Written by: Ashwot Acharya - 22021, Grade XII
Posted on: 23 November, 2021
Character development is a literary tool used by writers to express how the character has grown in terms of understanding and gives the characters some depth. This way the plot line becomes more interesting as there is a certain motivation to the character.
As said from the article from masterclass, without a clear sense of who the characters are and what his motivations and personality are and how they develop the characters becomes dull and thus the novel becomes boring. The same applies for anime as well but this does not mean that the character development is fully necessary. Especially in comedy anime we do not see a lot of character development because that is not really needed. For example In the anime Aho girl , we do not at all see the characters develop. Then how would you make the anime interesting, and fun to watch ? This is covered by characterization.
An example of a great character development would be re-zero . Here not only you see some depth to the character but who and what he likes , his mindset and how that changes over time ( may contain spoilers) The time when Subaru continuously dies and comes back alive to change the outcome and to stop Rem from dying and his change of attitude towards rem and ram these all different things are clearly seen. This could be a great example of character development.
Characterization
Characterization technique used to describe a character, his/her nature features , his/her likes dislikes etc. In the video by BobSamurai:What is Character Development & Characterization? He explains how Edward Elric is considered as a good character. I highly recommend you watch it .
In the video he talks about how Elric doesn't like to be called small which shows that he is uncomfortable when being called a shrimp. The fact that he doesn't like to drink milk . These small details are of no use to the plot and have no effect on the story line but what it does is give a character a certain depth. This also shows that the characters are not perfect and this helps the character development. It creates a proper environment for development that makes the story interesting and better than simply introduction to character and straight to the plot.
Characterization is the most important as without it we do not at all know what the story or who the story is about, anime is no fun without a proper characterization. In comedy anime where there is not a lot of character development the characterization takes over. This sometimes makes it so that the characters do not need any character development. A good example would be "Nezuko'' from "kimetsu no yaiba" (may contain spoilers). The only thing shown in the anime about "Nezuko '' is that after she changes into demons she comes to get the idea that Demons are bad and humans are good. This characterization makes it so that the characters don't need a lot of development which makes it easier for the writers. Nezuko may have more development later in the manga but so far in the anime it doesn't have a lot.
Characterization and its importance can be seen clearly as we would love to watch anime where the characters are really nicely described as it creates an amazing setting but even if the plot of the anime is good and the setting is not attractive the story again starts to become dull.
Character Growth
Character growth is sometimes mistaken for character development. But they are completely different. Character growth could be like a character could train some skills they already have and be better like in the anime "Naruto" , Naruto learns Rasengan which is a result of his training and he also learnt something new but there is not a lot of character development in that section of the anime.
The reason people get confused in character growth is that when character growth happens in the anime it sometimes comes together with character development Which BobSamurai has talked about in his video . Taking an example of "Kimetsu no Yaiba" when "Tanjro" trains he learns something about sword art which is a skill and is character growth but in the process of learning sword art he learns about the death of old students , and that affects his growth mentally and his view starts changing. This can somewhat be considered as character development. But before he learns sword art his training of running from the top of the hill to increase his stamina is character growth.
Character growth may or may not affect the storyline of the anime but it adds to the thrill as we love to see characters grow to become stronger and better . This reason is why character growth and character development are sometimes kept together. This reason is why people get confused with development and growth.
References:
youtube : BobSamurai, What is character Development? And character development
