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Lord Oink wrote:

That's odd. my post is missing. Must have been a mistake in the system or something.

bleachj0j wrote:

I know right? Why criticize a company for inaccurately portraying a real life person's skin color by making it a few shades lighter? The nerve of some people. Now I'm offended.

Nishikori also looks different and has lighter skin, but for some mysterious reason no one is complaining about his appearance in this ad.

He looks tanned to me, even then obviously the context is completely different given Nishikori's race.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

Errinundra wrote:

Naomi Osaka's father is Haitian.

And also black is an ethnicity not a nationality. So that's double dip wrong.

If your from Haiti your most likely Black. Not much debate there.

gacha wrote:

Silly oversensitive world strikes again. Hilarious.

I'm going to share with you what is easily one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received:

Just because it's not important to you, doesn't mean it's not important.

Kokuryu Daimao wrote:

The article even mentions that the company was in touch with Osaka's representatives, so if she herself wasn't offended by the artistic depiction then isn't all this backlash somewhat of an overreaction?

It also mentions that she never publicly commented on how she feels, so it's a bit much to assume anything right now. Because sometimes representatives screw up. A rather famous example in the US is when Weird Al's parody song "Amish Paradise" incredibly pissed off Coolio, the person who did the song it was parodying. Supposedly Weird Al's record label asked for permission like it always did, and permission was granted, but at some point there was a communication mess up and Weird Al did the parody despite Coolio not wanting it. (Though thankfully that's all water under the bridge now.)

Anyways, the point of my weird (haha) tangent above was to simply illustrate that sometimes in cases like this people make mistakes, so the fact that her representatives were involved can't be taken as any guarantee that she was actually happy with how it turned out.

Quote:

If someone offered you a boatload of money to use your likeness in an ad and all they did was whiten your complexion and change your hairstyle, but it allowed you to fund all your expenses so you could continue to pursue the sport you love, would you still turn them down?

...

But don't feel bad for Osaka, the sponsorship check cleared and she got paid.

Well, I'm already as pale as a vampire, and dirt poor, so no I wouldn't turn that down as I could really use the money and would be curious how it's even possible to make my skin whiter.

Jokes aside, people need/like money. Someone being fine with something because they get paid doesn't automatically mean that thing is GOOD. It just means they're fine with it because they get paid.

Also, white-washing dark skinned people is an issue that goes beyond just one person. It's an unfortunate trend that can have a lot of complicated effects on society, beauty standards, and the like. And so even if Osaka herself is fine with this in this case, it's still not something the company should have done because of the larger effects it has and the trend it is part of. Fortunately, they seem to have realized that after the backlash.

gacha wrote:

Silly oversensitive world strikes again. Hilarious.

Nah, this one is actually legitimate. Switching a cartoon characters ethnicity between mediums is one thing but falsely portraying a real person is totally different.

It seems like the artists didn't try to depict EITHER person in an accurate way.

It is obviously more noticeable with Osaka, however, because the difference in design is so glaring. I can understand not getting her face correct, but her skin color? That's just wrong.

People who are dismissing this as 'not a big deal' have most likely not had their ethnicity suppressed or shamed in media for centuries. Keep tryin' y'all.

As people have already mentioned, in many parts of the world, the European look is the default beauty standard that the media says that we all need to aspire to. Lighter hair and fairer skin is where society says that we need to be at. Heck, in some parts of the world, skin lightening creams are disturbingly popular. To bring it back to a more contemporary note (at least in this circle) are the tons of darker skinned people that are constantly told that our skin is too dark to cosplay Character X, and even being told that our skin tone is just not attractive.

With regards to this specific case, Naomi never publicly came out and said anything, so it's a stretch to say that she, herself, approved of it. Even if she did approve of it, it likely could have been done begrudgingly as a defense mechanism to what she's had to face in the past.

All I know is that, personally, if I saw someone portraying me with a much lighter skin tone and silky hair, I'd be royally PISSED!!! It's not just some simple oversight when they're trying to portray me (a black male with dreadlocks). They're explicitly telling me, and the world, that I'm not attractive enough to be presented to the audience as I am. Those that think that I'm being too sensitive about this needs to check themselves.

I thought the issue was bad enough but of course the comment section here proves to be even worse. Amazing.

Last edited by reanimator on Wed Jan 23, 2019 12:14 am; edited 2 times in total

I don't follow tennis, but when I saw picture of Naomi Osaka first time on internet, her Asiatic feature caught my attention more than her skin color. By the way, I'm a Korean by birth.

About the animated video of Osaka, I skipped it halfway because it was silly to watch cartoon depiction of real life person that promotes some food product. I don't care about coloring mistake on the commercial which was made for Japanese.

