Asian or Caucasian?!

I've heard a lot of people who don't know much about anime and manga say that you never see any oriental (or East Asian) character designs in anime and manga and this issue is often used by many as a pretext to look down on the arts of anime and manga.

I have to admit that this issue is thought provoking. One cannot deny that there a ton of anime titles out there that use the so called “moe” character designs (large eyes, small mouth and nose...etc) but there are also many titles that don't use such designs at all. The question is: among the titles that don't use any “moe” character designs; are there any that use oriental designs?

This quetsion got me thinking so I decided to do some research in order to settle this issue once and for all with concrete proof. My research led me to compile a list of titles that have used oriental character designs in the past. The list is shown below:

1) Monster

2) Kurau Phantom Memory

3) Paprika

4) Otogizoushi

5) Happy (manga by Urasawa Naoki)

6) 20^th Century Boys (manga by Urasawa Naoki)

7) Zipang

8) A Spirit of the Sun (manga by Kawaguchi Kaiji)

9) Planetes

10) Like the Clouds, Like the Wind

11) Seirie no Moribito (it is set in a fantasy world but I will include it nonetheless)

12) Paranoia Agent

13) Texhnolyze

14) The Gokusen

15) Old Boy (manga by Nobuaki Minegishi)

16) Cromartie High School

17) Jin-Roh

18) WXIII: Patlabor The Movie 3

19) FLAG

20) Solanin (manga by Asano Inio)

21) Ciguatera (manga by Furuya Minoru)

22) Summer Holiday with Coo

23) Only Yesterday

24) Windy Tales (albeit the style is abstract)

25) Millennium Actress

26) Iryuu - Team Medical Dragon (manga by Tarou Nogizaka)

I believe that is a fair amount of titles that covers a large range of genres. There may be more titles that I don’t know about or I forgot to include so if you know of any such titles, by all means tell me in the comments section or via email and I will update the list.

The interesting thing is that all the titles listed above are not only examples of Far Eastern character designs but all of them represent some of the finest titles that anime and manga has to offer (and I’m talking about top quality here!). What's more fascinating is that all the people who use the character design issue to attack anime and manga haven't even watched or read any of the titles above despite the fact that all these titles are critically acclaimed. Of course all the serious anime and manga fans out there know that the main reason those people make such accusations is because they never bothered to look for such titles in the first place. It's always easier to make false accusations than to search for the truth.

There is another interesting issue I want to raise regarding character designs in anime. I’ve heard many people say that the widely used cute character designs that feature large eyes, small noses and small mouths are actually Caucasian character designs. I completely disagree. There are no Caucasian people with these facial features because if they did exist, they would be all over the news by now because they are different from the norm. Those widely used designs in anime were applied to Caucasian, Mongolian and Black races without exception. A famous example of this (though not something that I would call a quality example) is Plastic Little. That single episode OAV featured characters who belong to all the major human races but all of them were drawn using the same character design format mentioned above.

Now that I laid out all the facts, it’s time to tell you what I think and what I hope for. I believe that realistic character designs (Far Eastern designs if the story setting is Japan / Far East or other appropriate designs if the setting is outside the Far East) are best suited for serious titles while the cute design format is suitable for comedies. The number of anime and manga titles that feature Far Eastern designs have increased over the years and my guess is that it will continue to grow in the future. I don’t agree with other people who say that the cute character designs should be abolished because those designs are beautiful in their own way but I believe that their proper place should be in comedy and light titles. All in all, I think this cocktail of styles helps to enrich anime and manga and make them the captivating arts that we all know and love.

Edit: There is an interesting video on YouTube that actually sheds more light on this topic. You can see it here.