[ SECRET POST #3386 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3386 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Bit early today, sorry!

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 058 secrets from Secret Submission Post #484.
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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It means "I'm embarrassed that when I was a kid I was too sheltered and when I was a teenager I was too stupid, unobservant, and racist to realize a character who lives in Japan with a Japanese name in a Japanese show made by Japanese people was, *gasp* Japanese, if they weren't drawn with squint-eyes, buck teeth, and yellow skin. Therefore, I'm going to pretend the character was something called "white coded" in order to blame the writers/animators instead of myself for the misconception."

[(Anonymous)]

yupppppppppp

[cloud_riven]

This definition is wonderful ♥


To be fair to children though, with things like Sailor Moon and a lot of localised anime and games, a lot of names and places were changed that didn't reflect anything Japanese at all (eg: Usagi to Serena; Katsuya Jonouchi to JOEY WHEELER WHOOOOOO). It's kinda dumb to stick with the "they're white, right?" once you're an older nerd and have access to internet to already know better.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah, that's why I mentioned "sheltered" for kids. Which is in itself nothing to be ashamed of, kids believe in Santa Claus etc and aren't embarrassed of it. Being unable to accept that you didn't know everything when you were a kid is a sign of deep insecurity imo.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, he only anime I saw prior to Sailor Moon were Grimms Fairy Tale Classics, and The Last Unicorn, and every one of those characters was meant to be white/European. Now you've got Miyazaki kingdoms, Attack on Titan, Seven Deadly Sins, Fullmetal, Snow White with Red Hair, etc, etc. all set in European fantasy nations. Anime isn't necessarily always Japanese characters, you can give some people a pass for not immediately thinking "Asia!" every show.

[harp]

I don't think that you need to call people "stupid" for not knowing that a certain TV show came from Japan. Especially in the 90's when the internet wasn't available for everyone and fan sites weren't all over the place. Yeah "white coded" is a dumb concept if you're using it to mean "you drew them like what white people should look like", but there's no shame in a casual viewer (meaning a person who maybe only caught the show every other week or so) not knowing it was Japanese, especially with the way DIC (who dubbed the first four seasons) edited the crap out of the show. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that even if a kid didn't know that CardCaptor Sakura was anime it would be understandable because of Nevlana's extreme (though rather messy) editing.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Well, if a fan who's a teenager doesn't know that anime is Japanese and that it's dubbed in english, yeah, they're pretty goddamn stupid IMO, even without internet. I mean, someone who's never heard of anime but who occasionally saw kids watching Pokemon here or there would be a different story, maybe, but not an actual fan or regular viewer.

Kids get a pass.

[harp]

In 1995, without internet, a dedicated fan who made it a point to learn about the show and set aside time to watch it, yes, they should know it's Japanese. I consider myself lucky because my two best friends in day camp were big fans of the show (we were 9) and had some of the Japanese merchandise purchased in the "anime district" of Chinatown.

The reason I'm sticking to this point is because I'm trying to acknowledge that growing up in New York, I was privileged in terms of culture compared to someone who came from a more rural area. I'm trying to think about the experiences of people who grew up in less diverse states with dial-up internet, without places like Chinatown and The Strike Zone (my local fannish shop). I remember being 11 and finding one lone copy of Sailor Moon vol. 2 in Barnes and Nobles and snatching it up quicker than blinking. I'm telling you, there wasn't a single other copy anywhere in that store. I checked!

So I'm thinking that if this was my experience, I can't imagine what someone in a tiny town in North Carolina or Iowa. If you want to call them stupid, that's your right, but I personally feel like to judge them based on my experiences would be unfair.

[diet_poison]

!! harp! I haven't seen you here in ages! How are you?

[harp]

Diet Poison, now there's a familiar icon! Yeah, I haven't been here in a hot minute, have I? I feel fantastic. Are you alright there, too?

[diet_poison]

Not so hot! I'm sore and out $6k as of yesterday.

Other than that though, great!

I'm glad to see you again - I remember thinking you were pretty cool when you were here before!

[(Anonymous)]

DA. Honestly, OP isn't referring to them. Random kids from the 90s didn't call Sailor Moon racist for being all white, they took it as it was. It's the teens on tumblr who are calling out a JAPANESE work as being racist because it's actually all about white people

Now, if we're going to talk about how the Japanese sometimes do unfortunate stereotypes of black people, then we can talk racism. But "they're all really white because I read a blue haired teen named Nagisa from Japan as white because Japanese people can ONLY have super racist caricature or they're really white."

[harp]

Ah! Thank you for clarifying that for me. I'm not familiar with the Tumblr fanbase of Sailor Moon. Seriously, though, thank you for telling me this. I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am for a nicely worded explanation. ...Well, maybe you can imagine, if you know how the comments in this community can sometimes get.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

And even further back, for those of us who were kids of the 80s watching Robotech, which basically got the story totally rewritten as well. I didn't know Robotech - or Astroboy for that matter - were Japanese until at least 1997 when I found one of the later Macross stories in a video store.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

No, '95. The year after I left school - I was living in Sydney for a few months and watched the video at my brothers' place.

[harp]

You're probably one of the people I was thinking of when I wrote that. I was picturing people who grew up in places where they didn't have access to big cultural melting pots. Places that were in a bit of a "bubble"? (If that's not you, then please forgive me presumption and I cook socks).

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it probably does apply to me - a combination of the era I grew up in, only seeing some anime in the English dubs, and also my somewhat sheltered religious background and relative poverty.

I suspect there would have been plenty of Australians who would have found out where various anime originally came from,, I was just not in a position to be such.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't understand this secret means and I don't understand what this white-coded thing is, but I will definitely admit that it never occurred to me that the characters in Pokemon were Japanese. All the characters are white except for Brock who's black/Hispanic....... no? :D

[(Anonymous)]

Actually...it was revealed in an interview that the reason Brock was written off for a season was because they thought foreigners would be offended by him looking like an Asian stereotype. That's why Tracey looks more generalized and it's never established where he's from.

So Brock is not only Asian, he's SUPER Asian.

[(Anonymous)]

I thought that Brock was Ainu?

[vethica]

The first four gens of Pokémon took place in regions based on real regions of Japan, so while it wouldn't be technically accurate to say characters from those regions are "Japanese", it's a pretty safe bet that they're intended to be their world's equivalent.