2000s Character T-Shirts

The decade animation moved to computers and anime reached American television.

Two things happened at once. Computer animation displaced hand-drawn features almost completely across the decade, and Japanese series reached American television at scale for the first time, which is why this list runs from Shrek to Naruto without much in between resembling either.

Rendered characters are harder to put on a shirt than drawn ones. A computer-generated design carries soft light, texture and gradient that a flat print cannot reproduce, so the strongest apparel from this decade tends not to be a character portrait at all — it is a faction crest, a logo, a piece of typography or a silhouette. That shift is visible in what is actually listed for the characters below.