Research: Characterisation in Anime
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Loading ...Anime, as a form of narrative, actually has pretty weak characters on the whole compared to other mediums of story-telling such as film and novels. Let us talk about characterisation and its examples in anime.
There are several classifications of characters. A character can be flat or round, static or developing, possess or lack psychological depth, stock or non-stock, superficial or deep, hero and its sub-types. Today, we shall just look at a couple of these classifications.
Flat/Round
In E.M. Foster’s Aspects of the Novel, it was suggested that characters can be sorted into either flat or round types. A flat character has only one or two prominent traits and are not realistic of real human beings. They are essentially one-trick ponies, based on stereotype and do not develop throughout the story. Most anime characters tend to fall into this category, simply because such characters are easy to like or hate and very simple to create.
Anime (and manga, for that matter) is heavily guilty of overusing flat characters. This can be attributed to the general demographic of the viewing population, the majority being young, in their teens and rather unemotionally developed. Flat characters can be created without flaw, since they basically have one trait which decides their status. For example, Ayanami Rei, possibly the most famous anime female character ever, has a grand total of about two traits - she’s silent and obedient. Viewers like her based on the fact that she has good looks, doesn’t have annoying traits and is a fantastic representation of their ideal female. I would say it is this void of traits that make characters in anime well-loved and not the other way around.
Perhaps a more clear-cut example would be Tsukamoto Yakumo of School Rumble. Despite her huge fanbase (which includes me), her traits are few, namely being nice, capable, subservient and shy. Even with her great figure, she’s a good example of a flat character. Thankfully, more recent SR chapters have had her inching forward in character development, gaining an increased drive to succeed and achieve her desires and even showing her past. But the fact remains that for almost the whole of the first two anime seasons, she was little more than a cardboard girl and gained her fandom that way. Her image of the Perfect Oriental Woman (POW) really sums her up.
To really show how flat the typical cast of characters in a typical anime series is, I’ll pick one recently concluded (to no critical acclaim though) series - Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny. Here are the cast of characters and sentence which would describe them perfectly.
- Ryubi - A weak bookworm with large boobs.
- Kanu - Powerful woman warrior with large boobs extremely loyal to Ryubi.
- Choubi - A rash woman warrior with large boobs who speaks in a Kansai accent.
- Chouketsu - A cute little genius girl who doesn’t really talk much but doesn’t have large boobs.
- Choun - A cool woman warrior who doesn’t open her eyes but has large boobs.
- Sonsaku - A rash and intellectually-challenged woman warrior with large boobs.
- Ryoumou - An angry and irritable woman warrior with large boobs and an eyepatch.
- Sou Sou - A man who has been possessed with the evil spirit of Cao Cao unwillingly.
Round characters, on the other hand, are those who have so many traits they almost seem human. They develop, are hard to predict and viewers actually feel their feelings and might possibly perform the same actions if placed in similar situations as the round characters. According to Rimmon-Kenan, roundedness depends on 3 variables: the extent to which there is a penetration into the inner life of the character; the degree of the character’s complexity; and the extent of the character’s development.
Now, I had to think a bit to be able to come up with actual anime examples of round characters. Some of the cast of Infinite Ryvius comes to mind. This anime adaptation of Lord of the Flies has characters like Aiba Kouji and Oze Ikumi, who felt so human they could just exist in the real world. As the story progressed, every character changed significantly, be it in a good or a bad way and their actions and feelings were very easy to sympathise with, as a viewer. The sibling rivalry of Kouji and Yuki struck a personal note with me in particular. But as a result of the roundedness of each character, they were very difficult to like. I found myself hating the vast majority of them because they did not live up to expectations created by other anime of characters having to be perfect, virtuous, heroic or even stereotypically evil.
The Hero
Anime and its fans have always prided themselves on having cartoons that are more mature than western ones. By mature, most fans mean that there is no clear-cut villain who is there just to do evil, the protagonist is sometimes not that great a person and the plot is a lot deeper than Scooby-Doo’s mysteries. While a large chunk of anime’s heroes are of the standard successful category, it still has a sizeable portion of the other varieties to provide an interesting selection for viewing. Unfortunately, with increasing commercialisation, the need for sure-hits has made anime studios stick to more formulaic heroes.
The types of hero are: successful hero; hero-victim; anti-hero; and hero-villain.
The successful hero is found in ALLLLLLLLLLL shounen anime. By ALLLLLLLLLL, I mean 1000%. Look at Naruto, Bleach, all sports anime, One Piece, Kekkaishi, etc. A successful hero is "good", fights for the right causes, is noble and attracts little kids to aspire to be them. Oh and they always are not quick of thought but possess some huge latent energy just waiting to be controlled after which they gain the power to defeat the forces of evil. While not necessarily a bad thing, the successful hero is quite overused and hence boring.
