Anime News Nina!
Special Edition Part IV
by Robin Sevakis,
Robin's Commentary
"The idea for this strip came up while I was watching The Story of Saiunkoku, and was initially a little frustrated that the male cast were practically identical except for their hair style and color, especially because that show isn't even a romantic harem show, but simply has the window dressings of one. Of course despite this, perhaps a little shamefully, I eventually became attracted to these characters anyway. While sameness in character design is a valid critique, sometimes I feel like the artist who unfairly gets accused of this the most is Yuu Watase. Sure, it's kinda true that all her bishounen essentially have the same face, but I don't really think this is any more true of her work than the majority of other mangaka. The problem is that anime and manga usually feature the artist's idea of ideal beauty (the most ideal eyes, the most ideal face-shape, etc), so even with an extremely talented character designer like Toshihiro Kawamoto (who is quite capable of drawing diverse looking people), all of the attractive female characters are going to look the same. So, unless it's bad enough that you can't tell characters apart, this bit of criticism doesn't really bother me when enjoying anime and manga."
Anime News Nina will return from hiatus in mid-to-late August.
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