Early Installment Character Design Difference / Anime & Manga

Early Installment Character-Design Difference in Anime & Manga.

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• 3×3 Eyes:
  • When he first appeared, Coco seemingly had a small head with a gaping, monstrous mouth with fangs which apparently opened up in a diamond shape, as well as a bunch of tentacles instead of his right arm. When he appears later, both his arms look the same and he has a broad but normal mouth, while his head without his mask appears to be slightly larger than usual (though given that he can transform the changes may be slightly justified).
  • Minor antagonist Kelara was first introduced as an attractive demoness with a boyish face and unusually large breasts. When she reappears later she has the same slim body but her breasts are reduced in size and shape, her eyes are rounder and she has visible lipstick, giving her a more feminine face.
• In the earliest chapters of Azumanga Daioh, Chiyo's Girlish Pigtails look like actual hair before they gradually become more like solid shapes as the manga goes through Art Evolution; her eye color additionally changes from blue to brown, reflected in the black-and-white strips by her eyes going from light gray in close-ups to the same dark color as her peers. Her anime design uses her later hairstyle from the beginning, though the redrawn strips in the 2009 reprint retain her old hairstyle in the earliest chapters.
• In early chapters of Banana Fish, Ash's hair was initially short and fluffy◊. His hairstyle eventually becomes longer and wilder as the manga goes through Art Evolution, with his anime design sticking closer to his later manga design.
• Berserk:
  • The short called "Berserk Prototype". Guts notably had an eyepatch over his missing eye. In the manga proper Guts also initially had smaller and narrower eyes along with a rounder head, his eyes get bigger for the Golden Age and Fantasia arc and eventually his head is drawn to be more angular too with him having a noticeable Lantern Jaw of Justice. This could be because he keeps growing from his teens through his early 20s, like many real men.
  • Puck the fairy when he was first seen in the Black Swordsman arc had a noticeably curvy feminine figure to the point of having an Ambiguous Gender. When he reappears in the Lost Children arc he is obviously boyish and skinny (when not in his chibi state).
  • Femto is noticeably more bulky and muscular in the Guardians of Desire chapter than he is during the Fantasia arc, in which Femto is depicted with Griffith's usual lithe, slender body type. As Griffith his hair was actually quite puffy originally before getting changed into the wavy look.
  • Casca when she very first debuted in manga had a rounded head, brows close to her eyes and her signature Ambiguously Brown skin was absent. After five year Time Skip her well known look was finalised albeit her head much like Guts is still quite round and wouldn’t be depicted as angular until much later on. Casca is also depicted as having smaller breasts and more androgynous figure as an athletic teenager in the first half of the Golden Age, and it’s only in the latter half and beyond that she develops the unmistakably feminine figure and larger bosom of an adult woman.
  • Skull Knight when he first appears in the Golden Age has smaller pauldrons and horned collar and his skull is realistically shadowed making him look very threatening. When he appears later his pauldrons and collar are way bigger and his skull is less shadowed making him look more friendly (well as friendly as a skull can look).
• Black Lagoon: Revy didn't settle on her haircut until later in the series. This is one of few things the anime changed. In it, she has that haircut from the start. Furthermore in Chapter 0, Revy actually has got a bob cut hairdo rather than the Tomboyish Ponytail she’s known for.
• Bleach:
  • The pattern on Ichigo's hollow mask kept getting changing over the course of the manga, to the point it was acknowledged in-universe.
  • Ichigo's inner Hollow had black teeth in his first appearance, but in subsequent appearances had white teeth.
  • Ichigo's hollowfied appearance introduced during his training with the Visoreds looks very little like the finalized version manifested during his fight with Ulquiorra.
• The early colour pages of Brave10 have several characters with different hair and eye colour than what the creator eventually settled on. Isanami goes from green to pale blue to white hair, Saizo's eyes shift from brown to blue, Rokuro seems to wear purple lipstick and gets an eye-dye job in the anime to purple while they become increasingly blood red in the artwork.
• Captain Tsubasa: Yuzo Morisaki, the goalkeeper for Nankatsu SC who filled in for Genzo Wakabayashi in the finals, was revealed in the databooks and a prequel chapter focused on Genzo that he was the reserve keeper for Shutetsu. However, the first chapters of the manga (and both the 80s and 2018 anime series) show him with a very different appearance to the one he's known for, as the unnamed keeper who fills in for Genzo while he's training for the match against Nankatsu. See here.
