Curiosity about Gosho's drawing style?

[BlackLabel 0]

I always had curiosity on Gosho's unique drawing style for the eyes. For instance, characters from Japan would have that unique eye/iris drawing style whereas foreigners and Black Organization members have a simpler style for their irises(Except for Mizunashi Rena and Rei Furuya when they're not posing as Black Org.). Japanese characters, when surprised or scared, have their iris style changed into the more simpler style. Also, some characters have smaller irises than others, usually female characters have big ones while male characters tend to have smaller ones, for the exception of a few. Is there any particular reason for this?

Examples:

 

Conan, who is Japanese.

 

When surprised.

 

Jodie, who is from the USA.

 

Chianti, who is Black Org.

 

Rei Furuya, who is Japanese.

 

Rei posing as Bourbon/Black Org.

[Chekhov MacGuffin 1089]

The eye style changes to suit the mood. Manga artists (and anyone who draws quickly) learn to refine their styles to a few forms they can draw efficiently. The bigger pupil eye looks cuter, and so is the standard for characters who are supposed to look cute or normal. The smaller pupil eye (the so-called foreigner style) is used for characters who need to look mature or threatening. Gosho actually has a separate eye style for foreigners, but it is only used on background characters because it isn't very endearing. It is used in the New York case and some of the background FBI in Red vs Black.

If you are talking art generally, in both western an eastern styles, eyes and pupils are drawn larger than they are in real life to both convey expression clearly and because it is more attractive.

 

Because Japan is a very homogenous country racially speaking, that leads to some interesting style outcomes. Face shape is relatively emphasized. In a country where pretty much everyone has black hair and dark eyes, it isn't useful to describe someone's hair or eye color. Instead an asian might describe someone with a wide face or a narrow face. Gosho shows this very strongly, especially for the suspects who have a wide variety of face shapes.

Asian artists have a much lower threshold for what is considered light hair. For instance, Haibara's hair color is "chapatsu", which is this color in real life. It's quite dark, yet an asian comic artist like Gosho uses white for it. A western comic artist would definitely draw that color with a dark grey color or even black and reserve white for blond and light brown.