Lightknight said:
Gorrath said:
They look closer to western people from the point of view of western people. To western people, Marge Simpson looks white because we identify the character as culturally white but I would be very interested to know if Asian people looking at Marge Simpson would think she looks white. What I can say is that I have heard that Asian people view anime characters as looking Asian. It's a view of artistic expression through the lens of our own culture, which isn't itself a problem so long as we understand that the cultural view of others are likely to lead them to a wholly different conclusion. In other words, assuming that because we think a character has Caucasian looking features doesn't mean the creator intended that or thinks that themselves.
Oh, you found that article too, huh?
Actually no, it's just something that popped into my head as an artistic representation of people that could be culturally/racially confusing. I tend to avoid Kotaku like the plague it is. I may have to make an exception here though.
It's also bullshit in parts. Why do people think the Simpsons are white? Because they represent an average American family and they depict all other races on the show. They depict Asian (Indian and Chinese/Japanese/Korean), black, and Native American. However, I don't think I'd say they look like white people. In context they appear to be the white demographic since other races are depicted but the creators have claimed that they are white and the reason they chose yellow was because an animator showed yellow colored characters to him and Groening thought it would help them stand out when people were flipping through channels. I don't think people are honestly saying that Marge looks white. She doesn't. She doesn't look like any race I've ever seen.
Right, she doesn't, but that was my point. She doesn't look white at all, we just perceive her as white because of the culture portrayed in the show. We see the Simpsons as white because they are portrayed culturally as being white Americans. That's precisely what I was saying about anime. The characters don't look like actual humans of any race any more than the Simpsons do. If you look at characters which are explicitly supposed to be American in anime, they can get pretty out there compared to the non-white, non-american characters, just like how the Simpsons don't look white but they don't look Asian either, especially in comparison to the characters in the show which are explicitly Asian.
If you read to the end of the article the author they go into why Anime is clearly influenced by Western culture and looks. So the last half of the article is him back peddling the first half's comments.
From a purely aesthetic appearance I would never have guessed that most of the Anime characters were Asian. Can you honestly look at a picture of many of those characters and tell me that they "look" Asian with either a distinct narrower eye or yellower/darker skin or any other commonly accepted allele expression of people from those regions (I personally don't know many Japanese people with darker or yellowish skin, the only Asian friends I have with yellow tinted skin are Chinese and my Pilipino friends have kinda yellow but mostly just darker tinted skin that has more of a reddish/brown hue to it) ?
I would never have guessed they were meant to be Japanese people either. Then again, if you showed me a picture of the Simpsons, sans any context, I'd also have no idea they were supposed to be white Americans. Cultural context in the shows is where we get our clues as to the artist's intention, not the aesthetic of the characters themselves, which was exactly the point I was making. In light of a totally alien looking character, we perceive their race based on culture, not aesthetics. You seem to agree with this based on what you said about the Simpsons.
Anime is so common to the Japanese culture that of course the Japanese will view them as Japanese. But I'd have to debate with you that given more empirical comparisons they would have more in common with the western appearance than Asian. The art is clearly influenced by Western culture and the characters are at best somewhere in between and most commonly more European in appearance than Japanese.
I think doing an empirical comparison is quite moot because we are talking about subjective interpretations of art. The eyes of anime characters don't look like what many western people might think of as Asian looking but to me, they sure don't look like Western people either. They are hugely exaggerated for effect. Even being affected, clearly and historically, by western art doesn't mean that people should or do think the characters in said art are of any specific race or ethnicity.
Take for example typical fantasy anime, where the characters look like they are wearing some kind of really elaborate but European inspired armor. Those suits of armor look nothing like historical Japanese armor but they also don't look anything like historical European armor either. They are a mix of European inspired fantasy with a really strong artistic bent.
The fact that opinions differ to not alter the fact of it. WWII changed Japanese art forever to more strongly align with Western art and culture. Sorry.
Agreed that opinions of how the characters look don't affect the history of the influences but I'm not sure why that matters. The fact of historical influence is also moot with regard to subjective views of what race a person might think a character resembles.
The original author, Julian Abagond, makes the case that people are somehow making the claim because they want to show that Japanese "worship" whiteness. How fucking nuts is that? "Those characters look white...", "Quite saying I worship white people". Ridiculous.
I would be willing to accept the idea that anime characters might be "race-less" or "race-neutral" even though they still clearly depict other races with more robust stereotypes. Maybe anime characters are a combination of white and Asian too?
That's a tough question because we'd be digging into an unknown state of the artist's mind, which is ripe ground for leading our own interpretations. I think it is fair to say that, often enough, non-Japanese characters in anime are made to look explicitly not like the Japanese characters in the show, though even this is not always the case. If someone were to see Ryu from Street Fighter without any context, I could easily see how a Japanese person might think he's Japanese and an American might think he's white. Throw Ken in there though and it starts to get a bit more clear. Throw Zangeif and Guile in there and we're talkin' turkey. On the other hand, throw Ryu up there along with E. Honda. Japanese person might say both Japanese, where as an American might say one's obviously Japanese and the other looks very much American in comparison. Obviously the artist intended Ryu to look Japanese and Ken to look American though.
I think it's fair to say that artists will have their own ideas about what makes a character look like a certain ethnicity and that it will vary from artist to artist, though we will also see some strong trends across a broad style like anime. The human characters in Gate may look more or less Japanese depending on the perception of the viewer but toss in the characters that are explicitly not Asian and you can see how the artist is differentiating between the two.
<youtube=Qus34ySIbyI>
I think the youtuber makes a good point. The problem here lies on the shoulders of the animators and not on the masses. You can draw a thing to look like a thing. If people think it looks like a different thing then that's your problem, not theirs.
Agreed totally! Though I'd say it's not even really a "problem" as such. Is it really a big deal if we think anime characters look white and Japanese people think they look Asian? I don't think it's a problem, I'd just caution against asserting that our interpretation of the character's looks is the correct interpretation. I sort of get the feeling you might have read more into my original statements than I actually meant.