AwesomeAnimeResearch

Everything related to Anime.
For the Comics/Manga papers, please refer to 🔥 Awesome Comics Understanding
For the 2D cartoon video research, please refer to 🚀 Awesome-Animation-Research

📂 Datasets

• Overview of Anime/Comic/Manga Datasets

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	arXiv	AnimeScore: A Preference-Based Dataset and Framework for Evaluating Anime-Like Speech Style	Github
  2025	arXiv	MagicAnime: A Hierarchically Annotated, Multimodal and Multitasking Dataset with Benchmarks for Cartoon Animation Generation
  2025	arXiv	ComicScene154: A Scene Dataset for Comic Analysis
  2025	COLING	AnimeDL-2M: Million-Scale AI-Generated Anime Image Detection and Localization in Diffusion Era	HP
  2025	COLING	Context-Informed Machine Translation of Manga using Multimodal Large Language Models	GitHub
  2024	Arxiv	Tails Tell Tales: Chapter-Wide Manga Transcriptions with Character Names	GitHub
  2024	Arxiv	CoMix: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Multi-Task Comic Understanding	GitHub
  2023	CVPR	Human-Art: A Versatile Human-Centric Dataset Bridging Natural and Artificial Scenes	Github
  2023	Arxiv	Manga109Dialog: A Large-scale Dialogue Dataset for Comics Speaker Detection	Github
  2023	ACM-TG	Semi-supervised reference-based sketch extraction using a contrastive learning framework	Github
  2023	ACM-TG	Parsing-Conditioned Anime Translation: A New Dataset and Method	Github
  2022	NeurIPS-DB	AnimeRun: 2D Animation Visual Correspondence from Open Source 3D Movies	HP
  2022	ECCV	COO: Comic Onomatopoeia Dataset for Recognizing Arbitrary or Truncated Texts	Github
  2022	CVPR Workshop	A Challenging Benchmark of Anime Style Recognition
  2022	ECCV	AnimeCeleb: Large-Scale Animation CelebHeads Dataset for Head Reenactment	Github
  2021	Arxiv	DAF:RE: A CHALLENGING, CROWD-SOURCED, LARGE-SCALE, LONG-TAILED DATASET FOR ANIME CHARACTER RECOGNITION	Github
  2020	ACM-MM	Cartoon Face Recognition: A Benchmark Dataset	Github
  2020	ECCV Workshop	Unconstrained Text Detection in Manga: a New Dataset and Baseline	Github
  2020	ECCV	DanbooRegion: An Illustration Region Dataset	Github
  2020	MMUL	Building a Manga Dataset ”Manga109” with Annotations for Multimedia Applications	HP
  2019	CVPR	Creative Flow+ Dataset	HP
  2017	CVPR	The Amazing Mysteries of the Gutter: Drawing Inferences Between Panels in Comic Book Narratives	Github

• -

  Benchmarks

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	arXiv	AnimationBench: Are Video Models Good at Character-Centric Animation?	Github

📜 Papers

Anime Production

• End-to-end Anime Generation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	SIGGRAPH	AniME: Adaptive Multi-Agent Planning for Long AnimationGeneration
  2025	SIGGRAPH	AniMaker: Multi-Agent Animated Storytelling with MCTS-Driven Clip Generation	Github
  2025	arXiv	CartoonAlive: Towards Expressive Live2D Modeling from Single Portraits	HP
  2024	SIGGRAPH	Anim-Director: A Large Multimodal Model Powered Agent for Controllable Animation Video Generation	Github

Image Generation

• Generation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	Arxiv	SakugaFlow: A Stagewise Illustration Framework Emulating the Human Drawing Process and Providing Interactive Tutoring for Novice Drawing Skills
  2025	Arxiv	Interactive Drawing Guidance for Anime Illustrations with Diffusion Model
  2022	Arxiv	Combating Mode Collapse in GANs via Manifold Entropy Estimation
  2022	SIGGRAPH	StyleGAN-NADA: CLIP-Guided Domain Adaptation of Image Generators	Github
  2021	ICCV	DisUnknown: Distilling Unknown Factors for Disentanglement Learning	Github
  2021	Arxiv	CoPE: Conditional image generation using Polynomial Expansions
  2021	Arxiv	Efficient Continual Adaptation for Generative Adversarial Networks
  2021	ElConRus	Generating "Ideal" Anime Opening Frames Using Neural Networks
  2021	CVPR	HistoGAN: Controlling Colors of GAN-Generated and Real Images via Color Histograms	Github
  2020		Generating Full-Body Standing Figures of Anime Characters and Its Style Transfer by GAN
  2020	NeurIPS	GAN Memory with No Forgetting	Github
  2020	Arxiv	Classification Representations Can be Reused for Downstream Generations
  2020	Arxiv	Autoencoding Generative Adversarial Networks
  2019	IEEE Access	An Adaptive Control Algorithm for Stable Training of Generative Adversarial Networks
  2019	Arxiv	Overcoming Long-term Catastrophic Forgetting through Adversarial Neural Pruning and Synaptic Consolidation
  2019	EG	Towards Diverse Anime Face Generation: Active Label Completion and Style Feature Network
  2018	IJCNN	Generate Novel Image Styles using Weighted Hybrid Generative Adversarial Nets
  2018	ECCV Workshop	Full-body High-resolution Anime Generation with Progressive Structure-conditional Generative Adversarial Networks	HP
  2017	Comiket92	Towards the Automatic Anime Characters Creation with Generative Adversarial Networks	HP

