Forum - View topicBlacks and Head Shots in anime (**PLEASE read first post!**)
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Sam Murai
 Posts: 1051 |
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As many here probably know, anime has had its share of character deaths, be they mundane or for-show. However, when it comes to the demise of dark-skinned characters, more often than not, they die by a single shot to the forehead (or in some instances, a stab from a sword).
I have been covering this pattern for the past half of the year in a seven-part feature (bearing the same name as the forum topic), which could be seen in works such as Blassreiter, Gungrave, and A Wind Named Amnesia. Across these, a few shared traits were present, such as the characters being villains, with some hearkening back to old stereotypes (i.e. characters turning into monsters, "big pink lips"), yet, none of these seemed to be particularly correlated to how the characters died (outside of story conventions, whether in conjunction with a particular theme or because they were a villain, who usually die in the end). Even when placed in comparison to the trait's history, there does not seem to be a clear indicator of where dark-skinned characters getting shot in the head originated from. By examining facets in history and social observations, one hypothesis that could be formed is that can be traced to imported media, where in a homogeneous country with low exposure to dark-skinned people, their view of them is formed basically from what they obtain from beyond their borders. A film? News item? An incident in Japan? There is no concrete evidence to lend a hand, but it is something worth considering. I have been covering this for the past half of the year in a seven-part feature (bearing the same name as the forum topic) on my blog, but I have been very curious to hear what the thoughts of the anime community are concerning this pattern. With that, I am posting about it at two very different forums, both here and at Mania/AoD's. How do you feel about it? Does this have any affect on how you watch anime or view the genre as a whole? What do you believe it says about the Japanese perception of dark-skinned people, if anything? Also, what do you believe may be the origin of this may be? These are only just a few questions to keep in mind, but overall, don't be afraid to state your opinion about the topic. Whether you feel strongly, don't, or are on the fence, you can say so and why. Though, as a caution and given that this topic involves the matter of race, please be respectful and try to avoid getting caught in flame wars or going off-topic, whether here or across the bow against those at Mania/AoD's forum. ------------------ To begin, as you can tell, I do feel strongly about this and it has affected how I watch anime. It's not that I have anything against the genre--or the Japanese, for that matter--but after seeing the same instance replayed with the same type of people so many times, it is hard not look at a dark-skinned character on a show and not think in the back of my mind "I wonder if this character will die the same as they did" (Of course, it depends on what type of show it is. I wouldn't expect it to happen in, say, a children's show or comedy...3-D Magical Play notwithstanding). It is both fascinating and concerning to see a pattern like this and it naturally makes me wonder how Japan perceives dark-skinned people, though I do not believe it is necessarily deliberate or racist (at most, perhaps there is some level of misunderstanding or insensitivity present). As for the inevitable argument that "this doesn't matter because the characters aren't real", that is besides the point. It is still a questionable sight in its frequency that is worth exploring and inquiring over. One that would be great to know of the reason of its existence to. (Note: Apologies for using "black" so broadly in the title, when it is more accurate to use the term "dark-skinned", since not every character can be categorized as such. I'm using the feature's title for the title of the forum topics just for continuity's sake (and made a similar note of this at the end of the feature.) |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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I'll just say that it's not realistic to expect such an indiverse nation, with some minor xenophobia, to portray them like you want them to be portrayed. You won't find many black people in Japan let alone in their media. I could only name maybe 5-10 anime that even included one and those are the ones that make an effort to be international.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18443 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I went and read your summative blog post and some of the individual cases, Sam Murai, so I can see that this is not an idle or ill-informed opinion you're voicing here; clearly you've done some research into this and given this a lot of thought. However, I think you may be reading much too much into some things.
