It's interesting how the things you take for granted affect your worldview and the things you think about. I always go through culture shock as I travel between Taiwan and the United States - I've done this many times now, but I always learn something new about myself and the world when I do so.
One of the first things I notice in Taiwan (aside from the humidity and heat) is the fact that people here generally look like me! Quite obviously, that isn't always the case. I spent most of my childhood in the American Midwest, which is, according to my completely unscientific estimates, maybe 5% East Asian, so I grew up in majority white culture, aside from the Chinese church we attended. You can imagine what a shock it was when my family first moved to Taiwan in 1999, to live in a society where you don't necessarily stand out, at least in terms of physical appearance. I got used to it after awhile. People still stop and stare at my brother and I when we start having conversations with each other in English, though when I speak to friends in Mandarin while in the States this doesn't seem to happen as much. My guess is that it's because I lived in Ann Arbor. Go to South Dakota and you'll get stares. "He's a North Korean spy!"
At any rate, expectations for what is considered "neutral" are shaped largely by society, and that's going to be my topic today:
Expectations and manga/anime style art!
This is a subject dear to me because for a while (probably until sophomore year of college), one of my far-fetched career aspirations was to become a manga artist, in the Japanese-style. By that I mean unlike syndicated American comic strip artists where they have their works displayed in newspapers, in black and white six days of the week and full color on Sundays. By Japanese-style I mean the weekly (or monthly, depending on magazine) format, roughly 16-18 pages black and white at a time, with an occasional color splash cover. No need for a punchline every single day, but room to tell a story, though certainly highly sensitive to readership polls.
At one point (maybe high or school or so) I practiced drawing manga all the time. Now, good manga doesn't necessarily require excellent art, just that which helps to tell the story. It helps a lot if you're able to create a believable environment for your protagonists to work with, and so in that regard being able to draw good backgrounds and stuff like that is an important skill, but the majority of storytelling and emotions derived from your work comes from the characters. As such, much of my time practicing was spent drawing people over and over again.
Almost invariably, they were almost always "Asian". Here, I should probably stop and clarify something. I recognize how the term "Asia" can be problematic in many ways. When I said "Asian" in the first sentence of this paragraph I meant black hair, black eyes, the kind that you see generally in Mitsuru Adachi or Takehiko Inoue's works. (I chose these two artists because for the most part, the characters drawn by these two artists tend not to have "odd" hair colors i.e. green, pink, or physical features) I might have said "East Asian" instead, perhaps encompassing Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan... but that would have its share of problems too. The assumption is that "Taiwanese people look like Jay Chou", which is *generally* true, but there are plenty of non-Han in Taiwan, just as there are ethnic minorities in Japan, and China, etc. Point being, when I use the term "Asian" here (or in general), I am generally referring to East Asian , majorities in those countries. Maybe I'm getting off track. Anyway, my characters tended to have a certain look, and to people looking at my hardwork, it would seem like I had a very hard time drawing people that I tried to portray as "white", or "black", or any other non "Asian" ethnicity. It's very true I had trouble drawing people with or without certain features.
Here's the interesting part - I didn't actually think of the characters I drew or designed as "Asian" per se. However, in Taiwan, unless I gave the drawn characters really obvious ethnic markers such as dark skin or afros, they would assume the characters were Asian, or even Taiwanese. Interestingly enough, in the States, many people assumed they were white. Kind of like people assumed the characters in Dragonball or The Last Airbender were white too, I think.
In order to draw convincing "black" characters, I had to depend primarily on skin and hair color to make my characters "look black". You see many artists do this - in Detective Conan/Case Closed, for example, it's *really* obvious when someone is supposed to look like a non-Japanese. Typically, they'll be white, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Granted, Conan/Shinichi actually has blue eyes too:
but he's obviously supposed to be Japanese, as you can see through the culture he's a part of, things he believes, the language he speaks (one could argue that this is simply because the author is Japanese, but many of his deduction tricks utilize kanji, unique to Japan), etc. That, and the American character above speaks Japanese in a stereotypical "foreigner" accent in the anime so it's clear she's different from the others.
