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Anthropomorphic Shift: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"I think when you get to the point where [[Cars|a car]] is holding and firing a pistol with his [[Feather Fingers|tire/hand]], you have to ask yourself: ''Why'' are they even cars anymore?!?"''|''...of SCIENCE!''}}
Book one of the ''Fluffy Woodland Critters'' series introduced a society of [[Civilized Animal
A few years later, you're wandering through the bookstore, and spot book 20 in the series. Except... Now everyone's wearing clothing, cranky old Mr. Rabbit runs a general-store, Mr Wolf [[Carnivore Confusion|lives right next-door to him]] and Miss Mouse and Mrs. Cougar both wear the same dress size. What happened?
The series went through
Why? [[Most Writers Are Human|Because it's easier]] for us. Easier to write or draw, easier to deliver [[An Aesop]], easier for the younger audience to understand and sympathize with the characters when they don't even have to think about Mr. Wolf being nearly color-blind and just how Ms. Deer [[Feather Fingers|baked those cookies]] with those hooves.
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{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* While this didn't happen to individual [[Digimon]] in Digimon, it did happen with the design ethos of Digimon as a whole. In the initial birth of the franchise, humanoid Digimon were still given lots of unhuman traits to make sure the audience knew that they were still monsters. For instance, Angemon being [[The Faceless]] and possessing downy fur, and he was one of the most human ones. As the franchise progressed, new humanoid Digimon became more overtly humanoid and less monstrous: compare the fluffy and [[The Faceless]] enigmatic Angemon and Angewomon to Lucemon or Tinkermon (who are both essentially human children with wings and tattoos (and claws in the case of Tinkermon)), for example.
** Traditional anthropomorphic shift can still be seen in a handful of Digimon species. For example, comparing the scaly and reptilian Agumon from the original [[Virtual Pet]] to the round, glove-wearing Agumon from ''[[Digimon Savers]]''. Or comparing [[Expy]] subspecies, like the more dinosauroid Greymon to the more human-proportioned Geo Greymon.
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* A minor example from the Swedish children's comic ''[[Bamse]]'': As time went on character designs became more and more anthropomorphic (although they had always been very much so) as an example, quite a few of the early characters are stark naked (except for well, fur) while later characters tends to wear full human clothing.
* An intentional example of this phenomenon is the Franco-Belgian comic ''Chick Bill'', an animal cowboy in [[The Wild West]]. The artist, Gilbert Gascard aka "Tibet", wanted to draw his characters human, but [[Executive Meddling]] prevented him, so he started drawing them as furries and then ''gradually turned them human''.
* The Belgian comic ''Chlorophylle'' began with two adventuring mice, who spent several adventures before wandering into a ''[[Mouse World|miniature rodent society]]'' where they became [[Amateur Sleuth]] [[Intrepid Reporter
** The comic later got a TV show from it (and a pretty good one too), but it instead goes straight into [[Furry Confusion]]... As it combines mostly anthropomorphic puppets with live animals. And there's no particular difference in intelligence either.
* In the UK's ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' comic book series, aptly titled ''[[Sonic the Comic]]'', Sonic's allies Porker Lewis and Jonny Lightfoot start off as cute little animal critters like those busted out of Badniks in the games. They talk, but they're small, animal proportioned, without clothes and tend to go on all fours. Their shift, however, is anything but gradual: in issue #21 of the series, they are totally bipedal, human-proportioned and fully clothed (in biker jackets and jeans, to be precise). Within a few more issues, Porker's hooves became ordinary human hands.
** Within the somewhat official but fan-made ''[[Sonic the Comic Online]]'' comic, already shifted characters gained further shifts. In Sally's cameo for the 250th issue, she had been revamped to [http://www.stconline.co.uk/250/250/pinup/pinup_5_large.jpg look more like her Archie]{{Dead link}} counterpart compared to her game counterpart. Oddly though, other characters based off Sonic's animal friends from the Genesis games still look like their game versions (though Joe Sushi is wearing a jacket like Rotor).
** Strangely inverted in [[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|the Archie comics]] with Drago Wolf; before, he was just as humanoid as the other prominent Mobian characters. In a later comic, though, he was redesigned to be more feral and [[Our Werewolves Are Different|werewolf-esque]], complete with more animalistic eyes and digitigrade feet instead of plantigrade like he normally had.
