As fans, we often praise anime for its realism – how it gives its characters human emotions that are easy to relate to and presents its stories and settings in very believable ways no matter how fantastical they are. But if you think about it, do anime characters really act that much like real people? A recent post by Myna got me thinking more about this…
Like with other forms of media, there are some anime with characters that are meant to resemble real people more than others. Anime aimed at an older audience, such as Ghost in the Shell, Wolf’s Rain, Gundam, Darker than Black, and Cowboy Bebop, come to mind. The characters in these series are presented in a very serious way; they often can’t be labeled by any specific anime archetype and there’s no hyperbolic comedy to interrupt the seriousness of the story. Even in a comedy anime like Cowboy Bebop, the humor is subdued and subtle, and relies on character-driven comedy rather than slapsticks.
Then we have other anime, from shonen series like One Piece, to slice of life comedies like Lucky Star, to general otaku-aimed shows like AnoHana. Can you find a group of real people who are as strong and unfalteringly self-sacrificing as the Straw Hat crew from One Piece? Can your real-life friends provide endless wit and clever humor in their conversations the way the Lucky Star girls can? Do people you know openly show their overwhelming angst the way the AnoHana cast does? I’ll even use my personal favorite series, Haruhi, as an example. A real person who speaks and thinks the way Kyon does, especially someone of his age and background, is more or less an impossibility.
So then the question is, does mirroring real people make characters “better” than those that don’t? I don’t believe any form of media that tells a story tries to make its characters exactly like real people. People watch movies and TV shows, read books, play video games, etc., in order get some sort of fulfillment that they can’t get from reality. Whether its the uniqueness of the story, clever writing, artistic creativity, or any number of wish-fulfilling attributes, they want to experience something they can’t find in real life. So it wouldn’t be in any writer’s best interest to create a fictional story that’s trying to be non-fiction.
Going back to anime, even the characters of Cowboy Bebop, Gundam, and the other “realistic” anime that I mentioned, are still more like anime characters than real people. Again, for any form of media, it’s too hard for people to relate to a fictional character who’s just as chaotically complex as a real live human being. So in order for the audience to relate to them within the scope of the story, creators have to give them appealing traits and dialogue that may be impossible in real life. Are tsunderes of Taiga’s level from Toradora!, and moe-blobs of Yui’s level from K-ON, plausible in real life? Not really, but such characters have enough other, realistic human traits for viewers to relate to. Same thing with indestructible, self-sacrificing shonen heroes like Luffy and Naruto. The average real person isn’t as strong and selfless as they are, but by emphasizing this appealing trait that we’d like to see in real people, makes the characters that much more appealing. And of course, would Kyon be nearly as entertaining if he didn’t have his witty way with words, as unrealistic as it is?
So to summarize and go back to the question of whether being more like real people makes characters better, I would say it doesn’t necessarily. From my experience, fans don’t like anime characters because they’re exactly like real people – they like them because they’re “realistic fictional people.” They’re given enough real human traits to make them seem more like people than cartoon characters, but at the same time certain traits of theirs are emphasized in order to make them appealing to a certain audience, even it makes them less realistic. Thus, a character can be well developed even if their personality can’t be found in a real person. Fans love anime because it gives them these certain somethings they can’t get in reality. Whether you love a character because they have a personality you like, a well developed backstory, or any number of reasons fans love their favorite characters, how closely they resemble a real person isn’t usually one of them. And as I’ve said before for similar things in the fandom, it comes down to personal taste in the end =)
Yup, that’s pretty much it. I think if characters were too much like real life people, they would be boring. Or they would have traits that we do not like. So anime characters just focus on a few traits and expand on those. They may be heroic, selfless, funny, aloof, etc. And it does not only happen in anime, also in western movies and books as well.
I don’t think anyone wants to see characters as they deal with real life issues like paying bills, or washing the car, so those are removed. Same with less attractive personally traits. So to answer the question, I think characters take a few real traits as base, and exaggerate or expand on those to create their personality. Should they be too real? probably not. It is a form of entertainment in the end, so watching something that is too real would probably be boring.
