Me, a 122 lb white American: 🤨 But yeah, we definitely need to end those sugar subsidies. That's why they load all our food with sugar - cuz it's artificially cheap. Nixing those subsidies would go a long way towards helping those who are obese.
@@bsmith6784 That's why I make my own food, been doing it since I was 15 and I'm as healthy as possible. If you want to be healthy in America avoid all processed foods, easier said than done though I suppose lol.
I think, since anime faces are so minimalistic in their style, people may project what is normal to them onto these characters, because the actual drawing doesn’t really give enough detail to discern race or nationality.
I think the same. Also it's impossible to define nationality by looks, one can only guess based on probabilities. The criteria is vague enough that allows people to reply with stereotypical representations of diversity. Race is also vague, contrary to what people usually think.
I think anime characters are purposefully drawn for aesthetic not really focusing on actual nationalities but if so it's usually exaggerated. (always confused me)
@Dan Astor No. White European foreigners when drawn to look like their nationalities are drawn with narrow eyrs, high cheekbones and a pronounced nose bridge. Check the foreigner in Lucky Stars and Diethard, or Charles Britannia in Code Geass. As a matter of fact, Code Geass is on of the best examples of ethnicities drawn in anime, because the author made sure to have certain features pronounced for different nationalities. The young Japanese are drawn like traditional anime characters. The old Japanese are more accurately drawn with Japanese stereotypes like Kyoshiro Todou. The Britannians are drawn with european features with high cheekbones, long noses and narrower eyes. The Chinese are drawn with very pale skin, pronounced eyebrows. Then when you look at the big picture, you'll realize that even then, the rules arent followed. Britannians can have pink hair and pink eyes. The Japanese are all over the place in design and the Chinese are almost identical to them. The main idea, is that the authors dont actuallu give a shit, until they need to or want to. Preconception of a characters ethnicity is at the mercy of personal perception.
Well I’m surprised no one has heard this but I have the answer for you, first remember that many if not all of these characters come from manga done entirely in black and white, when mangaka draw they use white paper and then usually just outline characters in black that’d why so many Asian characters have white skin, it would 1, take far longer to draw in a darker skin tone, and two it costs publishers more money to print excessive black ink, that’s why it’s rare outside of hair color to see darker complexion characters they take more time and are more expensive to draw, a classic example is the super saiyan, from dragon ball, goku normally has black hair however when he transforms his hair turns WHITE in the manga this was done to make it easier to keep drawing him for all panels so that the chapter could be released on schedule
Confusedgerman People who whine about whitewashing but love and celebrate non-black characters being replaced with black characters are mentally challenged hypocrites. And don't give me that whitewashing is a big problem bullshit. Every time it's done a massive shitstorm will happen yet more and more non-black characters are being replaced with black actors and barely no one gives a shit. Even worse, people who point out the hypocrisy are labeled racists and white supremacists by ignoramuses like yourself.
I see alot of ppl being pissed that L was replaced by a black guy (which was dumb). but you proved my point. L being replaced by a black guy is the thing that makes yall triggered. but Light being white...*Crickets*. We are so used to whitwashing its normal to us. But change one character to a black one then its a problem. anime bearly has black people. I cant even think of a black anime character, but white-looking anime character i can name plenty..
I see where you are coming from with your whitewashing bullshit. You are simply wrong as backlash has increased for shit like that like motoko being played by scarlet johanson, which was trivial tbh. In china, the media will be made up of chinese, in japan the japanese. As the US is primarily "white", the media is gonna appeal to them most often. Spout your stupid rhetoric elsewhere
They definitely have different stereotypes in Japan. In the US the Russian stereotypes are foolhardy and often inebriated (probably because they need a high bac to keep their blood from freezing while they go bear wrestling in the arctic cold.)
They even make bears flee when running at them (saw a vid about it) though it reqs huge nutsack to do something that crazy.😊 Hell, bears can even be a pet buddy or even a drink buddy, look at the vid where a guy is on a moto and his bear on his side-car. 😉
@@apang1831 of course I do, all russians do. I wake up to hard bass, drink vodka to hard bass, pat my bear to hard bass. Even at my funeral I will listen to hard bass
@@SixHundredAndSixtySix No, they are not. In fact Asians are rounder and blacks are also rounder. European and western are more shaped like an almond people got it wrong it's the other way around.
God Doesn't Exist actually western eyes and face are sharp and more defined, whereas Asians are more rounder with is why most of them look younger than their actual age.
Japanese people seem to associate being skinny with being a foreigner (American etc). I think Japanese people are generally skinnier than 'foreigners' tbh
It's probably because most of them are just exposed to the Hollywood version of the western world and a lot of actors, actresses, and singers on TV and movies are slim with the exception of comedians. Just like how people in the West get into anime, idol groups, and movies or shows and imagine that the average population is as good -looking. A lot of people in the entertainment industry worldwide use makeup, though, so odds are a lot of people in the industry look just as average as the rest of said country's citizens.
Yeah, I personally think White people are pretty stocky. Like they are slender when in their teens and early twenties but after that their body frame just looks so broad. Their wrists and shins as well as their necks get kinda thick.
RandomBasketballer true although it's pretty obvious like attack on Titan is a good example it's clearly inspired by Europe with all the architecture and everyone having different colored eyes than brown. Same with full metal alchemist.
TheYeller7 By extension people tend to see the race that they are used to seeing (usually their own) as the most "normal". Say if you tell someone to think of just a generic human, the first thing to spring to mind will be closer to what they look like. It's why the protagonist of a story is always the same as the target demographic. Making them slightly different is one step further from the likelihood of them relating with the character off the bat
The ethnicity of an anime character isn't to be assumed based on the character's appearance as they aren't real people to begin with, but is to be specifically announced/revealed by the writer or to be fictionalized by fans.
If that's the case, wheres the pale, blonde haired, blue eyed character that's really a black African from the Zulu tribe? The truth is the Japanese reserve the "looking Caucasian" characters for themselves..........
We don't think deeply about features.Bascially,many anime characters are japanese. I am very surprised at whether anime characters are white or not. If anime characters are white people, those characters have European names. And anime characters don't look like white people that much.I think that European people have defined facial features.But anime characters have soft ,childish faces. But there are exceptions.For examaple,Berserk(Kentaro Miura) . If we exaggerates white people,We write people like Berserk characters.Berserk characters are more realistic and European.
>Gold eyes >red hair They're definitely white i swear. You need to understand outside of stereotype looks based on western, and how asians view racial stereotype First thing first colors in cartoons are just common things to use by to give uniqueness and to differentiate, by no means red eyes and hair means white, grey eyes/hair means white, its just artistic way of drawing. Second unlike western who sterotype asian by their eyes, asians clasify what is asian look or western look by bone structure, chin, jawline, cheeks, nose, body type, and body hair Asians view western to have a face more long and bony and larger nose and larger body type and really hairy This is different where asians see asians to have more smoother face more feminine even for males , fair skin, thinner body type and not hairy.
The problem with that argument is that in anime, hair color/eye color obviously means nothing. There are people born with green, blue, purple, pretty much any color. So when someone has yellow hair it doesn’t really matter if in the same show there are people who naturally have pink or blue hair. It’s more denial to see them in a very clearly asian country, and assume they’re all white.
@@cailys8665 therebis a difference in having a character with inhuman traits and another with with human traits. There are no Japanese people with natural blonde hair or blue eyes. Which are normal human traits.
Yes, though they almost always assumed some asian race whether it was chinese, korean, vietnamese, etc. I found that very interesting. Rarely did they say foreigner/white (except for that one with the book). I think that guy at the end was correct in thinking that whatever race is watching will tend to 'project' themselves onto the characters.
@@ryoshockwave really? For me it's based on the story plot and the characters' origin. Idc about what race they look like because the creators also don't give a shit and gave every characters bright hairs and bright eyes
@@silvermaus Appearance matters a lot. It is the first thing everyone notices. Anime is popular in the west because most of the characters are drawn with very distinct European features.
@@BobSmith-mp8ld Miyazaki created modern Anime and his inspiration was a Russian Anime, thus he made his characters look Russian. But I really have enough of the blonde blue eyed characters, most people in the world aren't even blonde and blue eyed... and it is already boring.
@@ikki-gaming8933 Depends where you live. In Western Europe and the Northern US light eyes and light hair is the majority not the minority. That point is moot anyway, light eyes/hair are universally considered far more beautiful than dark eyes/hair; So anime will continue to be drawn the way it is now.
Our New Design Ive never seen that. Its always possible one parent is japanese in any case. I guess I just never really thought about it. Unless the story brings it up I just enjoy the show
@@ticktockbam I meant that Japanese people are self-hating which is why they (some of them) want to look "white". By "white", I mean, white features like big eyes and noses, etc. It's kinda obvious in some Japanese fashion magz and live action movies.
squidgi Her name is cannonically spelled "Hange", which is German. Since AoT is made in Japan, translators incorrectly assumed her name was the Japanese name "Hanji"
Some Swede "hange" isn't a german name, "Hanne" is a german girls name or "hannes" a german boys name but "hange" does not exist in german language "Levi" is a hebrew name from the old testament or could be the shortform of "levente" which were hungarian Jäger or jaeger is a german lastname and also means "hunter" while "eren" is a turkish boys name Greetings from germany
Or seen any typical russian videos of them doing stupid shit lol. Reacted to that too. Especialy since Japan is so well educated it's almost wierd seing them think higher of anyone else in that regard. And mayby especialy east europe lol, but they don't seem to know anything real about europe. Like their ideas of France and Italy for example. They aren't bad places or anything but not magical or even that amazing. I think more Japanese people should learn how great Japan are in comparison to most places and not just go by fiction. And whats better in other places could probably help them improve on certain things too, mainly social interactions and the major gender gap.
The guy at the end was completely correct and said exactly what I was thinking. People project themselves into anime and see the characters as a representation of themselves. Thats why some people think they are white, some people think they are japanese etc. With exceptions of course. Certain characters are meant to look a certain way, or a certain race so they exaggerate some features or way of speaking the emphasize that.
Salvatore Dino and Raccoon Child haha so true, well that's what i was thinking first, but i remembered how i thought that kuzan/aokiji must be black. Same with Sokka and Katara from Avatar the last airbender. I think it might also affect black people if the character has darker skin or particular facial features, same goes for latinas.
@@tropinnka According to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 76.6% of the U.S. population is white, versus 13.4% black. According to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the NIH, roughly 44% of white Americans suffer from some form of obesity, along with 61% of black Americans. 44% of 76.6% is roughly 33.7%. The U.S. Census estimates from 2017 put the total population at 325,719,178. So, roughly 109.7 million white Americans are obese. Compare that to 61% of 13.4% of the population (roughly 8% of the total population), or roughly 26.6 million obese black Americans. ~109.7 million whites versus ~26.6 million blacks. There are far more obese white Americans than black Americans. Regardless, this poor Japanese girl has no idea how wrong she is about us 'Mericans.
I think what the guy said was right. People watch and project themselves as the character so they see the character as what they think they look like. Spot on answer from the guy.
Also the characters all live in Japan and have Japanese names, so it’s just a given that they are Japanese. It’s the same as if the cartoon was of a cat or a dog or something, it’s obv not a human but if it’s speaking Japanese and lives in Japan with a Japanese name, then you assume it is Japanese and don’t think otherwise lol.
HTH can someone with big blue or green eyes and anything but brown hair be seen as Japanese? Afro Samurai does not become Japanese because you project yourself into the storyline.
The culture too, or the characters manners.. even in FMAB for example, they have more like japanese manners, than europe manners.. because the artist is japanese (i think in other anime, somethings like this happen too)
I mean Erens last name gives it away, it's Jäger...sooo yeah he's German. Most of aot characters are either French, German, Russian american, I think only mikasa is mixed Japanese
@@SolarDragon007 Sorry to disagree but while the Nation X or Y doesn´t exist, doesn´t mean a comparable Nation exist. Example : In Strike Witches there is a Country called Karlsland...and like everyone from that Nation is a reference to an German Ace Can we assume Karlsland is supposed to be Germany? Yes, but you kind of don´t call the real names especially when the Anime is set somehwere around 1914-1945 Having some other name for real life Nations were done plenty of times. A more recent example would be Azur Lane or KanColle if boats are more your thing
People getting so heated over the genetics of fictional characters in Japanese cartoons that, in artstyle, usually don't match general human anatomy really well in the first place. Truly a shitstorm of undeniable proportions.
I always assumed that it was just how japanese people wanted themselves to look or something, and it really seems to be their "ideals" if we consider how japanese girls in anime, who we know are pure japanese, also usually have traits that asian people doesn't. Well, I usually just think all people that show up in japanese anime/manga etc are japanese unless told otherwise. It's not as if you can tell if it's a japanese character or not, unless there's some VERY distinct features, like that guy around 3:33
I imagine there are the anime characters which are supposed to look *very* Japanese, characters which are supposed to be very much *not* Japanese, and then characters which are supposed to have only human features so that they aren't tied to a place on Earth. Or maybe it's that the anime style only looks vaguely human anyway so any relation to race is through stereotypes and assumptions, who knows :P
@GOD OF ART I don't think he said anything about americans specifically, and he definitely didn't call them scum. Regardless the fact that most people assumed Japanese proves you wrong. The characters are so heavily stylized that it doesn't really matter, most are just modeled vaguely after what the designers are used to seeing in people around them.
@@rodentlover100 yeah, he wasn't paying too much attention to the video. One of the guys was like, "blue eyes? Blonde hair? Really tall? Western fashion? I think he's japanese."
I was laughing when they said Lucy from Fairy Tail is a Vietnamese girl that cosplays as a Japanese girl lol Since she had Heartfilla in her name, she's definitely of British descent in my opinion.
Nah, now way. I've never seen Anime characters as White People and still can't Picture it no matter how hard I try. The closest someone can get as an anime character is probably the K-pop idols.
What about Baccano? That takes place in America and most of the main characters are white. What about Monster? It takes place in Germany and Dr Tenma is the only Japanese character. What about Attack on Titan where it's stated that Mikasa is the only Asian person there.