The hero-victim, or tragic hero, is a good guy who has to go through a lot of pain and suffering, which isn’t all that good to him. Ultimately, he will probably suffer a bad ending. One famous representation of a hero-victim is Leonidas of SPARTAAAAAA. But he’s not in anime so we don’t really care. Most casual anime viewers hate bad endings, and hence hero-victims are really uncommon. Spike from Cowboy Bebop comes to mind and this is one reason why this series is so highly rated by many.
Anti-heroes are those who do good in the overall scheme of things but either utilising unethical means or simply possessing a socially undesirable personality. While some consider Yagami Light of Deathnote a anti-hero, I prefer to think he’s a hero-villain. A better example of anti-hero would be Kurono Kei of Gantz. His indifference, selfishness, horniness and blatant cynicism pretty much makes him my anti-hero epitome. Oh yeah he gets whacked so he’s also a hero-victim. The trend these days is towards anti-heroes, especially for teenage viewers, as the angst and cynicism are issues they can relate to and hence we see quite a lot of anime having such protagonists.
The hero-villain is one who is evil and bad yet still is portrayed as either being forced or justified in his evil actions. GONZO’s remake of the Count of Monte Cristo, Gankutsuou, has the eponymous hero-villain scheming and murdering his way through the series. I consider Light a hero-villain as well, considering how he murders so many people in the name of world peace and order. The hero-villain is interesting, non-cliche and appeals to the darker side of viewers.
Stock Characters
This section is where the anime medium truly stands up to be counted. There are so many stock characters in the various genre of anime, you could probably guess accurately which types of characters will be present just by the genre of the show.
A stock character is one who is closely associated with a given narrative genre. For example, a loud-mouthed, all-action, stupid and resilient protagonist with a huge potential for improvement is a stock character with all shounen series. The unique thing about anime genres is that, stock characters permeate them all. The same stock character is a staple of multiple genres, which is quite strange but very effective at drawing in the crowds. I would even say that anime itself as a medium has stock characters, despite the term applying to genres. Obviously despite the appeals of freshness, many still prefer the familiar.
A quick list of stock characters who are in almost every series:
- The twin-tailed tsundere who appears mean but is actually soft-hearted and not open with her true feelings.
- The clumsy long-haired dojikko who makes lots of mistakes but has large boobs (most of the time).
- The silent loli who barely speaks, and if she does, it’s with a completely flat tone which gives out mystery vibes.
- The bespectacled introvert girl who is very shy.
- The cat girl who says "Nyaa".
- The above-mentioned all-action hero.
- The playboy sidekick who gets lots of physical abuse from the ladies.
- The virtuous older lady (inexplicably always voiced by Ohara Sayaka) who heals wounds, be it emo or physical.
- The comedic character with the kansai accent.
- The null-personality plain joe every girl falls madly in love with.
- The wise-cracking little girl.
- The cool and aloof pretty boy.
- The know-it-all teacher whose abilities are masked by a improper physical appearance.
- The otaku who loves figures and merchandise and is socially inept.
- The bratty sister.
- The too-lovable-to-be-true sister.
- The long-haired narcissist with a legion of fangirls.
There are probably more…. name them.
Superficial Characters
For the final classication of the day, we shall look into superficial characters. Anime is a visual medium, unlike textual novels and its fantastic nature that can easily sever the link to reality tends to place emphasis on creating beautiful characters. The A-list Hollywood actors and actresses would not even rank as a C-grade anime character in terms of beauty, simply because they are real and real people have flaws. Flaws like pores, wrinkles and small boobs.
Regular anime viewers are so attached to the aesthetics of the medium that sometimes, it is easy for the creators to lax off in terms of the character depth, instead focusing on more scenes showcasing the physical beauty of the characters. This is fanservice and despite it sounding really stupid, everyone loves it to some extent. A superficial character is thus, one who has more focus placed on his/her appearance than on what is inside - the traits of her character.
Examples are everywhere. The above-mentioned Ikkitousen takes it to the extreme, being little more than a flesh-parade of boobs and panties with precious little screentime used for character exposition or development. Tokimeki Memorial has three extremely well-designed leading ladies but see how I can remember exactly how they look yet cannot recall their names or personalities.
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32 Responses to “Research: Characterisation in Anime”
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Other notable stock characters:
* The bishie villain with white hair (often long, but not always), who is ambiguously evil
* Psycho twincest killers
Not bad, for your standards. Good luck on getting marks on it.
>>Anime (and manga, for that matter) is heavily guilty of overusing flat characters.
You forgot to mention eroge and their adaptations.
