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The List - 6 Awesome People of Color in Anime


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invalidname
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Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2434
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 11:24 am Reply with quote
notrogersmith wrote:
invalidname wrote:
her boyfriend is the (white) ace pilot whom she invites over for dinner… and in an inner monologue thinks "and if I'm lucky, breakfast." In a show marketed to US kids in 1985.
To be fair, the line "and if I'm lucky, breakfast" is one that's likely to fly right over kids' heads, so it's not that strange that it would be allowed in a show marketed to US kids.

I always thought one of the great things about Robotech is that it was a low-profile thing in the afternoon kidvid ghetto that wasn't even on in a lot of cities so nobody was really paying attention to it, and that meant it could get all sorts of stuff past the cultural censors of the time, like Mirya accurately explaining to the Zentraedi where babies come from.
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ANN_Lynzee
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Joined: 02 May 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 12:21 pm Reply with quote
darkarcstar wrote:
What about Archer in Fate Stay Night? Hey it just says "People of Color", not "African-American", and he certainly was awesome this weekend!


But isn't Archer's identity actually spoiler[Shiro Emiya?]

ペンネーム wrote:
To be honest, upon rereading the intro to the list I'm glad to see that the authors admitted that these characters do have flaws and stereotypes built into them, but at the same time it would have been nice to have more diversity in the range of characters who come from more diverse, less Japan-centric backgrounds. The list really feels like its the "top six brown painted characters we can think of immediately off the top of our heads" rather than being a true example of awesome characters from diverse ethnic backgrounds in anime.


I'm all fine with debating the choices we made, but I draw the line at assuming Sarah and I put no thought into this. We sat down with a much larger list and debated the merits of each one before coming to this conclusion. This was not some lazy "which skin tones are dark enough??" thing we put together and I do take issue with that suggestion.

I also have no idea what you mean about "Japan-centric" backgrounds as a lot of the characters mentioned come from series that don't even take place in Japan.

ichii_1 wrote:
No Raikage, killer bee , chad, tousen or yoruichi? shonen hater confirmed Sad


Not a "hater" but the likelihood that I've sat through a shonen fighting series that lasts longer than 26 episodes is low. I made it through the first 40 of Bleach when it aired...and that's about it.

Garudyne wrote:
On Caska: "She's inspiring in her ability to play at the same levels as the men around her"

Is this a joke? It sounds like a joke to me.


It's not a joke. Female fights are routinely "saved" as soon as the male protagonist shows up. They do it to Caska too, actually, when she's menstruating later in the series, spoiler[ and the sexual violence that goes down at the end] so it's still not a perfect example, but up until that point, it was refreshing for me.
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Ulto



Joined: 04 Jun 2007
Posts: 25
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 1:12 pm Reply with quote
I feel like a few characters on this list are just well done sterotypes. Take Dutch: He's, quite intentionally, the big violent black man from American action movies. Black Lagoon is intentionally politically incorrect (Hell--they throw in Nazis too. IIRC there's a brief and appropriately hilarious conversation Dutch has with one of their leaders) and I hold no ill-will towards it, but I wouldn't put Dutch on a pedestal in context of race.

Quote:
Finally the more I hear the term "People of Color" the more its starts to sound as racist as the usual racist words.


This happens with every widely adopted "politically correct" term. The fact of the matter--which most people don't seem to realize--is it isn't the terms that have problems: It's the people using them.

I honestly think we should focus less on the words themselves and more on when it's appropriate to use them in the first place.
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 1:32 pm Reply with quote
darkarcstar wrote:
What about Archer in Fate Stay Night? Hey it just says "People of Color", not "African-American", and he certainly was awesome this weekend!


Archer's just brown for the sake of being brown, like Urd from AMG, Aura from Isekai, Kuro from Illya (obviously taken cues from Archer) Musashi from KanColle, Pirotess from Lodoss; Ingrid, Nina, and Miria from Lilith Games, and so many others. You can't pick out an ethnicity from them, their brown skin is more or less a fetish/moe point, not a demonstration of being progressive and inclusive.
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 2:44 pm Reply with quote
anon827449 wrote:

Are you lying or serious? We do not live in societies like that. It is not evident in leadership. Many leaders are Ashkenazi Jews, not particularly considerable nationalities of the country, of whom are very intent on forwarding racial tolerance.

Huh? The only place on Earth where the *majority* of leaders are Ashkenazi Jews is Israel, but after reading all the racist and sexist claptrap in these comments, I'm not surprised.


Quote:
"It's crucial that children and young adults see themselves in media portrayed as heroes, successful, non-token characters, etc. "
Children and young adults do not need those things particularly in racial likeness. Racial likeness is important mainly with Africans (they get plenty of reperesentation), but psychologically most races aren't going to be that troubled with not seeing their race on TV.

Children are very much influenced and psychologically impacted by what they see in media, and whether they see themselves or their friends represented.

Quote:
Do you really say these statistics without feeling sad? The majority of children under 8 not being British who are born in Britain? Well I'm glad, that you didn't mention statistics about Sweden, and hopefully don't know whats happening to Sweden, because it is especially bad there.

Who's stopping white people from having more babies? Are low white European birth rates "racism", too?
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Fedora-san



Joined: 12 Aug 2014
Posts: 464
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 3:22 pm Reply with quote
walw6pK4Alo wrote:
To swing it back around, does Japan need diversity in its programming? They don't have much diversity in their nation, what with 98% of the population being the same ethnicity. Maybe it's even more genuine because it's not like corporate is telling Rei Hiroe he needs to include a black guy to get that urban demographic, they do because they want to naturally on their own, like writing a story about blonde British transfers in KinMoza.


