fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3386 ]

[ SECRET POST #3386 ]

⌈ 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.

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Easy start: Aku no Hana, the anime.

Dragon Ball Z (not all the characters are intended to be Asian, Bulma is definitely meant to be white, but the saiyans are ALIENS who are coded Asian which is pretty cool.)

Oh oh! One of my favourite doujinshika of all time: Tocoyo-mushi (Tachibana-isshiki). Sadly her site seems to have disappeared.

I think Haikyuu's art style makes most of the characters look Asian even by Western animation standards. If you put Kageyama in an American cartoon, I'd probably know right away that he was Asian even without knowing his name.

??? I'll be honest, before I knew what was going on and just saw photos, I totally thought that Hinata, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, Daichi, Sugawara and Asahi were Westernized people of various ethnicities (I thought Yamaguchi was perhaps Hispanic, Asahi was some flavour of half-Middle Eastern). The only one on that team who I think looks really Asian in terms of "real life" portrayals is Kageyama. Obviously once I watched the show I gleaned that they're all completely Japanese (although Hinata is so non-Japanese looking that it's a popular fandom headcanon that Hinata's dad is some ginger from America or Europe), but this is definitely not a good example of this, at least in my opinion. Characters like Tsukishima and Yamaguchi especially (and to a lesser extent Asahi, he looks very typical of a laid-back hippie Caucasian college student who has weed and videogames back in his dorm room, not so much like a typical Japanese student), Tsukishima with his soft-looking, curly blonde hair (implied to be natural with his blonde eyebrows too), and Yamaguchi with the freckles, which you rarely see on Japanese people.

Uhh... ok, you have a point with Tsukishima, but Hinata and Yamaguchi look very Japanese to me. I didn't know of the headcanon for Hinata, is it the Japanese fandom that headcanons this? And I wasn't thinking about hair colors tbh, just other facial features, since obviously it's not realistic for there to be natural blondes like Tsukishima (Yachi's implied to be one too). Why is Hinata singled out as probably half-foreign for having an unrealistic natural hair color?

And there are definitely Japanese people with freckles; I've known some. Freckles are traditionally considered ugly in Japan, in older anime one of the easy ways to show a character was supposed to be unattractive was to give them freckles and call it a day. So not just visually, but Yamaguchi's treatment as a kid and his own attitude about his freckles are very Japanese.

Nayrt

Maybe Yamaguchi, and I agree with the the Japanese attitude toward freckles (although you only have that half right, lots of what people used to think are "freckles" on designated-ugly characters are meant to be pockmarks from acne, in fact this is an actual canon thing with one of the characters from a certain sports anime I watch), but Hinata in no way looks Japanese. He's got the typical massive anime eyes, and red hair (or as the other anon said, "ginger", which fits for the particular hue he has). You mentioned you weren't going off of hair colour, but then you conceded on Tsukishima, so I'm a little confused. Hinata has a lot of the same "foreigner" cues that Tsukishima gives off, curly, atypical color hair, large eyes, pale skin, etc.

As for the fandoms, I've seen the whole "Hinata is half foreign" thing in both fandoms. I have limited Japanese skills, but I can get around okay and sort of peep in on Japanese fan discussions, and while it's definitely not as prevalent as Western fandom, there have been a few discussions here and there, I remember seeing a couple in Japanese on tumblr if anybody with better Japanese skills than I wants t go re-hunting for them. The reason he's singled out like that is probably because of the specific hair color to be honest. He's not a massively unrealistic color redhead like say Akashi, or an obvious dye job like Kagami, both from Kuroko no Basuke. He's an actual "ginger", with a hair color very typical of the kind of hair actual real red-heads have in reality. It's sort of the understatedness of it that attracts people to the biracial thing with Hinata I think. We're very used to seeing "blonde Asians" in anime, but red-heads that have an actual, realistic hair color aren't nearly as prevalent.

Personally I don't think anyone but Kageyama on Karasuno looks very Asian in features. It's not his black hair either, I think he's the only one that has a very Asian face. I can see why the other anon is a little confused why you singled out Haikyuu!!. It's a very unique style of course, but it doesn't scream 'Asian' in my opinion. Honestly for me I'd nominate a show like Durarara!! for that. A lot of those characters have very distinct Asian features to me as a fellow Asian person (Korean though, so I know that's not the exact same ^^;;).

Something about the faces of Studio Ghibli protagonists always seems uniquely Japanese to me.

I was just thinking of Spirited Away about this.

Ping Pong

Death Note's Japanese characters look pretty Japanese. For one, everyone has dark hair except Light, but even he looks pretty Japanese, idk. And Misa, I guess, but she's a Harajuku girl. Basically every character has dark brown or black hair though, and dark eyes.

A lot of the less wacked-out (coughstudiotriggercough) styles look super Asian to me. It's in everything - the spiky hairstyles (often split down the middle or side part), super straight hair. I've known guys whose hair stuck out in all directions without even gel or anything. The shapes of the faces and eyes.
I think the test is more - if you colored their hair black, how would they look?
I personally really like the "fuck it" attitude anime has towards realistic hair and eye color. Why not, really?

Actually, after spending a year in Korea and sketching a lot of people on the bus there, I realized just how Asian anime characters look. It made me want to try and design "Western anime characters", and they do look different to me.

I mean maybe I should have picked a more "white" looking character, but since this claim is supposed to be for the majority of characters, I chose Alto Saotome.
I mean he looks so freaking Japanese.

I admit I don't have too much experience with anime, but I feel like when a Western character do pop up they tend to look noticeably different from the others - longer/more prominent noses, different eye-shapes (not as wide-eyed for one), lighter eye- and hair colours...

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[ SECRET POST #3386 ]

Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian

shitty sketch for demonstration purposes

Re: Anime/Manga characters that actually look asian