You’ve said it perfectly =) Nobody wants to see characters who are exactly like real people as that would defeat the purpose of it being fiction and entertainment. Even the worlds of slice-of-life anime are still filled with more whimsical-ness than real life. So certain traits in characters are emphasized depending on the audience. Of course, the best characters aren’t completely one-dimensional like this and have other traits to make them more relatable as a person than just a cartoon.
It’s fully up to the story. If a character is “realistic” then it should be because the story wants us to identify with them *as* realistic people for a *purpose*. if it fails to do something insightful or entertaining with that premise, then we get upset.
Often, people discuss realism when they’re really talking about believability, so it’s good to establish that. Realism is an aid for making a character more believable, but just how much of it is necessary is up to the story.
For instance, Spike Spiegel is NOT a realistic character, but making him behave more realistically human-like made him vastly more believable and served the purpose that we could buy the drama and the ending.
At least, that’s how I’ve always seen it.
Good points, especially about the difference between realism and believability. Like you said, realism works as an aid to make a character more believable, especially if they have other traits that real live people couldn’t possess (like your example with Spike).
Realism doesn’t equal entertainment, but it does help to give the viewer an entirely different perspective on the goings on. AnoHana wasn’t all that unrealistic, at least at first, with the way that everyone handled themselves. They were all struggling with issues that were far out of their control, and they showed it in subconscious ways through their mannerisms, which I think many people do.
I too felt that AnoHana was more realistic than most anime, at least in terms of setting and how the characters acted (each with their own flaws and emotional baggage). But at times the angst was a bit over the top, especially in the last episode. I thought to myself, “I don’t think a group of real people would get this emotional at something like this.” However, like you said, it instead provided me with a different perspective on any similar situation in real life, which I feel was its goal all along. Not to create something perfectly realistic, but real enough for us to relate to and unreal enough to give us new perspectives =)
I think anime characters have these”real” qualities in that they are more relatable to us rather than someone who simply mimics reality or other people. What I love about anime is that everything (characters, setting, plot, etc.) has both fantastical and realistic elements; anime can be as imaginative as can be while not being over-the-top (my favorite example, Cowboy Bebop, speaks for itself), which is why I became an anime fan in the first place! :)
Well said and the same reason I love anime too =) No matter how fantastical the stories are, the majority of titles take their characters seriously. They’re presented like fictional human beings rather than “cartoon characters.” By making characters complex and providing detail for the often complicated settings of fantasy/sci-fi series, allows the audience to fully suspend their beliefs upon viewing. I don’t believe many other non-anime TV shows can do this quite as well ;)
Well-written post! I agree that people don’t watch anime for total realism – they can get that just by getting up and talking to people around them. However, there definitely is plenty of implausibility in anime characters, especially (as you mentioned) in the way they think. As an example: I’ve just finished Railgun and although it was an entertaining show, I could not bring myself to believe that the main girls were supposed to be 13- and 14-year-olds. I mean, when I think about what I was like at 13, I was certainly not nearly as mature, clever and righteous as the Railgun girls, and I’m pretty sure nobody I knew was like that either. Perhaps if they were 17 or 18 it would have seemed realistic, but nope.
I get that same feeling upon watching other series that star young characters who act surprisingly mature for their age. My example with Kyon is similar, but going back to the Railgun girls, I think in the end the exact age of the characters doesn’t matter as long as you just think of them as “young girls.” In some ways they act adult-like, and in others I still see some childish naivety. But the audience is willing to accept them that way because they still have plenty of appealing human traits for us to care about them even if its not totally plausible in real life.
I’m sure we have to suspend our disbelief somewhere along the line… Ichigo Kurosaki is in high school, but has six-pack abs like a professional boxer.
In any case, I don’t think this is all to say there’s no appeal of anime programs that are implicitly real (which some might believe is, well, “boring”). Most of Mamoru Oshii’s features are written such to include entirely real characters in an entirely real landscape, but with only a hitch or two of fantasy. JIN-ROH: THE WOLF BRIGADE (1999) is one of my favorite films for this explicit reason. A soldier must wrestle away from a piercing internal conflict amidst an alternate-history Japan, but it’s a life you can’t just walk away from… you either accept it, or let it crush you. JIN-ROH will be plenty boring for otaku who prefer anime about super-powered grade schoolers, but for the viewers of which it was produced for, it’s as real as it gets.
