Trying to find where I’m lacking in drawing the body

I will clear this up in just a moment.

So to answer your question here is Steve Huston, explaining what makes it this way. This is who I learned this from. And then I added some imagery explaining gesture for others when I have attempted too.
"Gesture must accomplish two things:

1. The gesture line must act as the fundamental design line.
2. The gesture line must act as the connecting line, something to which the structure can attach.

Gesture=the long axis curve of any structure.

Always err on the side of the more dynamic. If the gesture is curved, make it more curved.

When you add all of the detail it stiffens up anyway, so go ahead and make it overcurved if you wanted.

If the sides oppose each other they can cancel out their fluid design. "

"The wave design-allowing movement and stillness. (he calls it a wave because we are made of a high percentage of water, and have a fluid motion)
Pent up. Relaxed. Or building pressure. "

CONTRAPPOSTO - COUNTERPOSE

As soon as the weight shifts, the pose becomes dynamic. It becomes asymmetrical. the pose has more potential energy, and that feels more alive to us.

It's the play between symmetry and asymmetry that's the real meat of good design. It implies change is about to happen. That's interesting. In storytelling, they call it drama, and it will keep you busy for the rest of your career.

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Anyway, sorry if I was confusing. I was up late writing all this original reply stuff and scrambling to remember it. Also trying to see how many words I could misspell apparently.

The lines on the first purple figure that I talked about being parallel is the top of the rib cage, and the bottom of the rib cage. The top of the hip bowl (iliac crest), and the bottom of the hip bowl (great trochanters). Landmarks, bones which touch the flesh, will always be related to the opposing side. See how they line up if you are confuse as to what a figure is doing. Abstraction Mannequins, connect to the major landmarks to define the height and width of a figure on your page.

The arm shoulders and can move. And have landmarks, so we cannot solely rely on them to line up the torso. That is why some people use floating balls, or pillows with pulled corners - to get the landmarks they need to be represented, which is the top of the collar bone on the acromion process.

Here is the steve huston book. It has a lot of figure drawing theory in it that I'm sure some anime books do not. It has explained in delicious simplicity the abstract theories that many students struggle with. You can you can make an account on archive.org and check it out or support the teacher and buy it.

Here is another talk I gave on gesture with the way someone else was wanting to use it.
cubebrush forum link on force and rhythm method

Also remember, that part of your issue is perspective. Your sketches in your sketchbook can be taken into the digital area and corrected to find the major and minor axis of the simplified forms of cylinders and cubes or spheres. Its important to do this when you are not using reference or a desk mannequin. So many people have to do this for a long time before they can skip it, and observe it in their mind before hand.

You're very welcome.

Here are some more tips to answer your questions I hope. But gather them all up and I'll try to answer them. Its a nice challenge and learning opportunity.

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You can see how this person below uses the floating spheres on the mannequin method. But notice that he uses them with a purpose to locate the deltoid mass and collar bone behind or in front of the rib-cage. The length of the thigh, or upper arm and lower arm. Everything has a purpose in these. The hips are square like the hip bowl. But this is by no means a finished drawing. And I am only showing you these because it is close to your theory of your book that you might be used too. I call it "floating balls". In my example though I try to give my mannequin's landmarks more purpose and perspective than the book seems have. (both legs look like they are going forward because of the ball outline being so thick on her right, our left..in the "OK" drawing

It's important to take a theory in a chapter, and see how you can replicated it in your own practice using reference. The drawing doesn't have to be good. Fit the theory into a master copy or reference that you like. Understand how it is used. Google more information. Find the landmarks (where bone meets flesh) to make drawings believable. (Watch this video on effectiveness and believably in creating animation styles. It also explains WHY the style looks the way you want to make it in the first place.)

You should study a method, and learn its process. It doesn't matter which one because no one really cares how you make pictures unless they start asking how you make them. But books will start out in wildly different ways. Trying to copy the picture perfectly doesn't help much and will be frustrating without the under drawing.

Again, draw that mannequin presented (the one that is in perspective in your book using references like the video above.) Understand and replicate a theory in a chapter before you move on. Make it your own, understand how you can use it or even...make it better. But its important just to get how it is used in your own work, and whether or not you need to incorporate it. Save those drawings. As you learn more from the book apply the new theories of drapery or line art to the figure that you made from reference or master copy like my demo above. This whole mess is called 'construction' by many. And it should feel like you are building something.

No one just sits down with a golden pen and decides they are going to make perfect drawings. If it looks like that, then they have all of this memorized already. And have studied it all. The style of everything before you has been lovingly thought out and designed for a purpose. So dont feel bad or behind.

It definitely helps if you have seen someone drawing and talking about it at the same time. I provided a good channel above that using this same sort of theory. Scaffold, anatomy, Rhythm, perspective...All that. Check out some of the other videos about practicing the body.

The way you can decide what books to study is if the book was made for content, like youtube or insta videos, or if the content is made for learning. The latter is much harder to find behind pay walls sometimes online. Content creators dont want to tell anyone that stuff. Because they count on clicks for the business model. Just like Manga how too books rely on buys in book stores. But after a while you will notice a pattern of what you need, and what you dont. And how they are all really saying the same thing.

But people put a lot of great information in not fun, and boring books. Or videos. But they are the ones with all of the magic in them. The more I am tempted to fall asleep, the more I am learning usually lol.

It probably is. Smoothing in Photoshop is the same thing its just a slider from 0-100. Don't worry its no bother. I enjoy teaching and helping people on this forum. I've been doing it for a while now.

If something is frustrating you and you cannot get it, like the 3 pt perspective thing, just move onto the next thing. If you are a "completion-ist" and can't move on unless you have to master it, just find the information on youtube. Spend time drawing the things that you want to draw. Sometimes going and learning everything else before you can draw what you want can really.....mess you up. So make sure to keep thinking of characters, and games, and fan art and keep trying to perfect doing the thing you love to do by actually doing them. Try your damn hardest every time. And then ask for an opinion. And move on.