First, on several occasions you bring up the point about dark-skinned characters undergoing "bestial transformations" and try to paint this as an unwitting racist characterization because of a tradition of regarding blacks as more bestial. Bestial/monstrous transformations are such a common element in fantasy, sci fi, and horror anime that you can hardly fairly point to that as having any racist connotations, however. These are flashy transformations which allow the normal to be turned into something hideous and threatening, and only rarely is there any deeper meaning to them than that. Although I didn't see you directly state it anywhere in the blog entries that I read, you seem to imply that dark-skinned characters are disproportionately frequently cast as villains. That is rooted far more in basic psychology than any form of racism: people who look different, even exotic, compared to the norm for a culture are much easier to perceive as being supernatural and/or villainous, and that's true for every culture around the world. Concerning your main point: this is not a phenomenon that I've ever noticed, though admittedly I've never looked for a pattern, either. You don't seem to discount the possibility that the "head shots" could just be because those are especially dramatic and flashy forms of death, and I think that's likely more than the truth than any deliberate or unconscious racism. It is also possible that some anime or movie way back when featuring a dark-skinned character taking a head shot became influential amongst animators and was repeated for no other reason than because it looked cool; this is a phenomenon which has been noticed with Christian religious symbolism in anime, too. In other instances where anime might seem racist towards dark-skinned characters, it seems much more a case of the animators simply not knowing that something could be perceived as racist/touching a nerve in other countries simply because they don't have the experience or perspective to know that. Basically, I think you're seeing a pattern here that either doesn't exist or has no deeper connotations. However, if you'd like to have one a true anime authority examine your arguments, check out the Ask John blog over at www.animenation.com. This is a question that might be right up his alley. |
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RHachicho
 Posts: 897 Location: Essex, UK |
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It's certainly an interesting correlation. Still I can't see how it's anything other than coincidence. I mean what reason would this correlation have to exist? I think as mentioned by key that it is simply a matter that dark skinned people are "different" in japan and that gives them an element of threat and mystery. I don't think any particular insult was intended or reason is behind it. It's the kind of thing if someone got offended and made a big deal out of it it would stop immediately.
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24141 |
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Wait, wait, wait...
...there are blacks in anime??? *mind is blown* |
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Olivine
 Posts: 197 Location: Sol 3 |
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BOOM HEADSHOT!! |
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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Could the OP list some examples, as I'm not recalling any examples except for Code Geass (and that was like some nameless nobody anyway, the only major dark-skinned character was Villetta and she survived the series) where a black or dark-skinned character gets killed so easily. In contrast, here's a bunch of series where such characters don't die, or don't go down so easily IIRC:
Baccano, Black Lagoon, Bleach, Cowboy Bebop, Darker than Black, Eureka Seven, Gankutsuou, Gundam 00, Naruto, Texhnolyze. Also, how can Gungrave count? spoiler[Bear Walken] put up quite the fight before going down, and he was more sympathetic character-wise in comparison to certain other members of the organization. |
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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I am completely not surprised by the results of your research. I do not feel that this is due to a specific desire or effort to target dark-skinned people in this way, but in my opinion it is just evidence that many many Japanese are very ignorant as to the situation of dark-skinned people in both a historical sense and in modern times.
