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Pretty much the only way in anime to make someone ugly or unusual looking is to do it deliberately and often non-subtly. If a character is not attractive looking, they're usually absurdly ugly. The result can be extremely jarring if it deviates too much from the rest of the show's look, although it tends to be more tolerated in comedies and non-human characters.
This is because of Generic Cuteness.
Not to be confused with a certain type of power droid , which looks more like a walking trashcan/safe.
Examples:
- Kare Kano featured a flashback of a guy who had considerably improved his appearance since he was a child. He's drawn in a completely different style than everyone and vaguely resembles a Fisher Price toy.
- The Puchuu in Excel Saga are cute mascot characters whose faces become Gonk (iconic faces from the Golgo 13 series) when they are injured or killed.
- A strange example occcurs in Ouran High School Host Club when the host club does this in an attempt to cheer up Haruhi. Since the show already has quite a few crossdressers, they (with the exception of Kyouya, natually) end up in hilariously overdone makeup to make the situation funny.
- Most fat characters in anime suffer from some level of Gonk. Examples include:
- Tenchi's classmate Kazuhiko Amagasaki (The Fat Guy With The Big Lips And Pimply Nose) in Tenchi Muyo. He appears mostly in Tenchi in Tokyo.
- Sumiyoshi from Excel Saga.
- Alvida from One Piece, when we first see her. Then she eats the Slip Slip Devil's Fruit between story arcs and becomes incredibly slippery... and slender. And everyone's object of lust. Luffy can't recognize her on first glance, and she was the first villain he fought.
- Noteable exception -- Princess Nine's Mao Daidouji being heavy-set is important to her characterization, but she is drawn in a realistic style.
- Another exception -- In one episode of Tenjou Tenge, we learn where female villain Emi Isuzu keeps all her hidden knives: she's really quite obese, and uses ki techniques to compress her fat and use it to carry concealed weapons. However, her full-sized form is completely Gonk-free, though it doesn't stop Maya (who learns Emi's big secret) from teasing her about it.
- Whether or not it's Gonk-free is really arguable; this editor found it laughably Gonky.
- Another exception, Sailor Moon has one of Usagi's schoolfriends who pops up now and then in the first two seasons of the show. She's chubby, but not ugly in any way. Sadly she never gets a name (and this is a show that been known to give names to the most minor of characters in the guidebooks) so fans can only identify her as "Usagi's Fat Friend".
- Ryu from Mobile Suit Gundam is a bit of a borderline case, as he's usually drawn in a slightly different style than most of the main characters, but he's not really ugly (in fact, in the novels Sayla has a bit of a crush on him before she ends up getting together with Amuro).
- Getter Robo teams always have "The fat guy", with varying levels of gonk. Musashi from the original looks a bit gonkish, especially compared to his impossibly handsome teammates (and his ridiculous, slapped together "uniform" doesn't help, either), but most of the subsequent incarnations had Musashi or his equivalent drawn with the similar rugged good looks to his compatriots. Kaede from the all girl Getter Robo Zan team is probably the gonkiest of all the Getter pilots (being a Distaff Counterpart of Musashi), but then again all the girls on that team are pretty homely by anime standards.
- Several of the less important shinigami characters in Bleach - but most of the shinigami outside the main cast are just comic relief, so this is understandable.
- Rock Lee from Naruto has strange, perfectly circular eyes with pronounced bottom lashes, as well as Big Ol Eyebrows and a super-shiny bowl cut.
- Dan in Bamboo Blade is short and has a head shaped like an acorn. Yet he's got a girlfriend, is ranked high in the school, can draw very well, and is shaping up to be good at kendo. He's probably the luckiest male in the entire show, and most fans think him a victim of a Ping Pong Club Lawyer Friendly Cameo.
- An unusual example in a serious anime is the sinister Kazundo Gohda (or Gouda) from GitS: 2nd Gig, whose face was hideously disfigured in an accident. Gohda decided not to have his face rebuilt because his new appearance made him distinctive. This is deliberately contrasted with Hideo Kuze, the show's nominal (but less villainous) villain, whose prosthetic body wears a handsome mask-like face.
- Queen Brahne in Final Fantasy IX, who outranks most of the monsters in the game in sheer ugliness for no easily explained reason. This may be a vague dig at Beauty Equals Goodness (compared to the villainous but attractive Kuja) as her subjects usually insist Brahne is a competant and respectable leader, at least pre-game.
- Every Fire Emblem game includes one playable gonk. The bandit class seems to be soley composed of these. One gonk by the name of Gheb achieved internet popularity.
- Konatsu's step-family in Ranma 1/2 is deliberately made hideous, despite them being hostesses at the "Sexy Kunoichi Tea Spot" (a brothel, the reader is made to assume, or at least an extremely exclusive parlor.) His stepsisters are either gangly and monkey-like, or gigantic and with lips so huge they are her entire face. To say nothing of the shrunken, yakuza-faced step-mother. This makes Konatsu by far the most attractive woman, even though he's a guy.
- Attenborough from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, who is best described as a crazed muppet. In fact, his Fan Nickname is Beamspam McMuppet.
- Several side-characters from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei are drawn completely different from the main cast.
- Gen-An Shiranui from Samurai Shodown is so terrifically ugly that it is impossible to even tell his species. (He's not a tengu, and he's not an oni, but he definitely isn't human...) Somehow, he not only has a Jungle Princess wife, but a few centuries down the road, his line supposedly includes Ms Fanservice Jiggle Physics queen Mai Shiranui...
- Gutsman's operator Dex in the Megaman Battle Network franchise. Naturally, his Star Force Expy Bull also falls under this. Dex looks like some strange obese shark person, while Bull is some obese guy with his hair shaped into horns.
- This might be a possible shout out to Astro Boy 's designs; Osamu Tezuka characters have a distinctive old-school flavor that often looks really strange to newer anime fans.
- Western example: Corporal Nobbs from Discworld is ugly enough to require documented evidence to prove that he's (probably) human.
- Leiji Matsumoto characters come in two flavors: catalogue model & gonk. Notably examples of the latter include Captain Harlock's sidekick Tochiro (and his seemingly endless line of identical ancestors. How a family line with men that ugly manages to continue one for so many millenia is the greatest mystery of the Leijiverse) as well as most of the other men on the captain's crew of Jolly Space Pirates (Harlock makes a point of not recruiting anybody handsomer than he is, since he also has several beautiful women on the ship). Most incarnations of 999's Tetsuro are also very gonkish, though he was considerably bishified in The Movie. Also, the entire population of Earth, sans cyborgs, during the Big Fat Future of the manga's second story arc.
- In Team Medical Dragon, it's possible to identify the good and bad guys by one characteristic alone: most of the time, the good guys are drawn incredibly attractively, while evil characters invariably look like the products of 18 generations of inbreeding.
- The villains sure are ugly (as hell), but the sympathetic male characters range from heroically handsome over small and dorky to The Big Guy. The women, of course, are attractive. The patients look sickly.
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