"Those Anime Dolls"- Does the connection bother you?

While I do understand that, I really don't see ANY connection between BJDs and anime except for the few Volks collabs like the Rozen Maiden dolls, but that's just a few dolls out of HUNDREDS of sculpts.

While some BJDs, particularly quite a few Volks molds, do resemble anime characters with their sharp point chins, and big, big eyes, the majority of BJDs are more realisitic looking. You really couldn't say that a CP El or a Soom Sard (random sculpts here) look like anime characters. That would be pure ignorance.

I think the connection with anime stems from the fact that our BJDs come from East Asia. I tend to find this kind of annoying because a big chunk of these dolls are actually made in South Korea, NOT JAPAN. Yes, there are Korean anime and mangas, but the vast majority of people would associate anime/manga with Japan.

I don't want people to associate my dolls with anime because I don't want to be seen as some sort of anime-obsessed-dork when I am nothing even close to that. I want people to see BJDs as an art-form, not some anime-novelty-tie-in.

 

Well, it's never come up for me because all my herd is 100% Western in look and derivation, and about equally divided between Celtic/English classical elves and superheroes.

 

Volks started as a company making anime figure kits and other companies have put out dolls based off of characters. Plus there is a shared aesthetic (one that even some of the more realistic sculpts share) due to where they come from, and a lot of owners have an interest in both and it shows in their dolls...

The problem is that you assume that all anime is big eyes, tiny noses and pointy chins. There is quite a bit more variety than that, though if you aren't interested in anime or manga you may not have come across it. To me this argument shows a certain amount of ignorance about anime/manga (I don't mean that in a nasty way--it's just that your charge of ignorance cuts both ways on this. Some people's reactions really aren't as silly as you think they are). A lot of the CP dolls, including El have a style that looks very much anime-esque and Soom dolls can have some of that look too. It's that common aesthetic thread that makes abjds different from Western style dolls--it's what separates on topic dolls from off topic dolls, and it also happens to be a very similar thread to what you see when you flip through manga or watch anime. For a non-abjd person to be able to pick that out from the less obvious sculpts is pretty darn perceptive--more perceptive than some abjd owners themselves (if you look through the threads about Asian aesthetic you'll see what I mean).

This is at least partly true, however, if they didn't share a similar aesthetic quality, I'm not sure the connection would be as strong to people. Also add in the fact that there is a big overlap in interest between anime/manga and bjds and it isn't out there to make that assumption. Remember, most people don't know squat about these dolls and don't have a lot to go on beyond the fact that there are stylistic similarities or that they might have seen some at a convention.

See, this offends me a little. I hate to break it to you, but there is a connection between bjds and anime and to deny that is to ignore the history of this hobby which seems a little odd. They aren't strictly anime dolls, but anime overlaps into their background and is still a strong presence with in the community. BJDs are much more than something only tied to anime, but that doesn't mean some of those ties don't exist. When people proclaim loudly that there is no connection it signals to me that they don't want there to be connection even though those overlaps do exist.

People are going to see bjds as they see bjds and it really doesn't matter or affect anything. This is a small niche hobby, and when you're involved in a fairly obscure hobby most people aren't going to have all the information, and they will make assumptions because they don't know better--that's life. At some point you have to either say screw it, it doesn't matter or drive yourself crazy trying to earn the respect of people that could really care less about what it is you're doing.

I also hope that you aren't suggesting that anime fans are obsessed dorks, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that didn't come out the way you perhaps meant it to. Anime and manga are as valid an art form as bjds are, by the way.

 

I'm honestly just tired of "Oh, what anime are they from? " and I have to explain that Mowen and everyone else are my own original characters.. What's weird is some people just can't comprehend that i'm creative and I can come up with things outside of the anime/manga fandoms.

Don't get me wrong, I do like anime and manga, but I've long since accumulated characters of my own and I can't wait to put some of them into a more tangible, resin form~

 

It doesn't bother me. Mostly because I've actually never heard anyone refer to them as "anime dolls".

I'm not really into anime (there are a select few I like, but what ones I do like I love, I suppose), and only into manga slightly more. I found ABJDs through lolita, but I'm not even lolita in style or manner. (I like knowing about things even if I don't partake in them.) But anyway.

See, the thing is that, even so, the modern ABJD really originated in Japan with Volks. So while most are designed, produced, blah blah blah, from South Korea, it's still Japanese in origin. Sushi you eat in America is still [basically, general 'you', so on and so forth] Japanese in origin. (Also, I'm not saying Korean or Chinese ABJDs are automatically Japanese here, just for clarification.)

And really, I think that when most Western people think of the Far East, they think of China or Japan before they think about South Korea and the other countries there. I'd like to be proven wrong about this, but this is from my experience. Even though the area I live in has many more people who are Korean in ethnicity, China or Japan pop up first in a lot of peoples' minds.

