Have you ever thought about this?

[itachi_]

Yeah, the topic speaks for itself... I wonder why, in most cases the characters (main) dosen't even look like japanese people, I mean small eyes, black hair, short, pretty skinny... but in the anime it's different, do you know why really? eg. Himura Kenshin (rurouni kenshin), All characters in naruto etc, everyone alomost... maybe it's what anime is all about

[SaSuKeRuLeS]

it bet its because its a pain in the *** to draw real people, let alone make animes about them and maybe the cartoon characters can have more detail in the way the animators want. thats just my opinon but i think it makes sense

[HimizujinEternia]

The reasoning behind the eyes is to make characters more expressive. You'll often notice in any anime that the most pronouced features in expressing any emotion are going to be the eyes.

As for the reason they don't typically look like japanese people... it's mostly an attempt at making a character look unique or out of the ordinary.

Take Ranma from Ranma 1/2 for an example. Ranma's ordinary form is pretty much stereotypical japanese, only with bigger eyes. Black hair, skinny, not that tall. However, when he gets splashed by cold water, he turns into a rather busty red-headed girl. The reason for the hair color change is to show that girl-type Ranma isn't the correct Ranma.

It's similar in other animes, especially ones set in Japan. The main character will always have distinguishing features that separate them from the norm if they are the slightest bit abnormal.

Other examples for consideration:

Sana from Kodomo no Omacha has reddish-blond hair, and yet lives in Japan
Yokou from Junni Kokki has red hair as well, despite being from Japan.
As you pointed out, Kenshin.
Excel from Excel Saga


If this isn't good enough for you, how about this: no matter how much you gloss things over, anime is pretty much a Cartoon. Therefore, it will not emulate reality by any means BECAUSE IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO.

[Neko Sniper]

You could also ask why most girls in Animes have a not so very small chest. Well, as an artist you can decide how your character looks and why the hell make it ugly? plus since jap girls have like most asian ppl pretty flat chests, they wanna have something big to drool over...

Oh and another reason could be that japanese ppl like it to peak out of the mass since even for them every person looks average with its black hair and the like. In Animes they can draw ppl how they want to with pink hair and green eyes. A thing you'll prolly never see on a jap street (ok, today maybe..but oh well) see what I mean?

just my thoughts here so sorry if I made somebody upset with it.

ja-ne

[itachi_]

ye ye chill down i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif , I just wondered if there was a reason behind it, a kind of logic, but maybe it's just to be different and unique as you said.

Neko_Sniper, very good and reasonable conclusion, I like it, And I've also thought about that thing with the chest.

[Kumiriko]

Anime. as i hear was oringally based off of Bettie boop. that freakish large head/eyed girl from the old cartoons. being the main insperation for the large eyes. the hole modern anime was started back in war times as a low budget way of produceing media after war devestated the economy. If i am totally wronge. someone kill me ^___^

[Mut]

you should just kill yourself to save us the trouble.

but whatever, i think real people should look like anime characters. it'll be funny.

[lasaire]

Dazz, enough being rude.

Secondly, there IS a viable reason why anime characters do not resemble Japanese people, and while making them more expressive, especially in the eyes, is part of the answer, it is far from the complete one.

The real answer is that in the early days of anime's popularity in Japan, Japanese televisions were made differently from American ones, and most homes had smaller TVs rather than the monstrosities we catch in American homes. They had a different set-up for determining color, and making anime characters have strange colored hair and huge eyes was in fact a way to help viewers distinguish between different characters and series by style. The series that could keep all its characters from being confused and give the viewers an image that was interesting and stayed in their mind was the series that very quickly did better in the long run.

You must also understand that anime is MUCH more popular in Japan than it is here. Only a very few anime make it on American TV, and not a huge amount more get fansubbed as they come out. However, in Japan there is no age barrier as here stating that 'cartoons are just for kids' and animes come out aimed at all ages from small children to adults. There are even specific genres for anime aimed at girls rather than boys (shoujo and shounen). Naruto is shounen, and targeted more for boys than girls, with lots of action and fighting, whereas a romance series like Ai Yori Aoshi, Hana Yori Dango or Revolutionary Girl Utena is targeted to the female audience.

The brunt of the above paragraph was to draw the conclusion that with the large number of anime series aired in Japan, very quickly anime creators learned that they had to make theirs 'stick out' in order to make people remember it and make it popular.

[HimizujinEternia]

Ah, thanks Lasaire, I hadn't thought about that.

[ruddvannistelrooy]

ahmm... it is because that japanese people have smaller eyes and the eyes show emotions for us to determine faster... that is all i know as far as i'm concerned /heh

and to add up... anime characters have really out-of-this world hairstyle(in comparison to the real world-spiky hairs like in DBZ) it is because to easier to distinguish characters from the rest.. hihihihi

[Gods_Son]

If characters were just drawn like ordinary Japanese people, they wouldn't look nearly as cool. A lot of characters in anime shows actually look nothing like any normal person. It's just for style.

[Mut]

well, ok, i actually meant that (kill yourself) in a joking matter but it obviously did not look that way to you guys. lol, my apologies! *wink*wink* ;]

[Raven]

I've always heard that Japanese people drew huge eyes because of a sub-concious resentment of their own naturally small eyes. I've got nothing to back that up though, just something I heard.

[Xollence]

Well Japanese teens these days looks similiar to anime characters with their dyed hair spikey long hair.

[Lego]

hmmm.... ive thought of why most of the guys in anime look the same i/expressions/devil.gif


other then that, it dosen't really bother me that much what the chars look like...

[LegendarySenninJiraiya]

well u guys say they need to make their series stick out but since now, just about every anime has oddly drawn characters wouldnt one that draws realistic chars stick out more than one that draws odd ones, i think the reasons behind it are the trends, spikey hair and dyed blond hair seems to be popular with japanese youth here in america, i know several japanese students that have their hair spiked out and bleached, as far as why, who knows at this point in time, but its my personal belief that anime reflects the trends of the times, also, the chars. looking japanese wouldnt take anything away from the series really, i think what people want to say here is why do the chars all look american lol, from sasuke to naruto to even sakura all of them look like they could come straight out of america, then you take a look at chouji and shikamaru, they look the most japanese in the whole series, also, we could take a look at another medium, the video game market, just for one example the FF series, every Final Fantasy star that was human in any way (even if they had extra mutant features) looked like an american person, if you look at Cloud, then look at Squall then look at Tidus and even their supporting characters, they all were more american looking than not, blonde hair, usually fair skinned, maybe blue eyed or green eyed, the fashion who knows where they get that from, but it seems that theres a trend there