First, what some have said about the homogeneous nature of Japanese society is absolutely true. I visited Japan a few years back, and there were virtually no dark-skinned people in the country except in the red-light districts. Most of them were African immigrants, working in clubs and other similar places. As such, there is definitely a lack of exposure problem. Second, and this probably stems from the first issue, depictions of dark-skinned people and African Americans in particular are HEAVILY stereotyped in anime. I don't think anyone can deny this. Virtually every anime i've seen that has a dark-skinned character has the person caricatured to a degree that they appear almost not quite human when compared to the other characters. You rarely see that kind of strangeness to asian or european characters in anime, as they are generally drawn in a highly idealized manner unless their particular character is a demon or evil. But even the good guys who are dark-skinned are often drawn in a highly exaggerated manner. This is not universally true. Although the dark-skinned characters in Cowboy Beebop were definitely stereotyped, they were not drawn in an extreme exaggerated manner so that is one example of a show that bucks the trend at least in that aspect. Some of the more recent kid-friendly shows have actually done a pretty good job depicting normal dark-skinned people as well, such as Sonic X (one of Chris's friends is a young black boy who looks completely normal). I completely sympathize with the OPs thoughts on this area, I think it is really mainly coming from ignorance in Japan. I met a Japanese transfer student in college one time who didn't understand what American Slavery was. I had to explain it to her in detail, and explaining it to her was highly uncomfortable. Even after that, I wasn't quite sure that she got it. Unfortunately, the media that Japanese youth are exposed to coming from places like America and other countries that has dark-skinned people in it is also often rap videos and stuff like that, so this probably reinforces some of the stereotypes of showing dark-skinned people in some kind of extreme or exaggerated manner. Perhaps this will change over time, but as I said, I think right now it is mainly due to ignorance. Maybe this is also having an impact on this whole death by headshot thing you are seeing. For a very interesting take on a similar subject but in the context of the video game industry, you might want to read this article: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_174/5430-What-if-the-Player-is-Black I think someone else might have posted this link some time ago, but it is an interesting reflection on depiction of dark-skinned people in video games, as written by (i believe) a light-skinned woman in a "mixed-race" marriage. Seems to indicate that American industries are perhaps somewhat as guilty as the Japanese in some of these issues. |
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Sam Murai
Posts: 1051 |
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That was a point I was trying to make, in that the transformations could be construed as being related to the old racist characterizations, but aren't racialized themselves (as noted in Part 2). That was something I wanted to dispel, as I know some people may be led to think of it that way. At the same time, I did not believe they died the way they did because of they were dark-skinned and transformed, as there were those that possessed no such ability.
I was solely making an observation that all of them happened to also be villains in their shows. With that, villains are more likely to die at the end than most other character types in your standard story structure, so they stood a high chance at meeting their demise like any other, regardless of skin color. Given the examples, most of the characters happened to be antagonists in their stories. I wasn't trying to make a point beyond that (ex. "Japan thinks black people are evil"), so pardon for any confusion. Like I mentioned in Part 5, I actually like seeing dark-skinned villains, so long as they break away from the old stereotypes of that category. That said, I found it odd that they all tended to die in similar ways. I don't think outright racism was at play, but it seems to happen too often and exact to be beyond just coincidence.
That's basically what I have thought. I made mention that anime is home to many fancy and creative deaths as early as the beginning of Part 1, which was one reason why I thought it was strange that the dark-skinned ones often died a particular way. As for a reason/explanation behind it, it's essentially what I've been trying to look for, though I don't believe it to be a racist thing. Maybe the pattern itself is subconsciously done (with potential influences from stereotypes), but even then, it's hard to identify just where it would have originated from. I believe that something like a movie from the past could have started it, as well, although I was led into thinking it hailed more from outside of Japan. Your theory may ring a little closer to reality, however, and it's quite plausible. I never thought about "Ask John", but I'll certainly give it a shot. Thanks! |
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Sam Murai
Posts: 1051 |
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Dark-skinned characters getting taken down easily isn't the issue here, but the frequency of those characters that died from head shots spoiler[(on the contrary, I don't think any of the characters were easy to defeat, but that's beside the point…)].
Although such stereotypes could be seen in past anime and in some today ("big pink lips" being the most common one), and for some of the same reasons you brought up, there wasn't a connection between a character with such features and their dying from a head wound. While the designs of 3-D Magical Play's Coffee and Blood+'s James were iffy on some level, Blassreiter's Wolf and Gungrave's Bear were quite respectable. "Looks" weren't a factor in how a character died, but stereotyped views in Japan may still lend some clues as to the origin of the pattern (in terms of animators getting it from overseas media and/or possibly being predisposed to think that it happens often in real life, or as Key suggested, may have been repeated from an earlier anime or movie because it "looked cool"). |
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rwarwick
 Posts: 31 |
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I've never thought about the headshot issue really and I suppose that is rather accurate.