• Few-shot

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	CAVW	Controlling StyleGANs Using Rough Scribbles via One-shot Learning	HP
  2022	WACV	Data InStance Prior (DISP) in Generative Adversarial Networks
  2021	Arxiv	MineGAN++: Mining Generative Models for Efficient Knowledge Transfer to Limited Data Domains
  2020	Arxiv	DATA INSTANCE PRIOR FOR TRANSFER LEARNING IN GANS
  2020	CVPR Workshop	Freeze the Discriminator: a Simple Baseline for Fine-Tuning GANs	Github
  2020	CVPR	MineGAN: effective knowledge transfer from GANs to target domains with few images	Github
  2020	Arxiv	FEW-SHOT ADAPTATION OF GENERATIVE ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS	Github
  2019	ICCV	Image Generation From Small Datasets via Batch Statistics Adaptation	Github

• Interpretability

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	Big Data	Unsupervised Discovery of Disentangled Interpretable Directions for Layer-Wise GAN
  2022	AAAI	Self-supervised Enhancement of Latent Discovery in GANs
  2021	ACM-MM	Discovering Density-Preserving Latent Space Walks in GANs for Semantic Image Transformations
  2021	CVPR	Discovering Interpretable Latent Space Directions of GANs Beyond Binary Attributes
  2021	Arxiv	EigenGAN: Layer-Wise Eigen-Learning for GANs
  2021	CVPR	Surrogate Gradient Field for Latent Space Manipulation
  2021	Arxiv	Do Generative Models Know Disentanglement? Contrastive Learning is All You Need
  2020	Arxiv	Unsupervised Discovery of Disentangled Manifolds in GANs
  2021	CVPR	Closed-Form Factorization of Latent Semantics in GANs	Github
  2020	ICML	Unsupervised Discovery of Interpretable Directions in the GAN Latent Space	Github
  2019	Arxiv	RPGAN: GANs Interpretability via Random Routing

• Montage

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	ICPR	MontageGAN: Generation and Assembly of Multiple Components by GANs	Github
  2022	TOG	Sprite-from-Sprite: Cartoon Animation Decomposition with Self-supervised Sprite Estimation

• Text-to-Image

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	Arxiv	Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models	Github
  2022	Arxiv	DreamArtist: Towards Controllable One-Shot Text-to-Image Generation via Positive-Negative Prompt-Tuning	Github

Image 2 Image Translation

• Face 2 Anime

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	Arxiv	StyO: Stylize Your Face in Only One-Shot
  2022	TVCG	Appearance-preserved Portrait-to-anime Translation via Proxy-guided Domain Adaptation
  2022	Arxiv	Neural Optimal Transport
  2022	CVPR Workshop	Cross-Domain Style Mixing for Face Cartoonization	HP
  2021	Arxiv	A Domain Gap Aware Generative Adversarial Network for Multi-domain Image Translation
  2021	ACM-TG	AgileGAN: Stylizing Portraits by Inversion-Consistent Transfer Learning	Github
  2021	Arxiv	FINE-TUNING STYLEGAN2 FOR CARTOON FACE GENERATION	Github
  2021	Arxiv	GANs N’ Roses: Stable, Controllable, Diverse Image to Image Translation (works for videos too!)	Github
  2021	JSAI	Multi-CartoonGAN for Conditional Artistic Face Translation
  2021	Arxiv	AniGAN: Style-Guided Generative Adversarial Networks for Unsupervised Anime Face Generation	Github
  2021	ICCECE	Turn Real People into Anime Cartoonization
  2020	NeurIPS Workshop	A Note on Data Biases in Generative Models
  2020	Arxiv	Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation via Pre-trained StyleGAN2 Network	Github
  2020	Arxiv	Few-shot Knowledge Transfer for Fine-grained Cartoon Face Generation
  2020	Arxiv	Auto-Encoding for Shared Cross Domain Feature Representation and Image-to-Image Translation
  2019	ICASERT	Generating Anime from Real Human Image with Adversarial Training
  2019	Arxiv	Landmark Assisted CycleGAN for Cartoon Face Generation
  2018	CVPR	DA-GAN: Instance-level Image Translation by Deep Attention Generative Adversarial Networks	Github
  2018	Arxiv	Twin-GAN – Unpaired Cross-Domain Image Translation with Weight-Sharing GANs	Github
  2018	ECCV	Improving Shape Deformation in Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation	Github

• Selfie 2 Anime

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	CVPR	Alleviating Semantics Distortion in Unsupervised Low-Level Image-to-Image Translation via Structure Consistency Constraint
  2022	ICIP	Hyprogan: Breaking the Dimensional wall From Human to Anime
  2022	MMUL	Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Negative Learning for Noisy Patches
  2022	CVPR	Unpaired Cartoon Image Synthesis via Gated Cycle Mapping
  2022	Arxiv	UVCGAN: UNET VISION TRANSFORMER CYCLE-CONSISTENT GAN FOR UNPAIRED IMAGE-TO-IMAGE TRANSLATION
  2021	ICCV	Unaligned Image-to-Image Translation by Learning to Reweight
  2021	Arxiv	Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal: Model Extraction Attacks Against Image Translation Generative Adversarial Networks
  2021	Arxiv	SPatchGAN: A Statistical Feature Based Discriminator for Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation
  2020	MAPR	Interpolation based Anime Face Style Transfer
  2020	ICML	Feature Quantization Improves GAN Training	Github
  2020	ECCV	Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Adversarial Consistency Loss	Github
  2019	IJCNN	AttentionGAN: Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Attention-Guided Generative Adversarial Networks	Github
  2020	CVPR	Breaking the cycle—Colleagues are all you need	Github
  2020	ICLR	U-GAT-IT: Unsupervised Generative Attentional Networks with Adaptive Layer-Instance Normalization for Image-to-Image Translation	Github

