Combine this with the artist's particular style which is an important feature for first-glance recognition - and the fact that anime characters are significantly less detailed than real-life humans, means that a lot of characters can look the same.
As many have pointed out, there are exceptions to general style of anime (angled features, hair texture, eye size, etc.). Hilariously enough, when you picked your examples of american cartoons, you picked the exceptions to the media. That's not to say that those don't have shows similar to them visually either. For Gravity Falls look at 7D.
The design is rooted in a deep history of animation. As many have pointed out, there are exceptions to general style of anime (angled features, hair texture, eye size, etc.). Hilariously enough, when you picked your examples of american cartoons, you picked the exceptions to the media.
Manga are not comparable to other random animation shows, because they all share that similar artsyle making them a medium. And that is why they are refered to as manga and anime, instead of using the name for each inividual show.
Dumb and emotionally dense characters make the viewer feel smarter than the character as opposed to feeling inferior as they would with the knowledgeable, thoughtful character. All of this increases the likeability of the protagonist.
Easier to Draw Therefore, manga artists draw their characters in fixed outfits to speed up the process of drawing each character. Aside from that, drawing the same outfit over and over again will make the manga artist get used to drawing said outfit and the character.
Animation Techniques Anime uses classical animation production means of storyboarding, character design, and voice acting. It is a form of limited animation in which instead of drawing each frame animator reuses common parts between frames. It means no need to illustrate a completely new scene every time.
Be it a deliberate creative decision or a necessary budgetary compromise, a change in art style adds layers of meaning and symbolism to an anime. Every now and then, an anime would suddenly break its own visual aesthetics and style, shocking viewers who grew accustomed to one specific look.
School uniforms were common in some, but not all European countries of the era, but the idea worked well in Japan, since large areas of the country were still pulling themselves out of peasantry, and so the uniforms would command a sense of respectability and modernism for the youth of the era.
Pretty much every animated character ever Since there's no actual body under the clothes, an animated character IS the costume. More practically, it's easier on the animators to stay consistent. And since animated characters don't age so there's no pressure to make changes that reflect the passage of time.
The SpongeBob SquarePants Anime, simply referred to as SpongeBob SquarePants (Japanese: スポンジ・ボブ Hepburn: Suponji Bobu, pronounced Spongey Bobbu) is an ongoing Japanese anime television series produced by Neptune Studios to produce a quality fan series built around his and Narmak's ideas.
Momotaro, Sacred SailorsThe first full-length anime film was Momotaro: Umi no Shinpei (Momotaro, Sacred Sailors), released in 1945. A propaganda film commissioned by the Japanese navy featuring anthropomorphic animals, its underlying message of hope for peace would move a young manga artist named Osamu Tezuka to tears.
Why can people of all different backgrounds see themselves in anime characters, and why does Japanese anime reach audiences across the globe? The first reason that anime is so appealing is its physical and aesthetic allure. Simply put, animation just keeps getting better and better.
The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1917. The first generation of animators in the late 1910s included Ōten Shimokawa, Jun'ichi Kōuchi and Seitaro Kitayama, commonly referred to as the "fathers" of anime.
The evolution of anime occurred in stages, starting with cutout animation and silent short films, expanding through government-sanctioned propaganda, then moving toward longer, more creative works influenced by Disney, but that took on looks of their own.
In the 1980s, anime became mainstream in Japan, experiencing a boom in production with the rise in popularity of anime like Gundam, Macross, Dragon Ball, and genres such as real robot, space opera and cyberpunk.
If you closely watch all anime, there are very few character designs. Moreover, one of the other reasons is that anime is an adaptation of manga. Manga writers have strict schedule to submit their works. So they use combinations of different hair designs, face designs and body designs.
At some point in the last decade of anime, designs started to get simpler and simpler. The more creative designs were thrown out the window and SHOT in mid air with live rounds.
There are a lot of times when people come up with similar hairstyles (or appearances) because they based it on their surroundings in real life. In real life, you see a lot of people having similar hairstyle (or appearances).
Anime is a very specific form using very specific nuances and character set ups the very nature of anime means that yes it will be is being and has been repeated many times before actually i watched something on this once, because when manga began the countries of origin where very loose in regards to their copy right laws because of this all anime was reproduced to look exactly like any other popular anime of the era.
No. No matter how similar animes appear, every mangaka and the studio making the animation have a different style. Because studios take on multiple projects, sometimes several animes can look similar because they have the same people making them. But studios collaborate with other studios, and animators leave and get replaced by new ones. So animations will never all be exactly the same.