fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3382 ]

[ SECRET POST #3382 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3382 ⌋

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

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Because I've always been curious when it comes up, as it did a lot in yesterday's thread about race and shipping:

Do you, or did you ever, mentally read anime characters as white? Be honest, because we all know they're not (most of them), but it sounds like there's debate over whether it's possible for Westerners to actually see them that way without having Western animation's Asian-coding features. What do you think? If you want, talk about why you think you do or don't see them as white, too.

...huh? If the anime takes place in Japan then I see them as Japanese

Yeah, I did, because I originally saw them in a French dub, and there were like characters with blonde hair, so yeah.

It depends on the level of detail the characters are given.

For generic moeblobs or samefaces, no race. Not white, not asian. They're generic fictional peachskin or whatever color they happen to be. For example sailor scouts are generic peachskin fictionpeople, I can accept them to be whatever peachskin race their name reflects even if their hair is blue cause nobody real has natural blue hair anyway. If a character is brown and you tell me she's indian fine, if you tell me she's native american fine, if she's named juanita she's probably latino, whatever.

For more detailed realistic looking characters or 3D ones, their race is usually apparent. The guy from Big Hero 6 is asian, Mulan is asian, Elsa is white.

I'm asian.

That's a tough question. For me, character designs like Usagi (Serena) from Sailor Moon read as white to me, but that's more from eye shape/hair colour than anything else.

I'd have to say it's probably maybe 40-60? And a lot of for me has to do with how exaggerated a lot of non-realism anime shows draw certain features, plus the across-the-spectrum hair colours.

For artists like Clamp and stuff, even though their art is exaggerated, I don't think I've ever 'seen' any of the characters as anything other than Asian, even when it comes to non-human characters like the angels/devils in Wish/Legal Drug etc.

I tend to think of all characters in anime as being the same generic "anime" ethnicity, even ones who have dark skin.

I replied above and yup same. Even if I read Hetalia and I look at blond haired blue eyed "America" or "England" or "Germany" I see him as generic peachskin anime dude. I have to actively try to picture them as a real 3D white person and wouldn't bother anyway unless someone asked me to do it for some reason.

It depends on the setting! If it's all set in Japan, I'm going to assume they're all Japanese unless otherwise told. Just like if it's all set in the US (a la Tiger & Bunny) I'm going to assume they're white unless we're given indicators otherwise/we're told their racial make up.

If it's all set in some fantasy land then it really depends on how that fantasy land is set up.

(But, okay, when I was really little I watched the original Sailor Moon English dub and I thought they were white. Oops? Tiny child mistake?)

Same. Series set in Western-y settings, like FMA and such, I do think they're some form of non-Japanese.
SNK we know is actually mostly populated by non-Asian people (which... is kinda bullshit but whatever).
When I was little I don't remember that I really thought about what the characters were. I never identified too strongly, because it was obvious they weren't from my country anyway.

With Sailor Moon and other shows from that time, it might not even have been your fault - a lot of shows set in Japan were localised in the dub to reflect the country they were aired in -so you had name changes, location changes and in some of the dubs in my country, they even changed the names of certain iconic foods to be less Japanese because they assume children would't understand the concept of riceballs or something.

It... depends on the setting? Like if they're in Japan and have Japanese names then they're 100% Japanese in my head.
If they have English names and they're in London then... English, obviously? But in my mind I see them as they're drawn so... idek
I don't think I understood your problem.

I think there's been a lot of discussion that because the majority of mainstream anime characters don't have stereotypical defining 'asian' features, people are coding them to white, and are we coding them to white because in a lot of western animation, those stereotypical features are present and we can't 'see' anime characters as asian because those features are absent.

If that makes sense?

Re: "Mentally whitewashing" anime?

(Anonymous) - 2016-04-07 23:51 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Mentally whitewashing" anime?

(Anonymous) - 2016-04-08 00:02 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Mentally whitewashing" anime?

(Anonymous) - 2016-04-08 00:08 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Mentally whitewashing" anime?

(Anonymous) - 2016-04-08 00:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Mentally whitewashing" anime?

(Anonymous) - 2016-04-08 00:32 (UTC) - Expand

Re: "Mentally whitewashing" anime?

(Anonymous) - 2016-04-08 00:37 (UTC) - Expand

Yes, I've read anime characters as white because they were, indeed, white.

Nope. I knew anime was Japanese even in my early childhood when I watched it dubbed, so I grew up thinking of the anime style as just the way Japanese people draw themselves. I was too young to think about the whys of the style, it just was what it was. If I recognized that something was anime, that was an automatic mental code for "Japanese character."