However, for some insight into how "dark skinned" (there need to be better sounding terms for this kind of thing, this just sounds horribly evasive) characters are drawn, I would look into how anime began and where it's influences are (most notably Disney). The entire world was flooded with racist cartoon characters in the anime and manga industry's formative days (it still is!). It's my theory that anime is a media that builds on old trends in a much more noticeable, a much more archival way than any other form of comics/animation. Of course all of this is fairly obvious and I apologize if I've restated anything, especially since you seem to have done quite a bit of research, Sam Murai. |
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ShinobiX
 Posts: 889 Location: NY |
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um didn't read all of first post dont think i have too.
1. Not many blacks or as you like to say "dark skinned people" in anime 2. Not many head shots either and I watch a lot of violent anime. Normally decapitations or demonic crap. Violent Anime guru. oO Oh read intro of blog post. he's just venting about nothing. Its like when people say "why is it in every horror movie the black dude dies first?".....who really cares. Its funny lol. I know someone laughed. Comparison argument: In anime there are more horrid deaths than head shots so I really don't see the point he made. I'd rather get shot in the head than getting eaten alive or suicide. Yes it sucks to be White or Asian in anime. Head shots thing idk maybe I'm immune, but I've seen a bunch of non-black head shot kills so I really don't see the issue. Just because, according to him, most black people get shot in the head doesn't make it special. Watch a couple of violent anime, GITS for example, and u'll see probably 10-30 head shots that are non black. I guess my point is, its not only black people, its everyone. Moreover, clearly more White/Japanese people get shot in the head than blacks so go figure. Do Japanese people hate themselves and white people? Of course not. Also, I should note that in the realm of violent entertainment, its strictly fantasy. Meaning most people can differentiate between fiction and reality. People do not make assumption about watching violent entertainment. If we did we'd all be superstitious and crazy. Also, as for "every black guy getting shot in the head" I think he needs to watch more anime and in fact I cant really recall many black faces in anime to begin with. Sounds like he's just venting and if u ask me, he's trying to play the race card. If not what he's really saying in between the lines is, "I think it's wrong black people in anime always get shot in the head" What bloggers do anyway just bullshit about nothing. Oh just finished reading blog post. Hmm should change tone of what I wrote, but too lazy. How I talk don't take it too seriously. Oh, fyi you need more examples to actually support this claim. Albeit, like I said earlier, that would be hard to do since not many blacks in anime to begin with. I think that fact is the main reason why I dont see the importance of this. Anyhow, how Japan views "dark skinned people" (you should just use black or African American. In a way by not calling the characters black its like your not acknowledging their existence)? Well you can't use anime as a basis since well practically no blacks in anime lol. Back to question. New generation doesn't care. Japanese people, especially the young likes black culture. Well the hip hop part at least. The old might not since they are very conservative. Btw that is shown in anime a lot. Japanese Americans, they love black people. If I had to make a deduction based on solely what u say, then clearly the assumption would be that Japanese do not like black people. But you know, when you compare head shots to the more gruesome deaths(the popular ones) I think a head shot is a blessing. Beats going to Hell via hell hounds. Now, I remember you saying something about why head shots. Contrary to the popular belief, if you're gunna die, next to sleep, head shot is the most painless way to go. Being an expert on all things death, as shown in anime, plenty of worst ways to go. People just think head shots are bad because we place such a high value on our brain. Why destroy something of value that separates us from animals. We see head shots as degrading, but at the same time its a peaceful death: 1. Head shots, you die instantly. It's like an eternal sleep. 2. Bullet kills you before the pain receptors register the pain 3. No pain receptors in brain 4. Not advocating suicide. Just saying, compared to millions of other ways you can die, a head shot is the least of your worries. |
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rwarwick
Posts: 31 |
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I think that it's about the headshot's degrading nature (which you mentioned) rather than how painful, or how it compares to other ways of death.