• Death Note:
  • Back in early chapters when L was The Faceless, he was drawn as an "attractive young man", with straighter posture, a more angular face, better-fitted clothing, and curlier hair. However, Obata started experimenting with his design until the face reveal, where he is skinnier with spikier hair and loose clothing. Even then, he was still occasionally drawn with eyebrows for a little while.
  • Mello originally had white hair because his character wasn't finalized and he was meant to resemble Near. Later he was given blond hair. Mello originally appeared with white pants instead of black and his midriff covered.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
  • In the series’s Weekly Shounen Jump manga debut in 2016, a center color illustration showed Nezuko’s kimono was actually accentuated with a green color, rather than the immediate following color illustrations that showed her clothing color scheme is black, pink and white, no green on them save the single lace on her waist. That strangely remains the only piece with a slightly different design for Nezuko’s outfit.
  • In his debut appearance in the manga, during his Upper-6 days, the odd stain effects on Doma’s hair extended to his sideburns too, but just a few chapters later where his current Upper-2 appearance is seen, the stain is exclusively on top of Doma’s head and would remain that way throughout all his following parts in the story. Doma’s anime debut reconciled this discrepancy: his hair stain is only on top of his hair too during that same flashback, making his appearance completely consistent in the animated adaptation.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the first chapter of the manga, Goku's gi and Bulma's hair are blue, while starting in chapter 3, Goku wears his iconic orange gi and Bulma has purple hair. In the anime, Goku wears a blue gi until the 21st Tenkaichi Budōkai arc, which was also featured in the anime's opening until the start of the Demon King Piccolo arc, long past the point where he got the iconic orange outfit... and in the English dub, which never got the second variation of the opening, the blue gi stays in the opening for the entirety of the first series. Bulma's hair remains blue in every Animated Adaptation of the series except the tenth anniversary movie Dragon Ball: The Path to Power.
  • Chi-Chi when she first appeared as a kid wore a blue armoured bikini and underwear and a bladed helmet and a cape. This look was ditched for her martial arts Cheongsam she wears as a teenager-adult and changed again later on when she wears sleeves on her Cheongsam too.
  • Tien in the original anime had purple pants rather than green. This was likely error from animators as the Kanzeban covers depict having green pants and was fixed by the time of Piccolo Junior arc.
  • In Piccolo's first appearance, his turban has tendrils trailing off behind it. These are never seen again for the rest of the 23rd Budōkai arc, or the series in general.
  • In early episodes of the anime, Krillin's eyes are white instead of his iconic Skintone Sclerae.
  • Thanks to colored illustrations of the two not existing yet in the manga, Dragon Ball Z had to create its own colour schemes for Vegeta and Nappa, with Vegeta having garish blue and orange armor as well as bright orange hair. By the time the pair arrive on Earth, their proper colors are used (Dragon Ball Z Kai changed the animation to use these colors before the pair go to Earth).
  • Similarly to the Saiyans, Dragon Ball Z gave Super Buu white eyes at first, as opposed to the red he had in the manga.
  • Vegeta's face in the manga was more simplistic early on having no forehead ridges and he wasn’t particularly muscular (reflecting the fact he was more of a Villain of the Week Smug Snake back then). During the Namek Saga he gradually got closer to his iconic look before finally settling on it by the end of the arc.
• The main characters in The Electric Tale of Pikachu retrieved redesigns in order to make them look more like their anime versions. Misty had a redesign at the end of volume 2 when she joined up with the group, to be (slightly) less Stripperific, and was given red hair instead of brown. She received another one for the Orange Islands arc.
• In the early chapters of Fairy Tail, Erza Scarlet has a prominent forehead and her bangs are parted in a way that makes her look very different from her later design. Compare her first appearance to her later look.
• In Gamaran, Kurogane Jinsuke first appeared as a grinning, demonic-looking man with a sharp, pointy nose, tattered dark clothes, spiky black hair and a unique-looking katana. By the time we finally see him he has a more handsome look with long white hair, wears normal clothes under a Badass Longcoat and there's nothing implicitly special about his swords.
• Gintama:
  • Gintoki wore a pair of riding goggles on his head in the first chapter that were never seen again. Par for the course of the series, the characters spoof this fact in the anime. When Gintoki gets called out on it, he justifies it by explaining that the author decided that they were too much of a pain in the ass to draw every time he appeared, which is why they were left out altogether in the first episode.
