Wait, you're how old?!

Something else I have seen a lot in anime is that characters sometimes look like WAY too young to be as old as they are: little girl and little boy appearance.

Sometimes it is every character in a show, like Lucky Star for example:

Or it is just one character, like Honey from Ouran High School Host Club:

Can you believe that all of these characters are in high school? They look like elementary school students!

Why are they drawn this way?

Well, for starters, it can sometimes be chalked up to the style of art the anime is drawn in. Take Lucky Star for example, all of the characters look very young and cute, even the adults to a degree. This is just the style of the art of the show. However, you have to think that there are still roots to the style and why it is drawn that way. Most of the shows drawn this way are very cutesy and the plot lines are very light and usually humorous. So, the art style matches along with the style of the story and what the characters are doing in the series. I certainly wouldn't want to see some muscled, mature women discussing how to eat a chocolate roll. That would just make it boring and awkward. But that same situation with super cute characters makes for a delight!

Then we look at shows where one or only a few characters are drawn with the appearance as little kids. This is done because the artist wants to exaggerate the characters characteristics and personality in a more obvious way. Or even have the characters look one way, but act completely different than expected. Take Honey for example, his “selling point” is his cuteness and his innocence. Later in the series you find out that he is actually a master martial artist and see some of his deathly serious side – which pretty much just adds to his overall charm. Totally surprised me, but after a bit I enjoyed it! (Couldn't help but still think it was kind of weird, though!)

Why is it popular? Why is it acceptable?

I think it definitely has something to with the kind of audience the show is trying to attract. As I said for Lucky Star, it is a very non-serious show dealing with silly daily life situations of high school. They're most likely aiming the show at high schoolers or middle schoolers, probably girls, and people that want to watch a casual show. And this audience of young kids in middle school and high school is a huge one.

However, I am all too aware of the “fetish” of young girls and boys in Japan. I'm not talking about a blatant pedophilia, here. Which is most likely what most Americans would view it (and guilty of it myself in the beginning). See, in Japan the age of consent is 13 (but in each area it is usually bumped up to 17 by local government, but it was not originally). You legally become an adult at 20. So it is legal for 13 – 19 year olds to have sex in some areas. And it has a history of being this way, so it is a much more common idea that younger looking characters are acting older than they are or acting in ways that older people would act in. However, it is not commonplace in Japan that these things happen, only common in anime and such. Japanese people have a clear distinction between what is socially acceptable, and pretty much anything is acceptable in anime (which is, well, everything) because it is defined to them as completely unreal and detached from real life. (Which can also explain a bit why this is very common to see in hentai or animated pornography.)

That being said, you'd be surprised how many anime are adapted from dating simulation games. In those games, the characters are given very exaggerated characteristics, sometimes tailored toward fetishes, and the characters usually keep those traits when translated into anime. Anime based of dating sims sounds very weird, right? Well, there it is nothing to be surprised about. We don't even really have dating simulators in America – the concept is lost on us.

Language corner!

高校 - こうこう – koukou

High School

Kanji breakdown!

学生 - がくせい – gakusei

Student

Kanji breakdown!

少年 - しょうねん – shounen

Young boy

Kani breakdown!

少女 - しょうじょ – shoujo

Young girl

Kanji breakdown!

Big eyes, small mouths, and crazy hair!

Let' step back and talk about a topic that is in every anime and provides a pretty big window into Japan: physical appearance of characters.

Here's a group of sisters from Minami ke:

And a group of friends from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya:

And a pair of brothers from Mawaru Penguindrum:

What do these (and other) characters have in common?

• Big eyes
• Small mouths when closed, big when open
• Hair shades of browns and blacks
• Light skin colors
• Less noticeable noses

Do anime characters represent the “standard of beauty?”

Anime characters do tend to have very exaggerated characteristics (huge eyes, for example), like any drawing or cartoon might. The aspect of big eyes is indeed a characteristic that Asian cultures tend to find favorable, as well as lighter skin, and they do indeed tend to have less pronounced noses than many other ethnicities in the world, however, I don't think that they really represent what the Japanese “standard of attractiveness” is. In America, almost all of the people on TV and any sort of media are only those that our society has deemed “beautiful”. There is a huge pressure on our society that if we don't look like the models then we aren't beautiful. However, in Japan there is a different approach. There is not a big push to look like the supermodels. Instead, the goal is to look put-together and have a more natural beauty. They focus on fixing themselves up and being healthy (like having clear and smooth skin, long silky hair, etc), instead of focusing on whether or not their hips are too big or their knees too knobby.

A big question that I sometimes get when Americans see anime for the first time is “Why do the characters look white?” And it has baffled me too, once I started to really think about it. However, in trying to figure it out the answer was actually insanely simple. We just couldn't see it until we thought about it from another point of view. Say I draw a stick figure. What race and gender do you assume it is? I'm guessing most Americans would say a white male. How about a stick figure with an afro and a bow? A black girl, right? For most Americans the “standard” is white. Once an aspect is added is it obvious it is something else. That is the same way for anime characters. Since they are drawn by Japanese people, they are drawn like a “standard” Japanese person. There, everyone just assumes them to be Japanese. Not until a big nose, blonde hair, and blue eyes are added will they be seen as a white person. (See my post on foreigners!) How they act and their surroundings are really the driving factor that they are indeed Japanese, though (if anyone is in need of the persuasion). While a character may have green hair, yellow eyes, and white skin they can still be identified as Japanese by the way they take their shoes off when entering a house or by reading a Japanese newspaper.

Language corner!

美人 - びじん – bijin

Beautiful person (usually a woman)

Kanji breakdown!

日本人 – にほんじん – nihonjin

Japanese person

Kanji breakdown!

容姿 - ようし – youshi

(physical) appearance (of a person); one's face and figure

Kanji breakdown!