• Photo 2 Anime

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2024	IEICE TIS	A Novel Double-Tail Generative Adversarial Network for Fast Photo Animation	HP
  2023	ICCV	Scenimefy: Learning to Craft Anime Scene via Semi-Supervised Image-to-Image Translation	Github
  2023	CVPR	Interactive Cartoonization with Controllable Perceptual Factors
  2022	ACM-MM	Cartoon-Flow: A Flow-Based Generative Adversarial Network for Arbitrary-Style Photo Cartoonization
  2022	ICML	Learning to Incorporate Texture Saliency Adaptive Attention to Image Cartoonization
  2022	AAAI	Unsupervised Coherent Video Cartoonization with Perceptual Motion Consistency
  2022	MVIP	ARGAN: Fast Converging GAN for Animation Style Transfer	Github
  2022	ICCECE	Transfer photo to anime with dual discriminators GAN
  2021	3ICT	Cartoonize Images using TinyML Strategies with Transfer Learning
  2021	IEEE Access	Pseudo-Supervised Learning for Semantic Multi-Style Transfer
  2021	TVCG	GAN-based Multi-Style Photo Cartoonization
  2020	ISICA	AnimeGAN: a novel lightweight GAN for photo animation	Github
  2020	Arxiv	Generative Adversarial Networks for photo to Hayao Miyazaki style cartoons	Github
  2020	CVPR	Learning to Cartoonize Using White-box Cartoon Representations	Github
  2020	MMM	CartoonRenderer: An Instance-based Multi-Style Cartoon Image Translator
  2020	Arxiv	GANILLA: Generative adversarial networks for image to illustration translation	Github
  2018	Arxiv	Comixify: Transform video into a comics	Github
  2018	CVPR	CartoonGAN: Generative Adversarial Networks for Photo Cartoonization	Github

• Sketch 2 Anime

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	ACM-TG	AniFaceDrawing: Anime Portrait Exploration during Your Sketching	HP
  2022	TNNLS	PMSGAN: Parallel Multistage GANs for Face Image Translation
  2022	FDG	SketchBetween: Video-to-Video Synthesis for Sprite Animation via Sketches
  2021	TVCG	Deep Sketch-guided Cartoon Video Inbetweening
  2020	NeurIPS	How to train your conditional GAN: An approach using geometrically structured latent manifolds
  2020	ECCV	Modeling Artistic Workflows for Image Generation and Editing	Github
  2019	Arxiv	PI-REC: Progressive Image Reconstruction Network With Edge and Color Domain	Github
  2019	FITEE	SmartPaint: a co-creative drawing system based on generative adversarial networks

• Photo 2 Manga

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	AAAI	MangaGAN: Unpaired Photo-to-Manga Translation Based on The Methodology of Manga Drawing

• Anime 2 Costume

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2020	Arxiv	Anime-to-Real Clothing: Cosplay Costume Generation via Image-to-Image Translation

• Style transfer

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2024	IJCAI	Diffutoon: High-Resolution Editable Toon Shading via Diffusion Models	HP
  2023	CVPR	LANIT: Language-Driven Image-to-Image Translation for Unlabeled Data
  2022	TCSVT	HRInversion: High-Resolution GAN Inversion for Cross-Domain Image Synthesis
  2022	NeurIPS	Towards Diverse and Faithful One-shot Adaption of Generative Adversarial Networks	Github
  2022	CVPR	Pastiche Master: Exemplar-Based High-Resolution Portrait Style Transfer	Github
  2022	ICLR	Mind the Gap: Domain Gap Control for Single Shot Domain Adaptation for Generative Adversarial Networks	Github
  2022	Arxiv	Styleverse: Towards Identity Stylization across Heterogeneous Domains
  2022	ICCECE	Unsupersived Image Texture Transfer Based On Generative Adversarial Network
  2021	VSIP	Cross-modal and Semantics-Augmented Asymmetric CycleGAN for Data-Imbalanced Anime Style Face Translation
  2021	Arxiv	JoJoGAN: One Shot Face Stylization	Github
  2021	Arxiv	Fine-Grained Control of Artistic Styles in Image Generation
  2021	Arxiv	Few-shot Semantic Image Synthesis Using StyleGAN Prior	Github
  2020	CSICC	StarGAN Based Facial Expression Transfer for Anime Characters
  2019	IEEE Access	RAG: Facial Attribute Editing by Learning Residual Attributes
  2019	Arxiv	Disentangling Style and Content in Anime Illustrations	Github
  2018	Arxiv	Anime Style Space Exploration Using Metric Learning and Generative Adversarial Networks

• Author Style transfer

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	ICIP	Translation of Illustration Artist Style Using Sailormoonredraw Data

