What's wrong with the big-eyed, shock-haired, androgynous males, anyway?

[rj_anderson]

drmm wrote, in response to Point #5 in my unpopular fannish opinions post:

But I like anime-style fan art. Of course, I like anime, which probably makes a big difference.

For the record, I like anime, too -- in fact, I was practically obsessed with it between the ages of eight and fifteen. Back then I had no idea how much of it there was, or what it was properly called: I only knew that on the French channel there were these gorgeous cartoons like nothing I'd ever seen before.

I didn't understand more than a couple words of French, but every Saturday morning I paid rapt attention to Albator (a.k.a. "Captain Harlock") and Capitaine Flam (otherwise known as "Captain Future" -- I just went to look up the English equivalent, and found this brilliant French site where I am now listening to the theme song I remember -- oh, the nostalgia!).

I was also a devotee of Star Blazers and Battle of the Planets a.k.a. Gatchaman, though I was thoroughly disgusted by the cheap and obvious patch-up job they'd done with American animation for all the "7-Zark-7" bits in the latter. And I watched the entire Macross saga, or at least as much of it as my local station showed -- to my horror they broke off halfway through the third part and I had to run out and buy the novelizations to find out what happened to my beloved Lancer. :)

So yes, I do like anime. I haven't time or opportunity to get into the fandom (and that's a good thing, because I could easily see it becoming an obsession), but there's nothing lacking in my appreciation of Japanese animation or manga.

The point I intended to make was not that anime-style art is horrible and wrong -- it's perfectly appropriate in anime-based fandoms, or if you happen to be a Japanese artist -- but I don't understand why there's such a preponderance of this style of art in fandoms which have no anime connection, such as HP. And there's a lot of carry-over from this, too, where writers and artists seem to take it for granted that the HP males are all bishounen -- which is so at odds with canon it's just weird.

A few anime-type drawings in a non-anime fandom are one thing; an overwhelming flood of them is another. I can find pretty pictures of pretty boys anywhere. But in HP fandom I would really like to see some more realistic illustrations of the characters as JKR describes them. That's all I meant.