It's pretty easy to tell what characters in Japanese manga are supposed to be "Japanese" and which characters aren't, regardless of their physical appearance, once you've read enough manga. You see this kind of thing in American comics as well. One of my favorite American comics, "The Boondocks" also relies heavily upon special external racial markers to identify its characters. Why? Because in most parts of the U.S., people of color are seen as "other" rather than default, so unless you mark them obviously in cartoon/stylized drawings, it's quite likely they'll be identified as "white" by the readership.
If you think about it, there isn't anything particularly "white" about anime characters' appearance. They've got big eyes? Granted, people of European descent *tend* to have larger eyes on average than East Asians, but NO ONE has eyes as large as say, Sailor Moon's. Maybe E.T. did. Yeah, you'll see more natural blondes in America than in Japan. Then again, you see characters with blue and green and purple hair etc. As such, it should be obvious that hair color in Japanese manga isn't necessarily based on reality. Tiny noses? In Asia, at least, white people are stereotyped as all possessing enormous noses. That's the opposite of the typical anime style where the nose is pretty much a dot.
White skin? If you haven't noticed, most Japanese people actually have pretty pale skin, skin that could easily pass as "white", particularly in the black and white manga format.
"Default" is the key word of the day here.
Since a fair amount of Japanese have relatively pale skin and many (white) Americans have dark hair (at least, brown maybe, which can be pretty ambiguous particularly in black and white manga), the most recognizable distinguishing racial marker in a drawing would be slanted eyes. We see this a lot in WWII propaganda posters and on. Hell, we still see the slanted eyes/chinky eye thing used nowadays (ugh), though at least they've gotten rid of the buck teeth.
At any rate though, without slanted eyes, Son Goku of Dragonball is missing a key racial marker (for many White Americans, at least). Now in Japan, this doesn't really matter, because characters are pretty much assumed to be Japanese unless clearly marked otherwise. Just like in America, comic book characters are assumed to be white unless their race is clearly marked otherwise. He's got huge eyes? Interesting story. Most Japanese manga features characters with large eyes - one of the most influential artists in the early Japanese manga industry, Tezuka Osamu, loved to use big eyes because it made it easier to show a character's internal feelings. Add some shading, reflection... even more versatile! Eventually, it pretty became an integral part of anime style. If Toriyama Akira (artist of Dragonball) had originally published in America, it's quite possible that he may have had to mark the race of his characters as people of color, if their ethnicity was deemed to be important to the story.
(On an interesting side note, I grew up with many Chinese-language pictures books that were actually originally *Japanese*, but I didn't know that for a very long time, because the publishers took great care in editing out obvious references to Japan in the drawings, by removing hiragana from road signs, changing character's names, and so forth. "Doraemon" is a great example. It worked though, because many of us Asian kids identified with those characters anyway. I guess there's a grain of truth in the feeling that "all Asians look alike", though personally I think it's more of a "meh, close enough" kind of thing rather than anything grounded in reality. But I digress.)
To White Americans, Japanese people (and Asians in general) have "slanted eyes". Of course, Asians generally don't think they have "slanted" eyes. Most White people don't think of themselves as "blond hair blue eyed big nosed gun loving cowboys" which is a rather common type of stereotype seen in Japanese anime. Starting to get the point?
To refer to the title of this post - it isn't that anime characters are white. Rather, they are *interpreted* as white, generally by white people. (Similarly, many Asians will interpret anime characters as Asian.) Why?
Because to them, white is the "default" human being.
Here's an example. If I draw a stick figure, most White Americans will assume it's a white man. That's because the stick figure is considered default. If I'm drawing a woman, then I have to add a dress or long hair. If that stick figure is supposed to be Black, then I need to darken the face, or maybe give it kinky hair. If that figure is supposed to be Asian, then I need to give it slanted eyes. And of course, Japan does something similar. If a character is not Japanese, then it needs to be obvious (give him a big nose or blond hair), and the image above from Detective Conan is a good example.
The other has to be marked! If not, then the "default" is assumed.
Now of course, this is why it gets interesting - people apply this everywhere, and Japanese drawings are no exception. But to Japanese manga artists, the default human being is Japanese! There's no need to make the characters look "obviously Japanese" by giving them slanted eyes or some other stereotypical racial marker. Just make the characters look like people, and the Japanese reader will assume they're Japanese, regardless of their physical appearance.
Where was I?
Uh...