 

Honestly, I would go so far as to say that without anime, ABJDs would never have existed. Volks as a company mostly made their money from figures and garage kits based on anime series before they got into the doll business. The first Volks dolls, the 27cm size Dollfies, are also VERY anime styled. If they didn't have a stable financial base from their anime-related sales, I doubt they would ever have branched out into the more financially risky BJDs, and without Volks the ABJD craze would almost certainly not have taken off.

Maybe people don't see it because they are used to anime and manga styles, but I'd consider quite a lot of dolls to have anime or manga style features. Just about every single Luts doll looks like it popped right out of a manga to me, as do a lot of other companies. Maybe not from the pages of Sailor Moon or Pokemon, but there are plenty of manga and anime series which have a style JUST like Luts' dolls- chock full of bishounen.

And of course that's not even getting into the actual specific anime character dolls, which do exist and which are sometimes no more "anime" looking than other dolls (for example Volks' Suigintou and Shinku Rozen Maiden dolls don't look any more "anime" to me than most other BJDs, and yet they are official anime character goods).

Honestly, I think a big part of the "Asian aesthetic" on DoA is actually somewhat of an anime or manga aesthetic. It's changing a bit recently- in the last year or two there seem to be a lot of dolls coming out that are more realistic or have more of a fashion doll aesthetic, but I still think the most "typical" BJD look is quite anime and manga influenced.

 

No, it doesn't bother me; in fact, I myself use the description as a kind of "shorthand", when talking to the Muggles sight-unseen. It gives them a point of reference. It saves me having to go into much detail, saves a lot of time.

In fact, here is a paraphrase I had just this afternoon [over a few glasses of merlot] with a friend of a friend, here while I'm on vacation far from home.

"I collect dolls."
"Oh, you do? Aren'tcha scared they'll kill you in your sleep?"
"Naah, you're thinkin of those squidgy baby doll things. Mine are specially trained to be non-killing-in-sleep kinda dolls. They're these fancy customizable things from Korea & Japan an' look sorta more like anime characters. Y'know, with the long legs and the eyes and great shoes?"
"Oh! Cool. Hey, look, 'Family Guy' is on."

Even if the person has never seen any other anime styles beyond Naruto commercials, now they know the general aesthetic you mean. And more savvy art fans will grok the difference between rudimentary Pokemon-style anime faces (i.e. Dollfie Dreams) and more elegant faces on the order of CLAMP or Amano (i.e. Soom men).

 

It bothers me a lot, considering even most anime geeks don't know what BJD are, just because it's Asian doesn't mean it's Japanese.

My doll sculpts come from Korea anyway, so it bothers me a lot when they gasp and say "I always thought it would be from Japan..."

I watch anime, and I became into BJD separately, I thought they were cool. But there is no way I can group the two together.

Sometimes people who like BJD are into anime too, like me, but often some people just like collecting dolls.

I'm into all sorts of underground hobbies, and this is just one of them.

Honestly, I can't see the BJD based on anime characters that come in a set and to look like the character *volks do this, and it annoys me a little* as BJD, it just makes me think they're oversized poseable anime figurines, but I think that's just the anime geek inside speaking.

They came from Japan, and are supposed to look like the anime character but I still call them BJD, because they are.

But honestly aside from that mistake, or Volks fullset anime character dolls, if I had a doll like SOOM Sard and he was called an anime doll... I would be VERY angry.

Considering he's not even made by a Japanese Doll company.

 

Which makes me wonder why we American anime fans are so happy to be called 'otaku'....here, it's most definitely used to describe an anime fan.
And since we bear the title with pride, they're using 'weaboo' as the deragatory term now.

 

I don't mind. There IS a connection between anime and dolls. It's just the truth. Abjds have their orgin in anime, where they were created by Volks as a kind of girls version of anime figures/garage kits.

The connection between anime and dolls is embraced by most of the companies - just look at recent fullset 'Bix' made by soom. His outfit was clearly inspired by a chracter from the game Final Fantasy 7, which as most people know, features anime style art.

The vast majority of dolls have an anime inspired look even the more realistic ones- This is not just confined to the older Volks heads. anime - or manga/manwha - can be a relatively varied art style. The luts boys could easily have come from a CLAMP manga and the soom boys an amano or Ayami Kojima drawing.

 

Look at it this way: you sit a Soom Sard next to a Barbie. If you had to pick which one looks more like an anime character, it'd probably be Sard, right? Barbies just don't have the same aesthetic, and Barbies are what (most) Westerners are used to.

Most BJD fans can tell the difference. They can see all the subtle differences in the sculpt, so they say "No. That sculpt has a more-defined chin/smaller eyes/whatever. It doesn't look like an anime character." But non-BJD fans don't pick up on that.

