In the world of anime and manga series, these art styles remain the most iconic and recognizable to fans of all genres.
Anime and manga alike are visual mediums that are formed from drawings. This in itself is obvious, but one might underestimate just how many ways there are to draw the same thing. Due to a myriad of factors, every individual draws differently and is drawn to different visual forms of expression.
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Once the skills of an animator or a mangaka are on the table, these small variations evolve into wildly different and unique art styles. Every series and every artist has their own unique spin, but these art styles have stood the test of time and become so well known that they inspire millions to imitate and pay homage to them.
Updated on July 14, 2023 by David Heath: There are so many different anime and manga art styles out there that it’s hard to list the best of the bunch, let alone the most iconic ones. There are the big ones, like Toriyama’s Dragon Ball and Araki’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Then there are also many that broke new ground in both anime and manga, but only gained cult appeal outside Japan.
As such, this list has been updated with a few more familiar classics, and a few lesser-known artists that paved the way for a multitude of successors in multiple genres.
15 Masashi Kishimoto
While this art style is easily the least unique on this list, this is due mostly to the influence Naruto has had on the anime landscape. When Masashi Kishimoto first started Naruto in 1999, there weren’t an awful lot of other works that looked like his work. However after the series’ success, it gained more noticeable successors like Blue Exorcist, Soul Eater and Black Clover.
They all use fairly realistically proportioned anatomy and features, with the one comic expression or simplified form where appropriate. Each character also had set color schemes that either helped them stand out (ironic for a series about ninjas), or how each character connected, like the dark hair, beige outside, and white eyes of the Hyuuga Clan, or the black robes with red patterns of the Akatsuki.
14 ONE
One of the best-known things about the enigmatic ONE is that he actually isn’t the best artist around. When he first drew One Punch Man as a webcomic, the art was extremely shoddy, leading to it being redrawn by Eyeshield 21‘s Yusuke Murata for publication. However, his simple style transmitted his ideas in a way that still caught on, making his lead characters Saitama and Mob iconic in their own right.
OPM would switch back to ONE’s style for visual gags, usually as punchlines to more detailed scenes. While Mob Psycho 100’s anime would stick to ONE’s style in full since the original manga never got redrawn. Which is a good as, as doodle-like as the pinpoint eyes and tiny noses are, it wouldn’t look right without them.
13 Junji Ito
Junji Ito’s way of drawing human characters isn’t the most remarkable. His people are fairly realistically designed, with proper body proportions. It may even make the characters more relatable as they appear more familiar. Which then makes the horror more skin-crawling as he deforms their features either by adding or taking away details to make them look more deranged, or twist them into nightmarish shapes.
His darkly rendered scenes feel like they’re stuck in perpetual nighttime, and he uses somewhat sketchy lines to make everything feel eerily messy and off-putting. Yet it’s all done with intricate skill, with fine details and inking that are as impressive as they are horrifying. The skill behind his art is likely why anime studios have had a hard time adapting his works and their horror factor accurately.
12 Kazuki Takahashi
The best word to sum up the way the late Kazuki Takahashi drew Yu-Gi-Oh! is “sharp”. While the art style did evolve over the manga’s publication, it soon fell into the habit of rendering characters with long and spiky features. Their clothes are often folded to a razor point, and their faces air on the more angular side.
Even staple features like anime/manga’s big eyes tend to take on an angular shape in Takahashi’s art. It’s especially noticeable in the hair. Whether it’s the standard yet defined Seto Kaiba, or the glorious mane of angles Yugi himself presents, each character’s hairstyle helps their character stand out. To this day, even series inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh! like Bakugan can’t outdo the original.
11 Eiichiro Oda
The strength of Eiichiro Oda’s style, best shown in his seminal work One Piece, is that it frees itself from much of the usual constraints of an art style. It’s comfortable being far more cartoony than its peers, allowing the characters to stretch their faces into gaping mouths and popping eyes straight out of a Warner Brothers cartoon.
The style also allows for a range of body types that would look ridiculous anywhere else. The main cast largely keeps it simple, but the extended cast boasts characters like Kaido, Big Mom, and Blackbeard that wildly vary from the other characters’ builds, yet they don’t feel out of place. If anything, this diverse approach to body types and expressions makes each character distinct and recognizable from each other that adds to One Piece‘s appeal.
10 Osamu Tezuka
As one of the progenitors of modern anime, this list wouldn’t be complete without Osamu Tezuka. While Astro Boy was by far his most popular creation, he also was behind titles like Dororo, Kimba the White Lion, and Princess Knight among others.
Taking inspiration from classic western cartoons like Betty Boop, Tezuka introduced the large, round eyes now commonplace in manga and anime. Along with the simplicity and general softness of his characters, this makes his style distinct even today when it is homaged in shows like Star Wars Visions or other manga like Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto.
9 Go Nagai
As influential as Tezuka’s work is, Go Nagai could give him a run for his money. Originally working as an assistant to Tezuka’s contemporary Shotaro Ishinomori, Nagai’s early work looked fairly similar to both of his forebears. But he’d take it in a more mature direction. For example, Harenchi Gakuen, while tame by today’s standards, essentially created the modern ecchi genre.
While Mazinger Z gave mecha human pilots, creating the super robot genre. Devilman brought gothic horror and violence, and its spin-off Violence Jack brought post-apocalyptic action to readers a decade before Fist of the North Star. While his work could be controversial, it opened the door to more mature-themed manga down the line.
