Introduction
There was once a claim that Japanese anime characters resemble cats in their facial features. Indeed, the facial characteristics of Japanese anime characters have been the popular topic for some time now. While some has claimed that the faces of the characters closely resemble those of white people, opposing opinions have also been prevalent. In this post, I am going to explore these hypotheses regarding the anime characters and draw a conclusion regarding where the facial features of the anime characters really derive from.
Are Anime Characters Cats?
In order to test this hypothesis, I analyzed a face of a cat by dividing it into three parts: upper face, middle face and lower face. In humans, the ratio between the length of these three parts is about 1:1:1.
As can be seen, cats have large middle face length with significantly smaller lower face length. Now, let’s see the anime character.
As you can see, there is a significant difference with the cat. While it is true that the anime characters, like cats, have smaller lower face compared to middle face, human anime characters still have significantly smaller middle face compared to cats. Therefore, it is possible to speculate that the hypothesis presumably only considered the relative length of lower face and middle face. Even though it is true that both anime characters and cats have smaller lower face compared to middle face, the first hypothesis has to be denied: anime characters do not resemble cats.
Do Anime Characters Resemble White People?
Typically, the ratio of upper, middle and lower face in a white person is 1:1:1. However, in many East Asian idols including JENNIE and Hashimoto Kanna, the ratio is closer to 1:1:0.8, meaning that they have shorter lower face compared to their Western counterparts. As can be seen in the picture above, anime characters tend to have large upper face and relatively small middle face. However, the lower face is even smaller than the middle face. This suggests that the facial features of the anime characters are closer to those of East Asians.
The reason behind the relatively small size of the middle face can be explained with the fact that people with shorter middle face tend to look cuter and more youthful. Therefore, anime character designers presumably exaggerated the size of the upper face to make the middle face look relatively smaller.
However, it is important to note that the lower face is even smaller, indicating that anime characters resemble East Asians more than Westerners.
Finally, anime characters tend to have small noses, and this also is characteristic of a East Asian face. East Asians, as an adaptation to the cold climate of the East Asia, has developed smaller, less prominent noses. Therefore, the small size of the anime nose further demonstrates that the faces of anime characters are representative of a East Asian face.
Final Note
In conclusion, it seems like anime characters do not resemble cats and resemble East Asians more than Westerners. Thank you for reading my post and see you later.