Maya and the three: How even an unique style can fail

Let me say Im a big fan of Jorge Gutierrez’ work. El Tigre and Book of life are gorgeous and fun, and Im so happy to see a fellow mexican doing great stuff but alas no one is perfect.

His shows (or multiverse ;) ) style is colorful, unique, full of life and personality, making them stand out from other western animation BUT… lest talk about female character design.

El Tigre

A nice cast, look at the shapes, almost everyone has an unique shape/elements. In common, big heads, big mouths, upper body and noses.

(designs by Sandra Equihua) Now look at the female cast, it has some variety too, hairstyles mostly and some unique designs. Common: body types (curvy woman, tall child, short child), big eyes and small noses

In general not so bad.

Book of Life

And hereeeee its where the problem starts. For women you are either skinny curvy (just skinny if you are a child) or an old lady with cool design which takes us to:

Maya and the three

Lovely animation and designs but why they all look like this!! Im between the Nubile savage trope or reminds of of Chel from Road to El Dorado. Of course this is a common problem everywhere but with Jorge’s style I was hoping we could avoid the good old, big dad small women trope. 

(Maya and the three & Brave)

Cont. Here is our girl Maya with her brothers.

It follows on, men get to have unique/ their own design using a wide palette of elements for variation, hell, they even get to be animals or creatures, and for a lack of a better word or way to explain they get to look native. Women, women don’t get the same privileges, like Book of life you can either be a tall or short woman but now you get tick thighs (thanks 2021) and a degree or curviness OR if you are lucky enough to be an older woman you get the same treatment as men and you get your own design yay, don’t believe me? Here are some collages

The problem summarized in one picture (above). 

Aside from the main cast males, which get to be “attractive”, look less “generic native”, you get buff big men but unique enough to be their own thing. Women are all “small”, with small noses (sometimes european looking), thin but curvy to some degree (I’m not even going to touch how most of the native women don’t have that body type and I was hoping to see it animated for the first time but)…  what is worse is that all of them are GOOD characters if you remove the design they have goals, personality, etc. But enough talking, I will let the designs speak for themselves.

Bonus mention: The old ladies who get AN UNIQUE DESIGN!