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Why western animesque doesn't look like anime
It's the lips. "Actual" anime doesn't draw lips. But western professional animation illustrators insist on drawing them, for some reason.
Comments
So what's the line between "barely-defined lips" and "anime mouth"?
I don't think it's just the barely defined lips.
You don't see lips in this picture, but it still looks... well, more like a parody of anime style than something from an actual anime.
Probably because it kinda looks like bad Hetalia fanart.
^^ Hmm, you're right.
The other thing might be that anime tends to use relatively similar shapes for faces, while western animators use much more variation in face shapes. Or the general placement of facial features.
That said, that picture you posted looks more like anime than, say...
...where it's not just the faces but also the bodies that have been distorted. As much as I like to complain about things like noodle people, grossly oversized breasts, and other proportion issues in anime, it does on par tend to have relatively realistic body proportions when compared to something like the above, where we practically have stringy, more exaggerated limbs as a rule.
It IS true that this stuff is more "cartoony" in the sense of looking less "serious" and more like a stylistically exaggerated portrayal of the human body. I also have a hunch that the animation budget is probably higher.