On The 8th Day God Created Anime – Graphical Uniqueness

Ok, so we’ve established what anime is, now how to we recognise anime when we see it? Lucky for us, those Japanese have made identifying anime and manga pretty easy. Let us take these sample pictures of one of my favourite anime/manga characters Sana Kurata from Kodomo No Omocha to illustrate.

What are some of the more blatant characteristics that stick out at you? Well, most likely the most obvious would be the mouth. Very large and very happy, a large mouth indicates happiness or in some cases intense wailings of pain. We’ll get back to the mouth in more detail a bit later on.

The next noticeable thing we see are the rather large eyes. Anime eyes are known to be the soul of the character and are always kept large and expressive. The larger eyes help to convey the friendliness and openness of a character. A Reader/viewer can tell almost immediately whether a character is good or evil directly from the expression of the eyes. Although, not always the case a general rule of thumb that is good to follow is that the rounder and softer the yes are the, the more innocent and on the side of good the character is. Villains will usually have narrower, sharper looking eyes. The only ways around giving an anime character large eyes would to be giving them either sunglasses worn 24/7 like the character Rei from Kodomo No Omocha, or giving them squinty eyes like those of Brock in Pokemon.

Next you’ll notice that Sana is wearing a typical school girl’s uniform. Any anime character below the age of 18 will very frequently be spotted in a school uniform. The guys uniform tend not to be noticed as much or given an excess amount of detail. The girl’s uniform on the other hand will mostly likely be very appealing featuring very fitted blouses, short skirts, knee highs and usually a bow or two somewhere.

Now getting back to her mouth, let us compare the above wide mouthed picture to the following.

Big difference isn’t it? Unlike the eyes of an anime character, the shape and size of the mouth changes with every emotion and situation. Mouths, like eyes, help to show and express a vast amount of emotion. Just as large mouth indicates happiness, anger or pain, smaller mouths express surprise, sadness, indifference and a variety of other more mellow emotions. The larger mouths express emotions that are more energetic, such as shock found below.

Another feature that we notice in this picture is Sana’s hair. It defies the laws of gravity. Because anime and manga focus on emotion so much it is very common for characters to defy the laws of physics in order to express emotions. Anime hair also holds another unique property that is not fully expressed in Sana-chan. In order to display my point more fully here is a picture of Sasami from Tenchi Muyo.

We can see that Sasami’s hair is not only extraordinarily long, but it has a natural hue of aquamarine. Anime hair length and colour are not subject to normal standards. Anime characters may have hair from any part of the colour spectrum, and length does not matter. Some anime characters have been known to have hair that touches the floor and still keeps going.

The final blatantly unique graphic style that anime and manga uses is the Chibi Deformity. The Chibi deformity is used to make things cuter or as you would say in Anime lingo, Kawaii. Here’s an example of Chibi deformation

Here we see that in Chibi deformation, Sana’s head is the size of her entire torso. This stands true for all Chibi deformations. Everything is shunk down except the head. This helps to still convey expression but renders the character cuter and more adorable. Chibi deformation is often when characters daydream or in fan art. There have been however entire series of anime done in Chibi Deformity, such as Mini Goddesses.

Finally, we have some general rules of thumb about anime drawings. The legs on anime characters are always twice the size of there torsos. This gives them extra height and makes them look much more elegant. Characters always look older than they really are. If an anime character looks like she’s 18, shes probably 14. And if she looks like she’s 14, she’s usually 9 or 10. Take the following example using the character, Usagi from Sailor Moon.

Usagi, although having the appearance of an 18 year old, is only 14 years of age. You can also note that her torso is quite short and just her thighs match the size of her torso.

Well that’s about it for this chapter. I hope you’ve come to notice that anime and manga is very unique in its drawing style and hopefully you’ve picked up some tips on how to draw it for yourselves. Stay toned next week for Chapter 3: Themes and Genres

-- Andria Bancheri, Otaku Aniverse