I personally think it's the last two guys that shed the most light on the whole issue. The thing is anime characters are almost purposefully made to look multi-national or ambiguous in terms of nationality....aside from most black characters, that is, but even then people have made the assumption that Mugen from Samurai Champloo could be racially mixed black and Japanese due to his darker skin and fluffier hair, so it's not actually clear-cut in that case either. Point is though that anime creators tend to want to make interesting looking characters, not hyper-realistic characters. There's an assumption I see made that asians aren't aware there are patterns to how they look, and that only other races see it and think that "all asians look the same", which no one but a racist ACTUALLY thinks. But while same-race people can tell subtle differences between each other better than outsiders can, they can still recognize racial patterns, and so can every other human being in the world. Japanese people could probably make hyper-realistic, generic and super homogeneous asian character deisgns if they REALLY wanted to. But no one wants that. No character designer does that, especially the wackos who make anime and the crazy stuff that happen in them. Real human beings look real, and typically boring. You typically paint or draw real people with the express purpose of making it look real. Cartoon and anime characters are abstract styles of art and in general are exactly the opposite of looking truly real or boring. They're cool, unique, and interesting, even WHEN the look more realistic, and if they aren't interesting then they are PURPOSEFULLY made to look generic. Character designers take influences from all sorts of different cultures when they make characters, and are out to make visually appealing characters, not everyday people on the street, and that goes for the Japanese too. And the fact that some of the Japanese in that video even guessed at some of the characters being white, even for a bit, proves that the characters are made with influences that aren't exclusively Japanese. Whether the character be white or asian looking doesn't actually matter in the end, especially in fictional and fantastical worlds like you see in Shounen Jump. Who even really cares if Luffy the Pirate looks white or asian to you, for example? He's Luffy the Pirate. He has fair skin, but he could really be anything, and what you call him doesn't make a difference. And a crazy candy-coloured Japanese girl with sickly pale skin can be Japanese if that's where she comes from. The only relevance the nationality has is on the story and personality of the character. Japanese project themselves onto the characters emotionally and call them Japanese, and Westerners do it vice versa. And nothing is wrong with either race doing that. Anime picks and chooses from many different influences, and generally tosses traditional ideas out the window. The artstyle reflects this, and the anime artstyle doesn't only appeal to the Japanese but everyone, and nowadays the style isn't used exclusively BY the Japanese, but by all sorts of people worldwide.
Realistic designs takes more effort to make than stylized because of its nightmarish detail-to-detail. 80's and 90's anime used to be more detailed. But because of time constraint, they streamlined it into more simple designs.
It's not racist to think people look similar. Also sociologically speaking it's quite common to think people outside your race/nationality/ethnicity look similar. It's what you do with your first impression that is racist or not. If you think Asians look similar, acknowledge you made that thought and move on then who cares. If you think Asians look similar and therefore are all the same, that's an example of racist stereotyping. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging people look similar.
@@edwinnaranjo9435 So many people think that anything racial is automatically racist. Are people in this comments literally trying to say ethnicity's' dont share common traits? Because everyone is trying so hard to disassociate. You don't have to look at things with racism because then you can see how the creators of the anime portrayed 2 groups of people or more in the anime with different ethnicity's. Usually I see this with Japanese and European-esq characters and then I'm able to go into a further critical anaylzation of the anime if i hadn't noticed these.
@@beastvicious8672 Yes. That is why I always thought that the characters were all Japanese, unless they specify that they are from another race or country in the anime
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE ,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man , very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ... so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime) The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro. (he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo) Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy -> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent'' Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime) MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african) This comment is just for those who think ALL japanese anime characters are ethnic japanese, which is simply not always the case.
Yeah , but JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE has many non-japanese characters (with a few who are mixed japanese and white , like giorno from part 5 or josuke from part 4)
Occassionally, it depends on location and things, like if they’re from a big city like Tokyo they are more likely to have exposure to foreigners. The girl with the blue and white stripe shirt in this video looks like she might be half black or something.
@@Roam-de-route lol exactly, then when they transform they go blonde, with lighter skin tone and blue eyes. This just tell me alot of Japaneae people want to look white
Not really, they think she looks Asian and I know Vietnamese girls are considered curvy in Korea, so I guess that goes for Japan too and that's why he said it.
That’s so stupid, not all Europeans have the button nose look. If they have Blue/Green/Hazel Eyes and Blonde/Red/Light Brown They’re definitely white. I honestly get mad when the anime can’t differentiate.
Su Ghu Never said you weren’t? But you are most likely an Arabian caucasoid with some European blood, resulting in European features. Just like some Latinos. You are considered Caucasoid, but not European. Which in no way degrades you, Green eyes are unique and beautiful :)
I'd have to agree that there is an element of universality in alot of anime characters. They're transcendent beyond first time impressions and the best way to tell their ethnicity is to watch or read the individual story. So perhaps that universality is one heck of a hook to reel in potential fans?
Kevin Smith It's just a testament to the stagnant art styles of anime and manga so it's easy to draw, recognize, and pump out in a short amount of time.
One thing about Japanese animation is that they typically aren't afraid of utilizing stereotypes so if they want a character to look American, or German, or Egyptian then you'll know it! If they look normal they're usually Japanese because Japanese is normal to them lol
@@1elitegeek Idk, base the character off an American? For example, the character Annie leonhart was made to look like Avril Levine, an American singer. People in Japan typically think of blonde hair blue eyed people to be American aswell since they typically know about American celebrities apearences. I'd say there is no specific look as American since people look different, but Caucasian is typically what Japanese people draw when trying to make a character look American.
@@1elitegeek to portray an American or European they will go with blonde hair and blue or green eyes because blonde hair and such isnt really a natural thing in japan its also a sign of rebellion to dye your hair blonde
Have you ever read any of Scott McCloud's books? In them he talks about how drawings of people (specifically western comics, but can apply to anime/manga too) are symbols with usually very basic features. He explains that a person can see a simply drawn face with a line for a mouth and dots for eyes as a human face, despite it's simplicity. If I recall, he says that people tend to identify said face as themselves (or at least their race), even though there are literally no identifying or racial features to be seen. This video kind of confirms that theory. I find it fascinating.
Not themselves but whatever race is the majority where they live and it also happens with age and gender. Most people seem to think a stick figure with only a basic face on it is a middle-aged male as that's the “default” from their perspective. It leads to that for instance in xkcd the males have no hair and are just sticks but the females have distinctly feminine haircuts to compensate.
Lol what I’m not white and I can clearly see that many Japanese think their physical features r inferior to those of white people. Ppl getting interviewed on the street isn’t evidence for anything lol. Also denial exists?? They don’t want to look bad by saying the racist truth
Is it only me or everyone find it difficult to imagine an anime character in real life with just their just anime images I wonder how would Misaka would look like in real life from attack on titan.
I'd say the kid at 8:07 was more on the nose. Or else there would be more main characters who look black or other race denominations and not just white.
White people will usually see Anime characters as white, while Asians will see them as Asian. Really though, Anime characters aren't really drawn with race as their main concern unless they're meant to be. It's a style, and how people interpret it is different from person to person.
Both sides of the ocean have been seriously misled by the media. Japanese stars are gorgeous....but the average Japanese, though slender and trendy, actually looks quite inbred (which comes from a narrow gene pool being an isolationist homogenous island nation). They also have wacky teeth since they rarely straighten them. American stars are certainly gorgeous as well.....but we also have serious problems with obesity as a nation. We have the fattest unhealthiest people in the G20 and the average American is quite chubby.
_"He has green eyes.... He's Philippino!"_ ...wait what?? XD In Attack on Titan lore, All asain countries were nearly all destroyed and asians are rare. Mikasa is the only asian in the series... Maybe Levi. But I doubt it from the name. I dated a Phillipinno and seen his whole family. I guarantee they don't have green eyes. 😆 *Interviewer:* _So he has blonde hair and blue eyes. What ethnicity might he be?_ *These people:* _Maybe not Japanese... Chinese?_ *Interviewer:* _Here is a hint, his name is _*_"Edward.... Elrich"_* *These people be like:* _Oooh! Exotic. Maybe Vietnamese?_ Do you guys need stereotypes to figure out where people might be from? XD
@@sidaranesong324 they draw them that way because their standard of beauty is European. Not to mention if they just drew Japanese looking people maybe with dye hair their characters wouldn't stand out much. I mean it really doesn't matter at this point. But in the video one of the guys said Europeans look better than us. Which isn't true they just look different.
I've never really thought about the race of an anime character. I just saw them as just anime characters. Unless the anime characters themselves told a background story of themselves and said what race they were
@@libertyadams5961 ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE ,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man , very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ... so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime) The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro. (he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo) Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy -> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent'' Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime) MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
@@mxd-1990asn we know they aren't always Asian... We're just saying it's difficult to distinguish between most races in many animes based on physical appearances unless it's stated by the plot
I think anime characters race is based off context and not much off their literal appearance. Since they’re 2d and so stylized you can’t really pin down an ethnicity. Its all in the context. Eren yeager is european. We know this because of the context of the show. A character with the exact same physical traits but set in a japan with a japanese name would be assumed japanese.
@AZUNI Anime characters don't often have stereotypically Chinese traits, no, but the majority of anime characters do have Japanese traits. Even some characters that are meant to be "white" like Eren, have Japanese traits in the character design.
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE ,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man , very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ... so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime) The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro. (he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo) Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy -> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent'' Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime) MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african) This comment is more or less also for ppl who think ALL japanese anime characters are ethnic japanese, which is simply not always the case.
@@purplespectre The main asian characters in anime are japanese ( ive seen one anime where a japanese character ,a man, had a half Thai half japanese daughter , she was still a child in that anime ) but if they wouldnt have mentioned it you wouldnt know, anss since actually a lot of us thais are mixed with chinese too we can look either more east asian OR more southern asian such as indian (as southern thais are more mixed with indian and north thai people are much more mixed with chinese so the country itself has different appeareances bcs of that) , which is why you cant really 100% draw them correctly a half thai/japanese or japanese-vietnamese kid can look either more east asian or more south asian ,the artist of that anime simply gave the girl short dark hair and eyes (the usual for any asians to have brown-black hair and brown eyes) but all characters had huge eyes and pretty much the same nose soooo yeah... if they didnt have mentioned it you wouldnt know that the little girl is a mixed asian girl. I know a lot of thai-japanese families from bangkok and you literally cant really tell that the kids are asian mixed. Talked to some of the fams and the kids arent even guessed for foreign in both countries....japan/thailand. At least not theyre kids. Dont know about other japanese/southeast asian mixed fams. (but its the same with our family which is thai-south chinese, u would probably just guess them all automatically for thai simply bcs they live in thailand, but we have 11 million 100% ethnic chinese in thailand since 2020, most live here sincs countless generations so thats also the reason why a lot of thais mixed up with chinese, well , those who are not from the main city bangkok cant be always told apart just by looks as most even ethnic 100% in thailand have brown , speakking of the older chinese here at least , as white skin is popular everywhere in east and southeast asia they ounger ppl all try to stay white ingeneral so u dont know if theyr really white-skintoned since birth or not and that goes for both the chinese and thais here) Skintone i dont really include as especially japanese ppl who work a lot outside (mostly people working at ricefields etc) can be pretty dark (with that i mean east asians do not all have natural white skin either , the same goes for southeast asians dont all have brown skin, many full chinese in thailand you could not tell apart from thais as especialy south chinese people are mostly brown some very dark brown and those dont look different from ppl in southeast asia, so china is a big difference to the rest of east asia ALONE, as we *my family is also thai-south chinese mixed* the country is much bigger and has totally different climate in some regions ,therefor the people have different skintone and can also be different in facial features... well anyhow i told this as its about if you can tell characters apart then... which isnt always that easy with anime-appeareance
@RS It's weird I was never notified about this reply. Anyhow, not all Asians look the same. It shouldn't be hard to distinguish between Chinese, Korean, Tai, and Japanese people. Unrelated to this, but you really shouldn't call an Asian person a weeb, because "weeb" only applies to white and black people. It makes even less sense when a weeb like you calls someone a weeb. Edit: To expand on what was meant by Japanese features, I thought I may as well link to this answer to the whole "debate," written by a Japanese person: www.quora.com/Why-do-the-majority-of-Japanese-anime-characters-look-like-white-people/answer/Yoneda-Masahiro
How can they tell whether an anime character is Japanese, Spanish or Korean or whatever other nationality besides their dressing style ? it just doesn't make sense.
Exploring With Gumpy are there people in the world with pointy chin and nose, big rounded red eyes and purple or blue hair ? I've not seen yet an anime character that has at least a similar look to real people, Anime is so much away from being real.
It can still give you an idea from where it's from. If you are not from Japan, you probably thought of other nations than the one these people said. It's sure when you take something like Gintama it may be harder to find something that looks like him but for Lucy, I won'T see her asian at all. xD
In many anime, there is no way, other than the person's name or being told their background. I see plenty of anime with blonde haired, blue eyed, creamy skinned characters who are Japanese. Then as you said, the characters with blue/pink/purple whatever color hair. I think anime/manga design, especially for girls is done for a cuteness factor instead of trying to match appearance to ethnicity.
Despite some of them looking Western, they are all Japanese to me. I feel as though they change looks up to make it easy to distinguish characters from different animes and make them unique.
Yes, definitely, unless they explicitly tell you their nationality or their name, you just can't assume someone is caucasian just because the character have blue eyes/blond hair. What race has eyes taking up 1/3 of their face yet their mouth is a single line? The diverse hair, eye colours are just there to make up for thr simple drawing style in most anime.
Spain, being in the Mediterranean, and Egypt, being in North Africa, have people in their countries who sometimes share similar appearances. The two countries aren't very far from each other.
Wait, they... they do realize that Western people have brown eyes, too, right? Weird. (Also I think white people see anime characters as 'white' is partially because Asians don't look THAT drastically different, so when you make the eyes big like they are in most anime/manga, it kind of blurs the line racially.)
Then you haven't seen enough Asians or are too ignorant. You're telling me Japanese, Thai, Filipinos, Koreans, Indians, Laotians, etc. all look the same? I might as well say everyone from England, Sweden, Germany, Russia all look the same. But guess what they don't and they are "white." Let's not even get into how different African tribes see each other. But I guess they're all "black" to you.