  Gintoki: You should be grateful you even get any screen time in the opening sequences, you worthless goggles!
  • In his first Flashback appearance, Kamui had black hair like his father instead of red hair like his little sister. This is actually referenced in one of the later "Ask Ginpachi-Sensei" bonus segments, with a fan writing in to point out this inconsistency. After informing the asker that they weren't imagining things, Ginpachi-sensei tosses the postcard away with an annoyed expression on his face.
• Gunsmith Cats: When she first appeared in Riding Bean, Rally Vincent had long blonde hair and wore a pink shirt, beige skirt, and white coat. In Gunsmith Cats proper, her design was changed so that she had black hair that she wore in a bob haircut, her skin became Ambiguously Brown, and her attire underwent a color change to that of a white suit, black skirt, and brown coat.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Many characters had different eye or hair colors in the earliest colored illustrations than they would have later on. For instance, Russia and Iceland originally had blue eyes, rather than the purple eyes that they have now.
  • North Italy's trademark wild curl was originally drawn much smaller, in comparison to now, where it's become a very distinctive aspect of his design. This difference was lampshaded by the author himself at one point.
  • Latvia was originally drawn as being only slightly shorter than Estonia and Lithuania. In the present, he's become much smaller than both of them, and one of the smallest characters of the series.
  • America lacked his trademark Idiot Hair (representative of Nantucket) early on, and had his hair parted in a different way.
  • In his first appearance in both the manga and anime, Bulgaria was drawn as having his Eyes Always Shut. In all of his subsequent appearances, he's had fully open eyes.
  • Prussia now has Technicolor Eyes (red on top and blue on the bottom), rather than the solid red eyes that he was given in the earlier series. And in the very earliest colored illustrations, he had blue eyes.
• Himouto! Umaru-chan: In the original one-shot, "Indoor Umaru" was drawn resembling a child (as opposed to going Super-Deformed) and was much meaner, including Groin Attacking her brother Taihei at one point^note She slid between his legs with one foot up, so it was semi-accidental and lying about him being an abusive, hot-headed jerk while talking with her friends at school. This gets referenced in the DVD-exclusive Umaru-chanS shorts, where the one-shot version of Umaru shows up alongside the finalized version, with Taihei outright discussing the differences.
• Inugami: 23 is drawn as a German shepherd in the first chapter. He becomes a wolflike Siberian husky in the next chapter and never turns back.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Generally speaking, the earlier designs of JoJo characters were less distinctive, with the first two protagonists not sporting outfits and hairstyles that are as recognizable or iconic as their descendants, and Jonathan and Joseph actually wear different clothes at different points. The likes of Jotaro and Josuke are rarely, if ever, shown outside of their school uniforms (at least in the installments where they are teenagers).
  • From Stardust Crusaders:
    • Very early on, Jotaro's hat was smaller and not smoothly fused with his hair in its usual iconic appearance - instead, a bit of hair comes out of a hole at the top of his hat. He's also shown wearing a button-up shirt, which was quickly swapped out for a tank top. Over time his hat grows larger and takes a more angular shape, even affecting his hairstyle as well. The anime adaptation for Stardust Crusaders blends both old and new design traits together, but retains the square look for Jotaro's appearance in the later parts.
    • Polnareff's flattop was much lower and he had Hair Antennae on the front of it.
    • Iggy looked a lot uglier in his initial appearance, closer resembling a real dog before later shifting to a more cartoony and anthropomorphized appearance. Despite this, various video games and even the anime adaptation keep the early design before similarly changing Iggy's appearance.
  • Several characters in Diamond is Unbreakable look different at the start compared to the end, thanks to Araki's major Art Evolution midway through. The anime adaptation largely used the newer designs for a more consistent visual style.
    • Josuke essentially looked just like Jotaro with a giant pompadour in his debut. By the end of the story, he has a much more distinctive, youthful appearance, with larger eyes, a slimmer build and softer facial features. Josuke was also depicted wearing a pair of white gloves on the first chapter cover of Diamond is Unbreakable and some of the early official art.
    • Okuyasu's hairstyle looked more like a pompadour, but after Art Evolution kicked in, it became more of a flattop.
    • Both Kobayashi and Hazamada were taller in their introductory arcs. After their defeats, they were shrunk down to barely taller than Koichi. Their anime designs depict both of them as short from the beginning.
  • From Golden Wind:
    • Giorno's forehead was bigger in its debut.
