Super deformed

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For the nuclear physics topic, see Superdeformation.

Ryu drawn in a super deformed style, from the arcade game Pocket Fighter, known as Super Gem Fighter: Mini Mix in the United States.

Super Deformed is a specific form of Japanese caricature, in which characters are drawn in a highly exaggerated manner. Those characters are typically small and chubby with stubby limbs and oversized heads.

It is part of the Japanese culture, and is seen everywhere on Japan, from subway signs, advertisings, to anime and manga.

It is often also used on anime and manga in brief interjections, in order to show extreme or exaggerated emotion, especially in the cases of anger or surprise, that would be difficult to portray, or would seem out of character if expressed on the more realistic visage. They are meant to be cute and are often used in humorous diversions from the storyline.

Many amateur anime artists enjoy drawing super deformed characters because the style is considered cute and is relatively easy to draw. The head-to-body ratio of a super deformed character is normally anywhere between one half and one third, with the eyes taking up a majority of the space on the head. Some artists may use alternate proportions. Recent trends in anime have shifted away from super-deformed character designs, yet the traditional anime character designs remain. In life, heads are usually one eighth of a person's height. There are other exaggerated proportions (such as the 1/5th proportion, as used by Tales of Eternia, etc) that are popular in anime, but are not considered SD.

[edit] Appearances in other media

The Capcom fighting games Puzzle Fighter and Pocket Fighter featured characters from various Capcom fighting games, all portrayed in the SD style.
Several SNK fighting games on the Neo*Geo Pocket and Neo*Geo Pocket Color handheld devices employed SD style, including Nettou King of Fighters, Nettou Samurai Spirits, Gals Fighters, and SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium.
Mortal Kombat: Deception's Puzzle Kombat copies the concept introduced by Puzzle Fighter, including the super deformed characters.
Sega's Virtua Fighter Kids is Virtua Fighter 2 with the characters in the SD style.
Final Fantasy VII was the first in the Final Fantasy series to implement three-dimensional super deformed character models. However, in the battle mode and in many of the pre-rendered cinematic sequences, the characters were much more realistic. It is argued, though, that the use of SD animation in the game was not intentional, but instead necessary because of technological constraints on the polygon count. Likewise, many of the earlier, 2D sprite-based, games in the Final Fantasy series used SD character animation, as this was the only way to produce visible facial expressions on the small sprites.
SD Snatcher is a remake of Hideo Kojima's best seller Snatcher made by Kojima himself.
The not-so-popular Nintendo 64 fighting game, Flying Dragon, created by Natsume and Culture Brain, features two playing modes, one of them being the "SD Mode", where all the fighters are super deformed, showing happiness when they win or land a super move successfully, and showing pain when they are hit.
The recent television show Teen Titans uses excessive amounts of super deform.
The Super Robot Wars series typically features various Gundams, Super Robots, and other mecha as super deformed versions. Close-ups of the mecha during attack animations in later games in the series, however, are proportioned normally.
A special series of Gundam animation was produced called SD Gundam, the series was popular enough to land their own games and merchandise and also include itself to the Super Robot Wars Series.
Most of the characters from the anime Getbackers will morph into a child like form to express their emotions in any situation.
The title of Syd of Valis for the Sega Genesis is a mistranslation of "SD Valis", as it presents the events of Valis II in a super deformed style.
The well-known MMORPG Maple Story uses super deformed character models.