The Insider's Guide To Anime

Since artist’s styles are different, most manga and
anime looks a little different. (Even though sometimes
the styles are so alike it may seem like the same person
drew everything in different series, that’s just not the
case.) But there are some drawing styles that have
developed over the years that are common to most
anime.

Here are a few of them:

Hair: Hair is usually wild and either flowing or
spiked, depending on what the “hot” style is at the
time. A character’s hair is also used to tell something
about the character without having to actually say it or
explain it – the wilder it is the wilder and more
unpredictable the character usually is.

Noses: Noses are very small – sometimes characters
don’t even seem to have noses. If they do, they’re
really really small. There are several theories about
why anime character’s noses are small, but the
simplest are that Japanese noses tend to be small,
unlike American noses, and also that noses aren’t very
expressive: they don’t tell much about what a
character is feeling (other than if they smell something
nasty.) Eyes can show anger, surprise, or disbelief;
mouths can too. Noses just don’t do much.

Mouths: Mouths are very small when they’re closed
and very large when they’re open. Most characters
also show a lot of teeth when they smile. You almost
never see lips, either – that’s a detail that isn’t
necessary, although the trend is changing. Some
highly-detailed manga characters now have lips.
Posters and illustrations for advertisements will also
show lips, even though the actual characters in the
anime may not have them. Again, that’s to keep things
simple, easier to draw, and less expensive.

Eyes: Eyes are large and exaggerated. Sometimes
they take up one-third of a character’s face. Huge eyes
make a character seem young and innocent, and also
allow the artist to use them to show emotions. In
general, heroes tend to have large eyes, and villains
tend to have smaller eyes.

There’s another reason eyes are large in manga and
anime. In Japan, actors in plays used to shave their
eyebrows and paint fake eyebrows higher up on their
foreheads. The idea behind it was to show beauty,
even though it sounds kind of odd to us. Shaving
eyebrows and painting them higher up caused people
in the audience to think the actor’s eyes were bigger.

Drawing large eyes isn’t unusual for American
cartoons, either – especially older cartoon characters.
Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters all have
large eyes; it’s supposed to make them look innocent
and sweet. Manga and anime artists are doing the
same thing – the only difference is that they’re also
influenced by Japanese theatrical history, giving them
another reason to make character’s eyes larger than
normal.