Why are so many anime characters white?

[Spiner909]

Anime: often made by Japanese people
Japanese people: often white.
BING!

 

[CorruptCor3]

EVERYONE IN JAPAN IS WHITE

 

[thenumberthirteen]

To me it just seems a projection of your own cultural values since the art style removes traditional visual cues to ethnicity.

Oh and for a universe that's half Chinese Firefly sure doesn't have any Asians.

 

[snowman6251]

Just want to throw it out there that Oda said in an interview or SBS or something that if the crew lived in the real world they'd be the following nationalities.

Luffy - Brazilian
Zoro - Japanese
Nami - I'm pretty sure it was Swedish. Not positive.
Usopp - Not sure on this one either but I think it was an African nation.
Chopper - Canadian
Robin - Russian
Franky - American
Brooke - Austrian

Pretty sure I got that right.

 

[duckfi8]

because there asian?

 

[wolfy098]

EVERYONE IN JAPAN IS WHITE

Might want to edit that.

 

[Jonluw]

I heard someone say on these forums that he had been complaining about anime characters' skin tones, and was then properly schooled on the fact that the colour was either quite representative of the skin-colour in Japan, or for the convenience of the animators.

I wish I could provide a link, but I can't remember what the thread was called.

Edit:

Spoiler

What I see is three white guys, a white girl, a half black guy, a half asian girl that looks like the woman from Smallville, and a deer.

To further emphasize my point: Why does that dear have the colour that it has? That doesn't look 100% accurate. No, but it is a good representation of the coulour of a deer's coat, which is all that is needed in a cartoon.

Edit 2: I just noticed that this thread is rather old, and that the creator of this thread may very well have been the person who said he had been schooled in anime skin-colour. Coincidences are weird.

 

[CorruptCor3]

Ok:

Nearly EVERYONE IN JAPAN IS WHITE

but not everybody. Just the game designers.

 

[Swifteye]

Maybe it's really easy to buy peach crayons.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

I just suddenly noticed this about anime, and japanese characters as a whole. Most of them are white. Naruto, Ken, Ichigo, Ryu, Mario, and every single final fantacy character (expect the "ethnic spice" as Yahtzee puts it), they all look Cacastion. Yes, I know that Japanese people don't have slitty eyes, buck teeth, and what ever else how they were protrayed in WW2 posters, but in the following image, what ethnicity comes to mind when you glance at these characters.

Spoiler

What I see is three white guys, a white girl, a half black guy, a half asian girl that looks like the woman from Smallville, and a deer.

Does anybody know why a culture that was cut off from the Western Wordl until a few hundred years (and the West has been either forcing trade on them, or making their cities fine radiated dust until a few decades ago) have so many of its characters being white?

Anime characters tend to be JAPANESE, not Caucasian, mostly.

 

[Altaries]

Maybe simply cause most japanese are in fact white? While many anime character tend to look western they usually are supposed to be japanese, they have as much a fascination with large round eyes as they do you know them being light skinned.

*Cough*
This

 

[Toriver]

Er, Most anime characters are Asian -.-. Seriously, unless there in a Fantasy setting where its painfully easy to tell there imitating Western traits most anime characters are Asian. Rurouni Kenshin, Yu Yu hakusho, Dragon Ball Z, Hell Naruto and Bleach have straight Japanese characters, if they don't ironically say it within the show -.-. Anime is idealized, so going through the details of separating races specifically takes away from it.

Though I think your reallllyyy blind if you think all Final Fantasy Characters look White. The only person in FFX that could play as White is Tidus, everyone else was heavily oriental...other then the fact that the entire game is based on Asian culture...seriously do the research -.-.

FF8 and 7 had alot of races. Barret and Raijin being black (or Indian for Raijin I guess...). Yuffie, Tifa, Cloud, Squall (white or azn) Rinoa, Laguna, etc are all Oriental. It's harder to tell, but pay attention to the details in the rendering. Characters like Irvine and Selphie were given ALOT to point out there american based. (They imitated country style characters for both of em for Christ sake.) Hell in FF7 the only white person in your entire party is Cid -.- and they made sure to point him out with his hair and his pirate mouth.

Hell I thought Chad in Bleach was straight black, till they explained he was actually Hispanic or whatever. The first Hispanic I EVER saw in an anime -.-, and he still sounded Asian! Just because there skin is pretty white doesn't mean there Caucasian since alot of Asians are pretty pale -.-...actually I've only seen a couple of Caucasians paler then Asians...so yeah At least the horrendous number I see.

This is it right here. Most anime characters are, in fact, supposed to be Asian in actual ethnicity, even if the characters don't look that way. If they mean to make a character of a different ethnicity, they will usually give that character at least a Western-sounding name. Other than that, they will take a lot of creative liberties with character design. Part of the fun of anime is the varied and colorful worlds and characters that the stories revolve around. If every anime were to take place in Japan with all Japanese and Japanese-looking people, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. So to liven things up and give the show its own unique feel, characters will even look outlandish many times, but to keep things at least somewhat recognizable for the main target audience, they retain their Japanese culture/ethnicity, despite their blue hair and bulging eyes. And if anyone has seen official live-action interpretations (NOT cosplay) of anime from Japan you would be able to see that those styles can work on a Japanese person and have the person still look distinctly Japanese. It's also the case that many, many anime don't take place in Japan or even a Japan-like setting, where one can have a mish-mash of races and ethnicities brought together and produce a very entertaining world (a la One Piece). Of course, in that case, not every character will look Japanese.

P.S. 1: IMO, Luffy, Zoro and Robin in the above pic are clearly supposed to be Japanese, or modeled after an average Japanese person. Maybe Usopp as well. The only more likely non-Japanese characters there are Sanji and Nami.
P.S. 2: Chad is actually half-Japanese, half-Hispanic. So he will certainly sound Asian, as he is half-Asian and living in Japan.