My husband is into anime, and that was one of the first comments when I started showing him doll pictures (after the "they all look like girls" comments). Once I started pointing out the details in the more mature sculpts he started to see that they all don't look like anime characters.

 

Interesting that the Korean company Blue Fairy made an Edward Elric doll. Sometimes you can't neatly compartmentalize things--like anime and manga is only an influence on Japanese dolls, like a doll has to be either a bjd or an anime figure...it just doesn't quite work that way. There are also Korean and Chinese companies that make outfits that I have a hard time seeing as anything but anime like. It doesn't matter if people want their doll hobby to be connected to anime or not, because to some extent it will always be--that's just part of the nature of the hobby as a whole. People just need to learn to accept that and move on.

 

It doesn't bother me, though I don't really particularly love anime either. (as in, I like some anime shows, much like I like, say, some comedy shows. I don't follow them specifically because they're anime) But if someone says "anime dolls" but my doll comes from Korea, I'll have to let them know. As many wonderful and unique things as the Japanese have brought us, they shouldn't get all the credit! XD

 

Meh. It doesn't really bother me, but I think there is a difference between the two. They're not really 'anime dolls' most of the time-- with the exception of some molds (Volks Dollfie Dream in particular), they just don't look 'anime' the way most people think of it. I'm not terribly bugged by it, but I don't think it's accurate.

Besides, recently the term 'anime' has become something negative for me personally, as I'm trying to get away from the 'anime style' that a lot of my design professors say I have (or had, hopefully) in my drawings. So now, whenever I hear the word anime connected to me, I flinch. That's the only way it bothers me. XD

 

I don't have a problem with it. I think it's expecting a bit much to presume that everyone should know enough about bjd and/or anime to tell them apart. There are enough stylistic similarities, not to mention the official collaborations already discussed above, that it's pretty reasonable to lump them together (especially if you're an outsider). I'd clarify the differences to someone who asked me about my "anime dolls," but I don't see any reason to be annoyed about it.

This discussion is reminding me of lolitas getting upset about being mistaken for cosplay...

I think I would be annoyed if I owned an artist doll bjd (haha, as if I could!) and someone called it an "anime doll."

 

i found dolls through anime too....It may not help that alot of us have and there are meetups and conventions... People see you, and label you. It IS a bit annoying because I do deal with thema nd think of them completly differently than anime things...

 

Or pure ignorance on your part to assume that anime and manga are not completely valid art forms in their own right with a broad variety of styles that go far beyond "pointy chins and big eyes." I hate to break it to you, but Cerberus Project, thus the sculptors of CP dolls, are actually a very well known anime/manga/game figure sculpting company. Their dolls look just like their PVC and resin figures. As for Sard, off the top of my head, he wouldn't look at all out of place with Minekura Kazuya's men. Some of them even have pointy ears.

I would hope that adults who play with dolls would realize it's a situation of the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to their obsession and dorkdom versus that of anime fans.

 

To be honest, i would pick the barbie. Sure barbie's are wholly western but to me they look more 2D and "cartoony." To me, Sard just looks like a person with hooves/horns slapped on. He lacks that "cartoon" quality.

And yes, Volks as generally accepted as the first modern BJD company and they are from Japan, but look at the companies that currently exist. South Korea outnumbers Japan in terms of BJD companies. Just because something started in one country doesn't mean it should be forever tied to that country. The human race as a whole originated in Africa. Are we all Africans? Does everyone look at other people and say "oh, they're from Africa!" No. Things should be tied to the country they originated from individually. And Japan =/= anime. Just because something is Japanese doesn't mean it has a tie to anime. If something is American, should we tie it to say, Disney? Saying BJDs have a connection to anime because they originated in Japan and have Asian aesthetic is like saying Barbies are "disney dolls" because they originated in the US and have a western aesthetic. It's really far to vague to make a valid arguement.

 

i hate when my dad calls Ari. "that anime doll" cuz he thinks anime is girls with short skirts and guys eyeing them,so i guess i take offense...he's warmed up to Ari now but he still calls her "that anime doll" sometimes

 

But they were influenced by dolls that began in Japan with a strong tie to anime. That influence is there albeit in a more indirect fashion. As I mentioned in an above post Korean companies have put out anime character dolls too. Why would you think that people from different countries aren't influenced by one another?

The argument is not a vague one and the aesthetic similarities are very strong. I'm not sure you should be basing your arguments around what you perceive anime and manga to look like, because it doesn't seem that you are very aware of the art styles it encompasses. Trust me, Sard looks far more anime like than Barbie does and if asked, most people would probably agree. You're trying so hard to distance your hobby from anime/manga that you're blinding yourself to what is very obviously there.