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Only Six Faces: Difference between revisions
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[http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/10/thesamefaces3.jpg Not so in cartoons]. At the very least, a Child, Teenager, and Adult of both sexes will be distinct from each other (often solely [[Teens Are Short|by height]]). Afterwards, all bets are off.
[[Impossibly Cool Clothes]] or [[Hair Colors|unusual hairstyles]] can create an extremely powerful framing effect, meaning the rest of the character's design may be quite simple as a shortcut. The unfortunate result may be a fundamentally homogenized
As East Asians culturally focus on eye and face shape to identify faces to a large degree, anime and manga typically uses a large amount of [[Eye Tropes|variation on eyes]] rather than changing the rest of the face. Similarly, western superheroes often look alike aside from their distinctive costumes depending on the artist. Female characters seem especially susceptible to this, due the emphasis on the character's stylised and stereotyped attractiveness/cuteness further limiting any unusual variation.
When applied in excess to secondary characters, it can become [[Faceless Masses]]. The
This is an actual documented issue in ancient art history. Surviving [[wikipedia:Fayum mummy portraits|burial portraits from Roman Egypt]] resemble each other more than real people would. The painters must have mixed-and-matched a limited repertoire of features, making this trope [[Older Than Feudalism]]. (This could also be due to Ancient Egyptian art's long history of making people look good, rather than realistic.)
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' and its sequels/spinoffs have about four basic body and face types - and character designer Hisashi Hirai's every work after Gundam Seed (''[[Heroic Age]]'', ''[[Fafner in The Azure Dead Aggressor]]'') features the exact same character designs, arguably due to ''Gundam Seed's'' great success. (Which is a shame because he was quite versatile in his earlier works.) It gets a little absurd when you notice that the only difference between Kazuki from ''Fafner'' and Shinn from ''SEED Destiny'' is eye color.
** And then there's Ryo in the prequel OVA, who looks
** This can be pretty confusing in ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' games with two of these series if you have watched neither.
** This let him earned his [[Fan Nickname]] and [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Pun]] in Chinese that translates to Bottle neck dog corpse, indicating he cannot get through his design bottle neck and kept using the same face over and over.
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* [[Ken Akamatsu]]'s extensive cast of females usually end up like this:
** In the most extreme example, [[Master of Disguise]] Kanako seems almost a [[Lampshade Hanging]], easily dressing up as any of the ''[[Love Hina]]'' characters and even passing off the big-breasted Mutsumi as Keitaro with little more than some makeup and hair styling, glasses, and a [[Sarashi]].
** The first ''[[Negima]]'' animated series also received flak for changing the hairstyles of the girls to more bold/garish colors. Interestingly, its creator [[Sure Why Not|
** The spinoff manga ''[[Negima Neo]]'' is really bad about this; pick two random characters who are doing a [[Moe Stare]] and their faces will probably look exactly the same.
** In [[Cute Ghost Girl|Sayo]]'s profile, he apologized for basically making her a white-haired Konoka.
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** Android 18 is distinctive from ''all'' other female designs, while even Bulma has some resemblance to the generic female. 18 has a very different nose and eyes, probably because she was one of the only serious female fighters in the series. However, jet black her hair and you have Android 17. They are meant to be twins, but come on, must they have even the same 'do, color difference apart? The similarity between the 17 and 18, along with them both having rather stand-out designs, could be intentionally invoking the [[Uncanny Valley]].
** Many of the main character's faces look very similar, with only small changes; Tenshinhan, Yamucha, Vegeta, and the adult versions of Goku, Gohan and Trunks all share several major features (thick eyebrows, pointy nose, large eyes). All of the above characters except Trunks also have the same eye color/design (plain black pupil, color indistinguishable). The only characters from the Cell-era group that really stick out physically are Chaozu (who is barely a speaking part at this point), Piccolo and Krillin.
** Oddly, the villains seem immune - even bit players like Zarbon are given more distinct looks. And barring genetic resemblances, the main villains do not have look-alikes anywhere else in the series, while the heroes all resemble each other. The unique-villains, generic-heroes pattern is rigid enough that Vegeta, who was eventually destined for the heroes' side, already looked familiar on his first appearance; and Piccolo, who looked unique as a villain in
*** The Namekians can be excused since most of them are [[Truly Single Parent|siblings]].
*** Raditz is an exception to that unique-villain rule. If he and Vegeta had both appeared together before the revelation that he was Son Goku's brother, many would likely confuse him for being Vegeta's brother.
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* [[Leiji Matsumoto]] tends to use the same faces over and over again. Sometimes it's explained (Mamoru Kodai was supposed to be Captain Harlock, for example), and sometimes it's not.
** ''All'' of his female characters look near identical, especially in [[Galaxy Express 999]] and [[Captain Harlock]].
* Earlier art for the ''[[Slayers]]'' novels have fairly distinguishable characters; as the [[Art Evolution]] set in, though, each character, moreso the females, become more and more identical facially and body-wise (which is
** To be specific, most of the females look like Lina, with Lina's new distinguishing mark being her [[Nipple-and-Dimed|nipples sticking out everywhere]].
* ''[[Claymore]]'' can be weird about this. While all of the titular characters have fairly distinct facial features (impressive, given their identical coloration and uniformly unblemished skin), the unimportant human characters share maybe four or five faces between them, while important humans have distinctive faces.