** Played straight in that issue with Lupe, who almost looked human.
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* ''[[Ice Age]]'' - The first movie involved animals who could [[Animal Talk|talk to each-other but were otherwise not human-like at all]], and they rescued a baby human. Flash-forward a few years and the same animal characters now star in a short where one of them takes a group of animal youngsters ''camping''. The hell?
* The Rock-Biter had this in ''[[The Neverending Story (film)|The Neverending Story]]''. In the first movie, he is a giant creature sitting in the mountains. In the third he is living with his family in a [[Sitcom]]-like household which even (somewhat undermining the series' message) has a TV.
* In the first ''[[The Lion King]]'' film, one of the few times when one of the lions used a paw like a hand was Scar in the gag scene when he used a skull as a puppet. Otherwise, paws were paws, and used the way most cats use their paws. In ''TLK2'', the paws suddenly became inexplicably dexterous hands which the cats used in a humanlike
** Simba used his paws when it came to bugs, and in a human-like way, in the first movie.
* Todd the [[Toy Story (franchise)|Pizza Planet truck]] from ''[[Cars]]''.
** Inverted with Snot Rod (he appears on Andy's calendar) in ''[[Toy Story 3]]''.
** Doc Hudson actually first appeared as a non-anthropomorphic Hudson Hornet seen near the end of ''[[The Incredibles]]''.
** Back to ''[[Toy Story 3]]'', this was also played straight with Finn McMissile, who first appeared as a non-anthro car on one of Andy's posters.
* Inverted with Cyril Proudbottom, a [[Partially-Civilized Animal]] in ''[[The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad]]'', but he's a [[Nearly-Normal Animal]] in ''[[Mickey's Christmas Carol]]''.
* The Toad in ''[[Flushed Away]]'' apparantly went through this during his [[Start of Darkness]].
* Baby Po in ''[[Kung Fu Panda 2]]'' is a [[Nearly-Normal Animal]], unlike his adult form, which is a [[Funny Animal]].
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*** Jacques never quite succeeded in explaining why Ninian's house had pews and a lectern, either. And it's hard to remove all traces of religion when the main characters live in an abbey, the leader is an abbot or abbess, and a dozen characters in any given book are called Brother or Sister.
*** Oh, and interestingly enough, [[wikipedia:Saint Ninian|St. Ninian]] happens to be real.
* As stated elsewhere, ''[[Dinotopia]]'' author/illustrator James Guerney never met an animal-related trope he liked. He strongly dislikes it when animal characters act too human and has [http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/02/animal-characters-4-animal-morphism.html written in his blog] about how he himself has has struggled to avoid this. It's worth noting that a few of the spinoff novels and the films have featured animal characters that are indeed anthropomorphic or nearly so. [[Canon
* While mild compared to many examples, in the ''[[Duncton Wood]]'' books, the shift in mole behavior between the first book and its extension to a trilogy, and especially between the first and second trilogies, is quite noticeable.
* ''[[Angelina Ballerina]]'' actually portrayed all of the mice as [[Civilized Animal
* The mice in the film adaptation of ''[[The Tale Of Desperaux]]'' are more anthropomorphized than the ones in the book.
* In the ''[[Arashi no Yoru ni]]'' books the characters look like regular animals. The manga and anime made them more anthro but they're still very natural. The 2012 cartoon based off the books gave them more human-like expressions. [http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/5679/1334424288293.jpg For comparisons sake].
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== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* ''[[Garfield]]'' still acts mostly like a cat but just look at his earliest strips (before 1982) and compare them to now. Once he learned to walk on his hind legs, all bets were off.
** Odie has retained his inability to talk (or... "think-talk"), but otherwise does not resemble the slobbering pooch from the comic's early days. He's still [[The Ditz]], though.
* Snoopy from ''[[Peanuts]]'', after Charlie Brown taught him to walk upright in 1958.
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* Inverted in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. While he still tended to walk upright, unless about to pounce Calvin, Hobbes became increasingly more cat-like as the strip progressed (Watterson himself even noted of it), and would often be seen doing typical cat things such as sleeping in front of the window, and scratching himself with his foot when left to his own devices.
* Bill the Cat from ''[[Bloom County]]'' became considerably taller and somewhat more human-proportioned over time.
