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Recently, someone told me that she likes Anime and Manga because they are avenues for limitless imagination, and without rules.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, because my own experience is utterly opposite: Anime and Manga are quite possibly the least creative, most rule-infested genre of art. I can speak with some authority on this subject because I've lived in Japan (the home of anime and manga) for eight years.
In fact, I OWN some rule books about manga and anime, despite avoiding that genre with the same dedication with which a diabetic avoids sugar. I've also watched interviews with manga artists as they discuss the rules of manga/anime, and hung out on a Manga-for-artists website.

Consider the following rule set, and ask yourself a) is it true? b) what sort of stifling rulebook and lifestyle forced these artists to stay well within the rules, only trying to break away from the pack by taking the rules of cuteness, sexiness, violence, and good-versus-evil to a new extreme?

The whole genre has become a breakfast, lunch, and dinner diet of pure sugar and saccharine, or leftovers drowned in ketchup and served up by marketing weenies who're too afraid of losing their jobs to break the rules.

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Mang and Anime have become formulaic in how they abuse the reader's sense of cuteness, sexiness, adrenalin rushes based on violence, and so on. Here are the rules of this soulless "art" form.

Let me describe some of those rules that are stifling creativity in anime:


1) "The Wink". For some reason, a huge percentage of anime cover-art in recent years includes the main female character winking. I have no idea why it's become a standard rule, but there it is.
Try this experiment: Visit this anime/manga website http://e-shuushuu.net/index.php?page=4600 and cruise around for a minute or two. Count the percentage of female characters that wink. Compare that to the percentage of male characters that wink.

2) Good characters will be handsome/beautiful. Bad characters will have some physical defect such as a scar, obesity, unusual body proportions, etc.

3) Big Eyes. Good characters, both guys and girls, will have eyes so large and watery/glassy that they must intersect behind the character's too-small nose and casue constant crying. Conversely, evil characters will have normally proportioned eyes with a tendency to squint.


4) "Chibi" characters will have bodies with these specific distortions (similar to the "cute" proportions of a baby): big head, big chest and belly. Short arms and legs. Ultra-small hands and feet. Here're some tutorials: http://www.polykarbon.com...orials/chibi/chibiart.htm and http://chibiland.windy-goddess.net/howtodraw.html


5) Good characters will be followed around by hyper-hypercute loyal "chibi" pets ...
... that are somewhat alien, sentient, and not particularly good speakers. In fact, their lingual abilities, physical coordination, and saccharin sweetness are comparable to Jar Jar Binks'.



6) No character will resort to therapy, objectivity, mediation, trials, laws, or understanding.
Instead, they will refuse to think about anything but how to punch, kill, and/or have sex with their opponents.

7) Swords are preferable to any other weapon. 2nd most popular are laserlike weapons.

Female lead characters will look like 10-year-olds with Dolly Parton's thoraxic stalactites. Think "Barbie (tm) as a 10 year old", with the 20-year-old Barbie's plastic boob job".
http://www.legnome.fr/bd.html


Or, occasionally they'll be normal-looking beautiful children of prepubescent age, but engage in an adult romance at an age when real boys and girls think the opposite sex is "yucky" and "has cooties". (Somebody call the cops and child welfare services!)

Battle Dress: Women and girls will wear a minimum of clothing, even when going into battle with sharp knives. Their preferred battle uniform will have massive shoulder pads but bare thighs, abdomen, knees, and biceps. Footwear will be either childish or sexy-impractical (barefoot or high heels, for example), never sensible choices for running across broken terrain.


Their preferred non-battle uniform is the Sailor Schoolgirl uniform of Japan with a bare navel and ultra-short skirt (e.g., Sailor Moon), and a mystery wind that always flips their hair and one corner of the skirt, even when the characters are unconscious, lying on the floor in a windless room. Second-most-popular is some sort of revealing age-inappropriate swimsuit, even when attending military formal meetings.

Warrior-girls http://elpinoy.deviantart...-and-the-sparrow-58119273 wear lots of swishy stuff like sleeves, ribbons and hair -- perfect for getting caught on things, blinding the whirling warrior-girl, and generally getting in the way.

10) Male leads will be troubled, sexually attracted to the nearest cute female character, and physically either follow the "cute" rules or have tiny heads and waists but massive shoulders created by plastic surgeons with unlimited access to football shoulderpads.

11) Successful TV anime will a) sell something violent or hypercute, and cheap and valueless, like Dragonball Z and Pokemon trading cards or My Little Pony pink pony dolls.

12) Successful TV anime characters will mutate into slightly different-looking characters if their popularity continues past the 3-year mark. This is to force fans into buying version b, c, d... of the doll, poster, gameboy, and trading-card crap that they already regret buying. Four prime examples would be "Pokemon" (additional character sets), and "Ultraman", Power Rangers/Gao Rangers, and "Kamen Rider" (changing uniforms).

13) Nobody's a democrat. Hence, nobody questions the wisdom in letting a child lead an army because of inheritance or favor of a god or king/princess/queen/prince. Likewise, nobody questions why an inexperienceed "good guy" or patently evil character is permitted to be a "prince/king/princess/queen" with immense political power. Even the successful outcome of a story will not lead to the victory of basic democratic ideals.

14)

No matter how heavy and big a sword looks compared to the character wielding it, the character can whip it around faster than a feather on a rocket, and never tires of carrying it. Neither do the characters fall over, or have any problem with the damned things banging against their legs and backsides as they climb, ride, walk, sit, and squat over latrine trenches.

15) Female lead characters will have the musculature of a kitten or a veal calf, and yet be able to leap tall buildings and carry a sword that outweighs her. Take a look at these perfect examples.
First, a pink-haired, prepubescent, pedophile posterchild with a sword bigger than her leg:
http://www.deviantart.com/print/2094253/

Heck, she even has the "mystery wind" and "long flinging hair to tangle herself in"!
Second, a pencil sketch of a clearly undermuscled little kid with a sword bigger than her whole body:


16) "Elves" and "Faeries" are normally proportioned people, except for ludicrous pointy dog ears that stretch out at 90% angles to their heads, like poorly glued-on Spock ears.

17) Characters will have unexpected and unnatural hair colors. Teenagers will have white or gray hair without attracting scorn or comment; any character may have green, blue, or violet hair. The only possible explanation for this phenomenon is that when all your characters are beautiful and stylized in exactly the same way, hair color, wardrobe, and pets are the only way to differentiate between them.