I have an essay about anime ideas and copytight, if you don't mind putting aside a few minutes to read, i'll post it here.
Is Copyright really Copyright???
Usually in media and numerous other trades, one can copyright their idea and sue another for using their idea if they didn't license or pay royalties.
Of course people can copy names of characters no problem e.g. card captors sakura, haruna sakura, tenchi's sakura, sakura TV on death note. Hinata is also a well used name in anime. Yugi also.
The truth is I see lots of trends of the looks of characters, one character in an anime show is imitating another and the original designers don't give a damn.
What's else with this is that it's because a lot of anime characters, are taken from historical figures.
For example mitsurugi. Did namco ask ninja scroll permission to have a character mitsurugi, maybe, but namco could easily use that character and say the idea comes from historical context.
Because there may have been a famous samurai named mitsurugi.
and agian. We have sarutobi sasuke. If I get a historical source and prove i've researched sarutobi sasuke, and the description is similar to uchiha sasuke, then I could make a character exactly like uchiha sasuke no problem, and even call him sasuke, use the same voice actor, make him look similar but not exactly the same, I could give him short spiky hair, make him pale, give him black eyes etc but not the particular style uchiha sasuke has. as long I don't use uchiha, sharingham or anything that's not from historical origon. and who wouldn't do that, it works only too well? I'll just say, I happened to research the same places as Kishi did and they may colclude that he was so great you couldn't miss him when researching. On top of that in memoirs of a geisha there's an artist called Uchida, Uchida is an actual family name in japan, like smith, or if you met lots of natives there you may meet a person called uchida and decide you like the person or name and want to use it in a character, and you can't be sued for making characters with real life family names. So I can call him Uchida Sasuke, without copying someone. If someone never saw naruto, made friends with a couple of native japs, read memoirs of a geisha and researced famous samurai they could possibly think of that name.
I coulud even add on that my sasuke also likes art which enforces that the idea genuinely came from Arthur Golden. So if I play my cards right, I could virtually copy a popular character from a popular show and not be breaking the law. The fact that i'm a narutard is irrelevant.
Also raphael yu gi oh, there's also raphael from soul calibur 2. They look the same, act the same, both got taken away from their families by an evil demonic entity, only difference, their occupation has been adapted to the theme of the show and nothing else.
If I was namco i'd walk up to the yu gi oh authors and say "what do you think you're doing". But if it caused a serious breach of copyright taken to court the arc with raphael in it wouldn't have been aired let alone dubbed. So I assume namco did nothing.
I asked people about this and it's possible that raphael was a historical figure with blonde hair. with that, it means anyone can use that character.
You'd also think cloud's sword is unique and copywrited, but look at zabuza's and seigfried's sword. No court cases there.
and you thought pegasus was unique, you thought wrong on the best 100 characters, number 64 looked exactly like pegasus but his eyes were black not yellow. Do japanese not copyright their characters or something?
I designed this character called morgan, who's an italian pagan, with long white hair and bejewled glasses. I saw a trinity blood illustration and he looked exactly like my character except the glasses were round and plain instead.
If I used my char in a commercial show they could sue me for similarities, but the truth is I has no knowledge of abel or trinity blood till after I made morgan true enough. They can either beleive that we happened to have the same idea or that I just took their character and changed his glasses and religion. How can I defend myself.
But then I found out LOADS of anime shows have 4 eyed tall pale dudes with long white hair(full metal panic is one example). I could just nick one and no one suspects a thing. As he'd fit in with my other characters instead of their ones he won't be exactly the same.
I've always wanted to ask a lawyer for an opinion on this. as to what can be copied and what can't, it seems a simple enough question but not so after what i've just pointed out.
