Big eyed, pointy-chinned character design seems rather fitting in Casshern Sins, where robots have replaced humans. Sure, a number of the robots are more primitive designs, but a lot of the main cast are functionally undistinguishable from shiny anime humanity.

Which at least makes the moeblobs amusing.

The sleek character designs serve as a representation of an artificial humanity with artificially existential obsessions, at the pinnacle of which is the superhero character - the crown prince of gleaming skin and the self-managing quiff. He’s surrounded by robots gone rusty and they clash in a world crumbling apart.

Which means, visually, that Casshern Sins is playing a consistent game with its textures. Three layers: the pristine humanlikes, the rusting battlebots (proletarian!), the massively decayed landscape. A hierarchy of texture, from clean-cut hero to detailed backdrop.

Which set me to thinking about the presence or absence of textural contrast elsewhere in anime. It’s an effect which is at its most obvious when the line is drawn between characters and backgrounds - like the occasions in Bakemonogatari where a CG backdrop is taken up for a scene or two, or the simplicity of the human beings set against the lush backdrops of Mushishi.

As for why this issue sprung out at me while watching Casshern Sins, it probably has something to do with my own qualms in relation to that style of design. What this show seems to do is take that visual tendency and match it to (artificial) personalities whose aristocratic extremes of behaviour fit with their streamlined appearance. It then places those characters in an overwhelmingly miserable world. Hyper-stylised character design as a match for a tendency to deal in comical extremes of personality then. With the reality of decay as the persistent counterpoint.