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Diversity in anime.

louis6578 wrote:

People need to stop being afraid of making some characters fat, noticeably skinny, give them messier hair, freckles, a pimple, etc. I feel like anime is too focused on selling merchandise, so they limit themselves to only one or two unattractive characters in a lead role

A less pestimistic assessment would be to point out those traits are generally rare in Japanese people, which is probably why they are also rare in anime. Japan's obesity rate is about a tenth of ours, so fat characters being rare is just a reflection of their culture. Personally, I'd rather not watch a show with ugly characters.

Well, not ugly. But if I were to show you a picture of Duck, Rue, and Pique or Lillie from Princess Tutu, which among them would you say is supposed to be the most attractive and which is the least attractive? What about between Naru, Usagi, and Haruka from Sailor Moon? They've all got a severe case of Same Face Syndrome, whereas something like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure makes things more unique.

Between Josuke, Koichi, Rohan, and Okuyasu, I can clearly tell that Okuyasu is the more thuggish, Koichi is somewhat cute and less mature, Rohan is the most mature and perhaps the most handsome by most standards, and Josuke is Yusuke Urameshi levels of handsome delinquent. They're all unique enough that one can gauge their attractiveness without really feeling grossed out. You can say "Okuyasu is the ugly one" without feeling like he's actually that ugly.

I'm pretty sure Dutch in Black Lagoon is African-American, not "African." He's one of the most realistically portrayed African-Americans in all of anime. Most of the time anime tends to stereotype non-Japanese characters, often quite badly.

For instance, here are the two Negro characters in Baccano!:



Either these designs were intended to portray contemporary images of black Americans in the 1930's, or they are just horribly racist.

Uchuu Kyoudai has a rather diverse cast, but most of the characters other than the Japanese, and to a lesser extent the Americans, are also caricatures. The Indian lady has fortune-telling powers, the Jamaican has a Rastafarian style, etc. The portrayals of Texas are also pretty hilarious.

@Ryo Hazuki, indeed. I am always impressed by the fact the Japanese often depict foreigners and from an introspective point of view. Westerners almost never depict foreigners from their own point of view. What I mean is that Western depictions of the foreigners (in the sense of non-Western) are often like Tintin Goes to Congo or Indiana Jones: western main characters interacting with extremely exotic caricatures, often primitive silly "locals".

Japanese depictions of foreigners tend to actually make the foreigners a bit more Japanese, like in Gunslinger Girl the manga is all about Italians but they behave in a similar way to Japanese customs and in Vinland Saga it's about Vikings but the main character undergoes a Samurai like journey with the objective of attaining redemption. While in Bride's Story they depict 19th century Turkey as a rather "moderate culture". In a way, the Japanese tend to idealize foreign cultures and put them on a pedestal while Westerners tend to look down on anything that's not western.

yuna49 wrote:

I'm pretty sure Dutch in Black Lagoon is African-American, not "African." He's one of the most realistically portrayed African-Americans in all of anime. Most of the time anime tends to stereotype non-Japanese characters, often quite badly. For instance, here are the two Negro characters in Baccano!: Either these designs were intended to portray contemporary images of black Americans in the 1930's, or they are just horribly racist.

Horribly racist? You have to see some European comics from the 1930's depictions of blacks:

http://www.alistgator.com/top-10-racist-moments-in-tintin-comics/

Like this:





Japanese depictions of foreigners never approached this level of stereotyping...

Quote:

Uchuu Kyoudai has a rather diverse cast, but most of the characters other than the Japanese, and to a lesser extent the Americans, are also caricatures. The Indian lady has fortune-telling powers, the Jamaican has a Rastafarian style, etc. The portrayals of Texas are also pretty hilarious.

It's expected that when one culture portrays another their depictions will be stereotyped and unrealistic. In Brazil we like to point out how horribly stereotypical (and often plain incorrect) are the Hollywood depictions of South America. Just look at the example above of an European from the 1930's trying to depict Africans (and that's a country they actually colonized!).

I like laughing off when manga tries to depict Brazilians, it's so silly but in a positive way. They don't look down on foreigners often (although in JoJo they made fun of India's poverty).

The Europeanization of anime characters is a well known issue that has been debated for years in many forums. You can pretend like it is not an issue, but it is and will continue to be for a long time because anime is so used to copying what came before in order to keep milking the cow. Indeed, whenever an anime tries to make their characters appear "more Japanese" that tends to create a big hubbub among fans and critics. This issue is much more complex than you try to make it.

The problem with being mindful of diversity is that you get to a point where suddenly characters are being made ethnically or sexually diverse for the sake of being diverse itself

I'm not sure in what way a lack of diversity in anime equates to a feeling of naturalness or authenticity. Or in what sense you mean diversity is "anti-white". Or why you would think anime is already...sufficiently, anti-white?