Japanese games and race

[Blood Brain Barrier]

-snip-

It's...sort of complicated really, the longer you look at it. The way I understand they are making their characters Asian, it's just a bit idealized and anyone who isn't Asian can easily read it as caucasian.

Because what exemplifies the stereotypical "Asian" or "Japanese" features? Small eyes, black hair, and the skin tone. However, modern anime was initially inspired by the Walt Disney style big eyes on cartoon characters, so that's one feature gone. Anime also has bright hair colors--even when the characters are supposed to be human--but that's more for character identification/characterization than anything else. Because if you think about it, a bunch of cartoon characters with the same hair color would all start to look the same. I remember one series where a character's hair was green, however at one point he dyed his hair blonde, and when they dyed him back to black his hair turned green again.

And as for the skin tone, it is very close to caucasian anyway, and when isolated from all those other features it can be very hard to tell.

This video will help explain a bit more on the difference they portray Asian characters and caucasian ones:


There is a whole other thing about Japan/Japanese media being on the xenophobic side, but that's another topic for another day.

Great post, thanks for that. Very informative.

 

[darlarosa]

...I feel like this is same "why are all anime characters white" conversation all over again... which kinda reads like cultural ignorance/blinders(no offense intended) because to the Japanese the characters appear Japanese...does anyone ever consider that? Once a friend's mom saw my sketch book and asked why I don't draw black characters. Back then I mimicked Naoke Takeuchi, the creator of Sailor Moon, and I drew in black and white, but did not know how to shade so I never did. I explained to her that my characters were mostly black even though to her they did not look like it because they weren't shaded and had stereotypical anime faces. It's kind of the same thing. To the artist characters are Japanese and are envisioned as Japanese

If you look at certain animes (mostly gundam , Cowboy Bebop and older games/animes come to mind) Americans appear differently, as do Blacks, Latinos, and other asian ethnic groups. Dark skin is often mistaken for making a character black in the west when they're usually part of a non-Japanese ethnic group or Indian to the Japanese. Serious American characters are typically strong jawed, blonde, blue eyed, strong nosed, slightly more noticeable lip. Serious Latino males long chestnut hair, tan skin or curly black hair usually the eye, nose placement/size depends on the character. The list goes on, but I gotta echo some of the sentiment here already. Japan is a very...mono-culture society and they have difficulty depicting people of color in a....not somewhat offensive way. Sometimes I just cringe because it is to the point of parody.

I think it's over simplification...and perhaps a bit of arrogance to just say "Oh they're making them look white cause white is great". In the west that is more often than not the case but...it doesn't ring true everywhere