Uh, no? As a kid, I didn't read the Pokemon/whatever else characters as any specific race at all, just viewed them the same as all the other cartoon characters (since, well, I was used to characters who had purple/green/blue/etc skin + characters who weren't even human).

When I watched anime as anime, like, knowing it was from/set in Japan, I read them as Japanese? Mostly because my first two major anime were Inuyasha & Fruits Basket, which make it pretty damn clear they're all Japanese.

I don't think I've ever actually thought a character wasn't Japanese when they were obviously supposed to be through name/setting, but most of the time I don't see many character designs as looking specifically "Asian" either.

Not saying they should look like Western-created stereotypes or that everyone looks white, though, because common anime features like huge eyes aren't exactly realistic for any race. More like, if I saw an anime character out of context, with blonde hair and blue eyes and no name given (and somehow wasn't aware of how anime is typically drawn), I doubt I'd initially guess they were Japanese. But of course that's because I've grown up in Western culture and am used to many protagonists being from similar backgrounds, even though most anime characters are logically not.

It feels a bit weird when fanartists are attacked for supposedly not drawing anime characters as Japanese though. Often it seems like they're just trying to translate generic anime face into something slightly more realistic, but without quite imitating the appearance of real people either. Unless they do something really stupid like claiming the character is somehow "not really" Japanese in their description or draw them exactly like an IRL white person, I think it's more often them just not deviating enough from anime sameface even as they attempt different styles.

If any of that makes sense.

Depends entirely on the animation style and how they're drawn. For something like Samurai Champloo or Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei I read them as Japanese. For something like Death Note or Evangelion I read them as Japanese/White/etc. depending on the race of the character. For something like Sailor Moon or Digimon or Madoka where they're less realistic I read them as sort of generic person characters. I don't see them as Japanese particularly (even though I know logically they are) but I also don't see them as white or really any race at all.

i never assumed ethnicity when i watch anime or cartoons or read manga tbh

i only give a character an ethnicity if the author tells us.

If it's set in Japan, like most anime, I mentally read them as Japanese even if they look "western" because I know that they are meant to be ethnically and culturally Japanese (unless otherwise specified, like the Mexican and half-Swedish characters in School Rumble.) Fictional characters, not unlike real people, can have a particular look to them that isn't necessarily representational of who or what they really are. Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin canonically has red hair, but that doesn't make him less Japanese within the setting of the series even though Japanese people tend not to be natural gingers.

If it's a series that takes place in Europe/fantasy Europe (Hellsing, FMA), yeah, barring any specific racial signifiers. Otherwise, no.

No, but I'm not a Westerner or white, so that's definitely a factor.

I guess I was always aware anime was from Japan, and the designs are representational anyway. And for the more realistic styles, it's easier to infer what ethnicity they're intended to be.

But for a more interesting case: the Ace Attorney games. I only played the English (American) localised versions, which gave characters Western names to preserve the name puns (a good move imo cause I really love puns).

But because there are still a lot of crucial elements in the plot that are culturally/stylistically Japanese, the "California" setting ended up more "Japanifornia". The head localiser's headcanon for this is about different immigration laws in early the 20th century, and I'm actually completely fine with that because the AA universe is already so AU in the first place. Not just in terms of spirit channelling and flashy lawyers, but also geographically. There are countries called Borginia, the Republic of Zheng Fa, and the Kingdom of Kurain which aren't direct expies of particular RL countries. So while I think of Naruhodo Ryuichi as Japanese, I don't put Phoenix Wright into any RL racial category. I only care that he looks in fanart similar to how he does in canon, that's it. But even if he doesn't, it's not my fanart, is it?

I admit to seeing anime characters as white, unless the anime is unequivocally set in Japan. I can't help think of older anime like Astro Boy, Voltron, or Robotech, which I saw when I was child - they did not make me think "Asian!" back then and that sort of reading is set in my head.

they don't look white to me, but they don't look Asian either.

I do sometimes forget that some characters in the text are very Japanese and not just like my own family, but that may be kind of the point of a lot of manga art.

That said, I'm not a racial realist. I can identify with characters of a variety of backgrounds without having to remember that I am on one side of an imaginary line and they on the other.

It must be hell for some people, reading books set in Africa and having to remember that everybody is a "savage Negro," or watching movies set in Latin America and being unable to tell all the Hispanics apart because their sheer Latinness is so overwhelming.

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