fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3164 ]

[ SECRET POST #3164 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3164 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #452.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Counterargument: Taisho Baseball Girls. The American is blonde, but there's definitely more to it than that.

They're eyes are exactly the same (except for color). Their noses and mouths are exactly the same, their chins, everything but the hair and the dark-haired girl has a wider face at the cheekbones.

How am i supposed to see these two characters as 'distinctly' anything but a cartoon?

r u srs

Well yes. The figures have the *exact same features*. Is there some huge difference i'm not seeing, here? Because they look identical except for eye/hair color.

DA

One's taller, has broader shoulders and big boobs. That's "white" in anime-ese. Big buxom blondes with blue eyes. It's not only the face. Please don't say you find their bodies identical?

I said *features*, not bodies. Obviously the bodies are different. But, okay, if Sailor Moon is 'obviously' Japanese, then why is she....a buxom blonde with blue eyes?

I'm so confused.

It's obvious because her name before translation is Usagi Kou. Plus she lives in Japan and is surrounded by people with purple and blue and orange hair. That series was full of unlikely coloration and the colors meant nothing in context.

In a more reality based series where all the Japanese people have light brown-black hair, the blond and blue eyed thing is a telltale sign of nonJapanese.

TL;DR: Context matters.

And you did say features but not "facial factures" and "big breasts" would count as a feature to most people.

I know SM only through the videos on tv (her name was Serena?) and nothing about the cartoon cities suggest Japan - or any *other* country, specifically - to me.

But then, Serena's squeaky voice got on my nerves so I didn't exactly obsess over it. (My daughter still loves SM and she's 18).

I don't think of breasts as a 'feature'. To me, features are facial attributes. Breasts are...unimportant other things.

There are lots of clues if you're familiar with Tokyo. The types of buildings of the time period, the subways and train systems, the schools, and so on.

What would you say if a Japanese person watched a translated version of PowerPuff Girls then insisted "Uto-san" and "キンポウゲ-chan" were meant to be coded Japanese because they have nothing that makes them white, since the features like black hair are the same?

Whereas a Japanese person with a sense of context would realize that Professor Utonium and Buttercup originally have names that are English like the rest of the cast and are probably white along with the rest of the cast as well.

I...have no idea who Uto-san and (characters) are? Maybe Power Puff Girls is originally Japanese? I have *no* clue. And honestly, I could care less. If someone says the PPG are all Japanese, more power to 'em. They're freakin' weird, to be honest, with those horrible, horrible eyes.

And you're assuming something here - you're assuming i'm *insisting* that 'X character' is white. They look like *cartoons*. They could be anything. But yet people are saying that 'these cartoons with huge eyes and spiky hair are *obviously* Japanese, but *these* characters with huge eyes and spiky hair are *obviously* not!!!'

I'm asking *how* does anyone know 'this one is foreign, this one is Japanese' when they're talking about people with purple hair and eyes that take up half their faces and every one of them has the *same weird tiny squiggle* for a nose.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2015-09-03 05:42 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

tabaqui - 2015-09-03 05:44 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2015-09-03 05:49 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

tabaqui - 2015-09-03 05:56 (UTC) - Expand

The anime showed Tokyo Tower though. Her school is also called Juuban High School, and Juuban is an area in Tokyo. She wears a typical school uniform for Japanese schools, and her male classmates wear gakuran, which is a distinctly Japanese type of school uniform too. She also can be seen wearing a yukata sometimes and go to distinctly Japanese summer festivals.

Also, Rei/Mars is a Miko whose house is a Shinto temple, you can't vet more Japanese than that.

/there was an error posting g thing msg, sorry if you got this twice.

I have no idea what Tokoyo Tower looks like. Not that i've never seen it? But that i have a terrible memory, and an animated cartoon's architecture may or may not be accurate. Plus, i'm used to watching American TV, where every city (New York, Chicago, San Fran, LA) is Vancouver, so I don't pay a lot of *attention* to the city scape, unless the show itself is making a big deal about it.

Like I said, I didn't watch it a lot, only occasionally when my daughter was watching. I don't remember seeing anybody's house but Serena's house, and i think the school? Not sure. It seemed like they spent most of their time flying around in the Sailor costumes, but it's been years and years....

Only got it once, so, no worries.

Edited 2015-09-03 14:30 (UTC)

Usagi Kou? Did I miss the alternate ending where she says fuck Endymion and hooks up with Sailor Star Fighter? No that was Fantaghiró. Ugh.
Her Name's Tsukino Usagi

butyou hit the nail on the head with the TLDR. Context is everything, and not just in the case of anime, but also in everyday situations of negotiation of self and other.

Usagi Tsukino* lol shit, I'm drama brainfarting. Kou is the wanky cosplayer.

Wait. Wanky cosplayer?

OH - do you mean in real life?
*trying to wrack brain to remember cosplayer on SM*

Yup. Real life.

Used to be full of drama.

(no subject)

tabaqui - 2015-09-03 05:30 (UTC) - Expand

So what you're saying is... Japanese anime characters aren't drawn ever with big boobs, and can't be tall, either.

Americans tend to be drawn with thicker lips. In this case, she's also noticeably paler and has less rounded eyes.

*goes to look again*
She is paler, yes, but then, i'm used to shades of skin around me so i figured...just another shade. *Are* her eyes less rounded? I thought that was just makeup, that heavy black edge - looks like eye liner.

Yeah, I watch a lot of anime and her general look wouldn't be that strange for a Japanese person in another show. If we hadn't been told she's a foreigner I'd just assume she was supposed to be older than the other girl.

SA as other reply

I googled a bit, and while there is a pic that shows the skin tone difference better (http://5pb.jp/games/taisho/images/chara.jpg) it also sinks the eyes argument since several of the girls have the same type of eyes. And she's plain wrong about the woman's lips, she's obviously (for an anime fan) wearing lipstick.

Mostly I'm baffled by the people acting like it's ~so strange~ you can't tell. Your first reply showed you obviously aren't an anime fan, so I'm not sure why people keep excepting you to be aware of common anime tropes.

Oh, who knows. People like to point out 'obvious' things, without realizing they're not always 'obvious'.

Or perhaps just waiting for me to say 'it's obvious they're all white!!!', in which I disappointed them.

But, it's interesting to know how the non-Japanese are drawn/animated, even if it's not a glaring difference to the uninitiated.

Thanks for the link, that's interesting to see them all in a row and compare.

Context kinda matters though. This pic only shows those two characters and anime can have all kinds of color combinations so those + the other features mentioned by anon above didn't automatically tell me "she's a foreigner!"

The woman doesn't look like she has thicker lips, she looks like she's wearing lipstick... which is IME a common way to show someone's an adult woman. Combined with her outfit it just made me think she was an office woman of some sorts. I chalked her eyes up as another way to show she's an adult. The girl's slightly darker skin did give me slight pause, but it's not that uncommon for characters to have slightly different skin tones - if anything I'd assume the girl was marked as "different".

I think this would've worked better for your example:
http://5pb.jp/games/taisho/images/chara.jpg
It shows most of the characters, so the differences between them and the American are much more obvious (though I'll point out that the American thing about this woman's lips isn't that they're thicker but that she's wearing lipstick).

Is it really that strange that someone not familiar with anime wouldn't be able to tell the difference?

da

I am. There's enough variety in "Japanese" anime characters that one could very well look EXACTLY like that blonde woman. Unless every other character in this particular series has dark hair, there is literally NO indication that this character is white.

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