My point is that characters' ethnicities are whatever they're intended to be, it doesn't matter what they look like externally. The context generally provides a more accurate framework. There are many characters in the anime "Suzumiya Haruhi" that have purple or orange hair or whatever. Why can I state with confidence that the story is set or at least based on Japan? The format of their high school, mostly. The way in which people interact with each other. The type of "club culture". Stuff like that. It's easily recognizable once you've lived in Japan for awhile, and that's why there's no need for the creator to make it visually obvious that the characters themselves are Japanese, or Japanese-inspired. They just are.
Some series are a bit more ambiguous, but I would argue that it's *not* because of character's physical appearance. In Naruto, our hero has yellow hair and blue eyes. I would argue though, that Naruto is actually *very* culturally Japanese. That's not to say that the story is set in Japan (as far as I know, there aren't any ninja villages. Then again even if there were, I wouldn't know about them anyway, because... well, they're NINJA villages, right?), but the cultural setting is clearly Japan, as opposed to say, Midwest Indiana. You don't really see the type of Ramen shop that Naruto loves to frequent in the States, but it's pretty easy to find that kind of place in Asia. Shikamaru plays Shogi, not chess or checkers. The explosive tags used as weapons are based on Japanese spirit/demon tradition - a Western equivalent would be garlic and wooden stakes. Hot springs? SO JAPANESE. Characters spewing blood from their noses when sexually aroused? Japanese. Emphasis on blood type? Not exclusively Japanese, but certainly a bigger deal in East Asia than in America. Hell, many people in the States don't even know what their blood type is. The swastika on Neji's forehead? Not inspired by its Nazi meaning, but rather its Buddhist symbolism. The concept of chakra?
... yeah, I could go on and on.
I don't actually have a point, now that I've said everything I want to say. Just that anime is fascinating, and careful discernment is crucial in identifying, labeling, and interpreting things.
Interesting blog. I'd like to add that I think the definition of 'beauty' by the media is also predominantly 'white', and maybe this contributes somewhat to Manga artists' perception of a fantasy world and their styles.
An interesting sidenote, Sasuke's cloth was intended to be black originally but the artists found it difficult to draw consistently so they changed it to a lighter shade. Maybe it just comes down to practicality and what you want to see out of the art?
White people, especially in America, very very often make the terrible mistake of always assuming that all non-whites want to be white or copy white culture.
In fact, the term "westernization", is a testament to this. You don't see "easternization" being applied to white people who eat Chinese take out, or white people who straighten their hair, or white people who dye their hair black. However, the word "westenization" is thrown around liberally. Asians that get eye surgery? Westernization. McDonald's popping up in Asia? Westernization.
But the reality is so sooo much simpler. Asians get eye surgery because they want to look like other Asians who are considered to be more attractive. Asians enjoy eating McDonald's because it's considered tasty, different, adds variety to dietary habbits, and is very convenient.
I live in Ann Arbor! Where in the deuce did you live? It looks like theres a lot more asians because all of the chinese/taiwanese stick together and all of the koreans stick together, but you're probably right.
This is an interesting blog, and I agree, almost all anime characters are white unless they are black.
On January 09 2012 12:51 13_Doomblaze_37 wrote: I live in Ann Arbor! Where in the deuce did you live? It looks like theres a lot more asians because all of the chinese/taiwanese stick together and all of the koreans stick together, but you're probably right.
This is an interesting blog, and I agree, almost all anime characters are white unless they are black.
The whole point of his blog is that almost all anime characters are Japanese unless they have blatantly non-Japanese names or characteristics.
It's a good point, although I think you could have said it with 1/10 of the words without losing much content. Nice read nonetheless.
I also wanted to point out that I reached a similar conclusion when I was travelling in Spain. I was there for work, but could take a few afternoons off to walk in the city. I don't like to look like a tourist, so I try my best to blend in. That is, for example not running around with a camera around my head (it was well hidden in the pocket!), not carrying my map visibly, not staring right and left wherever I went, but a more "I go here everyday" kind of look. I guess like your racial markers. I'm not really sure why I do this, as I indeed am a tourist, but never mind. There are a few ways of measuring success here. If someone ask me for directions in the local language, I win. If someone try to sell me a souvenir, I lose. etc.
Anyways, I notice that it is A LOT easier to be taken for a local if I am away from the touristic areas. I first almost assumed the opposite, that if I was the only non-local, I would stand out more, but this is in general not the case. I guess this links to your point. If I eliminate all clear signs that I am a tourist, (I dont look super-spanish, but to use your words: "good enough") people outside the touristic areas will take me for a local.
