Ryu Jose from MSG and Claudia LaSalle from SDF Macross
and I don,t think "white" anime characters look even remotely Asian.
and I don,t think "white" anime characters look even remotely Asian.
Why are all anime characters white?
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*sigh* This shit again. look man, everyone else have posted the video I was thinking of.
stop asking this question, PLEASE.
stop asking this question, PLEASE.
Yukari Morita from Rocket girls
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I'm European but most animie chracters (tho I get confused occasionally) looked more asain to me. Probably because most of the people I know who are Asian including the one who introduced me to amine in the first place have largeish eyes, pale skin and rounded faces like many anime characters have. Not the squinty eyes and yellow skin people seem to associate with all of asia. The eye and hair colour can confuse things but many anime don't follow normal eye or hair colours.
Kinda off topic: I remember a while ago there was a debate over a photoshoped image of faith form mirrors edge where someone and tried to make her appeal to the "asian standard of beauty" more. People where going on about ?unrealistic? it was, how sad it was the the Asian editor decided to make her more ?western? looking or how they are obsessed with westerns ?round eyed beauty?. Thing is, the photoshoped version (aside from the boobage) looked almost exactly like a girl I knew. It?s not the western standard of beauty and honestly seems kind of weird to me that people think so.
Kinda off topic: I remember a while ago there was a debate over a photoshoped image of faith form mirrors edge where someone and tried to make her appeal to the "asian standard of beauty" more. People where going on about ?unrealistic? it was, how sad it was the the Asian editor decided to make her more ?western? looking or how they are obsessed with westerns ?round eyed beauty?. Thing is, the photoshoped version (aside from the boobage) looked almost exactly like a girl I knew. It?s not the western standard of beauty and honestly seems kind of weird to me that people think so.
I *was* being sliiiightly faecetious thereBatou667 said:
But it was in the spirit of suddenly realising that, in whatever shared universe or persistent nation their stories are set, there's either been quite a bit of ethnic cleansing, or there's a very restrictive immigration policy. About the darkest character I can think of is Spiller in Arriety, who is almost literally the very latest addition to their character list, and he's still more "suntanned plains hunter" than anything.
I can somewhat go along with what you're saying there, but for a different reason - much as I love them (or maybe even one of the reasons why I do) is that all of his, and all of the studio's films appear to have a shared "cast" of generalised character models... sort of as if we've got a window into some kind of animated alternate universe where these are the equivalent of live action TV-movies, and this small studio has a particular set of regularly-used actors on its payroll. (Though again, they must have got a bit more budget of late, as they've hired 2 or 3 new faces for the last couple of films
"OK, we've got an opening for a stern but fair early 30s woman in a senior/mentoring role... Sal, you want to read for it? You did well as ... what was her name in that last one? Oh yeah, Eboshi... this actually reads kinda like a similar character but with less power and less central to the story... You do end up looking after the protagonist though. 10 year old girl. Thought we'd give 'chelle a shot at it, she's old enough to stop playing bit parts and macguffins by now. We might in that other kid again, too... yknow, he stopped the fight in that scene with you and Jenny? Bit of an emo? I know you have a soft spot for him. Hope you're good at talking to thin air and animatronics, by the way - there's a lot of CG and prosthetics in this. Talking frogs, that emo kid - ah, Stephen, that was his name wasn't it? - gets to turn into a dragon, and Vera's already getting measured up for the most twisted bit of maskwork you ever saw. Can still tell it's her, though, somehow. Not like Dave... he thought he was getting a bit typecast as the sidelined male comic relief-cum-kindly dad figure, so he's sticking with mocap and V.O's for the villain of the piece."
And if you can spot which films I'm on about and the particular characters from each... well, I'm not too surprised.
As for Hayao himself, wellllll like Tezuka he's not really made a secret of originally being inspired by Disney, and has a massive boner for european machinery and scenery, so a tinge of western styling is to be expected I suppose. But along the way he's made a house style all of his own - I actually clocked MCoG as being somehow related long before finding out that, yes, the studio which created featured several people he'd worked with on his early films... it was that distinct from anything actually airing in the east OR west.