8 Riyoko Ikeda
The shoujo genre doesn’t often get much in the way of kudos. Sure, everyone knows Sailor Moon or the like. But their creators don’t get as much notice as their shonen and seinen counterparts, even if they’re just as influential. For example, nearly every shoujo manga since the 1970s owes a debt of gratitude to Riyoko Ikeda
Her thin characters, pointy chins, soft colors, intricate patterns, and big, sparkly eyes have essentially defined the genre. Nana, Chihayafuru, Hana Yori Dango and more have elements drawn from Ikeda’s style. Then Revolutionary Girl Utena and Sailor Moon, while more distinct, still take on traits from Ikeda’s work in both content and design.
7 Rumiko Takahashi
Though not every shoujo mangaka followed Ikeda’s pastel prettiness. Rumiko Takahashi made her name with her more cartoony characters with their round faces and bold expressions. Whether she was making a more combat-heavy, shonen-like series like Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2, or romcoms like Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku, her style never looked out of place.
Her cutesy designs appealed to the shoujo crowd, while her action scenes and gags pulled in the shonen fans, with her drama pulling in older fans. As gentle as they look, Takahashi’s characters are versatile and have a universal appeal to anime and manga fans artistically.
6 CLAMP
Unlike the other entries on this list, CLAMP isn’t a single artist. It’s a group that consists of lead member and writer Nanase Ohkawa, and artists Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igurashi. As such, their catalog of work can vary in looks and style. For example, Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth are as soft and pretty as Ikeda’s work, while xxxHolic and X are firmer and darker in both art style and content.
Like Rumiko Takahashi, their work has appealed to all sorts of readers, be they fans of action series, fantasy adventures, magical girl stories, or even horror tales. Their versatility, themes, and approach to storytelling has made them an anime/manga staple for over 30 years and counting.
5 Tetsuo Hara
If testosterone could be distilled into print, the result would be Fist of the North Star. Inspired by Tezuka, Ishinomori, and gekiga comics, an old term for mature-themed Japanese comics, artist Tetsuo Hara would work with writer Buronson in bringing their kung-fu themed post-apocalyptic adventure to life. Hara’s style is personified by its buff, muscular men, giant foes, and dramatic images.
He’d contrast scenes of grisly body horror with tender, heartstring-pulling ones. Rather than make Kenshiro and co unmovable stiffs, they’d often succumb to their emotions in a way that made them appear more masculine and relatable than their 80s action contemporaries. Hara’s heroic figures, attention to detail, and violence would inspire others works like Hirohiko Araki’s Baoh, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, Akira Miyashita’s Sakigake! Otokojuku and its parody Cromartie High School.
4 Hirohiko Araki
When the series began, Hirohiko Araki drew Jojo in a rather similar style to Fist of The North Star, which was one of the big influences for Jojo. The chiseled features of Jonathan, Joseph, Jotaro, and even Josuke in the early chapters of Diamond is Unbreakable, paid homage to Tetsuo Hara’s style. Though as the years went on, Araki’s style evolved into something unique.
He combined his Hara-alikes with his other inspirations, like Classical and Renaissance sculptures, Antonio Lopez’s paintings for fashion magazines, and Roger Dean’s psychedelic work for Araki’s beloved prog rock bands. Over time, they produced a softer, more detailed, and flamboyant style that wouldn’t look out of place in a fashion catalog. Particularly with the iconic Jojo poses, many of which came straight out of the pages of Vogue and other magazines.
3 Kentaro Miura
As grisly as his inspirations Violence Jack and Fist of the North Star got, the late Kentaro Miura went further. Contrasting ONE, Miura’s art skills were so strong that his work as an assistant to Hajime no Ippo creator George Morikawa were cut short, with Morikawa saying he had no more to show Miura. At just 18 years old, he was ready to show the world the dark fantasy world of his seminal series Berserk.
His drawings and inkings were second to none, showcasing a broad range of inspirations. The bloody action scenes harkened back to Go Nagai and Tetsuo Hara’s work, yet he also cited Riyoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles as an example of “expressing everything powerfully”. He’d also soften the heavy drama with gag scenes, often involving Puck, the elf companion of series’ lead Guts. Berserk really showcased how talented Miura was, and how much of a shame it is that he’s since passed on.
2 Akira Toriyama
Dragon Ball is easily Akira Toriyama’s most popular creation and is the series that introduced most people to his art style. However, Toriyama also did the art for classic RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest, where his comic style likely earned him fans in North America before his classic series about Saiyans went westward. Toriyama started off producing more cartoony looks for his characters, with kid Goku and Arale from Dr Slump looking more cutesy and cartoony with their big eyes, tiny noses, and childish proportions.
But once Goku grew up in Dragon Ball Z, he and his fellow fighters got more buff and angular, with tight frowns and increasingly spiky hairstyles. Yet whether it was showing a fight for the fate of the universe, or a wacky visual gag, no one would mistake Toriyama’s art for anyone else’s. It’s this combo of cartoony looks and serious drama that would inspire other mangaka’s work, like Oda’s One Piece and Kishimoto’s Naruto.
1 Studio Ghibli
While most of these styles have been from manga and anime series, Studio Ghibli is the king of anime films. Over the years, huge films like Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro have helped the studio and their distinct style become recognizable worldwide, even to non-anime fans.
It doesn’t take much effort to find tutorials on how to mimic the distinct way they draw welled-up tears, or their soft-edged, wide-eyed humans. The Ghibli style, developed by studio founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata among others, even has a pastoral energy that makes it welcoming and wholesome to look at, even in its most violent moments.
Fuente: successacademy.edu.vn
Categorías: Anime