Wow, way to make extrapolations and assumptions there. I didn't say anything about them all looking the same. I said that they're not drastically different. I'm saying that when you simplify a human face into a basic shape, as is the case in many anime and manga, they all look generally same-ish (dependent on the artist's style. Some are worse about same-face characters than others.). Especially when you slap a big pair of anime eyes onto the face. This is evidenced in this very video, where the participants don't universally agree on what nationality a particular character looks like. You take a generic, brown haired and brown eyed male in an anime and show him to someone from England and say they're a British character, the person from England would likely agree with it. Take the same character and show him to someone from Japan, and say they're a Japanese character, and they'll probably also agree with it. This would likely repeat across most Eurasian populations. Why is that? I don't know, I'm not that kind of '-ologist'. But it might have something to do with the human genetic bottleneck that exists. We're all just one really genetically similar species that has small differences in appearance from population to population. There are mean values for pretty much every physical feature a human can have, regardless of what their ethnic background is.
"England, Sweden, Germany, Russia all look the same" To some degree? The difference between individuals is clearly bigger than the difference between the averages.
Every race has trouble distinguishing between the features of other races or people they have not interacted with much. The people in the video couldn't even form a consensus on what European the characters were supposed to be. I'm black, grew up in a black country and see black people everyday but I could not for the love of God distinguish between other black Caribbean people, or worse, ethnicities in Africa. I can guess but I ain't likely to be right. With Asians I wouldn't say they all look alike, but I really don't know how to tell them apart by nationality. Once I think I have an idea of what physical features make a race it quickly becomes disputed when I see someone different cause a person isn't always a caricature of their race.
I hate it when some dumb people believe this is all Japanese people's opinion. Anime characters have colorful hair/eye/skin colors just to characterize them. And they have bigger eyes than real humans just to make it easy for animators/manga writers to expressing anime characters' emotion easily. 'Some' Japanese people think white people are more beautiful but that's because they almost only see whites on movies, TV, or fashion magazines and all movie stars and fashion models look good. I'm Japanese but I don't worship white and don't have tons of self-hate.
Boy you don't have to worry, in the western world most people have the opinion that japanese guys looking more handsome, even if they are skinny and have longer hair they look often mysterious and stuff like that, many girls going creazy for that and nearly every japanese women looks cute and shy when they are smiling, and all japanese or most asians in general have a very harmonious faces so you don't have to be angry about these trend in japan because its in the rest of the world visa versa But to the anime figures, its quite a little bit ignorant to think that a character thats name is "eren jäger" ("jäger" is german name and also the german word for "hunter" while "eren" is a turkish boys name)is japanese, its clearly a gaijin name, also in many animes the characters wearing european Renaissance clothing armor or weapons or take place in european castles and stuff like that so of course some characters are not meant to be japanese (berserk, just to mention one example) even if the anime is from japan it can take place somewhere else
Lol Im Japanese and we are very racist people, despite not showing it, most Japanese and Asian people celebrate the Idea of pailer skin, wider eyes, slimmer noses which are all coincidentally Western/Caucasian features and look down on people of darker skin. There's a culture in Japan where girls overly tan their skin and in Japanese standards people regard them as being "black". It's like saying people who want to look tanned, want to look "asian" but in reality they are doing it to just look tanned. Whereas in Japanese and Asian culture, the desire goes slightly further to match Western standards.
LittleFilms Japanese beauty standards are very different to European features, firstly yes we like pale skin (also with yellow undertone) but it comes from a long time ago when Japanese didn't even know white people existed, it's to do with class, we don't want big hook noses like white people, or sunken eyes that are too round
we aren't racist to blacks and people of darker skin. Japanese people look at darker skin people as a class thing, so when you see a darker person it's not racist, they just assume that person is poorer/ lower class and is disgusting... Actually wait a minute that's pretty racist nevermind
steve hart hmm I guess but I don't know how it's racist because it's not the race they don't like it's just the skin color, a light skinned black person wouldn't be looked down on. There's definitely discrimination that needs to be fixed but it's not racism
@@oliveramarcoangelo1133, I don’t watch full metal actually because their white, I watch it because it’s a good show man, race doesn’t play a part in a story unless it’s race based
@@oliveramarcoangelo1133 Not worrying about someone’s race is not the equivalent to not acknowledging it. It’s about knowing that skin colour doesn’t dictate someone’s character
So what anime show do you watch where the protagonist has BROWN skin? Meaning they used the BROWN crayon to color their skin? I’ll wait....no your prejudice is PASSIVE aggressive, not direct that is all. Just as in life...when someone says “I love you” it means NOTHING when it is not showed by action. So....I ask you....SHOW that you don’t see race by what you watch or I’ll show you your hypocrisy
i'm not japanese but anime characters always looked japanese to me, its common sense and 70-80% of the animes take place in japan and their names are japanese too so why would you even think they're white lol
Objectively, they look more Caucasian. #1 Their eye shape is too round in most of the anime styles I've seen for them to be Asian, although I have seen anime characters that have eyes that are clearly Asian and their skin color is as well within the same anime(bleach as an example). #2 Despite how 'white' the Japanese and Koreans skin can be, as we know... they're not the same 'white' as Caucasians. If you take the time to compare, you'll see many so called 'asian' characters most certainly don't match Asian skin colors at all... The difference is night and day really. Keep in mind that you have a lot of pictures online of Asian people(both male and female) that are wearing makeup and their skin isn't really that color underneath. And then you also have had eye-lid surgery (very common) which is also very misleading.
Raza Khan do you realize that Japanese people can dye their hair to any color? They don’t want to make the character just black or brown hair. If their names are Japanese then they are
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE ,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man , very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ... so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime) The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro. (he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo) Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy -> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent'' Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime) MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
When I was younger, I wondered if some characters were supposed to be European mostly because of having things like pale skin, blue or green eyes and blonde hair. Plus many old shows, like Sailor Moon, also tried to make the shows seem more like they were taking place in the US instead of Japan, and gave the characters English names. Now I presume most characters in anime are supposed to be Japanese, unless they are like aliens or something, or it is clear they are from some other culture. But after studying things like color theory and character design, I also know that many hair and eye colors for cartoon characters (especially anime, unless it's 'real life' style) are not picked regarding race or nationality, but are picked instead to reflect aspects about the character. Like purple hair or eyes meaning magical and mysterious, red hair being passionate or fiery, red eyes being evil or demonic, and things like black hair and brown eyes meaning 'normal' person character (no special powers or magical abilities. Just an average joe or jane.)
Sometimes I noticed black hair in anime is painted in varied ways. It's not truly black, but rather undertones of either eggplant purple, navy, green, or brown. This allows for styles on the semi-realistic side to have the usual anime style color variations, but more toned down for the story & setting. One of the big "nos" of painting is to use pure black unless the work in question is meant to be painted mostly in grayscale and add hints of color to it for a particular effect. The only anime I can think of that does this is Jigoku Shoujo/Hell Girl in which Enma Ai's hair appears to be cel painted in pure black and the addition of bright red eyes for an unsettling effect.
Did you ever watch the original Sailor Moon? They all have Japanese names and they live in Tokyo. The translated version butchered the original production.
Yes, I have watched the original. But not until years after watching the original Dub Run on Toonami. And you are right, I was rather upset when I found out just how many things they changed that were 100% not necessary. One such thing that really got on my nerves was when Usagi and the scouts go to try and rescue Chiba Mamoru and try and get Usagi into the home of the enemies. I hated how they have Usagi begging for help instead of actually telling the scouts to stay away instead. And also Rae claiming she took the moon rod because she didn't trust Usagi with it, instead of Usagi actually giving it to her for protection.
I'm white but anime characters almost always look Japanese to me, but that's probably because I associate anime with Japan. The european characters in "Monster" looked european to me anyway.
Anime characters are just anime characters. Japanese artists just give them colors based on how they feel about the character. Sometimes it is based on their personality sometimes it isn't or they just like that color on the character. This is what it looks like when a person who has no concept of race animates and draws cartoons. Anime/Manga artists don't even know the prevailing stereotypes of white people to really make characters based on them to begin with. Unless they specify the race/nationality they are usually considered Japanese. I remember they animated a Korean character and he looked like he was African for some reason. That just show they have no concept of race. I mean how many people even have white hair and purple eyes. Or heck even green or blue hair. They would make an anime of Feudal Japan with red haired and purple haired characters. It makes no sense and isn't supposed to in the context of race. The exceptions are things like Black Lagoon or whatnot that do specify their race and is based on the real world.
But that's not the question. The question wasn't if they're asian or european. The question was, what do they look like. Which physical traits are more prominent, asian or european.
I m black and they surely do not look asian to me and they definitely do not look black (most of em) so yeah they definetly look more white. I ve never seen a fully asian person with blonde or light brown hair. also the facial features resemble western white ppl
In Japan, we are used to stylized drawings. And exaggerating the eye size is a technique used to increase the richness of a facial expression, or to make it easier to create an expression even if the character is far away from the camera. This technique, nowadays, isn't only for anime. White people have bigger eyes than asians but nowhere near the size of animes or Disney and Pixar characters have. So eye size in an anime isn't a indication of race in an anime, for us at least. That's why when a caucasian character is created, other parts of their face are exaggerated. Like brows, bigger nose bridge, bigger cheekbones, bigger jaws, etc. Also blond hair and green eyes are usually for caucasian characters or half-japanese characters, because those are colors related to a caucasian, (here in Japan). If the character has brown eyes, or a dark color, the blonde hair can now be interpretated as a dyed hair japanese character. Fictional colors like purple hair and blue eyes can be used for japanese characters without problems. We also create our characters with perfect bodies, even if those proportion are closer to caucasian fashion models + silicon implants. Or slightly deformed big headed characters even if our heads aren't that big. We do have big heads, just not that big. Another thing I think is the narrative, fashion, movements the character has, and even the language itself, that makes us feel that the character is japanese. Subtle things that probably foreginers can't catch, but they still feel identified with some other aspects make them feel that the character has their same race. Probably, I don't know. Imagine this: A character with big eyes playing baseball in the koushien (school championship). Japanese : someone playing in the famous japanese high school tournament, and speaking japanese -> Most probably japanese, like me. White people : big eyes, playing baseball, and maybe speaking english in a dubbed version -> Most probably white, like me.
I'm American. My father once asked me "Why do all the characters in these shows look white?" I told him "They don't. They just don't look the way you remember Japanese characters stereotypically looking in American media."
the asian pop idols dye their hairs, have special hairstyles and wear colored lenses so anime characters are most likely based on asian pop idols rather than white people
it got a lot to do with the hair color, since the personalities of most anime characters are related to their hair color, even their first or family names are related to hair color anime eyes are too big to be asian, true, but they are also too big for any real life race, westerner characters in anime must have smaller and less shiny eyes than the regular anime characters in order to appear at least a bit closer to real life westerners vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/yakitate/images/a/a6/Kid.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110909063213 pm1.narvii.com/6316/1e69ac8a2063b968cc34b0d8571cba41fb7c2d1c_hq.jpg i.ytimg.com/vi/IsLWj7ofNbg/maxresdefault.jpg
mrwarmind Tell that to Candy Candy and other old classic shojo characters. Many of them weren't asian but anime and manga still kept that color variety for their "japanese" characters. So it doesn't have anything to do with jpop or so.
i didn't say that variety of color is reserved for Japanese characters, but japan is a closed society, they will have japanese influence even in their western characters, some writers managed to design western character to look really western like the pictures i posted, but i'm sure you noticed how many anime characters that are western have weird hairstyles, and even have Japanese manners like calling older siblings "onii-san \ onee-san" or bowing their heads in the same way japanese people do
Anime characters are the Japanese ideal character, which I don't think is white. All anime characters are heavily neotinized (indicating Asian), unless they are meant to be white (making characters look more defined). Most anime characters have slimmer bodies, no brow ridge, less defined jawlines, no facial hair, and small noses. Features that are associated with white people are not really drawn in anime characters because it is not idealized (heavy brow, facial hair, wavy/curly hair, bigger bodies). Hair/eye color isn't an indicator of race imo because many anime characters have crazy features just so that their character looks more interesting and is a stylistic chose rather than an aesthetic one. I think the best example of racial difference is Attack on Titan. Mikasa and Levi look more like average anime characters and they look much different than Zeke or Erwin. Most fans interpret Mikasa and Levi as asiatic while they interpret Zeke and Erwin as white because of different facial structure. Most white people do not look like anime characters unless they use heavy makeup that masks many of their caucasian features.
To me, it became very clear what race anime characters are when I looked at cosplays. White people always looked separated from the character they're cosplaying, if that make any sense. No matter how good of a quality their outfit, hair and makeup, their facial features rarely blend well with the character. They rarely capture the essence of the character. While Asian cosplayers might not look exactly like the character but they capture the essence of the character more often than white cosplayers. It looks natural on asian features, while it always look like a blatant costume on white features. And then you look at asian celebrities, especially pop idols and they look more like the anime character even though they're not cosplaying. This whole topic/debate on what race anime characters are made me realize how ignorant and unfamiliar people are towards Asians. Merely a month ago, I seen people talking about blackwashing anime characters for poc representation completely forgetting anime characters are canonically Asian. Even on the topic about cultures and things Asians literally created, Asians are still forgotten. I see similar thing happen to actual real asian people. Many western fans of kpop stars refer and compare those real life Asian people to white people because they have no reference and little knowledge about asians beside stereotypes. From this whole ordeal, I learned a lot about how people see Asians or lack thereof.
@You're fake and gay usually those who are the majority of a society like white people in predominantly white countries and asians in asia tend to project their default race unto a animated character.. unless the character look stereotypical in facial features like tall nose bridge and deep set eyes for white people, and slanted eyes & yellow undertone for asians. They also don't see themselves only stereotypically, but white people had bigger influence and global familiarity so they can draw themselves in any form, and people wouldn't question it. I guess that explain why people don't question the race of western cartoons characters when they're just as unrealistic as anime, like the Simpsons are seen as white and they have yellow skin, bulging eyes and one of them has a blue afro.
If We admired white people,we would marry white people.I respect white people features(blonde hairs,etc) . But I don't want to marry other races.Maybe,if Japanese marry other races,Japanese marry Asian races.Half-whites are very very rare. Anime features are simply cute,cool,impressive.And I think that white people have defined facial features. Anime characters have softer and younger faces.Japanese faces are younger than white ones. Surely,Japanese don't have blue eyes,blonde hairs,etc.But Anime characters features are Simply adjusted for Japanese people's preference(like the fashion).That doesn't mean anything serious.
리성천 Rhee Sung Chun To be fair most Japanese people be flat as fuck. A 'C' cup is the biggest I saw over there on anyone under 60. If it was real that is. I knew many girls that had bras with built in pockets for padding.
