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The main distinction to establish here is the difference between aesthetic personality and conscience. Aesthetic personality is shallow. It’s the surface of the person’s outer quality, how they act, not necessarily why; it’s about the “clothing” of their mind, how their actions look. Conscience is deeper. It’s the ideological motivation for a person’s action – hence why they act. While in actuality there is no (or at least shouldn’t be) causal link between the how and why of actions, anime – especially in the past few years – makes use of repeatedly played-out stereotypes and archetypes which have anchored onto the corpus of representation established by the rearticulation and recycling of character frameworks to signify a generalized type of person.
Now, using only two characters isn’t much of a cross sample, but the similarities here are, nevertheless, undeniable. Glasses. Black hair. Two-sided bangs. Pale. Coincided with stoic, reserved, intelligent, cunning. It’s important to note that they’re juxtaposed to more brawny characters. In terms of aesthetic personality, the archetypal brains/brawns duo is in itself a binary often utilized for cast expansion.
Possibly for a further touch of coincidence, there’s the role of the pseudo-helpless tag-along girl.
Of course the binary of brains/brawns isn’t the only one used, and necessarily there are exceptions. One might be a passive/aggressive combination.
In the DBZ universe, due to the relatively simplistic art style, everyone is inherently categorized within the same visual archetype: ripped as hell. The dire lack of differentiating body types leaves only visual clues such as hair (or lack thereof) and height to distinguish between aesthetic personalities and consciences.
Future Trunks first appears against a mechanized Frieza as our stoic, smooth voiced Eric Vale (who also voiced effeminate Yuki in Fruits Basket). While Trunks is in himself a sign, he retains qualities of aforementioned characters drawn from these anime artifacts as well as constituting meaning from juxtaposed representations vis-à-vis the other DBZ characters: the sword behind the back, while being a trait beholden to both Mugen and Ichigo to indicate GAR, here, it functions to distance Trunks from the others as, primarily, futuristic and exotic since it complements the fact that he actually is from the future. I wouldn’t say that Yajirobi counts here simply because he’s not a Z Warrior. (and his katakana[?] is worn on the side.)
Endlessly creating categories to justify exceptions isn’t logically digestible – as the visual ambiguity between Goten and a younger Goku attests to (is that supposed to mean anything? Doubtful, thus the irony of talking about things like causality) – but I think the examples here are concrete and within the limits of authorial predictability. For good measure, a counter example is the abundance of characters in LoGH that don’t readily conform to the previous visual norms but still demonstrate healthy amounts of GAR or similar aspects of aesthetic personality (LoGH is not without “flaws,” however).
While cultural artifacts – like swords – are deployed to complement the generalization of an archetype, these artifacts, signs in themselves, have no meaning until they enter the process of representation. Basically, the artifact needs the person to acquire concrete meaning – it is transitive. Until artifacts acquire a context, they are mostly floating signifiers, able to mean a large number of things, having no definite meaning.
Without context, glasses alone have no implicit meaning. What is the image supposed to mean? Nothing and everything. It can imply geeks, nerds, nerdom, otaku, intelligence, eyesight, ophthalmology, the looking glass, abstract psycho-sociological ideas. Hell, this specific image could be an artsy photograph if you wanted it to be. But then when you add the context…
I don’t think any of these depictions have much an effect on the character. They’re added for the occasion, the rhetoric of the character’s aesthetic personality. Cultural artifacts – we can probably consider them tropes in themselves – like glasses, are added as weapons to increase the rhetorical armament of the character’s superficiality. The character’s shallow aesthetic personality is subsequently able to attack directly the floating, unanchored conscience which the animator wishes to latch onto the concrete character. Without images, aesthetics, without stereotypes, archetypes, idiosyncrasies, the animator has an increasingly difficult time attempting to falsely justify the basis for a character’s actions. What if Sanae looked like this?
Surely, based on convention, her glasses don’t signify the same meaning as Sanae’s! But don’t fret too much about appearances, since hypothetically, a person that looks like this is totally capable of acting similarly to Sanae and on a identical ideological basis. This is the three-step establishment of visual and mental causality that animators develop in order to concretize recycled character archetypes:
visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology
in other words…
cuteness [signifies] good-natured, loving, compassionate [signifies] human lives and emotions are paramount, motherhood is essential to the state of the family
Of course there are exceptions. Also take note of the girl from FLCL (since I don’t have any screenshots available and I don’t remember her name). In these exceptions, it’s much harder to discern the effect that glasses emphasize. In True Tears the glasses might be metaphorical – ie. attempting to say something not even about Hiromi herself. I don’t know.
