Anime characters look the same these days?

[Death Side]

you are getting more on anime, so you start noticing the stereotypes

[Noselfworthotep]

Bliss-filled Oblivion

Alexander: A man in his 60's or 70's, looks younger due to regeneration ability, from a older-male-targeted series.
Beyond the Grave: Undead, died in his late twenties, early thirties. Silent protector, vengeance incarnate. Also from an older-male-targeted series.
Mugen: Nineteen, a vagabond. From an older-male-targeted anime.

Three very, very different characters who don't looks the same.

Kirito: A Teen. Takes things seriously when they need to be, but enjoys relaxing. This is shown when he takes a nap in a place where he could easily be killed, without any watching over him. Why? Cause it's Aincrad's nicest weather setting. A series aimed at young males.

Gray: A Teen. Takes things seriously when they need to be, but enjoys relaxing. Shown often. A series aimed at young males.

Rin: A Teen. Would rather lay about, cook, (read: relax), but takes things seriously when things needed to be taken seriously. A series aimed at young males.

---

If you want to compare things, do so when the groups are similar, not night and day.

Who a series is targeted towards shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not a character stands out from everyone else. I get that the characters from a younger-male-targeted series would behave like younger males, but they still shouldn't look like EVERY OTHER shonen protagonist. It's a cop-out to say that "Well this guys act similar to most other shonen hero characters, so he should LOOK like them too!" It's an excuse to not be creative.

I get what you're saying. That because these older characters I listed act differently from one another, it would make sense for them to look differently too. But that doesn't meant that the opposite should be true as well.

[Bliss-filled Oblivion]

StrangeMinion

Bliss-filled Oblivion

Alexander: A man in his 60's or 70's, looks younger due to regeneration ability, from a older-male-targeted series.
Beyond the Grave: Undead, died in his late twenties, early thirties. Silent protector, vengeance incarnate. Also from an older-male-targeted series.
Mugen: Nineteen, a vagabond. From an older-male-targeted anime.

Three very, very different characters who don't looks the same.

Kirito: A Teen. Takes things seriously when they need to be, but enjoys relaxing. This is shown when he takes a nap in a place where he could easily be killed, without any watching over him. Why? Cause it's Aincrad's nicest weather setting. A series aimed at young males.

Gray: A Teen. Takes things seriously when they need to be, but enjoys relaxing. Shown often. A series aimed at young males.

Rin: A Teen. Would rather lay about, cook, (read: relax), but takes things seriously when things needed to be taken seriously. A series aimed at young males.

---

If you want to compare things, do so when the groups are similar, not night and day.

Who a series is targeted towards shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not a character stands out from everyone else. I get that the characters from a younger-male-targeted series would behave like younger males, but they still shouldn't look like EVERY OTHER shonen protagonist. It's a cop-out to say that "Well this guys act similar to most other shonen hero characters, so he should LOOK like them too!" It's an excuse to not be creative.

I get what you're saying. That because these older characters I listed act differently from one another, it would make sense for them to look differently too. But that doesn't meant that the opposite should be true as well.

What would you prefer? An adult who looks different is easy, a teen who looks different though?

You end up with the main characters from the various Yu-gi-oh series.

[Strange Taste]

StrangeMinion

gilgameshed

Yes, they do *facepalm*

although there are differences in animation
they are all bound to look the same.
If they didn't look like anime, then they
must not be anime

I honestly have no idea what on Earth you're trying to say.

I get the weird suspicion that this is a joke, but I really can't tell.

like how american cartoon isn't anime x)))

[Noselfworthotep]

Bliss-filled Oblivion

What would you prefer? An adult who looks different is easy, a teen who looks different though?

You end up with the main characters from the various Yu-gi-oh series.

Or the characters from Soul Eater. They stand out more than most other characters in this generation. And many of them are early-teenagers.

And at least the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh TRIED to make the characters different. I'd rather that there at least be some effort shown in the character design that see an anime full of characters that look like everyone else in modern shonen.

Put it this way. I can respect a character that stood out and ended up looking goofy or dumb than a character that played it safe by looking like the norm of their generation. Even if they ended up looking like something out of Rocky Horror, then at least I know that someone TRIED to do something different with that character's appearance.

[nasa peepo]

Ya' know, I originally wrote up this huge to-do, but then I was like... why?

Samey-ness has always been a thing. It's just easier to pick up on these days because there's a hell of a lot more anime around now then there was then.
70's/80's protags shared a ton of similarities, from their dark hair, to their side burns, to their thick brows.
90's protags have their similarities as well. Artists were taking cues from one another like crazy back then.
It's just what folks do in the industry. They just take traits they like and run with them, and sometimes you get similar designs.