I doubt the creators had any race in mind when designing characters. They just went with fun colors and styles. I agree with the guy in the vid: ppl feel the need to project race on them
I think this is a problem brought by Americans, because everything it's about race for them. They see Goku ssj yellow hair, green eyes. And then they say, 'Japanese people want to be white', while ignoring completely that people in various animes have like a rainbow of hair colors, from pink, blue, red, green. Even in dbz goku had red and blue hair. And this applies to the eyes too. Because let's be honest, all the characters having the same color of hair and eyes must be boring to draw. And even then I read mangas that depict people in a more Asian way. So, there you have it. Another case of Americans ruining the fun of everyone.
Mr. Nobody ...okay? That's not relevant to my comment. My point is, can you tell if an anime character is mixed race as well as which EXACTLY races make up that mixture? Probably not 😒
I just go by the names and the setting. If a character has a japanese name, theyre japanese; if a character has a european name, theyre european. If the setting is ancient japan or fantasy china, theyre asian; If the setting is fantasy europe or victorian/medieval europe, theyre caucasian. If they have dark skin, I go by the name. Id go by the setting too, but places like India, South America, SEA, polynesia, or central and southern Africa arent usually featured as the setting, which is a shame.
The guy at 7:30 is spot on. We try to identify with the characters of our favorite shows. Although I have never thought that characters who go to a japanese school, do japanese things and speak japanese are white - even with blonde hair. If it's a fictional world then yes, I interpret some as being of european heritage and some of being asian heritage... but somehow they all still speak Japanese sooooooooooooooooooo... they're still japanese somehow ;-)
I liked the guy's answer who said you tend to project yourself onto anime characters and that's why everyone sees their races differently like a lot of these Japanese people saw them as Japanese and/or Asian. It's not bad to see them as a certain race or nationality it just depends where you're from/what you've been exposed to. Like I know a lot of Filipinos but barely any Koreans or Taiwanese people so I wouldn't make that distinction with some of these characters. It depends who you ask and besides who cares? It's up to the writer what nationality they are and most are Japanese but it doesn't matter honestly.
The usual pitch for lessons at the end of videos goes "if you want to learn REAL spoken Japanese, rather than textbook Japanese or anime Japanese, buy my lessons". I love how this one is "if you want to watch anime without subtitles..." hahaha
it's actually a good reason. I find it much easier to watch anime since I dont really need subtitles anymore except for complicated technobabble or political-speak.
watching anime without subtitles is the best high you can get since you can just lord over your scrub friends. Plus Senki Zesshou Symphogear AxZ doesnt get its subtitles quickly, and when it does its by Commie which i find inaccurate anyway, so... well i rambled quite a bit, but thats my favourite anime
When I watch anime I think of all the characters Japanese. Even the girls with blonde and blue eyes in my head I’m still thinking Japanese. I got some Japanese friends that are really fair skin and they dye their hair all the time.
Justin Anderson Justin your a dumbass, have you seen the live action full metal alchemist, ruroni kenshin and bleach, back butler. All the characters are Japanese. Over there in japan people are really fair skinned and almost white for Asians, lots of them dye there hair blonde or red. I assume your white since your offended by Afrasiabi96’s comment and your name “Justin”
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE ,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man , very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ... so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime) The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro. (he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo) Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy -> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent'' Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime) MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
French people walk around with books and russian are smart, welcome to japan.
Tactics Lc 😂😂😂
matty lol
You forgot about the blonde Italians.
matty but they did say white people are slender. That was surprising to me...
chadbrochill19 lol Italians can be blonde tho
"White people are slender."
Me: *laughs in American*
Me, a 122 lb white American: 🤨
But yeah, we definitely need to end those sugar subsidies. That's why they load all our food with sugar - cuz it's artificially cheap. Nixing those subsidies would go a long way towards helping those who are obese.
@@bsmith6784 That's why I make my own food, been doing it since I was 15 and I'm as healthy as possible. If you want to be healthy in America avoid all processed foods, easier said than done though I suppose lol.
Me: *laughs back in Skinny American*
American obesity rate: LMAOOOO
It’s impossible for be to be fat or get diabetes
Anime Character Races are:
Pink hair
Blue hair
Light pink hair
Light blue hair
Blonde hair
Brown hair
Silver hair
Black hair
Green hair
Red hair
That’s it 😂
Hair dye exists
Mixed(Todoroki) and green(Midoriya)?
Harshit Sharma then they’re mixed
@@thehoneyeffect its not dye😂😂
I think, since anime faces are so minimalistic in their style, people may project what is normal to them onto these characters, because the actual drawing doesn’t really give enough detail to discern race or nationality.
I think you might be right.
I think the same. Also it's impossible to define nationality by looks, one can only guess based on probabilities. The criteria is vague enough that allows people to reply with stereotypical representations of diversity. Race is also vague, contrary to what people usually think.
I thought this at first, but then about a black persons would notice their skin is different then someone like goku.
I literally came here because of people debating about Goku's race and if it would be whitewashing to cast a white man as him again in live action.
Bingo.
I think anime characters are purposefully drawn for aesthetic not really focusing on actual nationalities but if so it's usually exaggerated.
(always confused me)
Large eyes, small nose and mouth is like the most common aesthetic
@Dead Archer those things hurt like fucking hell, are you serious? If I was a girl, I would preffer being a table, if I'm being honest.
I think I agree.
@Dan Astor No. White European foreigners when drawn to look like their nationalities are drawn with narrow eyrs, high cheekbones and a pronounced nose bridge. Check the foreigner in Lucky Stars and Diethard, or Charles Britannia in Code Geass. As a matter of fact, Code Geass is on of the best examples of ethnicities drawn in anime, because the author made sure to have certain features pronounced for different nationalities.
The young Japanese are drawn like traditional anime characters. The old Japanese are more accurately drawn with Japanese stereotypes like Kyoshiro Todou.
The Britannians are drawn with european features with high cheekbones, long noses and narrower eyes.
The Chinese are drawn with very pale skin, pronounced eyebrows.
Then when you look at the big picture, you'll realize that even then, the rules arent followed. Britannians can have pink hair and pink eyes. The Japanese are all over the place in design and the Chinese are almost identical to them.
The main idea, is that the authors dont actuallu give a shit, until they need to or want to. Preconception of a characters ethnicity is at the mercy of personal perception.
Well I’m surprised no one has heard this but I have the answer for you, first remember that many if not all of these characters come from manga done entirely in black and white, when mangaka draw they use white paper and then usually just outline characters in black that’d why so many Asian characters have white skin, it would 1, take far longer to draw in a darker skin tone, and two it costs publishers more money to print excessive black ink, that’s why it’s rare outside of hair color to see darker complexion characters they take more time and are more expensive to draw, a classic example is the super saiyan, from dragon ball, goku normally has black hair however when he transforms his hair turns WHITE in the manga this was done to make it easier to keep drawing him for all panels so that the chapter could be released on schedule
One thing I can say for sure, L from Death Note doesn't look black to me.
So much whitewashing in the show and you pick out the one character that comes from the UK (where a lot of black people live)
Confusedgerman People who whine about whitewashing but love and celebrate non-black characters being replaced with black characters are mentally challenged hypocrites. And don't give me that whitewashing is a big problem bullshit. Every time it's done a massive shitstorm will happen yet more and more non-black characters are being replaced with black actors and barely no one gives a shit. Even worse, people who point out the hypocrisy are labeled racists and white supremacists by ignoramuses like yourself.
I see alot of ppl being pissed that L was replaced by a black guy (which was dumb). but you proved my point. L being replaced by a black guy is the thing that makes yall triggered. but Light being white...*Crickets*. We are so used to whitwashing its normal to us. But change one character to a black one then its a problem. anime bearly has black people. I cant even think of a black anime character, but white-looking anime character i can name plenty..
can we all just agree new Death Note will be shit regardless of whether the characters are the same ethnicity or not?
I see where you are coming from with your whitewashing bullshit. You are simply wrong as backlash has increased for shit like that like motoko being played by scarlet johanson, which was trivial tbh. In china, the media will be made up of chinese, in japan the japanese. As the US is primarily "white", the media is gonna appeal to them most often. Spout your stupid rhetoric elsewhere
"Russian people are smart"
* looks at those dudes dancing to Hardbass...*
* ...completely agrees. 8)*
They definitely have different stereotypes in Japan. In the US the Russian stereotypes are foolhardy and often inebriated (probably because they need a high bac to keep their blood from freezing while they go bear wrestling in the arctic cold.)
Cheeki breeki i v damke
They even make bears flee when running at them (saw a vid about it) though it reqs huge nutsack to do something that crazy.😊
Hell, bears can even be a pet buddy or even a drink buddy, look at the vid where a guy is on a moto and his bear on his side-car. 😉
Russians be like:
*Throws vodka*
*Cyka Blat!!*
Let me down Stupid unfunny stereotypes:/
I feel like Anime characters have a race of their own lol
John Cenas for me I think they're all cartoons
Yeah, and fat albert is made out of chocolate, not black, nor human lmao
yEs. *yes yes yes*
:D ...potential for how 'post-racial' society is a thing?.
I agree wholeheartedly 🙋♀️
“He looks french”
“What part of him looks french?”
“Walking around with a book”
Lmaooo
I see they’ve been watching Beauty and the Beast
Fandom Godmother lol I just find him french cuz hairstyle
Walking around with a book is totally okay. I do so sometimes.
@@sirlezard670 Mais oui! Ohn hon hon, C'est manifique!
Shouldn't he be holding a croissant then
Based on their comments It makes me feel like japanese people do not travel a lot .
Nope its only Americans who dont travel and are ignorant of other peoples and cultures says everyone even our own.🙄
@@sonataharris3157 no its Asians who don't
which is funny as the Japanese tourist was a popular stereotype starting in the 80s, you see it in a lot of Hollywood movies
SEGA has or had (I’m not sure which) a studio that has a Japanese and American teams work together
Why do u hate Americans?
girl: "Russian people are smart"
me: looks at myself
also me: "Apparently I'm not russian"
Я тоже над этим посмеялась)
😂😂😂
Do you listen to hard bass?
@@apang1831 of course I do, all russians do. I wake up to hard bass, drink vodka to hard bass, pat my bear to hard bass. Even at my funeral I will listen to hard bass
@@basokvlad you are truly slav man. Damn
I mean tbh no race has eyes that cover a quarter of their face 🤷🏼♀️
Its not a phrase mom!
I think it's more about the shape. Western eyes are rounder and wider in general, so anime eyes are closer to western eyes.
@@SixHundredAndSixtySix No, they are not. In fact Asians are rounder and blacks are also rounder. European and western are more shaped like an almond people got it wrong it's the other way around.
God Doesn't Exist actually western eyes and face are sharp and more defined, whereas Asians are more rounder with is why most of them look younger than their actual age.
Joynel Bonet Delgado Why can’t people just say African people instead of blacks smfh
Japanese people seem to associate being skinny with being a foreigner (American etc). I think Japanese people are generally skinnier than 'foreigners' tbh
sxocc. god, half of Americans are overweight. literally. Japanese are the slender ones
It's probably because most of them are just exposed to the Hollywood version of the western world and a lot of actors, actresses, and singers on TV and movies are slim with the exception of comedians. Just like how people in the West get into anime, idol groups, and movies or shows and imagine that the average population is as good -looking. A lot of people in the entertainment industry worldwide use makeup, though, so odds are a lot of people in the industry look just as average as the rest of said country's citizens.
They mean Europeans, not Americans.
Yeah, I personally think White people are pretty stocky. Like they are slender when in their teens and early twenties but after that their body frame just looks so broad. Their wrists and shins as well as their necks get kinda thick.
Yeah. Way too many landwhales in the U.S compared to Japan where only the Sumo-wrestlers reach american girths.
the norm for anime drawings are Japanese characters. it's also quite difficult to see race from such an unrealistic art style
Agreed. That's why I think how that one guy said it's based on the viewer projecting their similarities into the characters is pretty realistic.
Mascheny that is true too
RandomBasketballer true although it's pretty obvious like attack on Titan is a good example it's clearly inspired by Europe with all the architecture and everyone having different colored eyes than brown. Same with full metal alchemist.
TheYeller7 By extension people tend to see the race that they are used to seeing (usually their own) as the most "normal". Say if you tell someone to think of just a generic human, the first thing to spring to mind will be closer to what they look like. It's why the protagonist of a story is always the same as the target demographic. Making them slightly different is one step further from the likelihood of them relating with the character off the bat
Danny Richie i could see Erwin as Caucasian, absolutely. but ed always seemed a bit Asian to me 😂😂
when im watching anime i just assume the characters are japanese unless specifically stated otherwise or they have non japanese names
Ayyy lmao thank you
I just assume they're all white people who were born in Japan.
Ayyy lmao That's the smartest way to do it.✨👍 And that's most likely what the artist / author expects you to do too. ✨👏
The ethnicity of an anime character isn't to be assumed based on the character's appearance as they aren't real people to begin with, but is to be specifically announced/revealed by the writer or to be fictionalized by fans.
If that's the case, wheres the pale, blonde haired, blue eyed character that's really a black African from the Zulu tribe? The truth is the Japanese reserve the "looking Caucasian" characters for themselves..........
Honestly Asian cosplayers look 100x closer to the characters than White cosplayers so I'd have to say that they're closer to Asian than White.
We don't think deeply about features.Bascially,many anime characters are japanese.
I am very surprised at whether anime characters are white or not.
If anime characters are white people, those characters have European names.
And anime characters don't look like white people that much.I think that European people have defined facial features.But anime characters have soft ,childish faces.
But there are exceptions.For examaple,Berserk(Kentaro Miura) .
If we exaggerates white people,We write people like Berserk characters.Berserk characters are more realistic and European.
if it’s from japan then they are 100% japanese unless they spoke about their background
That's only because they put more effort in
I agree, as an Asian I've always seen them as Japanese unless stated specifically in the manga or they just have an English name 🤷🏻♀️
@@takahiroyamamoto3137 naruto looks white. Saiyans look Polynesian like Hawaiian/Samoan
>blonde hair
>blue eyes
THEY'RE JAPANESE GUYS I SWEAR!!!11
There's definitely a lot of denial going on.
>Gold eyes
>red hair
They're definitely white i swear.
You need to understand outside of stereotype looks based on western, and how asians view racial stereotype
First thing first colors in cartoons are just common things to use by to give uniqueness and to differentiate, by no means red eyes and hair means white, grey eyes/hair means white, its just artistic way of drawing.
