Contemporary Anime/Manga in the vein of Gundam/Macross?

[zakkrusz]

You don't want know how many series I watched in just last year then. Hell I don't think even I want to know.

I guess that might explain the faces... but then there are the blond hair and other features that are pretty much synonymous with "white".

Thinking about it, there could be an even simpler explanation. Manga is printed in black and white, with nothing to differentiate any color aside from the shades of gray. Anime got it's origins from manga so maybe the white looking characters is a way of preserving that tradition.

It wouldn't be the only carry over from manga either. It's also why characters have eternally messed up static hairstyles. It's to help the reader tell who is who without color. Similarly, in anime the odd hair colors is sort of carry over from that as well.

On the opposite end of the spectrum you have character designs for shows like Black Lagoon, Death Note, and Patlabor for instance though which portray Asians and other races more realistically. Coincidentially or unoincidentially, all 3 of those are from Madhouse Studios.

 

[firehawk12]

I think that might explain it a bit, but there's also the Tatsumi Yoshihiro "gekiga" (nerd cred +1 ) stuff where the characters do look Japanese and "realistic". I think there was a conscious choice - sort of like how all American super heroes look like roided up S&M leather bar patrons or giant breasts with impossibly long legs attached to them.

But yeah, I understand that a lot of it requires suspension of disbelief. No one has blue or green hair, but let's just assume it's perfectly natural... and, as an Asian myself, I can honestly say that Asian people really do look a like at first glance, so I understand the need for differentiation.

I just think that in the same way that comic book (and video game) characters are hyper masculinized/feminized in Western art design, there's probably at least a subconscious desire to create a de-recialized art design in Japan.

Oh, I just remembered a story from an episode of the Kevin Smith podcast. In Cambodia, there's a cream you can buy that promises to make your nipples "pink" (like, well, European women). It's totally random, for sure, but it just goes to show how fucked up Asians can be when it comes to how desperately whiteness is fetishized. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if similar products weren't sold in Japan or China.

Hell, if you think about it, it's an issue that many Asian-Americans/Canadians grapple with everyday. I know I used to parody myself (and the typical CBC/ABC male) here when I said that I only found white girls attractive.
And, not to diverge too much, but it's an issue that a couple of Asian American comic artists have written about in their own books.

This is where I wish I was Japanese or at least could read Japanese. I have no doubt that there's some kick ass Japanese lit professor who has written a paper about race in manga/anime. I mean, if nerds in America can produce volumes of works about race in Star Trek, there's no way that anime hasn't been covered over there. Too bad.

 

[zakkrusz]

Well now that you mention hair and skin products, it reminds me of the last volume I read of Suzuka, 11 I think. The blond girl with the tanned skin that gets hammered and gives the main character trouble all the time, Yuka, is going home for the Holidays to visit her parents. Long story short, she looks like a completely different person, black hair, the tanned color of her skin is gone, because she doesn't want them to lecture her. It really puts things in perspective of realism. On the other hand, it brings up new questions, like if she's dyeing hers blond and it's not her natural color does that mean that Suzuka dyes her's blue and Miki's, Red? I'm so confused.

 

[firehawk12]

Which I suppose is a question of whether people can have natural blue/red/green hair in anime-realities.

 

[zakkrusz]

Well, the author, Kouji Seo, has some best designs for characters that I've ever seen, the art in the manga is VERY nice and extremely detailed. Of course being black and white you can't tell what color the hair is supposed to be other than in terms of light and dark. You have to look at the cover designs for that or the anime.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, I suppose for the most part you can ignore the hair/eye colour of the characters in the actual book itself - although blond tends to be drawn as empty space or "white".

I wonder though, I suppose it could also be a convention thing borrowed from Western film/literature/whatever. Blonds are more fun and ditzy, brunettes are more reserved, red heads are emotional, etc etc. Maybe blue, green and red mean something... I haven't really noticed though.
Although, I just read that hair style seems to matter anyway. Princess curls for "rich" characters, that ahoge thing for emotionally charged characters... I'm sure long hair and short hair are indicators for a character's personality as well.

I've also noticed something about the eyes - characters with more square "normal" looking eyes tend to have a chip on their shoulder about something, but I guess that's yet another tangent.

Oh yeah, another oddity is that when they use Western names, it's almost always English/American names. No Radzinksis or Freidmans to be found.

 

[zakkrusz]

Well surprisingly there's a lot of German used too.

 

[Sephiroth]

Which I suppose is a question of whether people can have natural blue/red/green hair in anime-realities.

I know that in Macross and a few others, it is mentioned in passing that hair dyeing is a current fad, and some animation studios use blue in hair to highlight black hair so a charater doesn't have a mass of black on his head

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, it's probably contextual. I suppose with series involving aliens or the fantasy equivalent, you can chalk it up to alien genes or what not.

 

[clint g]

Which I suppose is a question of whether people can have natural blue/red/green hair in anime-realities.

I know that in Macross and a few others, it is mentioned in passing that hair dyeing is a current fad, and some animation studios use blue in hair to highlight black hair so a charater doesn't have a mass of black on his head

Indeed. In Full Metal Panic for example, Kaname is described as having dark black hair. It would look weird on TV though so they make it blue and just call it black lol

 

[firehawk12]

I actually can see blue being a highlight to black... although some of the florescent blues seem like they're just... blue.

 

[Neopeius]

This is where I wish I was Japanese or at least could read Japanese.

I got to this point. Ten years later, I'm pretty good at Japanese. You should consider learning the language

 

[zakkrusz]

I can speak about 60-70 words personally. Mostly common stuff which include but aren't limited to, yes, no, hello, goodbye, thank you, insults, colors, some common objects, a request for someone to die, and a very direct way of asking someone for sex which all I had to do to learn was watch lots of anime subtitled. No Rosetta stone or expensive college courses required.

 

[firehawk12]

^
It's funny, I watched Heroes for the first time in forever and I felt like I probably understood the Hiro/Ando scenes without the subtitles.

This is where I wish I was Japanese or at least could read Japanese.

I got to this point. Ten years later, I'm pretty good at Japanese. You should consider learning the language

Yeah, if I move back to a large city, I'm probably going to take courses.
It's sort of frustrating because I can read like every other word because I can read Chinese and I can actually hear some similarities between the two languages (mostly the "very" adverb and the word "cute" though), so I feel like I have a decent chance of picking it up if I just had a chance to give it a go.