A criticism about anime that I often hear is “all anime characters look the same.” No, they do not. Please, you sound stupid when you say that. Let’s examine the definition of anime.
Anime means “animation” in Japanese. In our context, anime is “animation from Japan.” So if you say that all anime characters look the same, you’re saying that ALL animation from a country looks the same. I’ve never heard anyone say that about Western comics, so why are people saying that about anime? A lot of people are used to seeing the following characters:
Big eyes, exaggerated features, cute girls. Let’s take a look at some other anime:
Ping PongΒ
Junji Ito Collection
KaijiΒ
One thing that Kaiji is great at is showing human emotion. People don’t look pretty when they cry.
Devilman CrybabyΒ
Neo Yokio
I’m not a fan of this art but it’s still anime.
The photos of Sailor Moon and Yu-Gi-Oh look very 2D, but look at this beautiful photo from Violet Evergarden. This photo gives a totally different feeling from the first two photos.
I’m glad that my university (University of British Columbia) recognizes the value and importance of including anime in academia. I’m happy to have taken a course on Anime and Manga. If you think that “anime characters all look the same,” I encourage you to critically think about this. Honestly, it’s not very hard.
Wretched and Divine 