Second unlike western who sterotype asian by their eyes, asians clasify what is asian look or western look by bone structure, chin, jawline, cheeks, nose, body type, and body hair
Asians view western to have a face more long and bony and larger nose and larger body type and really hairy
This is different where asians see asians to have more smoother face more feminine even for males , fair skin, thinner body type and not hairy.
The problem with that argument is that in anime, hair color/eye color obviously means nothing. There are people born with green, blue, purple, pretty much any color. So when someone has yellow hair it doesn’t really matter if in the same show there are people who naturally have pink or blue hair. It’s more denial to see them in a very clearly asian country, and assume they’re all white.
@@cailys8665 therebis a difference in having a character with inhuman traits and another with with human traits. There are no Japanese people with natural blonde hair or blue eyes. Which are normal human traits.
@@Adam-yq9xe but when they are commonly used together with characters with inhuman traits they means nothing more than expression of collors.
Not even the Japanese themselves can agree on the ethnicity of these characters. My confusion feels even more justified now.
Yes, though they almost always assumed some asian race whether it was chinese, korean, vietnamese, etc. I found that very interesting. Rarely did they say foreigner/white (except for that one with the book). I think that guy at the end was correct in thinking that whatever race is watching will tend to 'project' themselves onto the characters.
@@ryoshockwave really? For me it's based on the story plot and the characters' origin. Idc about what race they look like because the creators also don't give a shit and gave every characters bright hairs and bright eyes
@@silvermaus Appearance matters a lot. It is the first thing everyone notices.
Anime is popular in the west because most of the characters are drawn with very distinct European features.
@@BobSmith-mp8ld Miyazaki created modern Anime and his inspiration was a Russian Anime, thus he made his characters look Russian. But I really have enough of the blonde blue eyed characters, most people in the world aren't even blonde and blue eyed... and it is already boring.
@@ikki-gaming8933 Depends where you live.
In Western Europe and the Northern US light eyes and light hair is the majority not the minority.
That point is moot anyway, light eyes/hair are universally considered far more beautiful than dark eyes/hair; So anime will continue to be drawn the way it is now.
I never really thought about it, I assume any anime character is Japanese unless indicated otherwise lol
Some IT Guy same
Some IT Guy
^This
Some IT Guy Yeah, unless its specifically set in a country, or its a main plot point that theyre say Swedish I just assume theyre all japanese
Technical Difficulties alot of different nationalities and races in Darker Then Black
Our New Design Ive never seen that. Its always possible one parent is japanese in any case. I guess I just never really thought about it. Unless the story brings it up I just enjoy the show
"White people are slender."
Bless you, small Japanese woman.
They have too much self-hate.
@@samuraijosh1595 Well, that's just white people in general.
Most White people are slender. Maybe not in the US but in Eastern Europe, they are.
@@ticktockbam I meant that Japanese people are self-hating which is why they (some of them) want to look "white". By "white", I mean, white features like big eyes and noses, etc. It's kinda obvious in some Japanese fashion magz and live action movies.
Whites are tall and slender in Europe
Attack on Titan characters are European/German. Except for Mikasa and maybe Levi. It was mentioned that Mikasa is an _oriental_
Mark Alvarez possibly also Hanji?
squidgi
Her name is cannonically spelled "Hange", which is German. Since AoT is made in Japan, translators incorrectly assumed her name was the Japanese name "Hanji"
Some Swede "hange" isn't a german name, "Hanne" is a german girls name or "hannes" a german boys name but "hange" does not exist in german language
"Levi" is a hebrew name from the old testament or could be the shortform of "levente" which were hungarian
Jäger or jaeger is a german lastname and also means "hunter" while "eren" is a turkish boys name
Greetings from germany
Generalmajor Trull
Ah, I apologise. I was under the impression Hange was a German name.
Some Swede no problem buddy, you are welcome
If you wanna know which characters are white in anime, they're the ones with the big noses...
So every "handsome" guy in an anime. Tall pointy-ass noses.
"They're the ones with the big noses"...so every main male character.
Or how about the ones named Henry Smith Jr. III. Not everyone with a big nose is white.
Lol, no?
Levi ` anime characters don't have high nose bridge
Should have shown a picture of Goku and have everyone say, "He looks Saiyan."
Aryan
@@kiritosenpai1501 Only his SSJ forms, otherwise, he looks Asian for the most part.
Im one his forms
@Caster Gil technically, India is in Asia
@Caster Gil I thought Aryans were like German Blond hair blue eyes kind of people from middle and norther europe
I usually never identified anime characters with a nationality unless it was hinted in the background, their names or obvious facial features
Same, i mean, in Fullmetal alchemist is clear they are from Europe (not conting Ling and some others that are clearly asian)
The point here is they don't look asian at all
Except the white naruto fanbase believe all naruto characters are white even though the lore is in japan or China or Korean.
@@mingchenwei1978 so most of the people don't think that Naruto is living in Japan or did I miss something?
@@mingchenwei1978 The question wasn't based on lore, it was based on looks. Naruto has blond hair and blue eyes.
"You think Russians are smart?" "Yes"
Obviously hasn't played csgo
KiuXEX RASH B CYKA BLYAT
KiuXEX Or Dota2.
KiuXEX nahui
Or seen any typical russian videos of them doing stupid shit lol. Reacted to that too. Especialy since Japan is so well educated it's almost wierd seing them think higher of anyone else in that regard. And mayby especialy east europe lol, but they don't seem to know anything real about europe.
Like their ideas of France and Italy for example. They aren't bad places or anything but not magical or even that amazing. I think more Japanese people should learn how great Japan are in comparison to most places and not just go by fiction.
And whats better in other places could probably help them improve on certain things too, mainly social interactions and the major gender gap.
@Daju or many of them think that british people are gentlemen, which makes me laugh hard everytime.
The guy at the end was completely correct and said exactly what I was thinking.
People project themselves into anime and see the characters as a representation of themselves.
Thats why some people think they are white, some people think they are japanese etc.
With exceptions of course. Certain characters are meant to look a certain way, or a certain race so they exaggerate some features or way of speaking the emphasize that.
Shadownian I loved that part
No black person is falling for that.
I'm latina so I can confirm this is complete bullshit ☆
Salvatore Dino and Raccoon Child
haha so true, well that's what i was thinking first, but i remembered how i thought that kuzan/aokiji must be black. Same with Sokka and Katara from Avatar the last airbender. I think it might also affect black people if the character has darker skin or particular facial features, same goes for latinas.
Shadownian Uhh i sure as hell dont project myself into anime characters. Thats something only teenagers do when they watch shonen.
*"White people are slender"*
Girl, have you SEEN the obesity rates in the U.S.?
Because white people in Europe don't exist?
@@tropinnka According to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 76.6% of the U.S. population is white, versus 13.4% black. According to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the NIH, roughly 44% of white Americans suffer from some form of obesity, along with 61% of black Americans.
44% of 76.6% is roughly 33.7%. The U.S. Census estimates from 2017 put the total population at 325,719,178. So, roughly 109.7 million white Americans are obese. Compare that to 61% of 13.4% of the population (roughly 8% of the total population), or roughly 26.6 million obese black Americans.
~109.7 million whites versus ~26.6 million blacks. There are far more obese white Americans than black Americans.
Regardless, this poor Japanese girl has no idea how wrong she is about us 'Mericans.
@@Stevenbfg the rate of obesity in romania is huge too btw
just a country in Europe but still
@@RazorM97 Heh... well, that sucks.
Anime character looking white won’t cross your mind until someone says something like that.
nope ruclips.net/video/UOmolLOQ7Rs/видео.html
@@catlily3366 go back to Twitter.
@@tiamelancholyjeoncockity delulu
I think what the guy said was right. People watch and project themselves as the character so they see the character as what they think they look like. Spot on answer from the guy.
The Hurricane Indeed - and as his friend said, that shows the skill of the artists in drawing characters with whom that's possible.
That little exchange was genius. Glad I sat through the video.
Also the characters all live in Japan and have Japanese names, so it’s just a given that they are Japanese. It’s the same as if the cartoon was of a cat or a dog or something, it’s obv not a human but if it’s speaking Japanese and lives in Japan with a Japanese name, then you assume it is Japanese and don’t think otherwise lol.
HTH can someone with big blue or green eyes and anything but brown hair be seen as Japanese? Afro Samurai does not become Japanese because you project yourself into the storyline.
The culture too, or the characters manners.. even in FMAB for example, they have more like japanese manners, than europe manners.. because the artist is japanese (i think in other anime, somethings like this happen too)
I mean Erens last name gives it away, it's Jäger...sooo yeah he's German. Most of aot characters are either French, German, Russian american, I think only mikasa is mixed Japanese
Elisa Artner He’s German (on his dad’s side) and Turkish (on his mum’s side).
@@charlieweasley2534 really, I didnt know he was mixed
@@charlieweasley2534 Well he can't really be either since Germany/Turkey don't exist in AOT
@@elisaartner7818 Races/Ethnicities from our world, (except for Asian), don't exist in AOT
@@SolarDragon007 Sorry to disagree but while the Nation X or Y doesn´t exist, doesn´t mean a comparable Nation exist.
Example : In Strike Witches there is a Country called Karlsland...and like everyone from that Nation is a reference to an German Ace
Can we assume Karlsland is supposed to be Germany? Yes, but you kind of don´t call the real names especially when the Anime is set somehwere around 1914-1945
Having some other name for real life Nations were done plenty of times. A more recent example would be Azur Lane or KanColle if boats are more your thing
If you are reading this don't scroll down, the comments are the literal definition of a shit storm. Save yourselves.
I only came to read the comments. I saw the title and knew it would be full of really stupid people saying tons of stupid/hilarious things.
People getting so heated over the genetics of fictional characters in Japanese cartoons that, in artstyle, usually don't match general human anatomy really well in the first place. Truly a shitstorm of undeniable proportions.
Hi It's Me Thank you and bless your soul.
I'm in too deep
thanks
About the Ghost in the Shell girl.
The 2 women:
-Japanese.
-No way. Korean.
-Spanish?
-Yeah, Spanish.
-Maybe Mexican.
-Maybe from Egypt.
When i was a kid, i thought most anime caracters where Japanese, since I understood early on that's where anime was coming from.
gold star
Same
Melissa blond hair and blue round eyes?
I always assumed that it was just how japanese people wanted themselves to look or something, and it really seems to be their "ideals" if we consider how japanese girls in anime, who we know are pure japanese, also usually have traits that asian people doesn't.
Well, I usually just think all people that show up in japanese anime/manga etc are japanese unless told otherwise. It's not as if you can tell if it's a japanese character or not, unless there's some VERY distinct features, like that guy around 3:33
I think they're Japanese unless it says so specifically.
I imagine there are the anime characters which are supposed to look *very* Japanese, characters which are supposed to be very much *not* Japanese, and then characters which are supposed to have only human features so that they aren't tied to a place on Earth. Or maybe it's that the anime style only looks vaguely human anyway so any relation to race is through stereotypes and assumptions, who knows :P
Best answer ever
Watch seinen shows which have more realistic anatomies and features compared to stylized artworks from shounen shows.
What about the american and brittish anime characters that have big noses and blonde hair to tell their race? Not all anime do this but some do it
@GOD OF ART I don't think he said anything about americans specifically, and he definitely didn't call them scum. Regardless the fact that most people assumed Japanese proves you wrong. The characters are so heavily stylized that it doesn't really matter, most are just modeled vaguely after what the designers are used to seeing in people around them.
@@rodentlover100 yeah, he wasn't paying too much attention to the video. One of the guys was like, "blue eyes? Blonde hair? Really tall? Western fashion? I think he's japanese."
I was laughing when they said Lucy from Fairy Tail is a Vietnamese girl that cosplays as a Japanese girl lol
Since she had Heartfilla in her name, she's definitely of British descent in my opinion.
Gjon Gaming Channel almost everyone in fairy is white
@ハニーキティー lmao, in fairy tail they are though because irish folklore. They're all meant to be irish characters.
@Missionjapan_DBAW no, she's definitely Heartfilia and British. As for the rest of Fairy Tail.....I think none of female are actually Japanese...
Lmao me too I thought everyone thought that she was white like I see no Asian features AT ALL 😭😂
As a Swiss Woman, I can confirm that we live inside huge walls because we fear giants (=the EU)
Down with the fourth reich !!!
I wish America was part of the EU.
@@michaelstratton5223 well the EU is not that perfect.... I'm glad Switzerland is not part of the EU
@@michaelstratton5223 I`m glad neither the US nor Canada is part of the f-king EU.
@マナンナンアナメ Why not.
Nah, now way. I've never seen Anime characters as White People and still can't Picture it no matter how hard I try. The closest someone can get as an anime character is probably the K-pop idols.
You Tube
Fuck, same.
You Tube attack on titan? Full Metal Alchemist? Soul Eater? All dont take place in Japan
was wondering the exact same thing.. then when you ask people, they start spewing that "white as default" crap
You Tube true
What about Baccano? That takes place in America and most of the main characters are white. What about Monster? It takes place in Germany and Dr Tenma is the only Japanese character. What about Attack on Titan where it's stated that Mikasa is the only Asian person there.
I personally think it's the last two guys that shed the most light on the whole issue.
The thing is anime characters are almost purposefully made to look multi-national or ambiguous in terms of nationality....aside from most black characters, that is, but even then people have made the assumption that Mugen from Samurai Champloo could be racially mixed black and Japanese due to his darker skin and fluffier hair, so it's not actually clear-cut in that case either.
Point is though that anime creators tend to want to make interesting looking characters, not hyper-realistic characters. There's an assumption I see made that asians aren't aware there are patterns to how they look, and that only other races see it and think that "all asians look the same", which no one but a racist ACTUALLY thinks. But while same-race people can tell subtle differences between each other better than outsiders can, they can still recognize racial patterns, and so can every other human being in the world.
Japanese people could probably make hyper-realistic, generic and super homogeneous asian character deisgns if they REALLY wanted to. But no one wants that. No character designer does that, especially the wackos who make anime and the crazy stuff that happen in them. Real human beings look real, and typically boring. You typically paint or draw real people with the express purpose of making it look real. Cartoon and anime characters are abstract styles of art and in general are exactly the opposite of looking truly real or boring. They're cool, unique, and interesting, even WHEN the look more realistic, and if they aren't interesting then they are PURPOSEFULLY made to look generic. Character designers take influences from all sorts of different cultures when they make characters, and are out to make visually appealing characters, not everyday people on the street, and that goes for the Japanese too. And the fact that some of the Japanese in that video even guessed at some of the characters being white, even for a bit, proves that the characters are made with influences that aren't exclusively Japanese.
