I think because they are
When you say westernised, in what way?
If it's dress, then I think it's because a lot of Japanese do tend to dress very similar to the "west" these days (TV/Film and global brands of clothing are to blame).
If you mean characters faces/general look, I think that's probably in part because it's slightly different (and thus interesting
) - it's fun at times spotting the stereotypes that pop up in anime.
I think large eyes come from a particular anime in the 60's or earlier that was popular, and copied because of that.
Also as mentioned, the large eyes can also make it easier to have clear expressions I think, and when it comes down to producing anime traditionally (cells, ink, photographic film), it is probably much easier to concentrate on one or two main features for the expression than the whole face, and the eyes/mouth are the obvious ones.
It's rather like the reason anime characters often have wildly varying hair, it had it's origins in the days when drawing high quality characters with distinctive features/looks was hard, time consuming and expensive, by giving them all distinctive hair you didn't have to worry about the fact the faces might look very similar.
It also removes a whole lot of potential continuity problems that might otherwise crop up if you go for less obvious features, how many anime characters have earings for example?
(I can only think of a handfull, and they are all primary characters).
It's only relatively recently that it's started to become more financially viable for TV anime to get more and more detailed, largely due to the costs of producing high quality detailed work dropping thanks to the use of computers (as they can relatively easily copy/manipulate a relatively few high quality key frames done from scratch to produce the "inbetween" frames).
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sorry rambling off topic by the end of the post
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If I remember i'll try and look up some links tommorow, as it's got me interested now (i've sort of got used to it)
