I learned anime anatomy through how to draw anime books. But what I do when there's a certain pose I want that I can't seem to recreate is I take a photo of myself or my friends. I identify their joints through that, draw lines across their bodies for the correct placements and draw it starting with the head, then torso, then limbs. Another thing you could do is find screen caps from animes and do the same process of identifying joints and drawing lines for placement :)

This has been explained many times before, but I wanted to toss my hat into the ring. :)

Remember first that everyone has their own way of learning how to do something-- I'm self-taught as an artist, so something like a book would be completely lost on me. Like most people, I learned by copying from artists I admired. If you learn more from it, you should do that.

If you want my advice, right now, the most valuable thing you can do for yourself in terms of beginning to improve your skill is two things: the first is to look at real people. Both anime and cartoons are caricatures or simplified representations of real-life gestures. If you study those gestures and know them well, it will be easier to draw an anime or a cartoon-ified body. The second thing is to look at other kinds of art. The greatest flaw I see with young anime artists nowadays is that they study too much anime art, not enough of other kinds of art, so make sure to broaden your horizon, look at different styles, discover what it is you like, and learn by copying. The more art you look at, the more you'll be able to see what makes anime unique! :neko:

Someone suggested comparing, so compare also different art styles-- this doesn't mean you have to stop drawing anime! But trust me, you will get better at drawing in the anime style by just looking at other styles. :P The best thing that improved my own cartooning was drawing real life people!