Rating: 
Summary: Just like everyone else says, not for complete beginners
Review: I am what I would call an "absolute beginner". My drawing experience is virtually nil. Other than seeing lots of anime and comics, I have no hands-on experience. I bought this book hoping that it would have a step-by-step process for how to draw anime characters. While it starts off promising, by having you drawing a cube from various perspective, the book's introductory nature almost disappears after that. To draw heads, the book says to draw boxes and then draw head-shaped ovals inside. But I had trouble even drawing the ovals to fit the boxes correctly. It gives one step-by-step process for a head from one perspective, but that's it. It then gives about 10 different head models and says "if you can draw these, then you can do your own work". But HOW to draw those? I was basically on my own to figure it out by guessing, but heck, I could do that just from copying what I see on websites.
The book's methodology seems very confused, as well. At first it tries to say drawing is like connecting dots. But dot-connecting is never mentioned after that. It says to draw heads in boxes, but I was unsure how to even draw the boxes for the various perspectives I was supposed to draw, and the book gave no indication. No rules were give for face proportions (I ended up trying to make my own rules), but later on in the book there were rules for body proportions.
The examples given of "absolute beginner", intermediate and pro were discouraging, in that the book gives very little help even getting to "absolute beginner". The book makes comments like "this gun looks like a toy" but doesn't explain specifically WHAT could be done to improve it other than by carefully examining the "pro" picture. It gives examples of very fancy outfits but it doesn't suggest how to actually draw those outfits.
I think this book could have been improved by just getting rid of the small amount of absolute-beginner stuff and making it a book for intermediate drawers.
Rating: 
Summary: How to Draw Anime and Game Characters Series
Review: I bought this book for my 15 year old daughter who loves anime and manga from Japan. She absolutely enjoys drawing anime and has made me look at all of her pictures at least a thousand times. Her drawings have greatly improved after studying these books. If only she studied math just as hard...
Rating:
Summary: Drawing Mangaq
Review: I bought this book for my son and found that it was ideal. He has no art training but is able to draw these characters using the methods shown in the book. Great investment!
Rating:
Summary: Bought "Sight Unseen" and am GLAD I DID!
Review: I bought this book from Amazon, without so much as a picture of the cover, because there aren't many "how to draw manga" books out there, and I need as much reference as I can get!Unfortunately, this still isn't the "Ultimate How to Draw Manga" book, I don't think it exists yet, but this comes very close. I've been drawing for over 20 years now, so I don't need some steps that I think beginners would benefit from, that never seem to make it into these "how to" books. I felt a twang of discomfort seeing the pictures in this one, going by it's ratings, my style falls somewhere in between "intermediate" and "very close but..." levels and not the "pro" level, but perhaps with some of the lessons in this book, I'll finally cross that threshold! The art is beautiful, looking like a cross between Disney and manga, it illustrates several different genres, and has pages and pages of examples of each "type" of character. Lots of "how to draw guys" too, which is a subject often ignored in "how to" books and tutorials. I highly recommend this book, even for the "non-beginner," it has lots to show!
Rating:
Summary: Bought "Sight Unseen" and am GLAD I DID!
Review: I bought this book from Amazon, without so much as a picture of the cover, because there aren't many "how to draw manga" books out there, and I need as much reference as I can get! Unfortunately, this still isn't the "Ultimate How to Draw Manga" book, I don't think it exists yet, but this comes very close. I've been drawing for over 20 years now, so I don't need some steps that I think beginners would benefit from, that never seem to make it into these "how to" books. I felt a twang of discomfort seeing the pictures in this one, going by it's ratings, my style falls somewhere in between "intermediate" and "very close but..." levels and not the "pro" level, but perhaps with some of the lessons in this book, I'll finally cross that threshold! The art is beautiful, looking like a cross between Disney and manga, it illustrates several different genres, and has pages and pages of examples of each "type" of character. Lots of "how to draw guys" too, which is a subject often ignored in "how to" books and tutorials. I highly recommend this book, even for the "non-beginner," it has lots to show!
Rating: 
Summary: this is a great book
Review: I have just bought this book about a week ago and it improved my
drawing alot.I gave it a 4 star because it took me a while to under stand the book.I've been looking for a good how to draw book and this book is great.It is good for beginners and has alot of details.I will recomend this book to anyone that wants to draw anime.
Rating:
Summary: A vey nice book
Review: I hesitated to buy this book at first because I was worried that it was one of those cheap, 12 page, how to draw book meant for 2nd graders. This book is not! It is pretty thick for a drawing book. I really liked the exercise suggestions, they helped a lot with my drawing. One quibble and that is not enough to bring down my rating, some of the translation is obscure (fringe for bangs, etc.) but you can usually figure out what was meant. This book is well worth it if you enjoy anime.
Rating:
Summary: A big help for beginners
Review: I learned a lot from this book. My drawings have improved tremendously. Perfect for beginners or people who want to refine basic techniques. Once you have this book, you'll want to buy the rest in the series!
Rating:
Summary: THE single most useful "how to draw" book to date!
Review: I thought it was a very good book, very easy to understand with maybe a rare bit of amusing little translation errors, but still, it was very easy to understand and made a lot of sense. I can honestly say that even practicing on cubes and cylinders recommended in the book made for a big difference. My skill was perhaps mediocre at best but now I can say that it's gotten a lot better, maybe even advanced!. The body from different angles, the heads and faces from different angles, and 15 virtually different characters to practice on, both head shots and full body with costumes and all! Also has a gallery of hairstyles, eyes, hands, feet, and generalized character body types. It even has outlines for creating incredible scene pictures, like the types that you'd see on posters. Tips, pointers, numbers, critiques, and diagrams as well as example pictures throughout the book make the learning process very easy with no difficulty that I experienced. A great resource for those who are truly willing to learn and are motivated to get better in this field.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK!
Review: I used to draw anime pretty well, but after just READING this book, I realized all the places that I went wrong. I could hardly recognize my own work! I reccomend this book for beginners and experts alike. FIVE STARS!
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