manga.)

Grew up on Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, Astro Boy and Digimon.

I lived in Japan for 9 years.

Taught by Junior High Japanese kids. So my style reflects that.

Ah, that's just my internet connection. It's pretty bad + I accidentally clicked before adding my other paintings. :joy:

THIS STYLE MAKES ME!! Absolutely want to start saying that.

True, finding comics with a non anime style here is pretty hard. Mine is mainly inspired by it because I find it appealing and I think it's the most suitable for the story. Each time I imagine a series, I envision it in a certain style.
In the end I think it's all due to the fact that it's a very recognizable style and people are very familiar with it. It also is appealing to some people due to the fact that most characters are cute (due to their proportions and looks).

my art style is mostly influenced by ONE's art (ONE made the original One Punch Man webcomic and Mob Psycho 100) and it started evolving into its own thing. I think people just like how the anime style looks and hell you can get realistic with it too, I would put Berserk into the more realistic looking manga section when it comes to art. In my case, I think you can't really do much in terms of style with a realistic art style (I'm pretty I'm wrong but to me, most western comics look the same) (my point is that I think the appeal of the anime style comes from how flexible it is)

I actually wanted to write "I was basically raised on anime, so it's natural I find it more appealing", but technically that's not true. I grew up watching a lot of TV, and while I never saw American comics before my late teens, there were always old X-Men and old Spider man, and a bunch of Cartoon network series later... and I never found any of those as appealing as anime. For me anime made everything better - the style was always better, anime was more polished, better with characters emotions, had better colors, better angles, etc, etc. One day I thought, hey, maybe this was just child picking on things, maybe American comics aren't that bad and I would like something. Nope, they still looked the same, I don't see them as appealing, I don't enjoy their frequently non-emotional faces, their general roughness (yes, most of them do look the same to me, but I see how anyone can turn this argument against manga too).
If I want something more realistic or rough looking, I always have a bunch of seinen titles I can choose from, not every anime is made of cute girls with big eyes and dot noses.
By this I don't want to say that the American comics are doing something bad or wrong, but they are just not doing something for me that manga/anime does ^^

my favorite western comic is Scott Pilgrim mostly because of its art style.

Yesss, O'Malley's work is a great fusion of manga and western cartoon influences. It's a really appealing art style to look at and really clean and "readable" for action and emotion.

Speaking as someone who does like the anime style - personally, for me, it's because of the expressiveness of the style... or styles, that anime tends to have. You can exaggerate facial expressions and angles in such a way that you can't do in realistic art styles.

Also a lot of artists either are into anime currently or was into anime growing up and that obviously has an effect over what art they draw, follow, and prefer.

Let's just stop basing the worth of an art style based on how "realistic" it is. Your topic kind of comes across as very condescending to the art style; both have worth, both have people who like looking at those styles and drawing them.

I think people choose the anime style because they like it or they like shows or comics with the style. Some people may choose to draw that way because they like showing off what they enjoy or they feel they are better at drawing in that style. I have met people who enjoy anime who do not draw in the style because they feel like they can never get it to look quite right.

I don't think this really matter or even exclusively an anime thing. The Simpsons, Flintstones, Adventure Time, etc. are far from realistic.

Yeah now that I think about it, I'm probably super biased since I grew up reading these kinds of comics and watching anime. It's part of the culture, and it also adds in a factor(?) of nostalgia.

As long as the art style is unique I don’t have a preference, though I find a lot of the super popular comics that tapas promotes have a very similar art style. Actually, it’s mostly the premiums with basically the same art style… intresting

At a glance, no judgement intended, it looks like your work caters more to the male gaze, and I think Tapas demographically is pretty female. Especially if we're talking snap judgements from the thumbnail.

I think it's funny that this is about liking non realistic proportions, because as a child, anime was my first introduction to the idea that animation could look more realistic and feature complex art and stories. It was a revelation.

Many styles are about a marriage between realism and the right amount of simplification and exaggeration. Including your art? But it's not rocket science to say that when balancing the proportions of the face, big expressive eyes are appealing. So simplified features + big expressive eyes = a character that is expressive and draws you in while being easier to draw repeatedly. It's very easy to see why this style is popular.

Also, the way you say "so non realistic" like it's an insult is weird? We don't define the value of art by how realistic it is. (I don't think your intention was to be insulting, but if you've gotten some salty reactions, I would bet this was one of the reasons!)

On a broader note, there's no denying the popularity of anime/manwah esque styles. I don't think there's anything prohibitive about making art not in these styles, but it comes with its own challenges. Which is true of many things. It's not like being on style and on trend is a golden ticket to popularity, you still have to deliver, and you still put the work in to make the art. If your art is a different style, there's always the possibility that it will resonate with the people who want something different. It's a complex machine, and getting ahead is hard for everybody.

My comic Birds don't have the anime art style. But it does have anime-esque themes like the reading pace of manga and the action that resembles of a shonen anime.

I like both, but prefer ones that look a little more cartoonish to me. Hence a lot of my works follow that suit. But hey, non-realism is the FUN of art, hence why anime does so well.

It's probably because people find it visually appealing. With that said, there are some anime art styles that actually pretty realistic. Yeah, the proportions may still be slightly off, but it's still appealing to look at!

I know I also like it because I think the chibi artstyle is cute!

I saw this topic early in the morning and since I wasnt completely awake I tot I was back in 2005 were this question was in almost any art forum... tf

@darthmongoose and @Kelheor thank you I love you for your answers :revolving_hearts:

yeah right.... ahem! @erancomics

Inoue Takehiko
3
1
5

Shinnichi Sakamoto

Murata Yusuke
1

Urasawa Naoki
2
2

1

Kentaro Miura
1


1

Obata Takeshi



Oku Hiroya


1

Shinkai Makoto


Kagano Mihashi

Yamamoto Hideo

1

Otomo Katsuhiro

Satoh Inoue
1

Hoshino Yukinobu

1

Zhang Jing


Masanori Morita

Iwaaki Hitoshi

Hanazawa Kengo

1

Koike Kazuo

Tsutsui Tetsuya

Akana Shu

Katsura Masakazu
2

AND MANY MANY MORE

RIP Kentaro Miura (sorry just had to say that, the man was a legend) and I love Yusuke Murata's art, I do somewhat prefer ONE's page construction but I like Yusuke Murata's art more.

For me mines a bit of a mix, but in general I lean towards the Manga style for how expressive it can be but also IT IS MUCH QUICKER TO DRAW, which when chugging out comics for places like Tapas and Webtoon makes things easier.

This is so true for me too, the first time I watched Howls moving castle I was so amazed at how realistic and natural their movements were!
And when I watched Paprika my mind was blown! :fireworks:

So true. Howl's Moving Castle is such a beautiful movie, it steals your heart :heart: (Coincidentally both the film and the book are two of my favorite stories in the world!)

I think it's because anime is stylized enough that you don't need to worry about crossing into the Uncanny Valley with art that's drawn on a deadline. There's artists who can draw comics with a more realistic art style and still have them look relatable/alive (Fiona Staples, Nicola Scott), but one of the reasons, for example, that I don't read many superhero comics is because a lot of the people in it look unsettling. Like corpses or wax dolls. It's just a consequence of having to draw fast, but the more stylized artwork is, the less likely you are to fall into this unfortunate category. And it allows for a wider range of emoting without, again, having the characters look really weird/frozen.