I think there was a Piccolo from DBZ up on animotions in the past. Ascii-somethingorother can't remember his name was working on some Ranma charas then dissapeared. Well the best idea for why Japanese anime/manga character design have such appeal was presented in the book understanding comics by Scott McCloud. the gist of it was that there is very little extraneus detail in many manga/anime artists styles, so there is less to distract the viewer from empathising with the character. In other words sometimes a smiley face can convey emotions better than a highly realistic drawing. Of course not all Manga artists/anime chara designers have such simple styles, and some like Ryoichi Ikegami have quite realistic styles. As for the broader appeal of Japanese comics and animation... that's simple: It's the best in the world. You have genres for everyone, and a level of storytelling and film making that often blows everything else in the west to hell. There's also a lot of cheaply done crap too... but with the absolutely astonishing volume of anime and manga produced each year in Japan that's not suprising.