Simple…
It’s on how the character was portrayed.
on how it was voiced, and on how much justice does the voice actor to the character he/she gave to life.
Voice acting can definitely play a role in how believable a character is. Poor acting can make a character less appealing, but on the flip side, a good voice can’t save a poorly written character. So I would say voice acting is important but not the main factor in determining a character’s believability.
It’s generally recognizability you go for, rather than realism. For which you do want a certain amount of realism, but then when you’ve got that, you distort the details for the purposes of the story. It’s like anime eyes. They need to have a certain amount of realism; if they were long, thin slits along the forearms you wouldn’t recognise them as eyes! But once you’ve got that “those are eyes” reaction, and have the basic features in place which people respond to, it’s generally better to make them bigger than real ones, so you can show feelings with them more clearly, and shows aiming for a different atmosphere may draw them in a different way.
The art of storytelling could almost be described as deciding how to be unrealistic. 100% realism is ‘reporting’ instead.
Excellent points. Your example with anime eyes is one advantage animation has over fiction – it can design characters with that much more un-realism while still making them realistic enough for people to relate to =)
Yep, I would have responded yesterday but there was a storm. Quite an interesting post though, I really like it. Honestly I think that the characters being relistic or unrealistic really depend on the genre and audience that you are trying to appeal to as a show.
bye.
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Usually the younger the target audience, the more unrealistic anime can be. However that’s not always the case as many kids anime I’ve seen treat its characters and stories very seriously. Likewise there’s a lot of anime aimed at older audiences that have less realistic characters (usually comedies like Baka Test and Excel Saga). So I would say when it comes to audiences, it depends more on their tastes than age.
Nothing I was going to say hasn’t already been said. :)
(Though my friends and I do occasionally have very witty conversations)
Glad to see that my post inspired you :D
Great topic. Flipping the discussion, I think it’s also worth pointing out that there are some anime directors who actively chose realistic settings, places, and events — historical or contemporary — because it’s a decision that re-contextualizes character. Spike Spiegal is a character that makes sense because the social context in which he lives requires him to be boisterous, annoying, competitive, incredibly talented, and coy with death. The universe of Bebop breeds characters like Spike and Jet (Myna’s post mentions Jet’s fascination with bonsai trees… perhaps we should reflect on how/why he continuously uses that one, resilient species as a coping mechanism.).
Consider separately the ESCAFLOWNE film (2000), directed by Kazuki Akane, or the sci-fi television series XAM’D: LOST MEMORIES (2008)… in both of these projects, there are cultures, customs, and mythological/religious social doctrines that are entirely fictional, but still entirely realistic. Akane told his production staff he wanted to expand the worldview of Gaea, create new species of people, invent religions for them, and so forth, ensuring that viewers are just as curious to know more about this strange new land as Hitomi, the main character. XAM’D does something similar, where a fringe but respected religious sect comes to the fore. The characters of this anime use their worldview in everything that they do — how they work, eat, and interact with others. It is their moral compass. That’s realism to me.
But if you want to understand the impact of “realistic characters,” then I would charge that it’s the characters we’re usually afraid to admit to being most similar to. Koshiro of KOI KAZE (2004) is a pretty real, and intensely flawed, character. He knows he’s a flawed person, but he’s too apathetic to do anything about it until it’s too late. It’s self-destructive. Or MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (2001) from the late Satoshi Kon, where just about every character is unique, approaching the film’s theme of lost/losing romance from a different perspective. It’s heartrendingly dramatic, but highly relatable.
I’m not familiar with all of your examples (except for Millennium Actress and Escaflowne, though its been over a decade since I’ve seen the latter) but I get what you’re saying =) What I find interesting is that anime that really emphasize realism aren’t usually big hits compared to the otaku-aimed series that you see all over Akihabara. So it would seem that fans want a certain amount of un-realism in their anime – not too much so that they can’t relate, but enough so that anime gives them wish-fulfillment and escapism rather than a fictional reality.