Video Generation

• Text-to-Video

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	Arxiv	ANIMATRIX: AN ANIME VIDEO GENERATION MODEL THATTHINKS IN ART, NOT PHYSICS
  2025	Arxiv	PTTA: A PURE TEXT-TO-ANIMATION FRAMEWORK FOR HIGH-QUALITY CREATION
  2025	IJCAI	AniSora: Exploring the Frontiers of Animation Video Generation in the Sora Era	Github
  2024	Arxiv	Aligning Anime Video Generation with Human Feedback	Github

• Image-to-Video

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	ICCV	VACE: All-in-One Video Creation and Editing	Github
  2025	ICCV	LayerAnimate: Layer-level Control for Animation	Github
  2025	CVPR	PhysAnimator: Physics-Guided Generative Cartoon Animation	HP
  2024	ICLR	ANIMATEDIFF: ANIMATE YOUR PERSONALIZEDTEXT-TO-IMAGE DIFFUSION MODELS WITHOUTSPECIFIC TUNING	Github
  2024	Arxiv	AnimateDiff-Lightning: Cross-Model Diffusion Distillation	HF
  2024	TCSVT	Hierarchical Feature Warping and Blending for Talking Head Animation
  2023	TMM	Language-Guided Face Animation by Recurrent StyleGAN-based Generator	Github
  2023	IJCAI	Collaborative Neural Rendering using Anime Character Sheets	Github
  2020	ACCV	CPTNet: Cascade Pose Transform Network for Single Image Talking Head Animation
  2020	SIGGRAPH Asia	MakeItTalk: Speaker-Aware Talking-Head Animation

Colorization

• NoHint

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2018	ISCID	Automatic Sketch Colorization with Tandem Conditional Adversarial Networks
  2019	IJNDC	Do You Like Sclera? Sclera-region Detection and Colorization for Anime Character Line Drawings
  2019	IJPE	Colorization for Anime Sketches with Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Network
  2021	MDPI-AS	Seg2pix: Few Shot Training Line Art Colorization with Segmented Image Data
  2021	-	Semi-automatic Manga Colorization Using Conditional Adversarial Networks	Github
  2021	ICPR	Stylized-Colorization for Line Arts
  2021	Arxiv	Generative Probabilistic Image Colorization
  2022	CHI	FlatMagic: Improving Flat Colorization through AI-driven Design for Digital Comic Professionals	Github
  2022	ICCIR	Attention-Based Unsupervised Sketch Colorization of Anime Avatar
  2023	IEEE Access	Robust Manga Page Colorization via Coloring Latent Space
  2026	CHI	No Pixel Left Behind: Filling Gaps in Anime Colorization	Github
  2026	WACV	Diverse Sketch Colorization with Content-Enhanced Style Representation and Recolorization Distillation	Github

• Atari

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	CVPR Workshop	Diffusart: Enhancing Line Art Colorization with Conditional Diffusion Models
  2023	WACV	Guiding Users to Where to Give Color Hints for Efficient Interactive Sketch Colorization via Unsupervised Region Prioritization
  2022	IVCNZ	StencilTorch: An Iterative and User-Guided Framework for Anime Lineart Colorization
  2022	WACV	Late-resizing: A Simple but Effective Sketch Extraction Strategy for Improving Generalization of Line-art Colorization
  2021	SIGGRAPH Asia	Interactive Manga Colorization with Fast Flat Coloring
  2021	TIP	Dual Color Space Guided Sketch Colorization
  2021	ICCV	Deep Edge-Aware Interactive Colorization against Color-Bleeding Effects
  2021	CVPR	User-Guided Line Art Flat Filling with Split Filling Mechanism	HP
  2021	CVPR Workshop	Line Art Colorization with Concatenated Spatial Attention
  2020	MDPI-AS	Automatic Colorization of Anime Style Illustrations Using a Two-Stage Generator
  2020	ICCST	Cartoon image colorization based on emotion recognition and superpixel color resolution
  2019	CSAI	User Guided Digital Artwork Colorization
  2019	IEEE Access	Two-Stage Sketch Colorization With Color Parsing
  2019	ICIP	MANGAN: ASSISTING COLORIZATION OF MANGA CHARACTERS CONCEPT ART USING CONDITIONAL GAN	Github
  2019	CISP-BMEI	Semi-Auto Sketch Colorization Based on Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks
  2019	TAAI	Interactive Anime Sketch Colorization with Style Consistency via a Deep Residual Neural Network
  2019	CVMP	PaintsTorch: a User-Guided Anime Line Art Colorization Tool with Double Generator Conditional Adversarial Network
  2019	Engineering Letters	Anime Sketch Coloring with Swish-gated Residual U-net and Spectrally Normalized GAN	Github
  2018	ACM-TG	Two-stage Sketch Colorization	Github
  2018	ACM-MC	User-Guided Deep Anime Line Art Colorization with Conditional Adversarial Networks	Github
  2018	Neurocomputing	Auto-painter: Cartoon Image Generation from Sketch by Using Conditional Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks	Github
  2018	EG	A Fast and Efficient Semi-guided Algorithm for Flat Coloring Line-arts
  2017	Arxiv	Outline Colorization through Tandem Adversarial Networks
  2011	NPAR	TexToons: Practical Texture Mapping for Hand-drawn Cartoon Animations
  2006	ACM-TG	Manga Colorization

