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May 2023

(Please I don't want anyone to be offended by my question, I'm just curious about this, that's all)

I've always wondered if anime is from Japan then why don't the mangaka's draw anime characters in a Japanese looking way?

They draw anime characters in a way to make them look European, I don't have a problem with them looking European but it makes me wonder, is it because Japanese people wish that they could look a bit like Europeans? .... Hence that's why some of their females do eye surgery to have European looking eyes?

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I think it’s because they’re modeled after cats if I remember reading correctly…

They want to make the characters look cute and attractive, hence they added the features that they consider cute or attractive.
The fact that those are Caucasian features or if the anime mimics Caucasian because Japanese wants to be want are rather Western interpretation.


Edit: tried and true
Let's try to make an anime girl by tracing kitten images and adjusting it.

A lot of mangaka actually do draw the characters in more "Japanese looking way", but it's not like all manga is about "average Japanese students" :smile: most of it very much fantasy and when you're drawing a blue-haired alien character, why don't make them any kind of features you like? Even if you draw a Japanese person, you just might want to make them stand out more with unusual hair/eyes, because it's a comic and you want people to differentiate characters better.

The real answer is the big eyes come from Disney. They wanted to copy large expressive eyes to show emotion. Then it just became the style used.

To add to @BoomerZ

It wasn't so much "Japan" or "anime" itself that was inspired by Disney but in particular Osamu Tezuka the otherwise known "godfather of anime"

I like the thing with the cats, the real reason is just a hyperfocus on expression.

The real answer is the big eyes come from Disney.

this is the answer. I don't know how true the cat stuff is, but if it is, it stems from modern manga.

Manga is technically just a Japanese word for comic. It evolved from a variety of sequential art, like kibyoshi which depicted people like this:

But then after WW2, Allied forces occupied Japan and brought over their influences. Osamu Tezuka, considered the father of Manga, watched a lot of Disney cartoons as a kid, which influenced him to draw characters with big eyes to emphasize expressions, leading to anime big eye.

Edit: I also think in some ways, we're evolved/ conditioned to find big eyes cute (babies, cats, and puppies), so the style stick. Japan is also heavily influenced by Western beauty standard, so I'm not surprised a lot of characters lean toward that end.

A short history of the stylistic choices of manga artists.

A very long time ago a young man with a silly hat named Osamu Tezuka drew big eyes because he loved Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat.

His stuff was extremely popular and every working artist had to copy him, even if they didn't want to, because it sold well. Since comics are written and drawn by fans who in turn create more artists who are fans, his DNA is always there in some capacity.

It's similar to how Jack Kirby can still be seen in every cape comic today. Or how every adult animated comedy is still doing Simpsons gags 30 years later. Copying copies of copies.

Some artists lean into the eye thing;

Others have sought a closer "realism" as a departure from Tezuka's outsized influence:

In the end the way a manga looks is largely determined by the fandom the artist came from, and the publishers's desire to pander to the limited tastes of their audience. Shojo romance books demand a certain look. Shonen fight books the same. Thankfully the audience has diversified enough that artists who do stand out can have a shot at making a career for themselves;

In the end, you're supposed to look at a Japanese character as a Japanese person. Even though Sailor Moon might be a blonde, she's a blonde Japanese girl.

Also, as a check on expectations around how a race "looks", here's a famous white woman...

East Asian folks are also pretty diverse looking once you get past the eyelids.

I think it's part

  1. You are viewing the characters from a non-Japanese perspective, thus you are not going to code them as being Japanese. A Japanese person may see them as character that reflect their culture even if they have strange color hair and eyes.

  2. Some of the characters aren't Japanese. I remember hearing that Naruto was suppose to be racially ambiguous. If you see him as white, well you aren't wrong about that interpretation.

  3. It's a cartoon, it is allowed to take creative liberties with things.

I feel like a good comparison is Marge Simpson. She's doesn't look like a white person. Her hair is a weird color. And her eyes don't look anything like a real person. But we know she is White of French descent due to the context given within the show.

I remember reading a documentary somewhere that they were inspired by early Disney animations. The large eyes, over expressive emotions, and small features were added later on because it just got caught up with art aesthetics trends.

Oh, this is gooood! Yes, the Disney Big Eye influence is true. Also I've heard in Japanese culture even in the 18/19th century, Japan was heavily influenced by Westerners/Europe: U.S., Germany, France, etc., from trade, war, etc.

I used to live in Germany (nearly a half century ago) and while watching anime stories like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Starblazzers, even Attack on Titan, D. Gray Man, and more there is a ton of corresponding material--names, costumes, military and social order, on and on.

I mean where did all these European, even German-like characters come to play? History--Japan had history, influence, and knowledge, especially during WWII.