* At least partly justified with Otto in ''[[Beetle Bailey]]''
== [[Video Games]] ==
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*** One of the more important distinctions between Achewood and uh other webcomics is that Onstad clearly doesn't give a shit about [[Fan Wank|this stuff]]. Characters are [[Rule of Funny|as anthropomorphic as the gag or story arc demands]].
* Inverted in ''[[Digger]]''. In the beginning, the main character had a [[Non-Mammal Mammaries|slight bust]] to indicate that she was female. These were removed, and now she just looks like any other wombat to human eyes.
* Most characters in ''[[The Beast Legion]]'' transform into beasts. Some examples can be found [http://www.thebeastlegion.com/issue-01-page-30-commence-the-attack-2/ 1], [http://www.thebeastlegion.com/issue-04-page-45-dragos-transforms/ 2], [http://www.thebeastlegion.com/issue-06-page-02-suryas-awe/ 3].
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* [[Woody Woodpecker]] started off looking very avian like ([[Deranged Animation|and very deranged at that]]) but later switched to a more streamlined, [[Funny Animal]] like design.
* ''[[My Little Pony]] Tales'' is easily the strangest example. The original ''[[My Little Pony]]'' series took place in a fantasy universe (so the few instances of what would have [[Furry Confusion]] were [[Justified Trope|justified]] at least a little). The "Tales" series, on the other hand, had the Ponies ''acting'' exactly like humans, living in houses and involved in such exciting adventures as going to school and so forth. The thing is, the Ponies ''remained unclothed, quadrupedal equines''. Ask yourself [[Feather Fingers|how a creature with hooves]] is supposed to manipulate (or even invent, since there was no mention at all of humans) an electric guitar. ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' takes a step back in comparison to this, but not all the way back: fantasy setting with no humans, but largely "human" paraphernalia, hoof [[Feather Fingers]] avoided but only as far as it's not too inconvenient.
* In his early cartoons, [[Droopy]] was a [[Civilized Animal]] who would switch between two-legged and four-legged stances, but in the later cartoons, he is a definite [[Funny Animal]] who would stay on two legs all or most of the time depending on the cartoon.
* ''[[The Raccoons]]'' originally had the animal heroes and humans co-exist in the same world and even though the animals had furniture in their homes, they still lived in trees etc and in general tried to give an illusion of living as a part of nature. In later seasons the humans completely disappeared, the amount of animal characters increased from a small group to a large community with stores and other services like broadcasting and rail transportation systems, the animals started to live in houses, the pet dog the humans had became the owner of a local pub and it became quite clear that the whole world was inhabited by animals who had a significant amount of technology and culture in their hands (paws).
** But the Raccoons still lived in a tree. And to add further confusion, when Ralph's brother's family moved into the forest, they lived in a tree which looked like a normal house on the inside. And had a ''garage''.
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*** He was even portrayed as a [[Funny Animal]] in the black and white cartoon "Blue Rhythm."
*** Note that Pluto's Scooby-like talking was all in his first year on the screen (''The Moose Hunt'' and ''Mickey Steps Out'', both 1931). There's a later cartoon where he ''thinks'' in a growly voice (''Mickey's Kangaroo'' [1935]), but that doesn't count. It clearly took a little time to determine exactly what Pluto could normally do, but once set, it was permanent.
** Inverted: Pluto and [[Figaro]] ([[Canon Immigrant]] from ''[[Pinocchio (Disney film)|Pinocchio]]'') were already "non-anthro" to begin with, but in ''[[Mickey Mouse Clubhouse]]'', they act almost like normal animals. Before that, they were a little more likely to stand [[Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better|bipedally]] and use their paws like human hands.
** The only time that Mickey and Minnie ever appeared as full-on rodents, right down to being smaller than their domestic surroundings, was in a cartoon that curiously came ''after'' having been anthropomorphic animals in a few other shorts (''Plane Crazy,'' ''Steamboat Willie,'' etc.). This cartoon is ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66AYGjkN4vE When the Cat's Away]'' (1929). For all the most obvious reasons, this interpretation was never seen again.
** Similarly, Walt Disney's original cartoon star, [[Oswald the Lucky Rabbit]], was more rabbit-like in his earlier shorts. By 1928, however, the only thing that could distinguish him as a rabbit was his ears and tail. Until [[Walter Lantz]] obtained the rights to the character and gave him a design ''[[Subverted|more]]'' rabbit-like than his 1927 appearance ([[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|which is most likely one of the reasons Oswald's popularity plummeted]].) [[Double Subverted|Until Disney bought him in 2006 and gave him back his 1928 look.]]