The brown hair / minority ethnic group thing, though? That's an actual fact stated by Ghibli in relation to a couple characters like Ashitaka (there's a reason his people are hiding deep in the forest, and possibly a similar reason why San was abandoned as a baby). And similar in other animes which have people with darker casts, brown/ginger(/blonde) hair, and often a sportier bent/rougher accented speech (the latter being a stereotype). This is a real thing in Japan. Heck, they're a real ethnic group in real life. I suppose it's a case of slightly more chinese/mongol influence than the prevailing majority or something. Someone matching the description was in some of my classes at university as an exchange student. We got reasonably friendly, but that topic never really crossed my mind to discuss
(Just realised, in fact... Aryan's totally the wrong word, because there's hardly any blonde people either... and when there is, they're thrown in for effect almost like you might someone with albinism. Black, brown, red and silver-grey are the dominant colours)
I could write a long post about this but really, the video linked on the first page explains it perfectly well. Anime characters look like cartoon versions of typical young japanese people. They are pale and have round heads. The eyes are big because it's a cartoon style, and also because it's a cartoon style that draws a lot from 40's and 50's Disney cartoons. If you think they look like white people, it is most likely because you are white yourself and projecting. It could also mean you identify with the chararacters, in which case I'd say the animators did a great job.
Oh look, it's this topic again.
No, anime characters don't look white, unless they're actually suppose to be Caucasian, in which case they will normally give the character blonde hair, blue eyes, a big nose and, often, a pinkish skin tone.
As that great video bruein linked to pointed out, the aspects some people see as "white" are hardly exclusive to Caucasian people. In case you didn't watch it, here's a quick summary:
Skin color: East Asians (i.e Japanese) people, especially woman, have a skin color that's just as white, if not whiter than Caucasians. Hell, a Chinese girl I know has whiter skin than me, and I don't exactly spend a lot of time in the sun.
Eyes: Many Japanese have eyes just as big as Caucasians, and some Caucasians have eyes squinter than most Japanese. However, Japanese people have an eye fold that Caucasians don't have, so you could argue that anime that don't include this in their art style might be considered "white", but as has been pointed out already, the eye style in anime is borrowed from Disney, who found that larger eyes makes characters more expressive. Also, Japanese don't naturally have that wrinkle above the eye that Caucasians have, and many anime characters have this, so this is actually very "white".
Here's a few visual examples, starting with Ai Yori Aoshi, which has a "typical" (i.e big eyes and colorful hair) anime art style:
Tina, the blond one is American, and you can see she has a different skin tone from the rest who are Japanese in addition to being blond.
Of course, Ai Yori Aoshi has a very simple art style, let's see what a more detailed art style looks like:
The character on the top is Japanese, and the character on the bottom is German. Of note are:
Japanese: Black hair, narrow, rounded jaw, brown eyes and small ears
German: Wide chiseled jaw, wide nose, blue eyes and big ears
No, anime characters don't look white, unless they're actually suppose to be Caucasian, in which case they will normally give the character blonde hair, blue eyes, a big nose and, often, a pinkish skin tone.
As that great video bruein linked to pointed out, the aspects some people see as "white" are hardly exclusive to Caucasian people. In case you didn't watch it, here's a quick summary:
Skin color: East Asians (i.e Japanese) people, especially woman, have a skin color that's just as white, if not whiter than Caucasians. Hell, a Chinese girl I know has whiter skin than me, and I don't exactly spend a lot of time in the sun.
Eyes: Many Japanese have eyes just as big as Caucasians, and some Caucasians have eyes squinter than most Japanese. However, Japanese people have an eye fold that Caucasians don't have, so you could argue that anime that don't include this in their art style might be considered "white", but as has been pointed out already, the eye style in anime is borrowed from Disney, who found that larger eyes makes characters more expressive. Also, Japanese don't naturally have that wrinkle above the eye that Caucasians have, and many anime characters have this, so this is actually very "white".
Here's a few visual examples, starting with Ai Yori Aoshi, which has a "typical" (i.e big eyes and colorful hair) anime art style:
Of course, Ai Yori Aoshi has a very simple art style, let's see what a more detailed art style looks like:
Japanese: Black hair, narrow, rounded jaw, brown eyes and small ears
German: Wide chiseled jaw, wide nose, blue eyes and big ears
Jesus christ, this topic is still going on?
The discussion should have ended the second the video explaining this was posted.
[HEADING=2]Pale skin does not mean a person is Caucasian. There is more than one race with pale skin. Anime characters have pale skin because that is a Japanese aesthetic ideal. It has nothing to do with trying to look aryan. Both Asian people and Caucasian people can have pale skin. If you examine the rest of the racial traits anime characters exhibit, you will see that they're quite clearly asian.[/HEADING]
As for the round eyes: Asians having narrow eyes is a stereotype. The Japanese ideal of beauty is large, round eyes, therefore they portray their characters with that trait. No, they do not view that as a caucasian trait. Westerners are normally portrayed with squinty and slim or square eyes.