You do raise a good point that in anime, a lot of white/japanese/alien people get shot in the head. Does that invalidate this point? Maybe... I guess in order for the race card to be pulled, we would have to prove that anime in which headshots are not common kill their "dark skinned" characters by shooting them in the head. Is there a black hamster in hamtaro we could use to test this? 
My interest in this topic lies in the actual way race is drawn in anime, as I mentioned in my earlier post. |
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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As to Shinobi's comment about whether or not its ok to say "dark skinned," I think the OP was simply trying to be as generic as possible in his description since black is often equated to African American in American culture, whereas there are many people with a dark complexion in southwest/southeast Asia and Australia, not to mention the continent of Africa, who usually are named as either their native cultural name or the country they come from. "Black" is most often a reference to people who are the descendants of slaves or are otherwise so far removed from what might have once been their ancestral roots that there is no longer a better historical ethnic descriptor.
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Sam Murai
Posts: 1051 |
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There aren't that many blacks/dark-skinned characters in anime and there have been other characters besides them that have died from shot to the head--that much is certain, and I make a note of both in the posts. As such, it is also how I came to notice the pattern: most characters often died from an assortment of ways, but with dark-skinned characters, a large majority have died in a similar fashion, made more notable given how few there are in anime to begin with. On the other hand, I also gave a few examples of ones that didn't die from head shots. If this were only a once or twice thing, I would have just shrugged my shoulders and say, "well, it's just another flashy death thing in anime" and wouldn't have written about it. But with it happening multiple times, it became something that grabbed my attention. I don't actively snoop out an anime with a dark-skinned character and watch it to see what happens to them. Every example I gave came from anime that I have already seen. And to be clear again about this, I am in no way accusing the Japanese of being racists or saying they hate blacks. I wanted to be very careful in not saying or insinuating that in what I wrote, especially since I never got that feeling from watching reports on Japan, in any of my research, or even in the anime I have mentioned. It would have been narrow-minded and short-sighted on my part if I jumped to that conclusion without looking into it first (or if I already knew otherwise and ignored it). However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a history of black stereotyping in Japan, which appears to be more unintentional than intentional (they have been a homogeneous, isolated country for much of their long history, remember; it's natural to expect that to happen). I'm not playing the "race card" and saying "blacks shouldn't be shot in the head", but I am trying to the raise the point that this occurs quite often and is worth examining. Would it be better if they died in a more varied number of ways like other characters? Sure, and if that was the case, then a dark-skinned character getting shot in head would largely be a non-issue. Since that's not, it becomes more notable when looking at its frequency. And on that subject, head shots are more distinctive than, say a chest shot or shot to the leg. Like you said, the brain holds a certain value, and if you get shot there, you are most likely going to be dead. I don't believe being targeted there is "degrading", but a shot there does create a different punctuation than any other "kill shot", as well as a certain "finality" to it. If it were a pattern of dark-skinned characters being shot somewhere else, I would have likely made note of it, still, though probably not at the same degree I have here, for the reasons just stated.
ChibiKangaroo basically summed up why I used "dark-skinned" instead of "black". When I first started, I was using the latter, but since not every character could outright be defined as such, I elected to use the broader, more encapsulating former (the first five cases may be clearer, but not so with those in Part 6). As not every dark-skinned person would necessarily classify themselves as "black", I wanted to avoid any confusion or controversy over "who's what", knowing how touchy it can get. I'm not a PC-type guy, nor is it meant to be "evasive", but I do try to be as respectful as possible in cases like this. In terms of the title, I was already using "black" in it when this occurred, so I just stuck with it spoiler[(that, and I couldn't figure out a less mouthful-of-a-title than "Dark-Skinned Characters and Head Shots in Anime", afterwords…)]. |
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