    • When the Big Bad Diavolo first appeared as a silhouette, he had shorter hair and wore a business suit. This is a stark contrast from his final design, where he has long hair and his outfit looks more like something from a death metal band.
  • Stone Ocean has a rather extreme and infamous example with Narciso Anasui who had shorter hair and was a woman in his first appearance. The anime cuts out this design and always shows him as male.
• Several characters from K-On!:
  • Yui wore Zettai Ryouiki early on in the manga before the author switched her over to Proper Tights with a Skirt.
  • Ritsu's bangs, which spill out from the side of her hair-band, weren't drawn as prominently in first chapters of the manga.
  • Mugi's distinctive eyebrows were drawn noticeably thinner in the earliest manga chapters.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: During her first two appearances, Kaguya (Moron) looked just like regular Kaguya, just with much rounder eyes and a flower growing out of her head. From her third appearance onward, she is instead rendered in a Super-Deformed style to better contrast her with the more normal looking Kaguya (Ice).
• While all the characters in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun have undergone some changes over time due to Art Evolution, Kashima looks the most different compared to how she did in her introduction. Specifically, her hair started out fairly clean-cut and flat-looking, but it got progressively messier until her wavy bangs achieved an almost spikey appearance.
• Because Love Live! began its life as a multimedia project with a variety of artists and styles, there was quite a bit of variation in the main characters' color palettes, hairstyles, and the designs of their school uniforms. Once the hugely popular anime aired, it became the standard for the character designs and art style moving forward.
• For his cameo appearance in Lupin III: Part 1, Lupin II resembled an archetypical Gentleman Thief, complete with a monocle, top hat and cape. His later appearance in Steal Napoleon’s Dictionary would have him look exactly like his son, right down to an identical outfit. Lupin Zero would eventually settle on his design from the original manga instead.
• Naruto:
  • Naruto wore goggles in the first few chapters of the original manga (including the pilot) before switching to the ninja headband. The ninja headband was created because Naruto's goggles were too difficult to draw. The goggles are an artifact from the pilot being an Urban Fantasy where Naruto rode a scooter.
  • Gaara is described as a brunet (like his father and brother) in early chapters instead of a redhead.
  • When Obito and Rin first appeared in a photograph in the anime adaptation, their designs weren't 100% concrete, though the basics were there, if younger-looking. Obito had slightly different hair, wore gray goggles, had no orange on his clothes, and had a stick in his mouth. Rin's clothing was completely purple and her hair was a lighter shade of brown. By Kakashi Gaiden their designs were finalized.
  • Naruto frequently had his Eyes Always Shut to make him look more fox-like. This was never completely dropped but became rarer as the series progressed.
  • Kiba's jacket was originally red in the manga before adopting the anime's grey.
  • Tenten's pink qipao was initially blue in the manga.
  • In The Last: Naruto the Movie, Boruto is depicted with purple eyes, which he inherited from his mother Hinata. The manga's Distant Finale changed it so that he has light blue eyes. The anime followed suit in Boruto: Naruto the Movie, with a plot point even being his eye color.
  • In the Distant Finale chapter of Naruto, several of the next generation are depicted as academy students. Some of their clothes, such as Himawari's, were never used in the anime (which didn't adapt the chapter until Boruto). Boruto's anime had Sarada wear a different uniform as a student, one based on her design from the Boruto manga, with her Chapter 700 outfit appearing in flashbacks from when she was a little kid. Others like Inojin and Shikadai also wear different clothing.
  • Hinata has three instances of this: Her Part 1 outfit is her only main outfit not to be mainly purple. Ever since Shippuden, purple has been her main colour. As a result, her cream-coloured hoodie sticks out like a sore thumb when you compare her pre-series flashbacks, her outfits in Part 2, and her outfits in Boruto. Her jacket was also noticeably thicker, which led some to believe she was chubby. The anime gave her a smaller jacket, which the manga adopted afterwords. The Distant Finale takes place when Boruto is an academy student, however Hinata has long hair. Boruto starts with Boruto becoming a student but Hinata already has a bob haircut.
  • Kurenai's Adaptational Early Appearance in the anime features her looking Off-Model. Her actual first appearance fixes her.
• One Piece:
  • The silhouettes of the Blackbeard Pirates from Dalton's memory are different from their debut; among other things, two characters have bicone hats rather than just Augur, there appears to be a swordsman in the crew and Blackbeard has a captain's hat before he gets one in canon.