• Reference

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	CVPR	Towards High-resolution and Disentangled Reference-based Sketch Colorization	Github
  2025	ICCV	MagicColor: Multi-Instance Sketch Colorization	Github
  2025	CVPR	Image Referenced Sketch Colorization Based on Animation Creation Workflow	Github
  2025	Arxiv	SSIMBaD: Sigma Scaling with SSIM-Guided Balanced Diffusion for AnimeFace Colorization	GitHub
  2025	SIGGRAPH	Cobra: Efficient Line Art COlorization with BRoAder References	HP
  2025	ACM-TG	ColorizeDiffusion v2: Enhancing Reference-based Sketch Colorization Through Separating Utilities	GitHub
  2025	Arxiv	MangaNinja: Line Art Colorization with Precise Reference Following	HP
  2025	Arxiv	MangaDiT: Reference-Guided Line Art Colorization with Hierarchical Attention in Diffusion Transformers	Github
  2024	Arxiv	ColorFlow: Retrieval-Augmented Image Sequence Colorization	Github
  2024	Arxiv	ColorizeDiffusion: Adjustable Sketch Colorization with Reference Image and Text
  2024	CVPR	Learning Inclusion Matching for Animation Paint Bucket Coloriation	HP
  2023	CGF	Two-Step Training: Adjustable Sketch Colourization via Reference Image and Text Tag	Github
  2023	Arxiv	AnimeDiffusion: Anime Face Line Drawing Colorization via Diffusion Models
  2022	ICME	ATTENTION-AWARE ANIME LINE DRAWING COLORIZATION
  2022	NicoInt	Semi-Automatic Colorization Pipeline for Anime Characters and its Evaluation in Production
  2022	ICASSP	Improving Reference-Based Image Colorization For Line Arts Via Feature Aggregation And Contrastive Learning
  2022	ECCV	Eliminating Gradient Conflict in Reference-based Line-Art Colorization	Github
  2022	Mathematics	Exemplar-Based Sketch Colorization with Cross-Domain Dense Semantic Correspondence
  2022	CVM	Reference-guided structure-aware deep sketch colorization for cartoons
  2022	TMM	Multi-Density Sketch-to-Image Translation Network
  2021	SIGGRAPH Asia	Anime Character Colorization using Few-shot Learning
  2021	IET-IP	Disentangled and controllable sketch creation based ondisentangling the structure and color enhancement
  2021	ICIP	PAINTING STYLE-AWARE MANGA COLORIZATION BASED ON GENERATIVE ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS
  2021	CGI	Exploring Sketch-based Character Design Guided by Automatic Colorization
  2021	ICME	Anime Style Transfer With Spatially-Adaptive Normalization
  2021	ICPR	Anime Sketch Colorization by Component-based Matching using Deep Appearance Features and Graph Representation
  2020	EG	Colorization of Line Drawings with Empty Pupils
  2020	EG	Deep-Eyes: Fully Automatic Anime Character Colorization with Painting of Details on Empty Pupils
  2020	CVPR	Reference-Based Sketch Image Colorization using Augmented-Self Reference and Dense Semantic Correspondence	Github
  2020	TMM	Semantic Example Guided Image-to-Image Translation
  2019	SIGGRAPH	Graph Matching based Anime Colorization with Multiple References
  2019	SIGGRAPH	Fully Automatic Colorization for Anime Character Considering Accurate Eye Colors
  2018	-	Attentioned Deep Paint	Github
  2017	ACIS SNPD	Automatic manga colorization with color style by generative adversarial nets
  2017	SIGGRAPH	Comicolorization: Semi-Automatic Manga Colorization	Github
  2017	ICDAR	cGAN-based Manga Colorization Using a Single Training Image	Github
  2017	ACPR	Style Transfer for Anime Sketches with Enhanced Residual U-net and Auxiliary Classifier GAN
  2017	IIAI	Deep Manga Colorization with Color Style Extraction by Conditional Adversarially Learned Inference
  2014	SIGGRAPH	Reference-based Manga Colorization by Graph Correspondence Using Quadratic Programming
  2004	NPAR	Unsupervised Colorization of Black-and-White Cartoons

• Tag

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	PG	Line Art Colorization Based on Explicit Region Segmentation
  2019	ICCV	Tag2Pix: Line Art Colorization Using Text Tag With SECat and Changing Loss	Github

• Video

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	arXiv	Uni-Animator: Towards Unified Visual Colorization
  2026	arXiv	OmniColor: A Unified Framework for Multi-modal Lineart Colorization	Github
  2026	ICLR	ToonComposer: Streamlining Cartoon Production with Generative Post-Keyframing	Github
  2025	ICCV	A Unified Framework for Industrial Cel-Animation Colorization with Temporal-Structural Awareness
  2025	ICCV	LongAnimation: Long Animation Generation with Dynamic Global-Local Memory	Github
  2025	CVPR	AniDoc: Animation Creation Made Easier	Github
  2025	Arxiv	InstanceAnimator: Multi-Instance Sketch Video Colorization	Github
  2024	ACM-TG	LVCD: Reference-based Lineart Video Colorization with Diffusion Models	Github
  2023	PR	Coloring anime line art videos with transformation region enhancement network
  2021	ICCV	The Animation Transformer: Visual Correspondence via Segment Matching	Video
  2021	WACV	Line Art Correlation Matching Feature Transfer Network for Automatic Animation Colorization
  2020	TVCG	Deep Line Art Video Colorization with a Few References
  2019	ICCV Workshop	Artist-Guided Semiautomatic Animation Colorization
  2019	CCCRV	Automatic Temporally Coherent Video Colorization	Github

