Is this just me...

Or do alot of japanese anime and manga characters not look japanese? My Dad has been saying this about anime for a while and now that I look closely, I think he's right. Except for the language and names, they all look...caucassian. :blink:

 

It's true.

 

RACEISM!!! just kidding. but they do.

 

That's because the caucasian face is pretty generic. Everyone expects an asian face--especially in drawn art--to have smaller, somewhat slitted eyes. If you were to draw an average face on a piece of paper, gave it averagely sized eyes (not to round, not too oval), an average looking nose, an average looking mouth, average sized ears, etc, and left that picture uncoloured, one's natural instinct would be "That person's white", until told otherwise.

I personally held the same opinion of you years ago, but watching some series now, they do look rather Japanese if you consider their hairstyles and facial structures as a whole, as eyes are pretty irrelevent since they're completely unnatural and unrealistic.

 

Damn. You gave alot of thought in that post, didnt you?

 

Not really, just I've heard this kind of comment many times over the past few years. It's a pretty common thing I've come across when discussing anime.

 

If you say so.

BTW, have you noticed that the only black looking anime character is Brock from Pokemon?

 

I dunno, there were tons of black anime characters in other series. The occasional extra in Dragon Ball Z (one in particular being one of Trunks' opponents in the Junior Tournament before the start of the Buu Saga. I must say that every black person has every right to feel offended when seeing that character), Shihouin Yoruichi from Bleach(if you consider her black), Bob Makihara from Tenjo Tenge, or Mattheiu, Hilda and Gidget from Eureka Seven.

The black characters of older animation was usually defined by the big fat (and usually coloured peach or a very light shade in comparison to their skin) lips, which has a pretty bad history on its own, but I rather liked the more modernized black characters like Matthieu and Hilda in Eureka Seven. They focused more on drawing their body types to match the bone structure of African Americans, and added the occasional dreads and afros. XD

Hell, check out Afro Samurai (the dubbed series actually has Samuel L. Jackson voicing the main character).

 

There was a bunch of black people in Beck. They even came loaded with the F word ; )