Too Much To Dream

Andrea,

I love the headlines, titles, whatever you call them to your posts.

Anime scares me. Whenever I come across a site with one of those pictures as a header I leave as fast as possible. But then I'm weird, I guess. I never could understand the appeal of Hummel figurines, and kewpie dolls creep me out.

Talk about scary, my daughter has suddenly taken a liking to Hello Kitty. Now *that*'s terrifying ...

That is THE weirdest stuff. I still can't figure out the attraction or popularity of cartoon sex objects. Not with real, live sex objects all over hell and back everywhere you look (and thank Jeebus for that, kinda sorta -- just not my daughter, step-daughter, or anyone else I know!)

Insectoid heads? Mouthless faces? Sounds to me like that old tomcat Henry (http://othercartoons.homestead.com/Henry.html) sowed a few oats.

(sorry for the text link, doesn't seem to be taking the href tag)

I'm with Scott on this one. But hey, I never liked Speed Racer when I was a kid either.

It is all part of the style. In some artists like Yukirin, it is more accute than in others, but it is similar to any other art form in that people from different cultures do things differently. Be careful not to fall into the trap of intolerance.

Also there is much more to the medium than just "pr0n" and short skirts. It is a medium just like any other in that it is possible to do anything with it. In fact people do do nearly everything with it, however, the stereotypes that are present in this country lead those without the desire to seek out examples to believe that it is solely devoted to softcore titalation.

Disliking an art style isn't "intolerance." I didn't say that anime art should be banished from the earth. I just said I didn't like the way faces are drawn in anime -- in any style of anime, including the short-skirted, panty-revealing kind.

That comment wasn't directed entirely at you.

I don't see that anyone else is being intolerant here either.

Actually, there are quite a number of anime with character designs whose faces have normal proportions, with normal noses and mouths. There is a wide variety in art styles. The works of Hayao Miyazaki tend towards normal proportion, for example. Criticizing all anime for the one style of faces is akin to critizing US animation for the preponderance of episodic shorts about anthropomorphic animals in the Hanna-Barbera style; accurate, but only up to a point.

The big eyes small mouth art style is indeed American derived-- Osamu Tezuka (Astroboy, Simba the White Lion) was one of the fathers of the industry, but took a lot of inspiration from American sources, including Walt Disney. The style is generally felt to allow for an easy expression of emotion through different facial expressions.

The comics and television shows with the absolutely largest eyes are those aimed at young girls. (Unlike the romance comics of American yesteryear, these are mostly written by women themselves.) It seems both more cute and allows for a wide range of emotional expression.

Goddammit. I did try to qualify my statements with "most anime," but I see that I should have been more specific, because no one reads everything I write. Or maybe I should post in a bigger font, or all caps. Okay, once more, and with feeling:

I do not like the style of the anime where the faces of the characters are drawn with the big eyes and the tiny noses and mouths. That is all.

Excuse me if my response seemed a little harsh. The only reason I am here in the first place is because someone commented on my site about how you were talking about the artwork behind my layouts. I would have never known without that comment because you linked directly to the preview image instead of the blog, therefore I have no way to check referals.

It could be debated whether or not it would have been better for me to know at all, but that is irrelevant now. As for the statement regarding intolerance, it was a warning, not an implicit statement of fact. There is a fine line between distaste and intolerance. Be careful not to cross it, that is all I am saying.

As another question, what is your opinion on the similar style often used for anthropomorphic creatures? Certain of the Disney characters and others often have quite large eyes. Donald Duck in particular has enormous eyes, but it's hardly limited to him. Does it look more acceptable to you when it's an animal? Or are the large eyes more palatable when accompanied by more of a nose or mouth?

I certainly understand disliking various art styles. There are several character designers whose styles I dislike, both Japanese and American.

I don't particularly care for the large-eyed style (Bambi, etc.) but those creatures tend to have the other facial features drawn in some detail. It's the lack of detail in the anime style I criticized that bothers me, as well as the resemblance (much more so than in the Disney characters you cite) to those pictures of big-eyed children and puppies, and those Precious Moments figurines.

And, I forgot to link to AstreaEdge's actual site; I will fix this oversite momentarily. I hope that will calm down any more concerns that I am trying to crush anime or foster intolerance or whatever it is. (PS: I don't appreciate being "warned." Because... what? Will I get a curse put on me? Sorry, I am rather sensitive about being treated like a cultureless, dissent-crushing idiot when all I did was say I didn't like something. I don't like mayonnaise either; doesn't mean I want everyone who slathers their food with mayonnaise sent off to a concentration camp.)

And come to think of it, the last line of my post is "I actually like the artwork on---" Oh, never mind. I am thinking of closing this comments section. Arguments over art don't go anywhere but in a circle, especially when the lovely spice of "intolerance" has been thrown in. I didn't mean to hurt Astrea's feelings; if you drew the picture that is on your website you are much more talented than I am. I just picked that image because it was the first one that popped into my head; I should have gone searching for Speed Racer graphics instead, or maybe something from Yugio.

Additional details in faces are a little bit more common in movies rather than television series, because of the higher budgets. To really do facial features realistically requires rather a lot of money and effort, whether in cel animation or CG. (For a CG example, look at Square's effort in the Final Flight of the Osiris part of the Animatrix, which still doesn't get them right. Gollum, however, was absolutely fantastic-- despite having such large eyes. ;)

For me, the lack of detail (as well as the annoying only-running-to-the-left-or-right motion) found in endless HB cartoons is annoying, though I can ignore it.

In general, however, the art style is a matter of choice. As I mentioned before, it's intended to allow for a great deal of expression in the eyes and in mouth, which changes shape quite dramatically. I'm not reminded of pictures of children or puppies at all, however. Part of that has to do with familiarity, no doubt.

C'mon, Andrea, they're just practicing for the new Japanese horror anime,
"Night-gaunt Hello Kitty."

I am not a fanboi of anime but I do rather like a lot of it. I especially like being able to watch it late night on both Cartoon Network and TechTV. The TechTV stuff is more "hard-core" anime (not in the sexual sense), and the CN material a bit light-hearted (like Lupin III). I am especially enjoying Trigun. A lot of Hentai is very disturbing, but then again there are Usenet groups called things like alt.sex.disney & alt.sex.cthulhu which contain "fan-drawn" porn that is pretty odd as well.

As with movies, there is great, good and horrid anime, but overall its a great genre. Think of it this way, you wont see an anime character making a total arse of themself for some leftie cause. That is a plus right there.

I just remembered one cartoon character that was kind of hot: that Acid Reflux chick that used to be on MTV 10 years ago. But she was busy saving some world or the species or something, and that's what drew my interest. I'd watch some of that kind of cartoon.

Yeah, that was good animation. That was also once phuqed-up cartoon... ;)

I'm with Andrea.

I do not care if the huge insectoid eyes are there to allow for a "great deal of expression." I do not care if there is good, bad, and great anime. I do not care if it is a highly versatile art form, and I especially do not care if saying that makes me intolerant. And the primary reason I do not care is because most anime devotees creep me the fuck out.

I like the big robots...