Also, good job on the writing. Is this really an assignment, or your own independent research as per category name?
tripeman
Not an assignment. It’s probably an exclusive for this site. I thought it would be interesting to relate what I’m doing in school right now to anime, my hobby. It also helps me strengthen my grasp of the concepts mentioned.
(screwed up formatting on previous comment)
tripeman = anti-hero, also: round
Cool. What course are you taking at NUS, btw?
Food Science and Technology. Totally unrelated to this module, but I’m doing it as an elective for summer term anyway. Are you in the same uni as well?
* The main character’s crazy, crazy (funny crazy, never scary crazy).
*The one young boy or girl that is seemingly oblivious to how the world works around them.
*The straight man (often a female); provides the common sense, and keeps everyone else grounded in reality.
…That’s all I got so far.
I see. Hope to see more of this in the future from you, then.
Amazingly explained and quite clear , Thank you for sharing =^^~
Now As a example for a Round charecter i’d say :
Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion / Edward - Al from FMA .. You quite enjoy their journey .
Now i just have to say round charecters can be annoying or easily-related to .. Or just both .
Chrno Crusade had some nice tragic round characters, Rosette and Chrno. Same goes for the Kiminozo leads. Lelouch is a recent one that could go either way. Sort of a hero villain. Suzaku is a good anti-hero by your definition imo.
Then there’s Kamina, the manly hero.
Not sure about CC really. I saw it a few years ago. Kiminozo is probably correct.
Lelouch is a hero-villain while Suzaku is probably a successful hero. That is why they share a protagonist and antagonist relationship.
I hate Kamina btw. Simon is probably the hero of Gurren Lagann though.
Wow, I would have thought you would be a big Kamina fan. He has mojo like Tripeman.
You might have some fun chuckling at the wiki http://tvtropes.org. They serve up humorous articles about the plot devices we see so often in fiction such as the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu. There is only a finite amount of Ninjutsu available to any given side. Thus one lone ninja is a deadly adversary (Ryu Hayabusa) and a thousand ninjas are cannon-fodder.
If you’re in NUS scope out the Japanese Studies Department’s offerings. I did quite a few modules there and enjoyed myself immensely as an otaku. Postwar Japanese Films and Anime (JS2216) is exactly that, lots of good cinema to watch and I got my A by writing an essay about Mononoke Hime and My Neighbour Totoro. Popular Culture in Contemporary Japan (JS2213) is also gold with a strong anime component and you can do anime as your project. Japanese Mass Media (JS3225) will also suit your taste if you like deconstructing film.
Stock characters can be seen as a direct result of Japanese culture and social pressure. You have to fit in and play your role in the society. Too round characters may disturb the Japanese viewer, even the otakus, who live with their own (and oddly rigid) standards.
Btw, would be fun to do a mid-season assessment of series based on this criterium.
>> # The otaku who loves figures and merchandise and is socially inept.
>> # The otaku who loves figures and merchandise and is socially inept.
I found that many otakus in anime mostly are either pasokon, game, or eroge ota though ^^
Good research, keep up the good work ^^b
*my post above was cut..
Great that you are now dissecting anime from the lit-crit perspective
in another 10 years time, maybe the local universities or institutes will be able to find academics to conduct courses on Anime/Manga/Games literary criticism
Gary: I’m not sure if I can take so many modules outside my core syllabus of science. I hear the sci faculty is pretty strict on this. If I will, thanks for the suggestion.
Yet another interesting post.
Stock characters:
The lazy genius - Really skilled, but just can’t be bothered to do anything
The laid back character - self-explanatory.
The hero for hire - No money, no service.(the Gintama guys)
The closet pervert - always denies or tries to hide the fact that he/she’s a pervert, but we all know it anyway.
The biological weapon - often a young girl enhanced/made to be a weapon. Soon joins the hero for various reasons.(like, say, freeing her from mind-control or something)
Pervert doctor - Need I say more?
The mahou shoujo - “normal”, often clumsy, girl who transforms into a “magical girl”, saving the world from stuff and showing fanservice along the way.
The meido - serves a master of mistress. Personality can range from silent to genki. May provide fanservice.
Mr.witty - Kyon.
That’s all I’ve got so far, may add more if I feel like it.
great article and so true. mmm… didn’t know you were from NUS.
Well Han, I don’t know about the FST course but if memory serves me right you need to do 2 GEMS (might as well make one Introduction to Japanese Studies - culture, not language), 1 SS and 2 Cross Faculty modules. JS modules are only available on one semester per year so even with the pool of 3 I gave you, you might be hard pressed to try any of them.