Editing

• Lighting

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	ICIP	Automatic Illumination of Flat-Colored Drawings by 3D Augmentation of 2D Silhouettes
  2021	ICCV	SmartShadow: Artistic Shadow Drawing Tool for Line Drawings
  2020	CVPR	Learning to Shadow Hand-drawn Sketches	Github
  2020	ACM-TG	Generating Digital Painting Lighting Effects via RGB-space Geometry	Github
  2019	CVMP	Augmenting Hand-Drawn Art with Global Illumination Effects through Surface Inflation	HP
  2018	NPAR	2D shading for cel animation	HP
  2018	NeurIPS Workshop	Automatic Illumination Effects for 2D Characters
  2018	ECCV Workshop	Deep Normal Estimation for Automatic Shading of Hand-Drawn Characters	Github
  2014	ACM-TG	Ink-and-Ray: Bas-Relief Meshes for Adding Global Illumination Effects to Hand-Drawn Characters

• Illustration Editing

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	SIGGRAPH	See-through: Single-image Layer Decomposition for Anime Characters	Github
  2024	Arxiv	Re:Draw - Context Aware Translation as a Controllable Method for Artistic Production
  2023	Arxiv	DreamTuner: Single Image is Enough for Subject-Driven Generation
  2023	Arxiv	Instance-guided Cartoon Editing with a Large-scale Dataset
  2023	Arxiv	Reference-base Image Composition with Sketch via Structure-aware Diffusion Model	Github
  2023	WACV	DyStyle: Dynamic Neural Network for Multi-Attribute-Conditioned Style Editing
  2021	NeurIPS	Unsupervised Learning of Compositional Energy Concepts	Github
  2021	ICME	Universal Face Restoration With Memorized Modulation
  2021	ICIP	Improving The Quality Of Illustrations: Transforming Amateur Illustrations To A Professional Standard
  2021	NicoInt	Sketch-based Anime Hairstyle Editing with Generative Inpainting
  2021	TSP	Deep Unfolding with Normalizing Flow Priors for Inverse Problems
  2021	CVPR	L2M-GAN: Learning to Manipulate Latent Space Semantics for Facial Attribute Editing
  2021	TVCG	Cross-Domain and Disentangled Face Manipulation with 3D Guidance	Github
  2020	ECCV	Erasing Appearance Preservation in Optimization-based Smoothing	Github
  2018	Arxiv	Spatially Controllable Image Synthesis with Internal Representation Collaging	Github
  2018	PG	Decomposing Images into Layers with Advanced Color Blending	Github

• Sketch Editing

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	ICMR	Joint Geometric-Semantic Driven Character Line Drawing Generation
  2023	ACM-TG	Semi-supervised reference-based sketch extraction using a contrastive learning framework	Github
  2022	ACM-TG	Reference Based Sketch Extraction via Attention Mechanism	Github
  2022	AAAI	End-to-End Line Drawing Vectorization
  2022	CW	A Drawing Support System for Sketching Aging Anime Faces
  2021	NicoInt	One-shot Line Extraction from Color Illustrations
  2020	ACM-MM	SketchMan: Learning to Create Professional Sketches	Github
  2020	MDPI-AS	Progressive Full Data Convolutional Neural Networks for Line Extraction from Anime-Style Illustrations
  2019	TVCG	Perceptual-aware Sketch Simplification Based on Integrated VGG Layers
  2019	SIGGRAPH	Unpaired Sketch-to-Line Translation via Synthesis of Sketches
  2018	ACM-TG	Real-Time Data-Driven Interactive Rough Sketch Inking	Github
  2018	ACM-TG	Mastering Sketching: Adversarial Augmentation for Structured Prediction	Github
  2017	ACM-TG	Deep Extraction of Manga Structural Lines	Github
  2016	ACM-TG	Learning to Simplify: Fully Convolutional Networks for Rough Sketch Cleanup	Github
  2011	NPAR	Temporal Noise Control for Sketchy Animation

• Interpolation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2024	ACM-TG	ToonCrafter: Generative Cartoon Interpolation	Github
  2023	MTA	Automatic Animation Inbetweening
  2023	ICCV	Deep Geometrized Cartoon Line Inbetweening	Github
  2022	ICIP	Enhanced Deep Animation Video Interpolation	Github
  2022	ECCV	Improving the Perceptual Quality of 2D Animation Interpolation	Github
  2021	CVPR	Deep Animation Video Interpolation in the Wild	Github
  2019	ICIP	Optical Flow Based Line Drawing Frame Interpolation Using Distance Transform to Support Inbetweenings
  2017	CMV	DiLight: Digital light table – Inbetweening for 2D animations using guidelines

• Automatic Image Enhancement

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2024	CVPR	APISR: Anime Production Inspired Real-World Anime Super-Resolution	Github
  2022	NeurIPS	AnimeSR: Learning Real-World Super-Resolution Models for Animation Videos	Github
  2022	Sensors	A Transformer-Based Model for Super-Resolution of Anime Image
  2021	ICCV Workshop	Real-ESRGAN: Training Real-World Blind Super-Resolution with Pure Synthetic Data	Github
  2021	JSCI	Enhancement of Anime Imaging Enlargement using Modified Super-Resolution CNN	Github

