I was talking about the difference between western and eastern cartoons with my middle schoolers the other day at work and realized I had a few of my facts wrong, so now that I have another means of making my distinctions I'll go ahead and do that here.
After watching Popeye and Betty boop, and the dwarves in snow white, I began to notice a trend in Western cartoons. Walt Disney once said that all cartoons are characatures, and that is just what Western cartoons mostly are. Over exaggerated people who can be easily determined even by just a sillouhette of their forms. Cartoons give us characters that are wildly different, and for the most part the story is about them. Western stories are more about (or were I should say, as the line between east and west has quickly gone away since the 90's) the character than the world. Our mode of story is very character driven, not story driven. There is no sense of destiny, we are in control, we have an ego.
Eastern comics are different. Their characters used to vary as wildly as ours did, but now many anime's and mangas have capitalized on a common style and their differences come in eyes, hair and simple changes in body type that are for the most part realistic. You don't see the forearms of popeye or the odd shortness of dexter. Their differences make them easily relatable, if sometimes samey. But besides character design the difference also lies in story. Anime gives you a definite sense of pacing and place. Where you are as important as who you are. Destiny, the story, takes a front seat to what the character thinks.
There are of course, more differences, but I wanted to take this time to point out the key difference I have seen (With a little help from Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics")
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