Forum - View topicThe List - 6 Awesome People of Color in Anime
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Hannish Lightning
Posts: 376 |
|
|||
|
People of color, really? Isn't that just a different racist way of saying colored people?
|
||||
|
||||
walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
|
|||
PoC refers to non-European-whites, and PoC use it themselves. It's a tumblrism. |
||||
|
||||
leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||
|
Of course racism is still going on. Just look at the race-based gang wars, or how children of minority groups (especially those of east Asian appearance) are teased and mocked in schools, and especially how the American entertainment business is mostly white and black.
It's hard to notice, but Usopp himself is a racial minority. At least that's what some scattered SBS question columns imply, particularly the one where Oda states that if the Straw Hats came from present-day Earth, Usopp would be from Africa. |
||||
|
||||
|
GATSU
Posts: 15309 |
|
|||
|
What, no Bobobo? You racist. =p
|
||||
|
||||
jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
|
|||
|
I finished buying a few anime released over 2013 and 2014, and I also received in the mail anime I paid for last year, and ordered anime I won't receive until next year. The Time of Eve movie international Blu-ray is also kind of ambiguous, as is Santa Company. Do OVAs bundled with manga volumes count? I just put down 6-9 and went to get a coffee.
|
||||
|
||||
Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
|
|||
As silly as it is to think so, there is this mentality going around that Asians are no longer a minority, or don't count when it comes to oppression. At least in the realm of internet and Tumblr activism. Diversity is a big discussion in video games recently, but whenever myself or other people point out all the Japanese games which feature Asian and female leads and characters, it's generally responded to with a "they don't count" response. I don't follow the cartoon scene very much, but I have seen Avatar praised far more for casting an "Asian" lead than I do any anime. I wonder if Japanese anime and games are ignored for the sake of continuing the diversity argument sometimes. -Stuart Smith |
||||
|
||||
|
Aquaregia99
Posts: 33 |
|
|||
|
Kinda sad that Lal'C Mellk Mal didn't make the list.
|
||||
|
||||
|
Flame Mistress
Posts: 2 |
|
|||
|
Okay, that list is nice, but thanks for completely forgetting the fact that Japanese people are POC too. Like, I know some of us are relatively light-skinned, but that sure as hell doesn't make us white.
And even then, in the end, I'd argue that anime is relatively much better in racial diversity than Western media, since POC actually make up a sizeable chunk of the population in countries like the USA than in a country like Japan (where non-Japanese people are admittedly still pretty hard to see) and are still underrepresentated. Anime goes out of its way to portray people of other races/ethnicities when there isn't an audience within the target population that will want to relate to them. |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11359 |
|
|||
How insulated from the real world do you need to be to be surprised that racism still exists? That makes me shake my head...
The term has been around since well before the internet, so no. As for the list, I rather liked Bear Walken from Gungrave. Kudos to Lynzee & Sarah for daring to step into this you're-always-wrong-no-matter-what-you-say minefield. 
|
||||
|
||||
|
SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2509 |
|
|||
|
Pretty nice list, but I could add a few more to it. The most obvious omission is Afro Samurai. He might be a bit of a stereotype (actually, Afro himself isn't, but Ninja Ninja definitely is), but Samuel L. Jackson just takes that role and rocks it.
Also Urd from Ah! My Goddess, Yoruichi from Bleach, Lara from School Rumble, and Louis from Blood+, and I second the earlier recommendation for Bear Walken. If we're including manga, then Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats as well. She's half-Pakistani and is drawn pretty dark in the comics, but the anime whitened her up quite a bit for some reason. 
|
||||
|
||||
KENZICHI
 Posts: 1103 |
|
|||
I'm black and I personally always long to see more darker skinned characters. Being the only black person in my circle of friends and always feeling the stigma that I can't cosplay certain characters I love because I'm black and they're not made me insecure and nervous when I did find the strength to cosplay. I grew up around the hate where my skin color isn't as 'good' as my friend's so I always find it nice to see a dark skinned character who is amazing and loved because it makes me feel good too. I know I can't expect it in every anime, but when it does happen I'm glad. |
||||
|
||||
Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
|
|||
|
This is a great list. And I completely agree that Japanese characters in Japanese anime aren't "diverse", it's more like the norm. Other East Asian characters, when portrayed well, could count (because they're so often stereotyped-see the Chinese tour guide in Ranma 1/2, for example), but that could be a whole nother list.