• Background Removal

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	arXiv	ToonOut: Fine-tuned Background-Removal for Anime Characters	Github

Manga Application

• Classification

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	TIP	Panel-Page-Aware Comic Genre Understanding

• Generation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	Arxiv	DreamingComics: A Story Visualization Pipeline via Subject and Layout Customized Generation using Video Models
  2025	Arxiv	Panel-by-Panel Souls: A Performative Workflow for Expressive Faces in AI-Assisted Manga Creation
  2025	Arxiv	Retrieval Augmented Comic Image Generation
  2024	Arxiv	Sketch2Manga: Shaded Manga Screening from Sketch with Diffusion Models	Github
  2021	CVPR	Generating Manga from Illustrations via Mimicking Manga Workflow	HP
  2020	ICAART	Hair Shading Style Transfer for Manga with cGAN
  2020	SIGGRAPH	Manga Filling Style Conversion with Screentone Variational Autoencoder
  2019	ISM	Synthesis of Screentone Patterns of Manga Characters

• Colorization

  | Year | Conference / Journal | Title | Links |

  2025	arXiv	Region-Wise Correspondence Prediction between Manga Line Art Images
  2025	arXiv	MangaDiT: Reference-Guided Line Art Colorization with Hierarchical Attention in Diffusion Transformers

• Restoration

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	CVPR	Exploiting Aliasing for Manga Restoration	Github

• Understanding

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	arXiv	CHROMIC: Chronological Reasoning Across Multi-Panel Comics
  2025	arXiv	Re:Verse - Can Your VLM Read a Manga?

• Inpainting

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	TOG	Seamless Manga Inpainting with Semantics Awareness

• Editing

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2026	Proceeding	Inference-time Trajectory Optimization for Manga Image Editing
  2023	Arxiv	Manga Rescreening with Interpretable Screentone Representation
  2021	SIGGRAPH Asia	Comic Image Inpainting via Distance Transform

• Text detection

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2020	ACM-MM	Learning from the Past: Meta-Continual Learning withKnowledge Embedding for Jointly Sketch, Cartoon, andCaricature Face Recognition
  2020	TST	Deep Learning-Based Classification of the Polar Emotions of “Moe”-Style Cartoon Pictures
  2019	ICDAR Worshop	CNN based Extraction of Panels/Characters from Bengali Comic Book Page Images
  2011	IJIP	Method for Real Time Text Extraction of Digital Manga Comic

• Landmark detection

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2018	Arxiv	Facial Landmark Detection for Manga Images	GitHub

• Segmentation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	Arxiv	Advancing Manga Analysis: Comprehensive Segmentation Annotations for the Manga109 Dataset	HuggingFace
  2022	ICPR	Towards Content-Aware Pixel-Wise Comic Panel Segmentation
  2020	ISM	Extraction of Frame Sequences in the Manga Context

• Translation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	AAAI	Towards Fully Automated Manga Translation

• Depth Estimation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	WACV	Estimating Image Depth in the Comics Domain

• Vectorization

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	Arxiv	Raster Manga Vectorization via Primitive-wise Deep Reinforcement Learning

• Re-Identification

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2024	ACM-MM	Zero-Shot Character Identification and Speaker Prediction in Comics via Iterative Multimodal Fusion
  2022	Arxiv	Unsupervised Manga Character Re-identification via Face-body and Spatial-temporal Associated Clustering

Representation Learning

• Representation Learning

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2015	SIGGRAPH	Illustration2Vec: A Semantic Vector Representation of Illustrations	Github

Pose Estimation

• Pose Estimation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2024	Arxiv	VLPose: Bridging the Domain Gap in Pose Estimation with Language-Vision Tuning
  2022	WACV	Transfer Learning for Pose Estimation of Illustrated Characters	Github
  2016	MANPU	Pose Estimation of Anime/Manga Characters: A Case for Synthetic Data

Image Retrieval

• Image Retrieval

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2021	Arxiv	AugNet: End-to-End Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning with Image Augmentation	Github
  2017	MTA	Sketch-based Manga Retrieval using Manga109 Dataset

Visual Correspondence

• Visual Correspondence

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2016	ACM-TG	Globally Optimal Toon Tracking	HP

Character Recognition

• Character Recognition

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	IEEE Access	Hierarchical Multi-Label Attribute Classification With Graph Convolutional Networks on Anime Illustration
  2022	ICIP	GCN-Based Multi-Modal Multi-Label Attribute Classification in Anime Illustration Using Domain-Specific Semantic Features
  2022	Arxiv	AniWho : A Quick and Accurate Way to Classify Anime Character Faces in Images
  2022	ECCV	Open-Vocabulary DETR with Conditional Matching	Github
  2022	EG	CAST: CHARACTER LABELING IN ANIMATION USING SELF-SUPERVISION BY TRACKING
  2021	TIP	Graph Jigsaw Learning for Cartoon Face Recognition
  2020	IJCAI	ACFD: Asymmetric Cartoon Face Detector
  2020	ACM-MM	Learning from the Past: Meta-Continual Learning withKnowledge Embedding for Jointly Sketch, Cartoon, andCaricature Face Recognition
  2020	TST	Deep Learning-Based Classification of the Polar Emotions of “Moe”-Style Cartoon Pictures
  2019	ICDAR Workshop	CNN based Extraction of Panels/Characters from Bengali Comic Book Page Images
  2019	ACM-TURC	Progressive Deep Feature Learning for Manga Character Recognition via Unlabeled Training Data
  2018	Arxiv	Object Detection for Comics using Manga109 Annotations