In the end it is quite natural. If you walk down a street where 70% of the people are tourists, you will assume that people are tourists (default) unless they show clear signs of the opposite. Similarly, if you go to your local supermarket where there seldomly are tourists, it will take some pretty clear signs for you identify a tourist. You could say that one of the main properties of a tourist is to be in a touristic place.
And that could probably also have been said with fewer words I guess. :D
I understand what you are trying to say but I have to disagree a bit with the idea that all anime characters are Japanese. The way I see it is that they are simply characters and one of the advantages of cartoon characters as opposed to realistic ones is their vagueness. Look at it this way if you were to read a western fantasy novel translated to Japanese as a Japanese person there would be nothing wrong with thinking of the characters as Japanese even though it may contain elements from western history. Basically the reader is personifying what amounts to a bunch of lines and words. It is up to the reader fill in the blanks.
Also in anime I think language makes a huge difference. In English Goku seems American
Whereas in Japanese he seems more Japanese
Basically it is the artists job to make the audience empathize with the characters I think that the racial vagueness of many manga and anime characters can aid in this and has likely helped to make anime and manga so popular worldwide.
On January 09 2012 12:16 nodnod wrote: Interesting blog. I'd like to add that I think the definition of 'beauty' by the media is also predominantly 'white', and maybe this contributes somewhat to Manga artists' perception of a fantasy world and their styles.
An interesting sidenote, Sasuke's cloth was intended to be black originally but the artists found it difficult to draw consistently so they changed it to a lighter shade. Maybe it just comes down to practicality and what you want to see out of the art?
That's true here in the west, but I'm guessing Japanese media also portray Japanese as the most beautiful and as a result that becomes the predominant opinion amongst the Japanese people? Same with Chinese people thinking Chinese are the most beautiful and Koreans thinking Koreans are? I'm not sure and I haven't lived in any of those countries recently, but it seems like the most reasonable conclusion of such ethnically homogeneous countries. It would seem a bit strange for someone in Japan to feel their looks are inadequate based on their ethnicity when from childhood they've seen "beautiful" friends and classmates of the same ethnicity get praised for their looks.
OT: After finding your blog, I really enjoyed reading it. I liked the life lessons from StarCraft one. When I was younger, I'd always try to find shortcuts to things. Like one time after I went swimming and I realized my freestyle was really bad, so I tried googling for some shortcut that might result in a big "Aha!" moment that would increase my speed 100%, which of course didn't work.
On January 09 2012 12:42 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: I've always thought this hahaha.
I would talk with my friends about this and we'd all agree that we tend to think of anime characters as white xD
You watch anime dubbed? because you shouldnt
Err, no? Where did I imply I watched dubs?
By saying you thought they were white, even though they speak japanese. I live in europe and i always thought of them as japanese, because guess what, they speak japanese xD. maybe thats just be being to logical
On January 09 2012 12:51 13_Doomblaze_37 wrote: I live in Ann Arbor! Where in the deuce did you live? It looks like theres a lot more asians because all of the chinese/taiwanese stick together and all of the koreans stick together, but you're probably right.
This is an interesting blog, and I agree, almost all anime characters are white unless they are black.
I think you missed the point - I'm arguing that you can't simply base an anime character's nationality/ethnicity based simply on physical appearances, because the inherent assumptions in creating that character depend greatly on its originating culture. In the Japanese anime case, most characters are actually supposed to be Japanese but are interpreted as white by (mostly) white people, because to them if something's not distinguished as being non-white in reliably stereotypical ways, then it must be default, which to them is white.
I lived in East Quad for two years, then near the CCRB for the next two years. Was in AA for college.
On January 09 2012 13:29 Cascade wrote: It's a good point, although I think you could have said it with 1/10 of the words without losing much content. Nice read nonetheless.
I also wanted to point out that I reached a similar conclusion when I was travelling in Spain. I was there for work, but could take a few afternoons off to walk in the city. I don't like to look like a tourist, so I try my best to blend in. That is, for example not running around with a camera around my head (it was well hidden in the pocket!), not carrying my map visibly, not staring right and left wherever I went, but a more "I go here everyday" kind of look. I guess like your racial markers. I'm not really sure why I do this, as I indeed am a tourist, but never mind. There are a few ways of measuring success here. If someone ask me for directions in the local language, I win. If someone try to sell me a souvenir, I lose. etc.