  • During his first mention in chapter 432, Kaido, was given a pointy-nosed, sneering shadowy silhouette, which the anime extrapolated from to create this. Compare that to Kaido's first physical appearance in the story here (which is 363 chapters and nearly ten years later). You'd hardly even know it was the same person!
  • In the anime, Big Mom originally appeared as a monstrous giantess with a grotesquely oversized head and bloodshot, all-pink eyes, as seen here. When she returned properly, she was given a far more physically proportionate frame (if still overweight), and her eyes became more normally colored.
  • Vivi out of all the core characters probably got (next to Chopper) the most noticeable change from her debut to her overall design. As Miss Wednesday she’s drawn to be an attractive yet austere looking woman with narrower eyes and angular face. When her royal status is revealed she’s suddenly got cuter softer features and bigger eyes like Nami. Her design change upon The Reveal goes in hand with her character change going from a Jessie-esque conniving Dark Action Girl to a Purity Personified Spirited Young Lady.
  • Robin had a fringe haircut and in the anime and movies had a brown tan skin tone both of which had become so accepted by viewers that there was a lot dismay when they were ditched in the Time Skip for her current appearance. In fairness though the darker skin tone was a creative choice by Toei as Oda depicted Robin with white skin in manga (as seen by the volume covers and cover spreads).
  • Usopp when he first appeared had a more pointy witch-like long nose rather than his usual Tengu or Pinocchio-esque rounded one.
  • Zoro and Sanji had rounder faces and eyes in East Blue manga and anime with Sanji in particular looking closer to Luffy it wasn't until the Grand Line and beyond that they both got more angular features, pronounced jaw lines and narrower eyes.
  • Nami in her debut was slim and small breasted and had short hair. Infamously her figure got more and more curvaceous after Oda got married and now she’s got longer hair (chapter 526 cover spread that depicts Nami's first appearance even gives her larger breasts than she actually had in East Blue). She was also depicted with Limited Wardrobe early on rather than being the fashionista she certainly is later.
  • Chopper had a wildly different design in his first appearance compared to his current Chibi look having a big round torso and smaller eyes.
• Pikachu from Pocket Monsters originally had green eyes. By the Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire adaptation, he had the standard Pikachu's black eyes.
• It's hard to tell as the manga is in monotone colors, however early official art from Pokémon Adventures shows Crystal with brown hair. Eventually she was changed to have blue hair like her game counterpart. Several years later, the remakes of Gold and Silver have a brunette female protagonist, though Kris keeps her blue hair.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In Ho-Oh's Early-Bird Cameo at the end of the first episode, it was entirely gold◊ instead of having red wings with green tips and a gold crest and tail.
  • When Gary Oak first had his eye color revealed (in episode 31, "Dig Those Diglett!"), it was shown that he has blue eyes. Afterwards, his canon eye color became green.
  • It's possibly due to being traditionally animated instead of computer animated, however in the early episodes Ash had light skin. His skin tone darkened to its current tone by Hoenn. In Unova he was redesigned to have larger, brown eyes to fit the Art Evolution of the games. Ash always had brown eyes, but they looked like Black Bead Eyes unless he had a close-up or particularly dramatic moment.
  • Pikachu's design has changed a lot over the episodes, as he was shorter and chubbier in Kanto but grew slimmer by Hoenn. Meowth has also become slightly less cat proportioned and more slim.
  • In May's first appearance, she was about the same height as Misty, being slightly but still noticeably taller than Ash. Afterwards, she's slightly shorter than him.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Utena manga began publishing shortly before the anime went into production. When the anime overtook the manga in terms of popularity, the designs in the manga were retroactively changed to match those in the anime:
  • Utena's original design depicts her as a blonde with either brown or blue eyes. Her uniform at the beginning retained the same basic design as in the anime, but was pink with blue/white trim. Early art also depicts her in a white duelist uniform with red platform boots, and even with braids at one point.
  • Anthy's original design depicted her with black hair. Her rose bride dress was originally white with pink/blue trim - similar to Utena's early uniform.
  • Touga was originally depicted as having black hair, though the long pieces of hair framing his face remained red. This concept was carried over by the anime - though Touga was a full redhead, those long pieces of hair were purposely colored lighter. His old uniform was similarly accented with both red and black - which was later carried for his design in the movie.
  • Juri's original design retained her distinctive hairstyle, but gave her blonde hair and brown eyes, similar to early Utena designs.
  • Miki's original design gave him brown hair, and his uniform was white with green accents, similar to Saionji's uniform design.
