Nox: Hmmm I guess I don’t see that one so often. To me, white/silver/grey hair usually comes off as standoff-ish and distant, ie. Yuki (fruits basket), Shizuma (strawberry panic), Yin (Darker than Black), Nagato/Ayanami (melancholy/NGE), Nozomu (kanokon), Hitsugaya (bleach), Near (death note) etc. etc.

I can picture a character that looks like Mugen able to act in many different ways. It’s much harder to visualize the Jin character design as acting any way other than the typical samurai. In this respect, Shigurui is an excellent example, as it definitely breaks the ’samurai’ archetype – it’s further indicative of how I don’t really know what a samurai really is – insofar as all the characters are samurai. The old man, koganryu (or something…) was definitely the mold-breaker here. I did like that anime for its incredibly interesting characters, one could argue it was all about characters and their respective histories.

N: It’s true that visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology is a shallow model, it’s too rigid (I’ll talk about this in the next post) and character construction and representation isn’t so linear like that (Stuart Hall says representation is constitutive of meaning, ie. representation is not re-presentation).

Hige: Thanks for the compliments! I usually hear good things, rarely bad things about FLCL. As you point out, its characterizations are something to keep an eye out for. Like the True Tears example, glasses probably signify a “looking glass” metaphor, questioning truth and so forth and so on. The whole authenticity approach is a cool one not so readily deployed in a lot of anime, which is why Eve no Jikan is an impeccably awesome series thus far, all glasses signifiers aside.

Anyhow, a great post. I look forward to the subsequent parts!

When people say that in regards to characters in anime, a lot of the time it sounds to me as something that just breaks the “visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology” connection. But that’s a shallow view of a (usually) shallow connection. But it’s a start. It might be why things outside of the norm evoke a powerful effect when they appear.

You can have the same visual design and personality, but have different ideology due to the character’s interactions with others. That’s one thing this model didn’t take into account (though I wasn’t necessarily planning on covering all the angles).

Ghost: “Better” way? I guess playing on the samurai/crazy warrior dichotomy is the “best” way to get the message across. But it is just as “efficient” if the animators were to simply switch their ideologies and personalities. Jin acts like Mugen, Mugen acts like Jin. It’s hard to visualize (since we’ve already seen the anime) and may seem a little “off”, but I think it would work out at any rate.

jonah: Originality is an interesting point here. People have said that plot originality is overrated, and that originality in execution is paramount (ie. ef). How would that apply here? – originality in visual design? in personality? in ideology? Must all three be simultaneously original for the entirety of the character to be considered truly original? In other words, if you have a fascinating, original visual design, but a terribly redundant personality or ideology, all we get is some nice picture to look at – but does one justify all? Not necessarily, no, at least I don’t think so. In that sense, that’s when we really do need to spell out the components of the character and address this process of three-fold signification.

G00 S2 is shallow. Ask Crusader. I think the “war justifies war” ideology acts as a basis to, in itself, justify the characters and act as a representational grounding (very similar to Suzaku).

Media such as anime and manga usually uses visual approaches to introduce, develop, and conclude what the creator wants to convey in his story. Since it is visual media, as you have mentioned, the easiest way to establish characters is using the formula:

visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology

However, there are limitations. As you pointed out, the most common one will be the development of stereotypes and archetypes in characters. Though, I still think that refining process using above ‘formula’ can reduce the negative effects to minimal. It’s all depends the creativity of the creator to establish its own unique quality in this explosion of visual media world. Originality (not the variations) in characters will surely give a breakthrough.

Personality and ideology are two every important aspects to establish the relationships and developments needed in the story itself. Visual media tends to have difficulties in delivering deep meaning to the personality and ideology. For examples, “The Dark Knight” give the deep meaning of how villian should be and his interactions. In my opinion, “Mobile Suit Gundam 00″ still give a really shallow idea of “to change the world through armed interventions” although they claimed it has politics flavor (in reality it’s even much).

Not a value judgment, these can go either way as some may rely on these lazily. Was there a better way to characterize Jin or Mugen visually? I can’t really answer that. To a degree we humans do adopt shortcuts to communicate certain ideologies about ourselves, whether we want to be perceived as mysterious, deep, intelligent, fun, reliable, etc. in the circumstances that we’re in.

What you said about no real causality and indexicality between appearance, personality and ideology and values is true. There is no necessary relationship, it is only contingent to the agreements we end up making as part of the relationships we make (creator/communicator to consumer/communicatee).