|
||||
|
||||
vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
|
|||
I voted for Kenshin, but I don't want a true reboot so much as the final arc please someday thank you? The first season's got a bunch of skippable filler, but the Kyoto Arc was covered pretty much perfectly, and doesn't need to be remade. I really want the Jinchu/Revenge Arc, though. Given how much money the live action films made we may see it get adapted there before it does in anime. Re: Anthy as a "PoC" character: Um, sort of? She's great for darker-skinned cosplayers, to be sure, but her skin color's not intended as a mark of race or ethnicity, but rather that she, like her brother and the Prince, are spoiler[supernatural archetypes]. Re: Race not being real. As a biological or objective reality, absolutely it's bogus. As a social construct that many societies classify people into and that people can develop an identity with? Yes, it's real. I never felt really "white" until I lived in Japan and became a minority rather than the default setting, and it was like, "Wow, so is this what it feels like?" It's easy to say "race isn't real" when you're the majority and your race isn't constantly brought up in regards to you. |
||||
|
||||
|
anon827449
Posts: 13 |
|
|||
The concept and meaning of race isn't necessarily tied with the social segregation of races. You are saying that race doesn't exist because its possibly subject to putting irrational thoughts in our head, that makes no sense. Race is not an arbitrary idea, it's a significant scientific phenomenon. There are substantial amounts of distinguished differences between what we know as races. We are stepping into an age where many people want to give every community and society a taste of the unity of humans to an extent that there is simply no relevancy about race or gender and we are all generally apart of the same things with our race and gender being mere appearance differences. Whatever you think about that doesn't matter, but the point I want to make is that people generally aren't that pragmatic when they really want to push for an ethical goal, so instead of actually just informing and teaching people about their morals and ethics in what they actually thoroughly are, they give us direct tastes of things to learn that it's okay because it happened and there are no problems. They also avoid explaining things that might make people have misguided views for not having been thoroughly informed, because informing entire societies is so hard, and giving societies tastes of things that persuade a view is much easier. This is very much how things are with politics and such. It's indoctrination. It's for a cause that can certainly be called good, but it's stepping stones over actual proper information. Race, except in medical terms, is never going be a crucial idea at all really. We don't need race in mind for anything vital except for medical things. Race barely has any complications in general. It's still real, and this video can inform you about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caanqmV96j0 |
||||
|
||||
|
kazenoyume
Posts: 425 |
|
|||
Um no. Japanese people are absolutely considered a racial minority and tumblr doesn't think that racism doesn't exist when it comes to them. The reason that people don't bring up anime and stuff when talking about East-Asian representation in media is because that is the default in the society that created the media. That's like saying that American films don't need more Indian characters because 'there are tons of Bollywood movies starring Indian characters'. Racial minorities deserve representation that reflects their society and the country they live in. That's why a movie like say, Big Hero 6 is a bigger deal with regards to representation in Western Society than your average anime. Western media should reflect the demographics of the country in question, which means a lot more diversity than we're getting. Acting like we don't need to diversify our media because they can 'just watch anime' is foolhardy, insensitive, and ignorant. White is the default in Western society. When a character's race isn't described, they're automatically cast as white 90% of the time. This is a problem, and it should not be the case. On the flip, Japanese is the default in Japanese society. There's nothing noteworthy about a cast of Japanese people in a Japanese show. So yes, of course Legend of Korra gets more praise for its diversity than... Naruto or something. It breaks the default of Western entertainment, to the point that there are literally no white characters. Yes, Japanese people are POC. But as this is an article about anime specifically, I assume that you would read between the lines and see that they mean "outside of Japanese people as they are the media focus of the country". It's being pedantic not to, but then again, that doesn't surprise me considering that people accused an innocent article like this of being a 'social justice!!' thing. Regarding Anthy Himemiya, what's with the assumption her race is ambiguous? She wears a bindi, so I'd assume she's South Asian. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group