Dragon Ball, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece

These are the main characters from the big four, and you can see they look like people. Also you might notice a few things that they all have in common, that is because the illustrators are following the general guidelines for drawing anime characters. Although these guidelines are not written anywhere, most of the anime artists follow them diligently that is why most anime characters look so much alike. Humans should look like humans (except for the eyes). Anime characters are almost always way more realistic than cartoon characters. No one’s head is too big, or have short arms, or legs twice the size of their bodies. In the world of anime things look like they are supposed to look because the art style of anime is close to real life.

These four anime are unofficial standard for the art style of all anime. Even between Naruto and Bleach you can see that they are very similar, and if you should look at all anime you will see that the art takes after one or several of these four anime. Characters heads are almost always oval, eyes are a little bit large and hair is spikey. In western cartoons characters have a very wide variety of looks, people heads are the size of their whole bodies, and they have square and triangular heads. Cartoons have much more relaxed art guidelines, they not even have any guidelines because they do not have to be close to reality.

 Phineas and Ferb, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory

In part three of this series I will be taking a look at the worlds in which both cartoons and anime exist to spot the differences, until then check out characters from some anime and cartoons and see what differences you notice.