Info
Media

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<<Back to: Main / All Anime Informational


        OK, so you wondering what's up with anime characters and large eyes, and then why some dont?
Or, maybe not, but whatever your wondering, here's my explantion.  One reason could be that it's a mockery of westerners, since most peoples, except for the oriental, have much larger, rounder eyes, and the Japanese have very narrow eyes.  so you ask, "Why not make shows for themselves?"  well there are alot of answers to this, it could be they dont like their eyes, but the most logical is that everybody now is just following the path laid for them, just like how Animerican "anime" have smaller more realistic eyes.

Now back to the subject,  the large eyes make it much easier to express emotion, you watch to scenes of romance, one in Japanese anime, and another in American anime, and you'll most likly get more feeling from the Japanese anime because the eyes express so much emotion, just like in real life you see eye movements and can understand them as expressing emotions such as nervousness, anxiety, love, stress, so then why some with smaller eyes?

This is most likly explained for these characters will not express any emotion, they are you sterotypical cold, hertless, stoic kind of person who would rather die before they express any emotion.  such characters are like Gendo from Evangleion, Kojima and Ethan Lyer from Gundam, Dekim Barton from Endless Waltz, Vicious from Cowboy Bebop, the list goes on.  Largly they characters are emotionally empty, the emptyness of space dosent stand up this kind of empty.

Now for characters who do express emotion, but have small eyes.  This stems from alot from reality, animation is getting more and more computer aided, so it is easier to express emotion with smaller eyes, whereas in older days, even with Disney, characters who had major emotion to express, were drawn with larger eyes.  Why?  because it's hard to get all that detail into such a small space.

Sometimes they get a bit carries away with the large eyes, in Escaflowne by the 4th episode Hitomi's eyes made up 90% of her face, it was freaky.  The small eyes are nice now and again, it gives room for a nose and other facial features and makes them look more realistic, this is shown in Jin Roh where nearly everyone had more human-sized eyes.