Matt Schley
July 19, 2022 
Every night, I wake up in a cold sweat, the following question on my trembling lips: why did old anime characters have such big chins?
Now, thanks to veteran animator Kenji Yokoyama, I can finally sleep through the night.
Sez Yokoyama in a recent tweet:
The reason anime characters used to have big chins is that when drawing on cels, it was a pain to redraw the chin each time the character opened their mouth. If you draw a large enough chin, you can draw the open mouth on a separate cel, place it over the first cel, and it’ll still fit.
Yokoyama also posted an image to illustrate what he meant.
Makes sense!
Kenji Yokoyama has been working as an animator for 40 years, and has participated in the making of such classics as Slam Dunk, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece and Digimon.
昔のアニメのキャラクターのアゴが大きかったのは、セル画だとアゴごと口パクさせるのが面倒な作業だったからです。アゴを大きめに描くことで、別セルに分けて描いた大きく開けた口が顔に収まるように調整した結果、そうなったのではないかと思ってます。 pic.twitter.com/TXgMRUEVCD
— 横山健次 – アニメーター（作画監督・原画） Kenji Yokoyama (@ky_anime_lab) July 17, 2022
Source: Otakomu