You perceive them as Caucasian because their racial traits are not exaggerated. They do not show any blatantly obvious racial traits, and so act as more of a blank character, race-wise. That's why you project your race onto them.
Ask any Asian person, and they'll think you're weird for thinking the characters are white
The discussion should have ended the second the video explaining this was posted.
[HEADING=2]Pale skin does not mean a person is Caucasian. There is more than one race with pale skin. Anime characters have pale skin because that is a Japanese aesthetic ideal. It has nothing to do with trying to look aryan. Both Asian people and Caucasian people can have pale skin. If you examine the rest of the racial traits anime characters exhibit, you will see that they're quite clearly asian.[/HEADING]
As for the round eyes: Asians having narrow eyes is a stereotype. The Japanese ideal of beauty is large, round eyes, therefore they portray their characters with that trait. No, they do not view that as a caucasian trait. Westerners are normally portrayed with squinty and slim or square eyes.
You perceive them as Caucasian because their racial traits are not exaggerated. They do not show any blatantly obvious racial traits, and so act as more of a blank character, race-wise. That's why you project your race onto them.
Ask any Asian person, and they'll think you're weird for thinking the characters are white
Yeah, I agree with just about all of this. I don't think you needed to repost it for me but, um, thanks.Mimsofthedawg said:
Note that when Wuggy says "Asians are usually recognized by their eyes being 'leaner'", it's really "Asians are usually recognized IN WESTERN ART by their eyes being 'leaner'". The actual difference in size between Caucasian and north-east Asian eyes is too small to be shown in stylized cartoon art. Western art has picked on that difference as a racial marker but Japanese cartoon art hasn't; it uses another tiny difference (the size difference between children's eyes and adults' relative to the face) and uses eyes as a marker for age or innocence.chuckman1 said:
Same thing with skin tone; to Westerners "pale"="white" and Asians are depicted as yellow, but it's not as if actual people are white, yellow, or pink. The actual skin tones of Japanese varies as much in paleness as the skin tone of Caucasians, and "normal" cartoon skin tones are as different from Caucasian skin tones as they are from Japanese. I think skin tone is often used as a racial marker in anime; the typical anime skin tone is "northern Japanese". Anime Caucasians tend to be distinctly reddish-pink in comparison, and Japanese from the south will be some shade of brown. And black people an even darker shade of brown.
Other people have pointed out that the Elric brothers are half bizarro-German and half Desert-Atlantean (whatever Xerxes is supposed to be), but am I the first to pick up on the blonde hair blue eyes bit ?ph0b0s123 said:
Edward has blonde hair and yellow eyes and Alphonse has brown hair and grey eyes.
But you know, one out of four...
FMA is actually interesting in that because if you look at the video on anime characters I'd say Alphonse, Edward and Winry (who DOES have blonde hair and blue eyes IIRC (but I probably don't)) have the typical "Japanese" anime facial traits. So what happens when characters from bizarro-China show up ? Ling does have western-cartoon-asian X-treme slanted eyes. But Mei very much does not; if anything she has X-treme Betty Boop eyes. Note that works better with the eyes depicting age/innocence than race.
Yeah, you got me there. It's a while since I saw it. I must have confused some of the Elrics features with Naruto's blond hair and blue eyes. Did not need the sarcasm in your response though..Caravelle said:Other people have pointed out that the Elric brothers are half bizarro-German and half Desert-Atlantean (whatever Xerxes is supposed to be), but am I the first to pick up on the blonde hair blue eyes bit ?
Edward has blonde hair and yellow eyes and Alphonse has brown hair and grey eyes.
But you know, one out of four...
FMA is actually interesting in that because if you look at the video on anime characters I'd say Alphonse, Edward and Winry (who DOES have blonde hair and blue eyes IIRC (but I probably don't)) have the typical "Japanese" anime facial traits. So what happens when characters from bizarro-China show up ? Ling does have western-cartoon-asian X-treme slanted eyes. But Mei very much does not; if anything she has X-treme Betty Boop eyes. Note that works better with the eyes depicting age/innocence than race.
I updated my original response to say that I think Anime characters can be pretty ambiguous and trying to give a race to each is a game in futility. About the only thing you can be sure about with most anime characters is that they are anime characters. They are almost like vague impressions of people that the watcher fills in what they would look like in the real world. Hence the variation in what people see. Hence I started off with the stick figure as representing a person. The viewer's imagination fills in the rest...