Essentially, this process of non sequitur signification based on idiosyncratic artifacts is not dissimilar to what Scott McCloud calls closure:
Closure as a psychological notion from the Gestalts is largely about “image constancy,” which means that you can have a single image with pieces missing and still understand the whole. In daily perception, we experience this anytime one object covers up parts of another one. Despite that part is covered up, we still understand that there is a whole object beneath it.1
Using closure to address the parts of a character is much different because they all exist simultaneously. Moreover, I’m using it in a rather reversed way: we view the characters as a whole in terms of levels of depth (visual, personality, ideology) – ie. we “flatten” the image – yet cannot realize that many characters are constructed through highly repetitive signifying practices that link these three disparate pieces and make them seem naturally, inextricably bound to one another when, in reality, there isn’t such a thing as causality and indexicality between appearance, personality and ideology and values. It doesn’t exist, it’s discursive. We, as viewers and consumers, have been inculcated in the logic that appearance somehow points to a “corresponding” ideology when the truth is that these things have no relation to one another, they exist autonomously and it’s the huge reserve of representational power that anime and media holds which is able to make such statements without us, for the most part, realizing it.
[1] Not the words of McCloud, but his brief definition “the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole” needed slight elucidation.
10 Comments
Types and Tropes… they’re shorthand signals. It’s like as if the creators don’t want to spend more time establishing a certain character (at the expense of others, or other narrative elements) and use established signs or components of signs to communicate their intentions.
Not a value judgment, these can go either way as some may rely on these lazily. Was there a better way to characterize Jin or Mugen visually? I can’t really answer that. To a degree we humans do adopt shortcuts to communicate certain ideologies about ourselves, whether we want to be perceived as mysterious, deep, intelligent, fun, reliable, etc. in the circumstances that we’re in.
What you said about no real causality and indexicality between appearance, personality and ideology and values is true. There is no necessary relationship, it is only contingent to the agreements we end up making as part of the relationships we make (creator/communicator to consumer/communicatee).
Well, here’s my thoughts about character building though I’m not an expert. Pardon me if there is any repetitive point of view.
Media such as anime and manga usually uses visual approaches to introduce, develop, and conclude what the creator wants to convey in his story. Since it is visual media, as you have mentioned, the easiest way to establish characters is using the formula:
visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology
However, there are limitations. As you pointed out, the most common one will be the development of stereotypes and archetypes in characters. Though, I still think that refining process using above ‘formula’ can reduce the negative effects to minimal. It’s all depends the creativity of the creator to establish its own unique quality in this explosion of visual media world. Originality (not the variations) in characters will surely give a breakthrough.
Personality and ideology are two every important aspects to establish the relationships and developments needed in the story itself. Visual media tends to have difficulties in delivering deep meaning to the personality and ideology. For examples, “The Dark Knight” give the deep meaning of how villian should be and his interactions. In my opinion, “Mobile Suit Gundam 00″ still give a really shallow idea of “to change the world through armed interventions” although they claimed it has politics flavor (in reality it’s even much).
Right, as both of you mentioned, there are exceptions and limitations to viewing character construction in such a rigid, linear way.
You can have the same visual design and personality, but have different ideology due to the character’s interactions with others. That’s one thing this model didn’t take into account (though I wasn’t necessarily planning on covering all the angles).
Ghost: “Better” way? I guess playing on the samurai/crazy warrior dichotomy is the “best” way to get the message across. But it is just as “efficient” if the animators were to simply switch their ideologies and personalities. Jin acts like Mugen, Mugen acts like Jin. It’s hard to visualize (since we’ve already seen the anime) and may seem a little “off”, but I think it would work out at any rate.
jonah: Originality is an interesting point here. People have said that plot originality is overrated, and that originality in execution is paramount (ie. ef). How would that apply here? – originality in visual design? in personality? in ideology? Must all three be simultaneously original for the entirety of the character to be considered truly original? In other words, if you have a fascinating, original visual design, but a terribly redundant personality or ideology, all we get is some nice picture to look at – but does one justify all? Not necessarily, no, at least I don’t think so. In that sense, that’s when we really do need to spell out the components of the character and address this process of three-fold signification.
