{"id":1149,"date":"2005-08-15T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-15T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2005\/08\/15\/ask-john-why-do-anime-noses-look-the-way-they-do\/"},"modified":"2005-08-15T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-15T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-why-do-anime-noses-look-the-way-they-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-why-do-anime-noses-look-the-way-they-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: Why do Anime Noses Look the Way They Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong><br \/>\nWhy do anime\/manga noses look like the way they do? In most anime, characters have either a sharp point nose or, for most female characters, a tiny sliver of a nose barely noticeable. Also, I noticed a trend (that I really like, mind you) in most 80&#8217;s to early 90&#8217;s anime\/manga of having charcters with a triangle for their nose (like a chipmunk) and a diamond shape on the side of their nose but where and why did that come about? Who started it?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nI recieve variations of this question more often than many readers would probably guess.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have a definite answer to give, only speculation. I&#8217;ve personally never read or heard detailed explanations or analysis of most specific characteristics of typical anime and manga character design styles. So although I don&#8217;t know for certain, I suspect that the small noses of anime characters are a reflection of actual Asian physiognomy. Asians typically have a more flat face and a subdued nose compared to Westerners, who tend to exhibit greater facial contours and a more pronounced, protruding nose. I imagine that Asian artists are most familiar with Asian facial features, so the physical characteristics of Asian faces tend to work their way into Asian art.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never been certain, but I suspect that the triangle nose typical of especially 80s anime character design is actually not a nose at all. In some cases, a triangle may be intended to be a stylized representation of the undersurface of the nose where the nostrils are located. I&#8217;ve always assumed that an upside down triangle shape is actually the shadow cast by the nose. The darkened shape along the side of the nose is, I believe, the shadow cast by the bridge of the nose. I don&#8217;t know for certain if my speculations are correct, and if they are, I don&#8217;t know which artist originated these stylized drawings nor when they first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: Why do anime\/manga noses look like the way they do? In most anime, characters have either a sharp point nose or, for most female characters, a tiny sliver of a nose barely noticeable. Also, I noticed a trend (that I really like, mind you) in most 80&#8217;s to early 90&#8217;s anime\/manga of having charcters [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}