Let me add, I saw a documentary on anime that mentioned when the Japanese manga/anime artist first were selling their works with their normal features--Asian eyes, hair, facial features, wouldn't you know, it was not accepted in the western world. However, I have seen works even anime, that have stayed true to their amazing appearance.

I must say, I love the variety of anime, even though some is conflicting, most of the stories are exciting, amazing to watch, and remembered. Ah, it's a small world after all.

I'm just gonna make an observation that Europeans do not have gigantic anime eyes. No human on the planet has giant anime eyes. Anime characters do not look European, they look like cartoons.

All good things said already. I just have this to comment:

This guy is British(ish).

This guy is Japanese.

Really good discussion in this thread!

I think it's always good to go into anime and manga with the understanding that it's presenting metaphorical truth, not literal truth. The characters are more like symbols than people.

So in the same way as how in a Kabuki theatre performance, you're not meant to literally believe you're watching the story of people with enormous hair and white, black and red face paint who stomp and pose all the time, but a stylised performance, so in manga, you're not meant to believe that people create enormous drops of sweat from their heads when they're anxious, or that they're literally people with blue hair.

Eye and hair shape and colour tend to be stylistic representations of characters in anime. If you see a character with spikey, red hair and wide blue eyes, you can probably assume "this character is energetic and hot-headed, but has a childlike innocence", while a character with smaller, brown or black eyes and dark blue hair slicked down will probably be serious, mature and quiet.

In the same way as a stick figure represents a human, even though it's very distantly abstracted from what a human looks like, manga characters represent archetypes. by exaggerating traits to be larger than life. The bleached, spikey hair associated with delinquency or not fitting into mainstream Japanese society is exaggerated from the sort of red-brown colour it'd be in real life to bright blonde, or sometimes a ditzy character will just be drawn with blonde hair, because she's figuratively "blonde", not literally blonde. Meanwhile a character whose personality or outward persona is the traditional ideal of the "perfect Japanese woman" will nearly always have long, jet black (or blue-black or deep purple, which kind of represent pure raven black) hair (Komi from Komi Can't Communicate, Sailor Mars etc.) because she's representing something more than a literal person.

When a character's defining trait is "white person" they tend to be drawn differently to differentiate them from the metaphorical or stylistically blonde and blue-eyed characters. Usually they're drawn with a larger nose with a higher bridge and a more heavily boned face with strong, sometimes scary cheekbones, and the eyes are often drawn in a more western art style to show that they're from outside Japan and are not a manga archetype. It makes them look intimidating and hard to relate to (because that's the point). But white characters who aren't defined by being white/foreign, tend to be drawn like any other manga character, because in manga, it's the person's archetype or personality that matters most, just like how in Kabuki, the style of face paint or mask and the hairstyle symbolise the person's role in the story.

It is one World. The otherwise unexplainable alliance of Japanese and German late capitalism/imperialism as well as their special brutality and criminality since the 20th century stems from their later development in a world already ruled by Britannia, later its mighty renegade colony in America.

I'm glad someone finally said this because I feel it's the most realistic answer here. ^^;; Although it's nice to have all the mini history lessons on how anime art styles developed, the point is that it's an art style. It's meant to look stylistic, not representative of any race in particular.

There are actually lots of anime/manga where the characters "look Japanese"; it's just that that's not the most popular art style in the anime sphere, obviously. Most fans like a more abstracted setup where people can have tons of different hair and eye colors and face shapes, and where those qualities can be used to emphasize their personality traits, like @darthmongoose explained.

And like @NickRowler explained, they can still be seen as Japanese even if they don't "look the part", due to the context they live in. Generally when you're working with a simplified artstyle, that's where you look if you want to learn about a character's heritage/racial identity: context. ^^;

Anime... translated to english as "Animation" has different styles. The fact so many have big eyes is due to the influence of the early stages of it's beginning, with Walt Disney and Osamu Tezuka taking inspiration from one another. And several assistants, newbies and younger generations were inspired by them.

But if we think carefully about the early animations, early comics, several of them use overexaggeration, which is grabbing aspects of the realistically anatomically human body and shape it so certain elements stand out even more, big eyes, big mouths or overxaggerated facial expressions were in fact a way to properly translate emotions or enhance the feelings of the characters. In other cases, it is to express the stage in life, part of their personality and more things.

Japanese characters don't look japanese in most cases because they are meant to be Mukokuseki, which means without nationality.
But let's not forget that as well, the reason why anime characters have big eyes, very extravagant hairstyles and colors, is because it opposes to what Japanese Society adoctrinates themselves into, in fitting.

This is not going to sound too well, but several asian countries's citizens look all the same because that's how they are taught to fit in society, standing out is not well seen. Even to this day despite the cultural and ethnic exchanges, kids with natural light hair color, be it brown to blonde, are still forced to dye it black in certain establishments.
The quote "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" is a very fair explanation, so welp... we can say anime and manga are a way for escapism in a very strict and judgemental society