  • Akio, similar to Anthy, was originally drawn with black hair. His red button-up, similar to Anthy's rose bride dress, was also originally white with blue accents.
• Rosario + Vampire: In the manga, Kurumu and Yukari have notable design changes after their introductory chapters.
  • Kurumu's bangs barely covered her forehead in the first two chapters she appeared in. Once she's part of the Newspaper Club, her hair mostly covers her entire forehead. He initial design shows up again in a flashback, which implies that she may changed her hairstyle intentionally.
  • Yukari's witch cloak was entirely black in her introduction. The next chapter, the top part of her cloak is white, which sticks for the remainder of the series.
  • Outer Moka's hair is described as hazel early on in the manga despite it being obviously pink, but the final chapter of the second series refers to it as pink.
  • Due to Art Evolution, all the characters look drastically different between the first series and the second series. This holds especially true for Moka, as both sides of Moka have completely different faces in the first series, but progressively become more and more similar in the second series to make it apparent that the real Moka did inherit her appearance from her mother Akasha who looks identical to Outer Moka.
  • Subverted with Tsukune, who becomes more and more Bishounen and his hair becomes less spikey and less cartoony as the series progresses. This is heavily implied due to him slowly becoming a vampire, which explains why he looks very different today than in his introduction.
• Usagi originally wore a Domino Mask in the Sailor Moon manga, much like Minako in Codename: Sailor V. She stopped wearing it within a few chapters (It was still seen, but she typically took it off immediately after transforming and it eventually stopped appearing altogether after the Dark Kingdom arc). Adaptations don't even bother to include it.
• Shaman King has many characters, and many have small cameos during the opening arcs of the story before the Shaman King tournament begins in earnest. Many of those characters also look different than they do when they are formally introduced later on. A big example would be the siblings Redseb and Seyram, who have a one panel cameo relatively early on seen from behind. Both siblings have black hair instead of the blond hair they have later, and Seyram appears to be older or at least taller than Redseb despite being the younger sibling in their later appearance.
• In the 2008 pilot of A Silent Voice, Shouya has a mullet. In the 2011 version and the manga proper, his hair is cropped shorter.
• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: In his first appearance, Gread Red Syberian was drawn with a realistically canine◊ face. In every subsequent appearance, his features are considerably more stylized and anthropomorphic.◊
• During the first season of Symphogear Chris has lavender colored hair, but from G onwards she has white hair. Similarly, Miku had dark green hair in the first season, but has black hair from G onwards as well.
• Tora from Ushio and Tora used to have a slightly more monstrous face and, most notably, large, rabbit-like ears emerging from his mane of red hair and dangling in front of him. As the series progressed, those ears leaned backwards more and more until they become indistinguishable from the rest of Tora's hair. In the anime series, they use Tora's "earless" design from the start. If you're willing to count an Empathic Weapon as a character, then the Beast Spear goes from being more spear-like with a narrow and short blade to getting a larger, broader blade.
• Wandering Son:
  • Several characters had different hair colors early on. Takatsuki is the most noticeable, as they had brown for the first two volumes but it changed to black from thereon. Nitori's hair color darkened over time from a light brown to a dark brown, and that's handwaved in-series as her hair darkening as she ages.
  • Makoto originally had Opaque Nerd Glasses but after a few chapters her eyes became shown consistently.
• The first chapters of Yu-Gi-Oh! had some differences in character design:
  • In his first appearances in the manga up until Death-T, Seto Kaiba had a somewhat creepy, haggard look, with a tendency towards toothy Slasher Smiles, and seemed to be fairly average in height and proportions. By the Duelist Kingdom Arc, he was much taller, slimmer, and more handsome, as well as a Perpetual Frowner. Additionally, this was also the first time he was shown wearing a Badass Longcoat.
  • Jonouchi's hairstyle was different, with normal bangs rather than the outrageous pompadour we all know.
  • Anzu wore loose socks with her school uniform, while in later chapters her socks are normal. She was also depicted with brown eyes, which were later changed to blue following her design in the second anime.
  • The Pharaoh wore ankhs on his wrists.
  • Domino City High's girls' uniform was originally bright orange with a green bow before being changed to pale pink with a blue bow.
  • Kuriboh, in its first manga appearance, had noticeably longer, vaguely humanlike limbs and perfectly circular eyes with very little eyeshine. By its second appearance, it had evolved into its more familiar cutesy design.

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