Whether the character be white or asian looking doesn't actually matter in the end, especially in fictional and fantastical worlds like you see in Shounen Jump.
Who even really cares if Luffy the Pirate looks white or asian to you, for example? He's Luffy the Pirate. He has fair skin, but he could really be anything, and what you call him doesn't make a difference. And a crazy candy-coloured Japanese girl with sickly pale skin can be Japanese if that's where she comes from. The only relevance the nationality has is on the story and personality of the character.
Japanese project themselves onto the characters emotionally and call them Japanese, and Westerners do it vice versa. And nothing is wrong with either race doing that.
Anime picks and chooses from many different influences, and generally tosses traditional ideas out the window. The artstyle reflects this, and the anime artstyle doesn't only appeal to the Japanese but everyone, and nowadays the style isn't used exclusively BY the Japanese, but by all sorts of people worldwide.
Realistic designs takes more effort to make than stylized because of its nightmarish detail-to-detail. 80's and 90's anime used to be more detailed. But because of time constraint, they streamlined it into more simple designs.
It's not racist to think people look similar. Also sociologically speaking it's quite common to think people outside your race/nationality/ethnicity look similar. It's what you do with your first impression that is racist or not. If you think Asians look similar, acknowledge you made that thought and move on then who cares. If you think Asians look similar and therefore are all the same, that's an example of racist stereotyping. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging people look similar.
@@edwinnaranjo9435 So many people think that anything racial is automatically racist. Are people in this comments literally trying to say ethnicity's' dont share common traits? Because everyone is trying so hard to disassociate. You don't have to look at things with racism because then you can see how the creators of the anime portrayed 2 groups of people or more in the anime with different ethnicity's. Usually I see this with Japanese and European-esq characters and then I'm able to go into a further critical anaylzation of the anime if i hadn't noticed these.
A lot of asians do sound the same though, it's like they get to pick from 5 voices, then slightly change the pitch.
ムゲンは沖縄人です…
So basically to Americans they all look white
To Japanese people they all look Korean XD
most of anime characters are korean.
Best comment so far LOL
Not sure what planet you live on. Most anime characters are Japanese.
*Asian : mainly Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese
雄大 Sakurai
They mostly take place in Japan bc anime is a Japanese style of animation
I'm western, I'm not white but I never thought of anime characters as white. I always thought they were japanese.
It's not about what they are. It's about what do they look like.
@@beastvicious8672 well, it is the same for me. You know there are black or white Latinos, right?
@@zelta1100 Latino isn't really a race. Aren't they all mixed?
@@beastvicious8672 Yes. That is why I always thought that the characters were all Japanese, unless they specify that they are from another race or country in the anime
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters
EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE
,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man ,
very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ...
so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime)
The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro.
(he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo)
Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy
-> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent''
Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime)
MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
This comment is just for those who think ALL japanese anime characters are ethnic japanese, which is simply not always the case.
should've shown them polnareff, they'd never guess he's french
-he’s french
-why do you think he’s French?
-T H E H A I R
hE dOeSn'T hAvE bOoK
He looks Russian to me
@@Nehauon even his name sounds russian lol (last name)
Yeah , but JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE has many non-japanese characters (with a few who are mixed japanese and white , like giorno from part 5 or josuke from part 4)
The hat guy was cracking me up, he just wanted to name every nationality possible
Or have huge eyes and different hair colors and light skin i can see why people think anime characters are white
I feel like I see all Anime characters as Japanese unless it is explicitly stated otherwise.
Same.
Sometimes it’s not stated but they clearly aren’t fullmetal alchemist for example
@@jeddgangman4502 another example is attack on titans
True, good point. It could be blatantly obvious without necessarily being stated outright.
@You're fake and gay I'd think they'd have a bit of trouble finding good white actors who speak japanese for the live action.
I'm from Japan. We don't care anime characters race at all.
say it for some twiiter 1iq persons, in sailormoonredraw hastag, i see many ppl who said you care
そもそも、アニメのキャラって特別、国や背景や名前などを示さない限り、全キャラは日本人って事で受け入れているし全く人種がどうのなんて考えないよね。あくまで出てくるのは、かっこいい、かわいい、印象的とかそういうキャラを見ているだけで、これは白人だとかなんて基本考えないよな。
@マナンナンアナメ youre just a weeb
you sure about that tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki ? ;I
Good
Japanese don’t meet a lot of people from other ethnicity often do they?
Occassionally, it depends on location and things, like if they’re from a big city like Tokyo they are more likely to have exposure to foreigners. The girl with the blue and white stripe shirt in this video looks like she might be half black or something.
@@zetax7397 pretty sure she's half brazilian half japanese cuz the other girl made a joke about it
@@paddyodoor3090 She has quite a few brazilian traits. Hell, she even sort of looks like a girl I met once that had Japanese origins.
They don’t
@TheCrazyKid1381 wrong Brazilians are white with but the sun makes their skin darker like Spanish people in summer
Why do people think anime characters "look white"? Because half of them have blond hair and blue eyes. Duh.
Arlenis B right
Arlenis B how many white people have pink eyes and hair ?
DBZ has quite a few of those
@Truth Troll noruto
@@Roam-de-route lol exactly, then when they transform they go blonde, with lighter skin tone and blue eyes. This just tell me alot of Japaneae people want to look white
4:28 that guy must be trolling so hard or he is just random af xD
lol yes
His overly-specific answers were hilarious!
This guy was really funny, I think he wasn't serious on this one
Not really, they think she looks Asian and I know Vietnamese girls are considered curvy in Korea, so I guess that goes for Japan too and that's why he said it.
He was pretty serious actually.
If an anime character is white, they'll usually have a defined nose.
You're welcome.
That’s so stupid, not all Europeans have the button nose look. If they have Blue/Green/Hazel Eyes and Blonde/Red/Light Brown They’re definitely white. I honestly get mad when the anime can’t differentiate.
Josephoso I’m middle eastern and I have green eyes but I’m not white?
Su Ghu Never said you weren’t? But you are most likely an Arabian caucasoid with some European blood, resulting in European features. Just like some Latinos. You are considered Caucasoid, but not European. Which in no way degrades you, Green eyes are unique and beautiful :)
@@sughu5644 You aren't a Caucasian of European descent. So no. Not white.
@@josephoso people say asians all look the same and no one's bitching about it. I also never hear anyone complaining about oversized eyes in anime.
I'd have to agree that there is an element of universality in alot of anime characters. They're transcendent beyond first time impressions and the best way to tell their ethnicity is to watch or read the individual story. So perhaps that universality is one heck of a hook to reel in potential fans?
Kevin Smith It's just a testament to the stagnant art styles of anime and manga so it's easy to draw, recognize, and pump out in a short amount of time.
Universal truth: Japanese people do not have blue eyes and blonde hair.
Shawn Snow but you think white people have pink, green, Greg, blue hair and eyes naturally like in anime ?
lmfao get the fuck out of here
One thing about Japanese animation is that they typically aren't afraid of utilizing stereotypes so if they want a character to look American, or German, or Egyptian then you'll know it! If they look normal they're usually Japanese because Japanese is normal to them lol
What is normal about anime? Lol
How do you make a character look American?
@@1elitegeek Idk, base the character off an American? For example, the character Annie leonhart was made to look like Avril Levine, an American singer. People in Japan typically think of blonde hair blue eyed people to be American aswell since they typically know about American celebrities apearences. I'd say there is no specific look as American since people look different, but Caucasian is typically what Japanese people draw when trying to make a character look American.
@@1elitegeek to portray an American or European they will go with blonde hair and blue or green eyes because blonde hair and such isnt really a natural thing in japan its also a sign of rebellion to dye your hair blonde
@@1elitegeek add fat flaps
Those boys look like a band ha.
Nah just normal good lookin high schoolers.
I'm Chris Hanson with dateline NBC.
Ita the hairstyle
They have a lot of make up on
アニメキャラは全員アニメ人みたいな感じで具体的に白人、黒人とかには分類できないと思うしそもそもアニメの世界に人種はない
Have you ever read any of Scott McCloud's books? In them he talks about how drawings of people (specifically western comics, but can apply to anime/manga too) are symbols with usually very basic features. He explains that a person can see a simply drawn face with a line for a mouth and dots for eyes as a human face, despite it's simplicity. If I recall, he says that people tend to identify said face as themselves (or at least their race), even though there are literally no identifying or racial features to be seen. This video kind of confirms that theory. I find it fascinating.
Not themselves but whatever race is the majority where they live and it also happens with age and gender. Most people seem to think a stick figure with only a basic face on it is a middle-aged male as that's the “default” from their perspective. It leads to that for instance in xkcd the males have no hair and are just sticks but the females have distinctly feminine haircuts to compensate.
Lol what I’m not white and I can clearly see that many Japanese think their physical features r inferior to those of white people. Ppl getting interviewed on the street isn’t evidence for anything lol. Also denial exists?? They don’t want to look bad by saying the racist truth
Is it only me or everyone find it difficult to imagine an anime character in real life with just their just anime images
I wonder how would Misaka would look like in real life from attack on titan.
people are commenting on how racist the answers are but here i am very satisfied to see gintoki
innt!!! i love gintoki's character :D
Gintoki makes everyone happy
How are the answers any racist? What is wrong with people?
Mai Yamada exactly 😂😂😂👍
Yeah.. I was scream in joy as I saw they guessing his nationality. Sakata Gintoki is my ideal type.
7:43 That guy wins in my book.
Looks at his stache and forearms.
Certified Chad
totally, found that part quite wholesome.
Joseph Choi when I read chad why do I think of s4 eren 😭
I'd say the kid at 8:07 was more on the nose. Or else there would be more main characters who look black or other race denominations and not just white.
Blonde girl with massive eyes
Japanese guy: Yep def Japanese
Bruh, I lold
Japanese girl who dye her hair blonde prob looks like that. Some Japanese have large eyes, so ya.
Yes, her blonde hair and massive... eyes were indeed most noticeable.
Ehh blonde hair is almost everywhere. Nothing special. I mean you have blue and pink hair in anime..
@@lovinglifeforreaal5689 it most def isn't a Japanese trait naturally
4:30 He said that Lucy looks Vietnamese XD. That made me laugh. This is coming from a Vietnamese female.
Yeah, I had hope for him after he disagreed with the guy saying Japanese... only for him to guess Vietnamese hahahah
White people will usually see Anime characters as white, while Asians will see them as Asian.
Really though, Anime characters aren't really drawn with race as their main concern unless they're meant to be. It's a style, and how people interpret it is different from person to person.
- Which part seems Japanese? (4:12)
- She's slender
- White people are slender (7:25)
Ah so... today I found out something new ^_^
They obviously are not talking about the average person as non-Americans are more likely to be familiar with American stars.
Most white people are not American
Both sides of the ocean have been seriously misled by the media. Japanese stars are gorgeous....but the average Japanese, though slender and trendy, actually looks quite inbred (which comes from a narrow gene pool being an isolationist homogenous island nation). They also have wacky teeth since they rarely straighten them.
American stars are certainly gorgeous as well.....but we also have serious problems with obesity as a nation. We have the fattest unhealthiest people in the G20 and the average American is quite chubby.
takigan Jesus Christ you are ridiculously offensive with your opinions.
takigan which american star is gorgeous?
“What part looks French?” “Walking around with a book”
_"He has green eyes.... He's Philippino!"_
...wait what?? XD In Attack on Titan lore, All asain countries were nearly all destroyed and asians are rare. Mikasa is the only asian in the series... Maybe Levi. But I doubt it from the name. I dated a Phillipinno and seen his whole family. I guarantee they don't have green eyes. 😆
*Interviewer:* _So he has blonde hair and blue eyes. What ethnicity might he be?_
*These people:* _Maybe not Japanese... Chinese?_
*Interviewer:* _Here is a hint, his name is _*_"Edward.... Elrich"_*
*These people be like:* _Oooh! Exotic. Maybe Vietnamese?_
Do you guys need stereotypes to figure out where people might be from? XD
Have eye color and hair color mean nothing in anime? They say that the characters is Asian because of the features
@@sidaranesong324 they draw them that way because their standard of beauty is European. Not to mention if they just drew Japanese looking people maybe with dye hair their characters wouldn't stand out much. I mean it really doesn't matter at this point. But in the video one of the guys said Europeans look better than us. Which isn't true they just look different.
Eren is actually Turkish, his name is a common Turkish name and it is an average look for Turkish people
@@ita-vero interesting
@@ita-vero But also his last name is german
also almost every one in AoT has a german name.
I've never really thought about the race of an anime character. I just saw them as just anime characters. Unless the anime characters themselves told a background story of themselves and said what race they were
2d master race
Same
Exactly, there's no other way to distinguish them otherwise (unless they're just black)
@@libertyadams5961 ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters
EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE
,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man ,
very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ...
so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime)
The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro.
(he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo)
Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy
-> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent''
Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime)
MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
@@mxd-1990asn we know they aren't always Asian... We're just saying it's difficult to distinguish between most races in many animes based on physical appearances unless it's stated by the plot
I like that guy in blue. He is so creative mixing their origins LOL!
I think anime characters race is based off context and not much off their literal appearance. Since they’re 2d and so stylized you can’t really pin down an ethnicity. Its all in the context. Eren yeager is european. We know this because of the context of the show. A character with the exact same physical traits but set in a japan with a japanese name would be assumed japanese.
But the question wasn't if they're european or asian. The question was "What do they look like".
@AZUNI Anime characters don't often have stereotypically Chinese traits, no, but the majority of anime characters do have Japanese traits. Even some characters that are meant to be "white" like Eren, have Japanese traits in the character design.
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters
EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE
,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man ,
very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ...
so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime)
The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro.
(he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo)
Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy
-> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent''
Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime)
MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
This comment is more or less also for ppl who think ALL japanese anime characters are ethnic japanese, which is simply not always the case.