G00 S2 is shallow. Ask Crusader. I think the “war justifies war” ideology acts as a basis to, in itself, justify the characters and act as a representational grounding (very similar to Suzaku).
I can’t say I can imagine Jin acting like Mugen and achieving the same results, but very interesting… I think I’ll leverage part of this idea on matching stereotypical looks with corresponding ideologies in discussing a character I find very interesting (being the Macross retard that I am): Klan Klan. By your leave, with assurances of proper and due acknowledgment and citation. Very interesting.
“How would that apply here? – originality in visual design? in personality? in ideology?”
When people say that in regards to characters in anime, a lot of the time it sounds to me as something that just breaks the “visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology” connection. But that’s a shallow view of a (usually) shallow connection. But it’s a start. It might be why things outside of the norm evoke a powerful effect when they appear.
Actually, your reference to Ninamori (the girl from FLCL) is quite a good example of an anime flouting the otherwise tried-and-true conventions/tropes you’ve laid out here. She uses the glasses to portray that image of dowdy intelligence, of quiet maturity, but it’s ultimately just a front. That’s why the very final scene of that fourth episode, where she wiggles a finger through the frames and admits, ‘They’re fake.’ is so effective. Aesthetic identity is ultimately just a falsehood, a front and so much anime seems to relish in these standardised (often totally vapid) signifiers. It makes a show feel lazy and predictable, which is why if a series decides to mock or subvert them, I’m immediately onboard.
Anyhow, a great post. I look forward to the subsequent parts!
ghost: Afro Samurai perhaps. A supreme case of irony, albeit, Afro has the visual style to make him seem Mugen-esque, but the demeanor of silent, stoic Jin. A comparison between these two becomes extremely complex, given the state of [racial?] representation and hip hop culture. Actually, that would make for an extremely interesting write up…
I can picture a character that looks like Mugen able to act in many different ways. It’s much harder to visualize the Jin character design as acting any way other than the typical samurai. In this respect, Shigurui is an excellent example, as it definitely breaks the ’samurai’ archetype – it’s further indicative of how I don’t really know what a samurai really is – insofar as all the characters are samurai. The old man, koganryu (or something…) was definitely the mold-breaker here. I did like that anime for its incredibly interesting characters, one could argue it was all about characters and their respective histories.
N: It’s true that visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology is a shallow model, it’s too rigid (I’ll talk about this in the next post) and character construction and representation isn’t so linear like that (Stuart Hall says representation is constitutive of meaning, ie. representation is not re-presentation).
Hige: Thanks for the compliments! I usually hear good things, rarely bad things about FLCL. As you point out, its characterizations are something to keep an eye out for. Like the True Tears example, glasses probably signify a “looking glass” metaphor, questioning truth and so forth and so on. The whole authenticity approach is a cool one not so readily deployed in a lot of anime, which is why Eve no Jikan is an impeccably awesome series thus far, all glasses signifiers aside.
As for glasses, I think it’s a not-so-subtle distinction of someone being utilitarian, emphasizing their seriousness in pursuits that doesn’t center them looking more stylish or anything. Especially in Tomoyo’s case. That kind of stuff happens a lot in anime. Also, if their work or fight gets serious, girls with long hair cutting it and such. It’s also cultural, but that kind of starts the psychological edge going. I think many anime characters go by that archetype and they try to branch away or accept that self-awareness and move on.
Don’t forget the ever-so-common “white/silver hair = evil/sly” theme that’s been worked to death so much it’s not even funny.
Shippoyasha: I guess in terms of visual appearance, yeah, it’s usually to indicate utilitarianism vs. glasses-fetish moe. There are more symbolic cases, as per FLCL and True Tears references, along with the interesting role glasses play in NGE.
Nox: Hmmm I guess I don’t see that one so often. To me, white/silver/grey hair usually comes off as standoff-ish and distant, ie. Yuki (fruits basket), Shizuma (strawberry panic), Yin (Darker than Black), Nagato/Ayanami (melancholy/NGE), Nozomu (kanokon), Hitsugaya (bleach), Near (death note) etc. etc.
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