** [[Pete]] was originally a bear and since ''[[Steamboat Willie]]'', is supposed to be a cat, thus why he has a [[Animal Stereotypes|rivalry with Mickey Mouse]]. However, you can only really tell in the first few shorts he's in, including ''[[Steamboat Willie]]''. In more contemporary cartoons like [[Goof Troop]], his design is such that many assumed him to be a dog or [[Dogface]]. [[House of Mouse]] actually had to take the time to remind us that Pete is, in fact, a feline through some [[Furry Reminder]] jokes.
** Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar of the [[Classic Disney Shorts|old Disney cartoon shorts]] and comics started out as actual four-legged non-anthropomorphic barnyard animals and alternated between anthro and non-anthro roles before becoming full-fledged [[Funny Animal]] characters alongside Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and the others.
** [[Chip and Dale]] started out as [[Talking Animal
** Inverted with Zeke [[The Big Bad Wolf]] at the end of ''[[Three Little Pigs]]''.
* Although subtle, by the third season of ''[[The Animals of Farthing Wood]]'', the animals were more human in movement than at the beginning (especially the weasels).
* Interesting example, [[Betty Boop]] was originally a poodle. Seriously. Soon after her first cartoon, her ears were remade into earrings and curly fur became flapper girl hair. So by extension, people who regard Betty [[Perverse Sexual Lust|sex symbol]] are in fact [[Furry Fandom|furries]].
* Brian in ''[[Family Guy]]'' follows the [[Rule of Funny]]; while usually unclothed except for his dog collar, he normally is a martini-drinking, Prius-driving (the only identifiable car in the series), bipedal urban sophisticate. When he exhibits canine behavior, it's played for laughs. He did, however, sit like a dog and generally acted more canine in the earliest episodes.
* [[Scooby Doo]] was suffering this by the mid-80s. He was seen walking on two legs all the time (it didn't help that his four legged design was not changed) and he was becoming somewhat less of a [[Speech-Impaired Animal]]. It seems to have been reversed beginning with ''[[A Pup Named Scooby
* Tom of ''[[Tom and Jerry]]'' undergoes this. He looked like a real cat in the first short, but over time the change was striking. He [[Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better|began to walk upright more and more often]]. Other characters underwent a similar transformation, though Jerry himself changed very little over the course of the series, having always been [[Funny Animal|somewhat anthropomorphic]].
** [[Tom and Jerry]] both show an increased manual dexterity and interest in human activities over the years.
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** Played straight more so in ''[[Taz-Mania]]''. While Taz was originally anthropomorphic in the original shorts, he was something of a wild predator. In the TV show, he has a fully anthro family, and, while still [[The Unintelligible]], he seems to have much more prominent uses of coherent English.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVos-3b4p6w&feature=player_detailpage#t=173s This sequence] from the [[MGM]] short "Sheep Wrecked" demonstrates this trope in short bursts. The lamb starts out as a normal animal (not unlike the sheep that came before or since), but when the plunger the wolf fires catches it and starts dragging it away, it turns into a [[Funny Animal]] and wraps its arms around the fence. We cut to a shot of the wolf as he pulls off some of the lamb's wool, and when we cut back to the lamb, it has been anthropomorphized even further into a [[Petting Zoo People|Petting Zoo Person]]. "Now there's a right purdy [[A Worldwide Punomenon|leg of lamb]]."
* Shaun and his flock in ''[[Wallace and Gromit]]: A Close Shave'' are [[Largely Normal Animal
* A large premise of ''[[Tale Spin]]'', which places a few characters from ''[[The Jungle Book (Disney film)|The Jungle Book]]'' into a human like civilization. In the film the animals were natural wild animals with their anthro traits more limited or utilized for humor value. Granted, it varies. For example, Baloo and Louie are nearly identical to their ''Jungle Book'' forms outside being clothed. On the other hand, in ''Jungle Book'' Shere Khan was a four legged animal who only made subtle use of his "hands" similar to the ''Lion King'' examples; in ''Tale Spin'', he stands on his hind legs and is wears a business suit. All three characters have one thing in common, though: they want to get rich (or in Khan's case, rich''er'').
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