@@purplespectre The main asian characters in anime are japanese ( ive seen one anime where a japanese character ,a man, had a half Thai half japanese daughter , she was still a child in that anime ) but if they wouldnt have mentioned it you wouldnt know, anss since actually a lot of us thais are mixed with chinese too we can look either more east asian OR more southern asian such as indian (as southern thais are more mixed with indian and north thai people are much more mixed with chinese so the country itself has different appeareances bcs of that)
, which is why you cant really 100% draw them correctly a half thai/japanese or japanese-vietnamese kid can look either more east asian or more south asian ,the artist of that anime simply gave the girl short dark hair and eyes (the usual for any asians to have brown-black hair and brown eyes) but all characters had huge eyes and pretty much the same nose soooo yeah... if they didnt have mentioned it you wouldnt know that the little girl is a mixed asian girl. I know a lot of thai-japanese families from bangkok and you literally cant really tell that the kids are asian mixed. Talked to some of the fams and the kids arent even guessed for foreign in both countries....japan/thailand.
At least not theyre kids.
Dont know about other japanese/southeast asian mixed fams. (but its the same with our family which is thai-south chinese, u would probably just guess them all automatically for thai simply bcs they live in thailand, but we have 11 million 100% ethnic chinese in thailand since 2020, most live here sincs countless generations so thats also the reason why a lot of thais mixed up with chinese, well , those who are not from the main city bangkok cant be always told apart just by looks as most even ethnic 100% in thailand have brown , speakking of the older chinese here at least , as white skin is popular everywhere in east and southeast asia they ounger ppl all try to stay white ingeneral so u dont know if theyr really white-skintoned since birth or not and that goes for both the chinese and thais here)
Skintone i dont really include as especially japanese ppl who work a lot outside (mostly people working at ricefields etc) can be pretty dark
(with that i mean east asians do not all have natural white skin either , the same goes for southeast asians dont all have brown skin, many full chinese in thailand you could not tell apart from thais as especialy south chinese people are mostly brown some very dark brown and those dont look different from ppl in southeast asia, so china is a big difference to the rest of east asia ALONE, as we *my family is also thai-south chinese mixed* the country is much bigger and has totally different climate in some regions ,therefor the people have different skintone and can also be different in facial features... well anyhow i told this as its about if you can tell characters apart then... which isnt always that easy with anime-appeareance
@RS It's weird I was never notified about this reply. Anyhow, not all Asians look the same. It shouldn't be hard to distinguish between Chinese, Korean, Tai, and Japanese people. Unrelated to this, but you really shouldn't call an Asian person a weeb, because "weeb" only applies to white and black people. It makes even less sense when a weeb like you calls someone a weeb.
Edit: To expand on what was meant by Japanese features, I thought I may as well link to this answer to the whole "debate," written by a Japanese person: www.quora.com/Why-do-the-majority-of-Japanese-anime-characters-look-like-white-people/answer/Yoneda-Masahiro
How can they tell whether an anime character is Japanese, Spanish or Korean or whatever other nationality besides their dressing style ? it just doesn't make sense.
Exploring With Gumpy are there people in the world with pointy chin and nose, big rounded red eyes and purple or blue hair ?
I've not seen yet an anime character that has at least a similar look to real people, Anime is so much away from being real.
It can still give you an idea from where it's from. If you are not from Japan, you probably thought of other nations than the one these people said. It's sure when you take something like Gintama it may be harder to find something that looks like him but for Lucy, I won'T see her asian at all. xD
In many anime, there is no way, other than the person's name or being told their background.
I see plenty of anime with blonde haired, blue eyed, creamy skinned characters who are Japanese.
Then as you said, the characters with blue/pink/purple whatever color hair.
I think anime/manga design, especially for girls is done for a cuteness factor instead of trying to match appearance to ethnicity.
I suppose it's based on impression and not really logic ^^
Pixel Fyxe Eren also looks caucasian imho because of the green eyes.
I've never seen a anime character that looked asian, some don't even look human.
To be precise almost every one of them looks like no actual human being as the typical "anime proportions" are off.
Despite some of them looking Western, they are all Japanese to me. I feel as though they change looks up to make it easy to distinguish characters from different animes and make them unique.
xAA7 I agree
So, even the intentionally white/European and Chinese/Korean characters are Japanese to you?
xAA7 I didn't know Jonathan Joestar was Japanese, or Joesph, or Dio, the Zeppeli family, etc.
Yes, definitely, unless they explicitly tell you their nationality or their name, you just can't assume someone is caucasian just because the character have blue eyes/blond hair. What race has eyes taking up 1/3 of their face yet their mouth is a single line? The diverse hair, eye colours are just there to make up for thr simple drawing style in most anime.
State-controlled Production Jojo's Bizarre Adventure would like to speak with you
The dude with mustache is so wholesome, his smile is infectious
“Maybe Spanish”
“*Egypt*”
Spain, being in the Mediterranean, and Egypt, being in North Africa, have people in their countries who sometimes share similar appearances. The two countries aren't very far from each other.
A B No
@@Mili-bedili Spain and Egypt aren't remotely near each other lmfao. Egypt have way more in common with middle eastern and northern, eastern africans.
@@tanguyt.5909 Yes
@A B
Spain and Egypt are pretty far from each other... I don’t know what you’re thinking lmao.
Wait, they... they do realize that Western people have brown eyes, too, right? Weird.
(Also I think white people see anime characters as 'white' is partially because Asians don't look THAT drastically different, so when you make the eyes big like they are in most anime/manga, it kind of blurs the line racially.)
exactly
Then you haven't seen enough Asians or are too ignorant. You're telling me Japanese, Thai, Filipinos, Koreans, Indians, Laotians, etc. all look the same? I might as well say everyone from England, Sweden, Germany, Russia all look the same. But guess what they don't and they are "white." Let's not even get into how different African tribes see each other. But I guess they're all "black" to you.
Wow, way to make extrapolations and assumptions there. I didn't say anything about them all looking the same. I said that they're not drastically different.
I'm saying that when you simplify a human face into a basic shape, as is the case in many anime and manga, they all look generally same-ish (dependent on the artist's style. Some are worse about same-face characters than others.). Especially when you slap a big pair of anime eyes onto the face.
This is evidenced in this very video, where the participants don't universally agree on what nationality a particular character looks like. You take a generic, brown haired and brown eyed male in an anime and show him to someone from England and say they're a British character, the person from England would likely agree with it. Take the same character and show him to someone from Japan, and say they're a Japanese character, and they'll probably also agree with it. This would likely repeat across most Eurasian populations.
Why is that? I don't know, I'm not that kind of '-ologist'. But it might have something to do with the human genetic bottleneck that exists. We're all just one really genetically similar species that has small differences in appearance from population to population. There are mean values for pretty much every physical feature a human can have, regardless of what their ethnic background is.
"England, Sweden, Germany, Russia all look the same"
To some degree? The difference between individuals is clearly bigger than the difference between the averages.
Every race has trouble distinguishing between the features of other races or people they have not interacted with much. The people in the video couldn't even form a consensus on what European the characters were supposed to be. I'm black, grew up in a black country and see black people everyday but I could not for the love of God distinguish between other black Caribbean people, or worse, ethnicities in Africa. I can guess but I ain't likely to be right. With Asians I wouldn't say they all look alike, but I really don't know how to tell them apart by nationality. Once I think I have an idea of what physical features make a race it quickly becomes disputed when I see someone different cause a person isn't always a caricature of their race.
I hate it when some dumb people believe this is all Japanese people's opinion.
Anime characters have colorful hair/eye/skin colors just to characterize them.
And they have bigger eyes than real humans just to make it easy for animators/manga writers to expressing anime characters' emotion easily.
'Some' Japanese people think white people are more beautiful but that's because they almost only see whites on movies, TV, or fashion magazines and all movie stars and fashion models look good.
I'm Japanese but I don't worship white and don't have tons of self-hate.
Boy you don't have to worry, in the western world most people have the opinion that japanese guys looking more handsome, even if they are skinny and have longer hair they look often mysterious and stuff like that, many girls going creazy for that and nearly every japanese women looks cute and shy when they are smiling, and all japanese or most asians in general have a very harmonious faces so you don't have to be angry about these trend in japan because its in the rest of the world visa versa
But to the anime figures, its quite a little bit ignorant to think that a character thats name is "eren jäger" ("jäger" is german name and also the german word for "hunter" while "eren" is a turkish boys name)is japanese, its clearly a gaijin name, also in many animes the characters wearing european Renaissance clothing armor or weapons or take place in european castles and stuff like that so of course some characters are not meant to be japanese (berserk, just to mention one example) even if the anime is from japan it can take place somewhere else
Lol Im Japanese and we are very racist people, despite not showing it, most Japanese and Asian people celebrate the Idea of pailer skin, wider eyes, slimmer noses which are all coincidentally Western/Caucasian features and look down on people of darker skin. There's a culture in Japan where girls overly tan their skin and in Japanese standards people regard them as being "black". It's like saying people who want to look tanned, want to look "asian" but in reality they are doing it to just look tanned. Whereas in Japanese and Asian culture, the desire goes slightly further to match Western standards.
LittleFilms Japanese beauty standards are very different to European features, firstly yes we like pale skin (also with yellow undertone) but it comes from a long time ago when Japanese didn't even know white people existed, it's to do with class, we don't want big hook noses like white people, or sunken eyes that are too round
we aren't racist to blacks and people of darker skin. Japanese people look at darker skin people as a class thing, so when you see a darker person it's not racist, they just assume that person is poorer/ lower class and is disgusting... Actually wait a minute that's pretty racist nevermind
steve hart hmm I guess but I don't know how it's racist because it's not the race they don't like it's just the skin color, a light skinned black person wouldn't be looked down on. There's definitely discrimination that needs to be fixed but it's not racism
I don’t see race, I see a show that’s good or shit
That is the weeb way
Agreed
I dunno dude, saying “I don’t see race” is kinda like telling that you don’t acknowledge a person’s race
@@oliveramarcoangelo1133, I don’t watch full metal actually because their white, I watch it because it’s a good show man, race doesn’t play a part in a story unless it’s race based
@@oliveramarcoangelo1133 Not worrying about someone’s race is not the equivalent to not acknowledging it. It’s about knowing that skin colour doesn’t dictate someone’s character
So what anime show do you watch where the protagonist has BROWN skin? Meaning they used the BROWN crayon to color their skin? I’ll wait....no your prejudice is PASSIVE aggressive, not direct that is all. Just as in life...when someone says “I love you” it means NOTHING when it is not showed by action. So....I ask you....SHOW that you don’t see race by what you watch or I’ll show you your hypocrisy
i'm not japanese but anime characters always looked japanese to me, its common sense and 70-80% of the animes take place in japan and their names are japanese too so why would you even think they're white lol
Because blue eyes and blonde hair.
Objectively, they look more Caucasian. #1 Their eye shape is too round in most of the anime styles I've seen for them to be Asian, although I have seen anime characters that have eyes that are clearly Asian and their skin color is as well within the same anime(bleach as an example). #2 Despite how 'white' the Japanese and Koreans skin can be, as we know... they're not the same 'white' as Caucasians. If you take the time to compare, you'll see many so called 'asian' characters most certainly don't match Asian skin colors at all... The difference is night and day really. Keep in mind that you have a lot of pictures online of Asian people(both male and female) that are wearing makeup and their skin isn't really that color underneath. And then you also have had eye-lid surgery (very common) which is also very misleading.
Aot theyre all different. Mostly German, but Mikasa is oriental and Levi is middle eastern. Also I believe Ymir is Norse
Because they look white......
Sarah Thamer u forget that Asians have slanted almond shaped eyes in which anime characters don’t
as a white person i never really thought about the characters as white. i guess i just always thought of them as japanese
Ich bin eine riesig Schwuler I always thought of them as just ASIAN
Lies
Raza Khan do you realize that Japanese people can dye their hair to any color? They don’t want to make the character just black or brown hair. If their names are Japanese then they are
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters
EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE
,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man ,
very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ...
so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime)
The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro.
(he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo)
Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy
-> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent''
Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime)
MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)
When I was younger, I wondered if some characters were supposed to be European mostly because of having things like pale skin, blue or green eyes and blonde hair. Plus many old shows, like Sailor Moon, also tried to make the shows seem more like they were taking place in the US instead of Japan, and gave the characters English names.
Now I presume most characters in anime are supposed to be Japanese, unless they are like aliens or something, or it is clear they are from some other culture.
But after studying things like color theory and character design, I also know that many hair and eye colors for cartoon characters (especially anime, unless it's 'real life' style) are not picked regarding race or nationality, but are picked instead to reflect aspects about the character. Like purple hair or eyes meaning magical and mysterious, red hair being passionate or fiery, red eyes being evil or demonic, and things like black hair and brown eyes meaning 'normal' person character (no special powers or magical abilities. Just an average joe or jane.)
Sometimes I noticed black hair in anime is painted in varied ways. It's not truly black, but rather undertones of either eggplant purple, navy, green, or brown. This allows for styles on the semi-realistic side to have the usual anime style color variations, but more toned down for the story & setting. One of the big "nos" of painting is to use pure black unless the work in question is meant to be painted mostly in grayscale and add hints of color to it for a particular effect. The only anime I can think of that does this is Jigoku Shoujo/Hell Girl in which Enma Ai's hair appears to be cel painted in pure black and the addition of bright red eyes for an unsettling effect.
Genisay w
Did you ever watch the original Sailor Moon? They all have Japanese names and they live in Tokyo. The translated version butchered the original production.
Yes, I have watched the original. But not until years after watching the original Dub Run on Toonami. And you are right, I was rather upset when I found out just how many things they changed that were 100% not necessary. One such thing that really got on my nerves was when Usagi and the scouts go to try and rescue Chiba Mamoru and try and get Usagi into the home of the enemies. I hated how they have Usagi begging for help instead of actually telling the scouts to stay away instead. And also Rae claiming she took the moon rod because she didn't trust Usagi with it, instead of Usagi actually giving it to her for protection.
"She has blonde hair and blue eyes, must be italian"
Wtf
Based on our own European stereotypes, Swedish would be the obvious choice.
Blonde people are very common in northern Italy
Have you been to Italy? Blonde, blue eyes are common on Northern Italy, you may find them in Northern Spain also! ‘Gasp’
Trunks_ _NRV mixing with Arabs? 😂😂 White people can have brown hair, I’m Irish and I look more Mediterranean than some Spanish and Italians!
Trunks_ _NRV In the states! They’re white, there’s no debate on that! the KKK didn’t like the Irish either, they hated everyone!
I'm white but anime characters almost always look Japanese to me, but that's probably because I associate anime with Japan. The european characters in "Monster" looked european to me anyway.