I find diversity in anime more genuine because of that. Chances are no one at Shounen Jump told their writers to put black people in their series in order to be politically correct, they did on their own choice so we got some actual interesting black characters as a result. With our cartoons generally every cartoon will have a token black, Asian, maybe Hispanic, and if it's the 80s or 90s, disabled kid to meet some checklist quota. They all pretty much lack character and interesting traits as a result.

I see a lot of diversity in anime. Lots of series will feature gaijin characters, especially if they go to other countries, and a lot of the time they'll even speak the native language, albeit terribly, with subtitles. Also it's not that uncommon to see series which actually star western characters either. I think Japan, despite their population being 99% Asian, show a lot more diversity than our own stuff does despite all the cultures and races that live here.
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notrogersmith



Joined: 06 Jun 2010
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 3:56 pm Reply with quote
Ulto wrote:
Take Dutch: He's, quite intentionally, the big violent black man from American action movies.
I don't agree. Yes, Dutch looks like a stereotypical "scary black man," but he doesn't act that way. Unlike Revy, he's not unstable, and he doesn't come across as someone who does violence for the fun of it. Remember that he's the one who restrained Revy when she started getting "Whitman fever" and killing innocent bystanders.
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Tony K.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 4:00 pm Reply with quote
Deleted several posts for over-quoting.

Don't want your posts deleted?

Then don't over-quote.
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MagicalGirlJodi



Joined: 23 Nov 2014
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 4:09 pm Reply with quote
Nice to see Caska getting more love this week! Smile
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jppcouto



Joined: 28 Apr 2013
Posts: 103
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 6:48 pm Reply with quote
Scar from FMA is so awesome and an example of an anime character that suffers from racism. I can just accept that he isn't here because he was a serial killer and this post wants people with positive qualities.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 7:02 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
when I read and watch stuff about the immigration controversy going on right now in the US, the talk seems solely about people who have immigrated from Latin America or Latin Americans who intend to immigrate. You never hear anything about Asian, European, or African immigrants (or Australian, but their numbers are pretty few).

That's because none of those locations share a border with the US, so their immigrants aren't literally, and I mean literally, running in traffic to get across the border illegally. For the most part, the well-off from other continents come across the oceans legally, and their refugees are too poor to get here at all without backing.

Likewise, Canada isn't dealing with widespread poverty, or fighting domestic guerrilla and drugs wars, so Canadians don't have much reason to try to run for their lives to the US.

There is the occasional story about Asian immigrants who have been smuggled here as slave labor though. But the numbers are vanishingly small compared to immigrants from Latin America.
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Shippoyasha



Joined: 28 Aug 2007
Posts: 459
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2014 11:52 pm Reply with quote
I don't get the gist of this list at all. At worst, it comes across as clickbait. At best, it vomes across as a tad mistaken in more ways than one.
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ChibiKangaroo



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
Posts: 2941
PostPosted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 4:51 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:


Kudos to Lynzee & Sarah for daring to step into this you're-always-wrong-no-matter-what-you-say minefield. Smile


Yes! This so much. I really find these types of analysis of darker skinned characters in Anime to be so interesting. To those who wonder why this is even a useful topic of discussion, well someone actually sort of answered that. i.e. Anime writers are really under no compulsion to put darker skinned characters in their stories.

The population of Japan is overwhelmingly Japanese and the vast majority of their media shows Japanese people as "us" and Caucasian people as "them." Darker skinned people are a sort of anomaly when it comes to Japan. Yea, you see some African guys in random places in Roppongi but that's about it. The intended audiences of Anime are primarily Japanese people and secondarily Caucasian Westerners. As a result, the vast majority of Anime characters are Japanese, and there is often a smattering of Caucasian characters thrown in as the "gaijin." There are almost no Anime that are created with an imagined audience of dark skinned people, whether African American or Latino or any other group. So when anime writers/creators do include a dark skinned character, it is because they want to. They want to give us something different from the norm and perhaps expand our horizons a bit. Some do an amazing job with it, and we should celebrate that.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:
To swing it back around, does Japan need diversity in its programming? They don't have much diversity in their nation, what with 98% of the population being the same ethnicity. Maybe it's even more genuine because it's not like corporate is telling Rei Hiroe he needs to include a black guy to get that urban demographic, they do because they want to naturally on their own, like writing a story about blonde British transfers in KinMoza. But then again, it's as simple to draw a white or black character and have them speak Japanese as it would to draw a Japanese character, quite another to have them acting for live action television on a regular basis. I think they add characters like that just for flavor and for being exotic over any kind of goal of racial harmony or appeasing execs.


I do think there is a benefit of having dark skinned characters in addition to the flavor aspect. The world is becoming much more "globalized" as far as people traveling outside of their countries and dealing with different cultures and ethnic groups. Japan is still extremely insular and homogeneous, but that won't last. The Japanese youth will need to become more exposed to a variety of other ethnic groups if the country wants to stop shrinking and become more connected in the future.
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Tenbyakugon



Joined: 11 Jan 2012
Posts: 788
Location: Ohio, United States
PostPosted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 5:59 am Reply with quote
F.Y.I., giving support to "people of color" by giving empowerment to their skin color is just as racist as segregating a group of people based on skin color, if not more racist because the former is the passive of the two.

Supporting this whole diversity movement is just as problematic as supporting racial segregation because it tends to leave out at least one specific group of people based on their "race" (when actually it is just skin color and we are all a part of one single race).

Want to support all "races?" Support the human race equally, from one skin color and ethnicity to another.
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Garudyne



Joined: 24 Sep 2014
Posts: 20
Location: Scandinavia
PostPosted: Mon Nov 24, 2014 6:41 am Reply with quote
Although there are some things about this list that angers me, I know the author wrote it with good intentions.

Last edited by Garudyne on Wed Nov 26, 2014 6:26 am; edited 1 time in total
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