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** Random villagers in Inyuasha tend to have more elongated faces than her main characters, though. you can basically tell who's going to be important to the episode by the presence or absence of the basic faces - if he looks like Miroku, you're either going to have to save him or kill him.
** The first time I saw a sneak preview of Wasted Minds, I ''swore'' she was doing a reboot of Maison Ikkoku.
** Rumiko Takahashi's use of Only Six Faces is most present in [[Ranma ½]]. As most of the characters are
* ''[[Mushishi]]'': Realistic hair and clothing, combined with simplified faces, means great difficulty telling most of the characters apart.
* From manga to manga, Mishima Kazuhiko's characters tend to look the same.
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** Several characters also strongly resemble each other; its usually justified though as most are either related in some way, or the resemblance is deliberately symbolic (for instance, Yahiko/ Deva Pain looks almost exactly like an older Naruto; this is probably to reflect his status as an [[Evil Counterpart]]).
* Basically all of [[Arina Tanemura|Arina Tanemura's]] main heroines have a similar face, [[Big Eyes, Little Eyes|gigantic-eyed and all]], with eye-size variations and her male characters only occasionally bear different-sized eyes and pupils. She is fond of long hair so most of heroines also have [[Rapunzel Hair]], though she does style it differently from character to character.
* Kaori Yuki was guilty of this during
* [[Bizenghast]] is very much a victim of this. Almost all the young women and men, including Vincent and Dinah, have the same face with different hair. (The old men and women were slightly less subjected to it.) They all seem to have the same height as well.
* Studio [[Gainax]]'s Yoshiyuki Sadamoto even satirized himself with this; pointing out that you could draw [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Shinji]] by drawing [[Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water|Nadia]]'s face [http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/show/16767/ with different hair.]
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** It varies from artist to artist, sometimes Cheryl Blossom and Melody have the same body as every other girl. Cheryl Blossom is lucky enough to get a slightly different face most of the time, though.
** In one comic, Betty and Veronica both dyed their hair red. Aside from hair ''style'', they looked identical.
*** For astute readers this becomes something of a
* Much of the cast of ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' restyle or dye their hair throughout the series—a very bad move considering Bryan Lee O'Malley can draw approximately 2 faces ('standard' and 'long', with optional female characteristics for the latter if you're lucky), and uses the same one for all recurring characters. Freckles are employed twice... and fail to distinguish the two identical blondes to which they're applied. This leads to interminable stretches of "Aren't those two together anymore? Who is that? Isn't she in America? I thought he was with them"...
** Not to mention the comic is in black and white.
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* ''[[Artesia]]''. It's more like two - one for men and one for women. Mark Smylie paints almost everything with great detail - human faces being the exception. There are certain variations, like slightly wider noses, wrinkles and scars. The only way to really tell the characters apart is hair and facial hair. With the Ensemble Cast, it sometimes makes things confusing. The old Artesia website used to have a Character Sheet, but the new one does not.
* Maybe not faces, but for Kevin Maguire, it's expressions. Look at Superbuddies or his JLI runs and you'll see the same confused expressions on the faces of the JLI
* Franco Urru's art on ''[[Angel]]'' spin-off comics - his male characters are pretty individual but his
* Charlie Adlard's art for ''[[The Walking Dead (comics)|The Walking Dead]]'' is especially bad with this, at least in the beginning of his tenure. He seems to have one stock "Unshaven White Guy With Large Nose and Scowl" face that he uses pretty much constantly for at least three or four different main characters, and most of the women (and Glen) are only identifiable by their hair and/or hats. In shots that just show the face, the reader has little clue who they're looking at, outside of the dialogue. On top of that, the range of expression for the vast majority of Adlard's characters is exactly one: semi-stoic serious face. This is especially notable since the first six issues were drawn by Tony Moore, who actually made all of the characters look very distinct from one-another, especially Lori (Rick's wife). Tony Moore being a complete and total aversion of this trope makes Charlie Adlard's work following Moore's departure all the more jarring, though he has visibly improved over time.
* ''[[Millie the Model]]'' often consciously imitated the [[Archie Comics]] style and had many of the same artists (including Dan [DeCarlo] and Stan Goldberg. Unsurprisingly, the feature often shared this trope with Archie as well.
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* The girls of ''[[Bible Black]]'' are not only limited to a single face, they all have the same body figure, and CGs featuring more of them will clearly show that they all have the same heights. It's like they are all clones with different hair and accessories.
** The anime series mostly attempts to avert this, as the character designer seems to have done their best at making the women as distinguishable as possible from one another. Character models show that, at least for the named characters, they attempted giving each male and female different figures and body types, and all of them are different heights. This is not completely averted however, as certain characters do look quite a bit alike and un-named background characters are sometimes identical to others.
* The guys of ''[[Dead or Alive]]'' are easy to tell apart, but the girls all have the same vaguely-childlike face, and the same build. It gets even more noticeable when you look at Team Ninja's
** Well, that's not ''entirely'' true. Close inspection reveals that there are, in fact, ''two'' female models in the game, the tall, incredibly well-endowed Caucasian, and the petite, yet still incredibly well-endowed Asian (or [[But Not Too Foreign|half-Asian]]).
* Akihiko Yoshida is notorious for this. Almost every character he designs (particularly in games like [[Final Fantasy Tactics]] and sequels, and [[Final Fantasy III]] (DS)) has the same face, albeit with a few characteristics. It's quite an accomplishment when even some of the males and females look the same.
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