I'm Japanese but I don't usually think of the race of anime characters. I think most of interviewee are the same.
Anime characters are just anime characters. Japanese artists just give them colors based on how they feel about the character. Sometimes it is based on their personality sometimes it isn't or they just like that color on the character. This is what it looks like when a person who has no concept of race animates and draws cartoons. Anime/Manga artists don't even know the prevailing stereotypes of white people to really make characters based on them to begin with. Unless they specify the race/nationality they are usually considered Japanese. I remember they animated a Korean character and he looked like he was African for some reason. That just show they have no concept of race. I mean how many people even have white hair and purple eyes. Or heck even green or blue hair. They would make an anime of Feudal Japan with red haired and purple haired characters. It makes no sense and isn't supposed to in the context of race. The exceptions are things like Black Lagoon or whatnot that do specify their race and is based on the real world.
I noticed skin tone was not considered very important to nationality. I suppose character and behavior are, based on this video.
You can be from Korea and still look africsn look at African European but I think you right with anime it pretty much depends sometimes
I think you are right.
But that's not the question. The question wasn't if they're asian or european. The question was, what do they look like. Which physical traits are more prominent, asian or european.
@@beastvicious8672 european since the Japanese lost their sense of hairstyle
I'm white and have always thought of anime characters as Japanese.
I m black and they surely do not look asian to me and they definitely do not look black (most of em) so yeah they definetly look more white. I ve never seen a fully asian person with blonde or light brown hair. also the facial features resemble western white ppl
The guy with the goatee at the end was definitely on point. We identify with the characters we're watching, so we see aspects of ourselves in them.
In Japan, we are used to stylized drawings. And exaggerating the eye size is a technique used to increase the richness of a facial expression, or to make it easier to create an expression even if the character is far away from the camera. This technique, nowadays, isn't only for anime. White people have bigger eyes than asians but nowhere near the size of animes or Disney and Pixar characters have.
So eye size in an anime isn't a indication of race in an anime, for us at least. That's why when a caucasian character is created, other parts of their face are exaggerated. Like brows, bigger nose bridge, bigger cheekbones, bigger jaws, etc. Also blond hair and green eyes are usually for caucasian characters or half-japanese characters, because those are colors related to a caucasian, (here in Japan). If the character has brown eyes, or a dark color, the blonde hair can now be interpretated as a dyed hair japanese character. Fictional colors like purple hair and blue eyes can be used for japanese characters without problems.
We also create our characters with perfect bodies, even if those proportion are closer to caucasian fashion models + silicon implants. Or slightly deformed big headed characters even if our heads aren't that big. We do have big heads, just not that big.
Another thing I think is the narrative, fashion, movements the character has, and even the language itself, that makes us feel that the character is japanese. Subtle things that probably foreginers can't catch, but they still feel identified with some other aspects make them feel that the character has their same race. Probably, I don't know.
Imagine this: A character with big eyes playing baseball in the koushien (school championship).
Japanese : someone playing in the famous japanese high school tournament, and speaking japanese -> Most probably japanese, like me.
White people : big eyes, playing baseball, and maybe speaking english in a dubbed version -> Most probably white, like me.
"White people are slender" says the japanese :P
I chuckled when he said that. There's a lot of fat white people in the west.
BIO KILLER come visit the west, i can say for a fact that’s not true :^) (unless you live in the south)
kiraine You and I both know it ain’t just the south.
Honestly, I was like umm, a society with a perpetual skinny culture vs the greedy West, tf you on about boi
Lol
Lucy:
“Vietnamese”
Lol bruh-
I'm American. My father once asked me "Why do all the characters in these shows look white?" I told him "They don't. They just don't look the way you remember Japanese characters stereotypically looking in American media."
I always thought anime characters are Japanese. With dyed hair and colored contact lenses etc.
the asian pop idols dye their hairs, have special hairstyles and wear colored lenses
so anime characters are most likely based on asian pop idols rather than white people
it got a lot to do with the hair color, since the personalities of most anime characters are related to their hair color, even their first or family names are related to hair color
anime eyes are too big to be asian, true, but they are also too big for any real life race, westerner characters in anime must have smaller and less shiny eyes than the regular anime characters in order to appear at least a bit closer to real life westerners
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/yakitate/images/a/a6/Kid.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110909063213
pm1.narvii.com/6316/1e69ac8a2063b968cc34b0d8571cba41fb7c2d1c_hq.jpg
i.ytimg.com/vi/IsLWj7ofNbg/maxresdefault.jpg
mrwarmind Tell that to Candy Candy and other old classic shojo characters. Many of them weren't asian but anime and manga still kept that color variety for their "japanese" characters. So it doesn't have anything to do with jpop or so.
i didn't say that variety of color is reserved for Japanese characters, but japan is a closed society, they will have japanese influence even in their western characters, some writers managed to design western character to look really western like the pictures i posted, but i'm sure you noticed how many anime characters that are western have weird hairstyles, and even have Japanese manners like calling older siblings "onii-san \ onee-san" or bowing their heads in the same way japanese people do
Gabriel Cornea that wouldn’t explain their eye shape though, and their nose shapes.
Anime characters aren't white they are just pale. And plus.. Anime characters aren't just Japanese people.
you mean vampires
@@RazorM97 Nice try.
@@楪矮 it wasn't a joke. pale characters are usually vampires
Yeah, pale the race where they can get blond hair and blue eyes lololol
They have large coloured eyes coloured hair, pointy nose, sharp chin, sharp face.
This is clearly inspired from caucassian face.
Anime characters are the Japanese ideal character, which I don't think is white. All anime characters are heavily neotinized (indicating Asian), unless they are meant to be white (making characters look more defined). Most anime characters have slimmer bodies, no brow ridge, less defined jawlines, no facial hair, and small noses. Features that are associated with white people are not really drawn in anime characters because it is not idealized (heavy brow, facial hair, wavy/curly hair, bigger bodies). Hair/eye color isn't an indicator of race imo because many anime characters have crazy features just so that their character looks more interesting and is a stylistic chose rather than an aesthetic one. I think the best example of racial difference is Attack on Titan. Mikasa and Levi look more like average anime characters and they look much different than Zeke or Erwin. Most fans interpret Mikasa and Levi as asiatic while they interpret Zeke and Erwin as white because of different facial structure. Most white people do not look like anime characters unless they use heavy makeup that masks many of their caucasian features.
To me, it became very clear what race anime characters are when I looked at cosplays. White people always looked separated from the character they're cosplaying, if that make any sense.
No matter how good of a quality their outfit, hair and makeup, their facial features rarely blend well with the character. They rarely capture the essence of the character. While Asian cosplayers might not look exactly like the character but they capture the essence of the character more often than white cosplayers. It looks natural on asian features, while it always look like a blatant costume on white features.
And then you look at asian celebrities, especially pop idols and they look more like the anime character even though they're not cosplaying.
This whole topic/debate on what race anime characters are made me realize how ignorant and unfamiliar people are towards Asians. Merely a month ago, I seen people talking about blackwashing anime characters for poc representation completely forgetting anime characters are canonically Asian. Even on the topic about cultures and things Asians literally created, Asians are still forgotten. I see similar thing happen to actual real asian people. Many western fans of kpop stars refer and compare those real life Asian people to white people because they have no reference and little knowledge about asians beside stereotypes. From this whole ordeal, I learned a lot about how people see Asians or lack thereof.
@You're fake and gay usually those who are the majority of a society like white people in predominantly white countries and asians in asia tend to project their default race unto a animated character.. unless the character look stereotypical in facial features like tall nose bridge and deep set eyes for white people, and slanted eyes & yellow undertone for asians. They also don't see themselves only stereotypically, but white people had bigger influence and global familiarity so they can draw themselves in any form, and people wouldn't question it.
I guess that explain why people don't question the race of western cartoons characters when they're just as unrealistic as anime, like the Simpsons are seen as white and they have yellow skin, bulging eyes and one of them has a blue afro.
If We admired white people,we would marry white people.I respect white people features(blonde hairs,etc) .
But I don't want to marry other races.Maybe,if Japanese marry other races,Japanese marry Asian races.Half-whites are very very rare.
Anime features are simply cute,cool,impressive.And I think that white people have defined facial features.
Anime characters have softer and younger faces.Japanese faces are younger than white ones.
Surely,Japanese don't have blue eyes,blonde hairs,etc.But Anime characters features are Simply adjusted for Japanese people's preference(like the fashion).That doesn't mean anything serious.
never knew that breast size dictates a foreigner, big breasted woman = chinese, european, whatever, but big breasted woman is not equal to japanese
in anime, white girls are often portrayed as having really large boobs and blond hair
Yeah, in an anime called Azumanga Daioh they made a joke about breast size and nationality. Something like big boobs, oh definitely american.
Japanese girls tend to be on the flatter end unless they are chunky
리성천 Rhee Sung Chun
To be fair most Japanese people be flat as fuck. A 'C' cup is the biggest I saw over there on anyone under 60. If it was real that is. I knew many girls that had bras with built in pockets for padding.
Well, none of them look Japanese, but they all speak Japanese, so they must be Japanese.
tohopes or they are probably half. You don't need to be Japanese to speak japanese
what about dub then?
hes talking about the anime characters dude...
tohopes All characters from Attack on Titan speak Japanese. By your logic, they're all Japanese and not European. (though Mikasa is half-Japanese)
Nah, if the anime's placed in Japan, where it's pretty homogenous, it's very safe to assume they're Japanese.
I doubt the creators had any race in mind when designing characters. They just went with fun colors and styles. I agree with the guy in the vid: ppl feel the need to project race on them
I think this is a problem brought by Americans, because everything it's about race for them. They see Goku ssj yellow hair, green eyes. And then they say, 'Japanese people want to be white', while ignoring completely that people in various animes have like a rainbow of hair colors, from pink, blue, red, green. Even in dbz goku had red and blue hair. And this applies to the eyes too. Because let's be honest, all the characters having the same color of hair and eyes must be boring to draw. And even then I read mangas that depict people in a more Asian way. So, there you have it. Another case of Americans ruining the fun of everyone.
I don't know about you but anime characters particularly of the stereotypical "Moe" style look more like an alien species than my human race to me.
And black people all have guns and see violent
Some of these people are pulling ethnicities/nationalities out of their asses. Half Iranian and half Japanese? Bruh.
Japan has three half Japanese-Iranian celebrities like Yu Darvish and Ariajasuru Hasegawa and Malia(singer). Bruh.
Mr. Nobody ...okay? That's not relevant to my comment. My point is, can you tell if an anime character is mixed race as well as which EXACTLY races make up that mixture? Probably not 😒
That's because you're stupid. 😒
Mr. Nobody nice comeback! Did your mom write that for you? Now go back to bed, you got school tomorrow.
Why you mad? hehe
The amount of guesses of Korean surprised me. I expected guessing Japanese, but specifically Korean was interestingly popular.
I just go by the names and the setting.
If a character has a japanese name, theyre japanese; if a character has a european name, theyre european.
If the setting is ancient japan or fantasy china, theyre asian; If the setting is fantasy europe or victorian/medieval europe, theyre caucasian.
If they have dark skin, I go by the name. Id go by the setting too, but places like India, South America, SEA, polynesia, or central and southern Africa arent usually featured as the setting, which is a shame.
The guy at 7:30 is spot on. We try to identify with the characters of our favorite shows. Although I have never thought that characters who go to a japanese school, do japanese things and speak japanese are white - even with blonde hair. If it's a fictional world then yes, I interpret some as being of european heritage and some of being asian heritage... but somehow they all still speak Japanese sooooooooooooooooooo... they're still japanese somehow ;-)
I liked the guy's answer who said you tend to project yourself onto anime characters and that's why everyone sees their races differently like a lot of these Japanese people saw them as Japanese and/or Asian. It's not bad to see them as a certain race or nationality it just depends where you're from/what you've been exposed to. Like I know a lot of Filipinos but barely any Koreans or Taiwanese people so I wouldn't make that distinction with some of these characters. It depends who you ask and besides who cares? It's up to the writer what nationality they are and most are Japanese but it doesn't matter honestly.
HayHayASMR It's the exact same reason why Semitic Jesus is fair-complexion in the west but black in Ethiopia.
The usual pitch for lessons at the end of videos goes "if you want to learn REAL spoken Japanese, rather than textbook Japanese or anime Japanese, buy my lessons".
I love how this one is "if you want to watch anime without subtitles..." hahaha
Avi Winner it would be nice...
There's no other reason to learn Japanese but watching anime without subs
Maybe trying to pick up a cute Japanese girl.
it's actually a good reason. I find it much easier to watch anime since I dont really need subtitles anymore except for complicated technobabble or political-speak.
watching anime without subtitles is the best high you can get since you can just lord over your scrub friends. Plus Senki Zesshou Symphogear AxZ doesnt get its subtitles quickly, and when it does its by Commie which i find inaccurate anyway, so...
well i rambled quite a bit, but thats my favourite anime
When I watch anime I think of all the characters Japanese. Even the girls with blonde and blue eyes in my head I’m still thinking Japanese. I got some Japanese friends that are really fair skin and they dye their hair all the time.
I see people of all races in Anime. I'm not prejudice like that.
Justin Anderson Justin your a dumbass, have you seen the live action full metal alchemist, ruroni kenshin and bleach, back butler. All the characters are Japanese. Over there in japan people are really fair skinned and almost white for Asians, lots of them dye there hair blonde or red. I assume your white since your offended by Afrasiabi96’s comment and your name “Justin”
ANIME CHARACTERS ARENT ALWAYS ASIAN , thats just how it is with some characters
EXAMPLE : JOJOS BIZARRE ADVENTURE
,several characters there are actually white (''Dio brando''who is the main antagonist is a british-english man ,
very few others are italian and one is french + one character i remember is supoost to be a german man) ...
so (theres also often half japanese half white characters in anime)
The artist of one piece also mentioned in a interview that the main charas (in the beginning of the anime) are non asian except zoro.
(he mentioned that luffy is brazilian and nami is swedish, robin who isnt there from the beginning of the anime is russian .sooo)
Some characters in ONE PIECE arent japanese either :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_D._Luffy
-> ''Concerning his ethnicity, Oda revealed that he imagines Luffy to be of Brazilian descent''
Oda also said in an interview that only zoro is japanese (at least out of the MAIN characters from the beginnings of that anime)
MOSTLY the characters are japanese, but its not always the case ( and i mean a few characters are also african)