To me, bigger context of the whole apology is that Japanese companies are too sensitive toward any negative comment from vocal minority via social media and I think they are too busy covering their behind. I doubt that people would raise picket sign to boycott Nissin food just for that mistake.

I don't know how many Japanese people care about the mistake. If they'e really offended, then sales of Nissin product line would go down notably. The way the things are, even the "offended" vocal minority would still grab a pack of Nissin cup of noodle because they're not exactly principled to what they're spouting.

j_plex wrote:

Not a person who cares about social justice but ... the people being so quick to dismiss this are ignoring real cultural context here. And this isn't an issue where you can say "what about all the anime characters with purple/green/pink/blue hair" for FICTIONAL characters. This represents an alleged attempt to depict an actual living breathing human being that looks absolutely nothing like the depiction.

I don't really care much for cultural context as being a Mexican and how the USA has pretty much used some our holidays to whatever they use. I could care less as long as its not hurting anyone. Annnnnyway, I wanted to say that I do agree with how anyone wouldn't care if it was a fictional character HOWEVER this is a real person. So I would think you would want to care.

gloverrandal and BadNewsBlues, stay out of this thread. Your deliberate and disingenuously nasty comments aren't welcome.

And, no "black" is NOT an ethnicity - it's determined by how pigments are arranged in skin cells, nothing more. Your racist crap will not be tolerated.

(A bumper sticker I once saw said, "Racism is a pigment of the imagination.")

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

You were in such a rush to comment on how this couldn’t possibly be racism that you forgot to read the article! Don’t be embarrassed, it happens to everyone.

Wait, no it doesn’t.

It’s not about having pale skin. It’s about drawing a dark-skinned woman so light-skinned with light hair that she’s unrecognizable. It communicates that her skin color is unsightly, in a culture that already considers light skin beautiful and tanned skin to be coarse, unladylike, and even ugly.

I did read the article, so there's no need for the condescension. You're also taking what I said out of context. At no point did I say or intend this incident wasn't about racism.

@belvadeer

I went to double check, and I see that your entire post was this, a single sentence.

Quote:

Good grief, it's like being even a little pale-skinned is somehow a violation of existence and against the laws of nature.

And all-tsun-and-no-dere quoted your post in its entirety. So I'm curious how she was taking you out of context, when there was no additional context.

I'm also curious about something else. If you were not at any point trying to say or imply the incident was not about racism, what were you trying to say then? You say all-tsun-and-no-dere was condescending, fine, but your own post was mocking and sarcastic, and so I'm really curious as to just what you were trying to say, if you in fact were not trying to say this was an incident that had nothing to do with racism.

I'm not typically the "oversensitive" type, but yeah, trying to depict a real person yet not really including any noticeable features of that person doesn't really seem like a great move. And the cultural context only makes things worse. Anime faces aren't going to look much like any real person, so at least get her skin colour and hair texture right.

I could completely understand non-anime fans having issues with this because the optics definitely look pretty bad, but I'm a little shocked people on an anime website are so up in arms over this. Oh no, anime art has skin lighter than real life... and the sky is blue. Look at the anime versions of the two athletes compared to the two prince of tennis characters, who I believe are Japanese, and you can see that the athletes actually do have darker skin than usual for that art. This does mirror their skin being darker than average for Japan. Is it an accurate portrayal? Hell no, not even close. However anime art has been 'white washing' characters for forever since a significant portion of Japanese characters are drawn much more pale than in reality.

belvadeer, you had one post removed (for blatant personal insults) and then posted pretty much the same thing again. Logic should tell you if it was removed once not to do it again. Especially when you've been warned for insulting users and being rude before several times. This is the last warning you'll get. Next time you're going on moderation.

Your original 1 sentence post btw left little to take out of context. It was entirely snarky and stunk of racist apologizing. Regardless of whether you were or were not implying this was about racism does not change the fact your post was insensitive at best, and simply trollish at worst. Given your posting history on social topics I'm leaning towards the latter. I suggest you and all-tsun-and-no-dere both don't reply towards each other anymore and just move on.

Speaking of racist apologizing....

Lord Oink wrote:

That's odd. my post is missing. Must have been a mistake in the system or something.

No, the only mistake is letting you skirt by this long. Your original post was yet another racist apologizer post where you downplay the topic and try to deflect the issue. You have a history of this, and on homosexual topics as well. Your posts of that nature do not add anything of value to conversations, and consistently drive discussions off topic or into heated arguments. You've been warned about it before. You've ignored the warnings. So now you're on moderation.

On a side note in 2 pages we've had to have 2 mods come in to warn 4 users about blatantly rude posts. If a mod has to come back in again for the same issue we're locking the thread and the users in question will go on moderation. Don't make racist or racist apologizer posts.

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