Is there a reason why many creators portray their evil creatures with the humanoid features of an ideal manly muscular male body or oversized body builder? Is it about the depiction of scary masculinity/manhood? Or the easy simple answer would be: Grotesque Monsters look just very cool and intimidating with big muscles. Examples: Kengan Ashura Super Sentai Devilman Amon Guyver Resident Evil Nemesis Silent Hill 2 Terra Formar (These Cockroaches look like racist caricatures...) Berserk Claymore Attack on Titan One Punch Man Parasyte Kaiju No.08 Helck
I just assumed that it was the authors way of showing the threat. Like, it’s intimidation, raw strength, and abnormal. Tbh, I don’t think it’s all to good, but then again, I don’t like superhero stories
Would you be more afraid of someone humanoid and built like a freight train or someone humanoid and build like they skip breakfast?
Rather than showing off as a muscular form, I think it's more about straight away representing them to be grotesque or otherwise visually depict them to be amoral. Its not just the muscles, their general proportions and face structures are meant to make you feel uncomfortable. As for the muscles, its to indicate their power. The cookie cutter antagonist is going to be brain and less brawn. Thats the assumption.
I mean those would look quite different if used in another genre of P***ographic manga but yes, it's very threatening and scary. That's just someone who would break you with a flick of his hand so somehow it doesn't make sense that people wouldn't tremble in fear. Even in real life people avoid muscled men and those who are close to be called giants. Somewhere in our hood there's a man who's very strong that people always avoid him, but the funniest part is that he's so nice and righteous, at night he would sit in the neighborhood and a lot of girls were saved just by that action, for the men who followed them completely vanish when he approached them. This man doesn't necessarily have to be evil but people consider him to be so, because they can't compete with him or control him. He has the physical power to crush them so they instinctively fear him, let's say he wasn't morally correct, then it would be more troublesome but even now when us who were obviously saved by him testify that he's a friendly guy or even nice, people would tremble saying that it couldn't be, 'you never know when a person change, or what they hide under their façade' that's exactly what I want to say to them but let's just pass it. Another thought is, I learned when creating an evil character that is not human, the teacher told me that the more human like it is, the scary it becomes because nothing is more scary than humans. So I took it by heart and it works. The more your evil character resembles a human being the scarier it turns out, for it will look more believable and close to existence to the reader.
Do you think that some of these beefcake male monster antagonists look kinda homoerotic? The way you decribed that real life muscular gentle giant who looks scary reminds me very much of the Character Kitano Ryuichiro in the Manga ANGEL DENSETSU. Good point. You know, I love seeing smaller little fragile looking people/girls able to beat down/fight a big scary muscular evil guy. There is sth special and exciting about this spectacle. Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart battle Best fight in Pretty Cure Splash Star
Well a little bit, not all of them but at the same time I know well of the different fantasies that exists, and a lot of mature mangas have species that are out of this world. That's me admitting to reading some unholy stuff but I've seen those types.
I think it's for the instictive image storytelling. When you see "bulgy muscle", it would equate to "strong". So you could notice "oh so this guy is not a regular mob".
1. Artists and such are already used to drawing human anatomy so exaggerating the musculature is probably just easier to do. 2. At least one of those is supposed to show that it comes from man and is related to humans and thus looks like one to give you those kind of thoughts. 3. Buff muscles show off strength in general so it’s an easy way to show to your audience oh X is strong and abnormal not like regular mook A! 4. People are obsessed with humans for some reason I guess Azathoth-chan got boring or something.
There is something very fascinating to see strange creatures who have no mascular humanoid features. Azathoth Why Bible Accurate Angels Are So Creepy "The New Dinosaurs" Explained | Speculative Zoology "Dinosauroids" Explained | Speculative Biology Imagine if dinosaurs evolved human intelligence. This is an exploration of C.M. Kosemen’s and Simon Roy’s incredible worldbuilding art project: ‘Dinosauroids.’ @clockworkc0rvusyt817 Things like C.M. Kosemen's Dinosauroids or Alex Ries' Birrin are what we need more of when it comes to fictional civilized species. The lack of a human-like body plan often results in much more interesting designs for tools, clothing, etc.