3D Character Creation

• 3D Character Creation

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2023	NeurIPS	DreamWaltz: Make a Scene with Complex 3D Animatable Avatars	Github
  2020	ICCW	Automatic Generation of 3D Natural Anime-like Non-Player Characters with Machine Learning

Robotics

• Robotics

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2020	IROS	Making Robots Draw A Vivid Portrait In Two Minutes

Speech Synthesis

• Speech Synthesis

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	IEEE UEMCON	Comparative Evaluation of Expressive Japanese Character Text-to-Speech with VITS and Style-BERT-VITS2
  2019	ACM-TG	Comic-Guided Speech Synthesis	HP

Adult Content Detection

• Adult Content Detection

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2022	IEEE Access	A Deep Learning-Based Approach for Inappropriate Content Detection and Classification of YouTube Videos
  2021	IEEE Access	An Evaluation of Traditional and CNN-Based Feature Descriptors for Cartoon Pornography Detection
  2019	ACM SAC	KidsGUARD: Fine Grained Approach for Child Unsafe Video Representation and Detection	Github

Survey & Review

• Survey & Review

  Year	Conference / Journal	Title	Links
  2025	arXiv	Comparing Human and AI Performance in Visual Storytelling through Creation of Comic Strips: A Case Study
  2024	under review	One missing peace in Vision & Language: A survey on Comics Understanding	GitHub
  2023	HSET	Anime like Character Face Generation: A survey
  2022	IJCV	Cartoon Image Processing: A Survey
  2020	Arxiv	Image Colorization: A Survey and Dataset
  2019	TOPS	Computational Approaches to Comics Analysis
  2018	-	A Survey of Comics Research in Computer Science

Projects

Summary of github or other types of projects that are related to anime or manga except above.

• Repository

  • Awesome-Animation-Research

• Datasets

  • Layered Temporal Dataset for Anime Drawings
  • TRIGGER dataset
  • Anime Art
• Representation Learning

  • Classification and vectorization of key-frames and face characters of anime
• Image Generation

  GANs

  • makegirlsmoe
  • ANIME305/Anime-GAN-tensorflow
  • jayleicn/AnimeGAN
  • FangYang970206/Anime_GAN
  • pavitrakumar78/Anime-Face-GAN-Keras
  • forcecore/Keras-GAN-Animeface-Character
  • tdrussell/IllustrationGAN
  • m516825/Conditional-GAN
  • bchao1/Anime-Generation

  Diffusion models

  • harubaru/waifu-diffusion
  • DGSpitzer/Cyberpunk-Anime-Diffusion
  • NovelAI
  • Stable Diffusion Models
• Image-to-Image Tranlation

  • Aixile/chainer-cyclegan
  • SystemErrorWang/FacialCartoonization
  • experience-ml/cartoonize
  • racinmat/anime-style-transfer
  • TachibanaYoshino/AnimeGANv2
  • XiaoSanGit/Real2Animation-video-generation
  • Avatar Artist Using GAN
  • Generating Cartoon Style Facial Expressions with StackGAN
• Automatic Line Art Colorization

  • style2paints
  • PaintsChainer
  • Ugness/Line-Art-Colorization-SPADE
  • sanjay235/Sketch2Color-anime-translation
  • Pengxiao-Wang/Style2Paints_V3
  • GANime: Generating Anime and Manga Character Drawings from Sketches
  • Line Drawing Colorization
• Character Animating

  • Talking Head Anime from a Single Image
  • Talking Head Anime from a Single Image 2: More Expressive
  • Talking Head(?) Anime from a Single Image 3: Now the Body Too
  • Neural Rendering with Attention: An Incremental Improvement for Anime Character Animation
• Super Resolution

  • waifu2x
  • Anime4K
  • goldhuang/SRGAN-PyTorch
  • Real-CUGAN
• Segmentation

  • jerryli27/AniSeg
  • zymk9/Yet-Another-Anime-Segmenter
• Landmark Detection

  • Anime face landmark detection by deep cascaded regression
  • Anime Face Detector using mmdet and mmpose

Venues

• TIP: IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
• TMM: IEEE Transactions on Multimedia
• PR: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Recognition
• TSP: IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
• CVPR: IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
• MMUL: IEEE MultiMedia
• TVCG: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
• MMM: International Conference on Multimedia Modeling
• ECCV: European Conference on Computer Vision
• NeurIPS: Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
• NeurIPS-DB: Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Datasets and Benchmarks Track
• ACM-MM: ACM Multimedia
• ACM-TG: ACM Transaction on Graphics
• ACM-TURC: ACM Turing Celebration Conference
• ISICA: International Symposium on Intelligence Computation and Applications
• 3ICT: International Conference on Innovation and Intelligence for Informatics, Computing, and Technologies
• MDPI-AS: MDPI Applied Science
• EG: EUROGRAPHICS
• CGF: Computer Graphic Forum
• CGI: Conference on Graphic Interface
• IET-IP: IET Image Processing
• ICME: International Conference on Multimedia and Expo
• CCCRV: Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision
• ICCW: International Conference on Cyberworlds
• IROS: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
• HSET: Highlights in Science Engineering and Technology
• TOPS: Topics in Cognitive Science
• COLING: Conference on Computational Linguistics