This was actually originally a blog post of mine from stechen.blogspot.com and I didn't really bother to shorten it, hence the length. I agree that it probably could have been abbreviated a bit, but I was a bit too lazy too and besides, many of my previous blog posts were fairly long as well but those who are interested should enjoy it regardless, and the tl;dr type is going to skip over regardless.
Your point regarding blending in is definitely an interesting one - I had similar thoughts when I was studying abroad in Japan - I often wondered what my experience would have been like if I hadn't looked obviously Asian. For example, I lived with a host family and once I went to watch their son play in a Little League game, and it was cool and all that since I could walk around and do whatever, just observing the "natural state of things". However, if I had been a obviously not-Japanese big black guy or bearded white guy, I'm sure that it would change things. It's like how scientists are always afraid their presence affects the experiment itself and they don't know what something is supposed to be like originally without your interference.
On January 09 2012 13:31 nekoconeco wrote: I understand what you are trying to say but I have to disagree a bit with the idea that all anime characters are Japanese. The way I see it is that they are simply characters and one of the advantages of cartoon characters as opposed to realistic ones is their vagueness. Look at it this way if you were to read a western fantasy novel translated to Japanese as a Japanese person there would be nothing wrong with thinking of the characters as Japanese even though it may contain elements from western history. Basically the reader is personifying what amounts to a bunch of lines and words. It is up to the reader fill in the blanks.
Basically it is the artists job to make the audience empathize with the characters I think that the racial vagueness of many manga and anime characters can aid in this and has likely helped to make anime and manga so popular worldwide.
I suppose I should clarify a bit. My point wasn't that all anime characters are necessarily Japanese, but rather that because a Japanese manga artist isn't going to think of physical properties as describing ethnicities in the same way as a white American artist might, they aren't going to add obvious physical markers to indicate the ethnicity of their characters in any particular way unless they're supposed to be clearly "non-default". And for Japanese people, default means Japanese. As such, in Dragonball, going off your example, you had some guys in the Red Ribbon army who were clearly based upon the Japanese stereotype of a "white foreigner", whereas the other characters had customs and stuff more similar to that in Japanese culture. This was all regardless of physical appearance.
I don't think most of those artists put particular thought into what ethnicity their characters are supposed to be, *unless* it's specifically supposed to feel "foreign", in which case they use obvious stereotypical racial markers to indicate as such. In the series Eyeshield 21, for example, the quarterback Hiruma has blonde hair, (you find out later on in the story that it was originally black and he dyed it later, being strongly influenced by a US Air Force base near where he grew up, but it's actually rather irrelevant) but you can *tell* that he's supposed to be a Japanese person even before it's revealed his hair was originally black, partly because of the massive contrast between his physical appearance and that of the visiting NASA American football team. The author wanted to make sure the readers new that the NASA team was "American" and so strayed far from "default", but otherwise it was unnecessary for most of his character designs.
On January 09 2012 14:06 CountChocula wrote: OT: After finding your blog, I really enjoyed reading it. I liked the life lessons from StarCraft one. When I was younger, I'd always try to find shortcuts to things. Like one time after I went swimming and I realized my freestyle was really bad, so I tried googling for some shortcut that might result in a big "Aha!" moment that would increase my speed 100%, which of course didn't work. edit: <3 that picture of Haruhi Suzumiya
That picture of Haruhi was the first one I found on Google Images. I just thought of her because she's pretty much the anime stereotype of huge eyes, large breasts, cute hair, small nose, and dyed hair. Glad you enjoyed my other blog posts as well!
I've never had problems with telling where the characters are from. Then again I'm exceptionally good at telling where people are from by their looks and dialects. Of course theres a million different art styles and genre differences. There is usually no asia or caucasia in fantasy/sci-fi settings. You wouldn't call vulcans caucasian just because they speak english lol. Otherwise they are all japanese by default, 99.5% of japanese speaking people you run into are japanese IRL too.
The idiotic racial stereotypes in anime are a problem though- well mostly the American ones. Well it was fun the first 10000 times.
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Nice read nonetheless.
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