How This Book Uses Character Images

Anime characters are easiest to recognize in the art fans already know. This edition therefore uses selected official promotional and editorial character images from franchise, studio, publisher, and broadcaster pages. The images sit beside critical discussion of the characters and archetypes. They are not merchandise, branding, or substitutes for the original works.

The images remain copyrighted by their respective rights holders. Appearing on an official website does not place an image in the public domain, and this project does not call these images openly licensed. A local copy, credit line, or editorial context can document how an image is used. None grants permission on its own.

Every image needs a trail back to its source

For each character image, the project’s manifest should record:

• the character and work represented;
• the official franchise, studio, publisher, or broadcaster source page;
• the rights statement displayed by that source where one is available;
• a plain-language modification note such as “cropped, resized, and converted to WebP”;
• the versioned local filename and descriptive alternative text;
• the date on which the source and attribution were reviewed.

These records belong to the publication, not to a hidden pile of production notes. Readers can trace an image to its official context. Maintainers can correct or remove it without guesswork. The records do not turn attribution into a license.

A credit line is not permission—or endorsement

Character names, series titles, designs, animation frames, key art, and promotional illustrations belong to their respective owners. Those owners did not produce, sponsor, or endorse this independent guide. A copyright line shows provenance. It must not look like a partnership badge or claim of approval.

This guide makes no universal legal claim about its image use. Copyright exceptions and publication risk depend on the image, context, amount used, audience, territory, and intended distribution. Anyone publishing the site publicly—especially as a commercial product—should obtain permission or replace these files with licensed press assets cleared for that specific use.

Faster delivery does not change ownership

The project stores reduced, optimized WebP copies with the static site and delivers them through Cloudflare Pages. That keeps pages fast, avoids using an official source as an image CDN, and lets versioned assets use long-lived cache headers. It changes delivery. It does not change ownership.

Cloudflare documents how Pages serves static assets and how optional image transformations can resize or reformat images on an appropriate zone. Caching and transformation do not supply a content license, erase an attribution obligation, or imply endorsement.

Keep the record—and be ready to remove the image

Official pages move. Rights statements change. An asset can be wrong for a publication even when its source is carefully documented. A responsible release should preserve source records, provide a visible contact path for rights holders, and promptly remove or replace an image when a credible concern cannot be resolved.

This page explains the project’s editorial practice. It is not legal advice. Republishing the guide or its image files requires a fresh rights review for the intended audience, territory, and use.