telophase | (no subject)

The Hooded Utilitarian points out to people who say "Why do Japanese manga artists draw everyone as white?" that if you look at the classic Superman design, he has black hair and narrow, dark eyes. They don't code as Asian to us, because of the context. If American readers look at just the hair and eyes as racial indicators in manga, why aren't they looking at just the hair and eyes on Superman?

[I started maundering on here about catching myself, when in Japan, not noticing certain physical characteristics that I normally code as "Asian", because they were so common - I just noticed the ones that differed from the norm. And that on the train I'd idly think that someone was a dead ringer for a person I knew back home, then catch myself and realize that if I put the two next to each other, a lot of the people back home would say "They don't look that much alike! One's Asian and one's white!" And then after going on about that for a paragraph or so, I realized I didn't have much of a conclusion to say so I deleted it all and wrote this instead, which is just as long as that was, but at least comes to some sort of end right about ... now.]

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I'm suddenly reminded of a while back, when people would complain about Jubilee (a Chinese character) always being drawn with very light skin (to the point where one of her parents as once drawn as white in a flashback, presumably because the artist thought that was why she was always lighter complected) even next to other asian characters. And then an artist did draw her with darker skin and more visibly ethnic features, everyone went nuts saying "But she's Chinese! Not black!" (Except for the ones who think all asians are Japanese, but we'll ignore them.) Then the artist pointed out pictures of *gasp* real live asian people with skin even darker, and that her skin tone wasn't nearly as dark as that of the black characters in the book.

There's also the very popular JBETB, which is either "Jubilee's blue eyes turn brown" or "Jubilee's brown eyes turn blue" depending on who you ask.

No, I'm not sure I have a point...

Captain Marvel is still drawn that way...

Matt Thorne's response to that question. He has the power.

You might as well ask "why do Japanese manga artists draw Europeans to look Japanese?" Swan has the typical shoujo 70s art with characters from Russia, England, the US*, Japan, etc. and I wouldn't be able to tell which character came from which country if they didn't tell me.

*There's a bit where the protagonist (Japanese) is in New York and is noticing that she had always thought that the US was very racially diverse, but everyone at the ballet school was white.

And that on the train I'd idly think that someone was a dead ringer for a person I knew back home

That happened to me in Hong Kong. One of the students in someone else's group looked so, SO much like one of my cousins. I'm still a little sad that I never asked him if I could take his picture. It was uncanny.

I just had a conversation about this last weekend.

Apparently all Americans still think the Japs look like this:

Also, they're all named Ping Pong.

EDIT: Sidebar, half the time it's hard to tell what sex the characters are, let alone what goddamn race they are. If it's not important to the story, who cares?

Yeah, "manga/anime characters look white (because of Japanese self-hate)" is one of my biggest pet peeves.

A few years back there was this fairly popular Japanese band called 19 and one of the guys looks exactly like Bruce's (white) cousin to the point where we both noticed it immediately the first time we ever saw a video of them. The guy still looks visibly Japanese. You wouldn't even say he looks half. But he still looks just like Bruce's cousin.

An example that brought that made this concept most clear to me were illustrations in Japanese textbooks (as in, teaching Japanese to English speakers). All the Japanese people look "normal" while all the Westerners have clearly different eyes and huge noses.

I was following this discussion, and would have commented, but wasn't sure I could take the inevitable fail. I'm already irritated on this thread by the "No Japanese have wavy hair whatsoever! It's all weirdly and crinkly if it curls at all!" comment up there. Clearly SOMEBODY'S met every single Japanese person ever.

Yeah, this always annoys me. Especially given AvatarFail (not manga, but the arguments are so similar)! What I always want to know is how come people don't read the relatively flatter faces (as in, shallower eye sockets, less prominent brows, not-very-high nose bridges) as Asian.

Hmm. I'd never realized green or light-blue hair was a typically-Caucasian feature. Learn something new every day! ;-)

The whole "anime and manga characters are all white!!111!!!" thing annoys me, too. Matt Thorn's article about it is great.