Often starring would also be:
The know-it-all - silent guy who always knows exactly what’s going on;
The government-man - a soulless guy in black suit with orders form above;
Or so I think. Also, choosing Ikkitousen as “typical anime” was rather harsh, don’t you think? From what I heard, it’s as distant from the “standards” as Evangelion is, only in the opposite direction:) (though, I might be wrong - I haven’t watched it after all). Are you that pessimistic (realistc, perhaps?) about anime industry nowadays?
A few more!
Yandere - Switches between loving to psychotic killer.
Closet Otaku - You should know this one.
The jock - Good at sports, but intellectually challenged.
Kuudere - Cool and loving. (But I only know of 1 character in this group, and she’s not even from an anime or manga.)
Split personalities - Self-axplanatory.
The friendly giant - Really, really big and tough, but is actually soft-hearted.
The (kinda) immortal - Will never die no matter how many times you hit him.(Like the many shonen heroes out there.)
The Wise Old man - Seen in oh so many stories. The one who teaches the hero and guides him along.
The cocky fighter - An arrogant man who thinks he’s the best. He can either really be the best or be the lousiest.
The narcissist - So annoying, yet so fun to watch. Especially when he gets hit on the face repeatedly.
That’s all for now, again.
I don’t think that the use of “stock characters” has a negative impact on character design in itself. Just as people automatically use first impressions to try to classify unfamiliar individuals in terms of more familiar traits and stereotypes, the audience is also looking for clues to piece together a personality when first introduced to an unfamiliar character. Did that twin tailed tsundere belong to an archetype because that’s the extent of her personality, or does she belong to that archetype because you decided to classify her that way?
More than flat/round, I think it’s important to look at whether the character in question is static or dynamic. Everyone seems to belong to some stereotype or another at first glance, but what differentiates them is how their character growth is handled. If the changes that we see in the character occur too quickly, are inconsistant, or appear contrived, then the character as a whole comes across as unnatural.
From a visual standpoint, I suspect that there is room for an anime to express characters in ways that movies and the theatre cannot. If you look at the usual proportions with which the face is drawn in an anime, there’s often heavier emphasis placed on the eyes by enlarging them relative to the rest of the face - as if based on its relative importance to non-verbal communication. I’m not sure if this was done on purpose, but just as a transition from the theatre to a movie allows you to cut back on sweeping body gestures and work with more subtle facial expressions, I wonder if the focus on the eyes in anime allows for the use of an even finer set of eye expressions (That isn’t to say that you can’t have eye closeups in a movie, of course, but it does come at the cost of a view of the face as a whole). Just a thought.
Suzaku is more like a tragic hero…with ~spoiler~
yuphie’s death and all
My favourite literature critic, Swampstorm! Thanks for your insight. I’m pretty much a beginner at this, so everyday I’m learning new things and changing my comprehension of the concepts.
I may have erred in assuming that sheer number of traits is the criteria for flat/round. Now I think that it isn’t the number of traits per se, but the combination and complexity of them. I was going to talk about static/dynamic characters as well but that’ll have taken another full article.
I like your last para. My term paper will be about how narratives are applied to anime, so your point there will come in handy.
As for the TTT, I know a vast number of similar/identical characters which can be grouped together. Our favourite Sawachika Eri has some traits of this archetype but thankfully also has a lot more other more complex traits which make her a lot rounder than Yakumo.
‘Stock’ characters are not limited to anime, all stories and forms of art have them, but isn’t it more accurate to call them templates? A character can be summed up or placed in different categories, but I don’t see a problem with that as long as it’s used as a starting point. A more complex character simply adds more detail onto a set framework, and may or may not change depending on the needs of the story. Furthermore, you can simply increase the number of templates to draw from to create variety.
Also, it’s important to remember that anime, being a visual medium, is under stricter time constraints than literature-25 minutes per episode or so, and so the only way to have more history, depth and character development is to have more episodes, or limit the number of characters to give each more screen time.
biltwick: We all know stock characters exist everywhere else. But anime is one medium where the proportion of stock and formulaic characters is sky high. In fact, it would be probably take up the vast majority of created characters, which is quite unusual.
I don’t agree that time limit is the factor here. A 13 episode series or even an OVA can have great characterisation in a short time span. It is because most anime series tend to include lots of scenes which do not advance the plot, do not develop the characters and do not serve any purpose besides fanservice.
That review on anime characteristics was well said. That review was far most the best review on anime characters I’ve ever read. It was so clear, organized and well written. Good job. I would like to read more if you have anything else out. Looks like you have a fan now.
Thanks
Love the assignment comment at the start.
It’s nice to see some anime related food for thought thrown around every now and then. The problem I see with this categorization, reguardless of it being truthful or a representation of what is currently available (in otherwords a half-truth, or perhaps even unintentional), it functions are tailored to suit its market perfectly to the point where one would have to ask: Who are the ones who create these classifications, you and me, or the ones who are selling it to us.