if you're a complete beginner, then I would suggest not watching any videos or instructional stuff for now. Just draw a lot and have fun. The basics of learning to draw, in terms of mechanical skill, is to break out of symbol drawing, learn any method of construction that works for you, learn how to work with light, and how to compose an image. there's a lot to learn when it comes to drawing. Anatomy is a complicated topic, gesture is something you'd study and never really stop studying. Another thing is that youtube videos are made for entertainment, not really education. (Look up hampton's analytical anatomy series to see what I mean. That's a formal university lecture right there.) A question i often asked was, "where is this youtuber getting their knowledge?" it's better to go straight to the source in that case, rather than rely on regurgitated information.
I think the best way for someone to start out is to simply copy anime drawings or manga panels they like without thinking too hard about it. If you keep at it, you'll naturally find challenges, which might make you ask more pointed questions like "why do my drawings look so flat?" rather than generalized ones like, "what can I do to improve?" In my own case, I would compare my drawings to finished works of artists I liked, and try to see where I was falling short. In my opinion, there's only two types of useful study material posted by other people on the internet; process videos and completed drawings.
I know you said you weren't looking for suggestions on how to get good fast, but I have a lot to say on the opinion of art education, so I can't help but type a lot. I took a look at various art curriculums for animation, illustration, concept art, etc, and from what I found most of these programs stress perspective as the most important thing. before learning to draw the body, most places would put you through the basics of perspective first. It makes sense, since you won't be able to draw a natural looking pose without understanding the concept of foreshortening. However, getting comfortable with drawing in a way where you are depicting forms in 3D space believably will not come with just a basic understanding of vanishing points.
Anyway, a generalized art school curriculum would probably be something like:
Term 1:
-Intro to perspective
-Exercises for penmenship and stability
-Still life exercises and drawing from life
(Texts: drawing on the right side of the brain, perspective made easy, scott robertson's how to draw - but just the penmenship exercises)
Term 2:
-Advanced perspective
-Constructing vehicles and mechanical objects
-Background drawing
(Scott Robertson's how to draw, Erik Olson's perspective for artists)
Term 3:
-Intro to gesture
-Intro to figure drawing
-Intro to construction
(Loomis's figure drawing books. You can't get better than this, really.)
From there you'd go on to your second year, where you'd probably split off and start learning what you're actually studying. There's an infinite amount of resources to pick from afterwards to learn about anatomy and painting, though I personally think anatomy for sculptors and alla prima are the go to books. I use anatomy books as reference texts, looking up muscle groups after I sketch out a figure to see what I'm working with. If you're going to draw anime girls, you obviously don't need to know about the teres major/minor and the infraspinatus individually, though you would need to be aware of the serratus and the external obliques. At the end of the day, anime is drawn the way it is as a simplification, but it's very hard to simply something if you don't know what it is you're trying to simplify. Also, a lot of instructional content on the internet is structured for observational drawing, not drawing from your imagination.
sadly it seems shimejis are a dying art.
seems i missed the point
