The More You Know...
13 March 06
I have to come clean here. You see, in junior high I fell in with a bad crowd, a group of multi-racial misfits who studied martial arts, collected manga and anime, went to comic-cons and traded duffel bags full of illicit hentai. Luckily for me I eventually discovered girls and thus spared myself a lifetime of collecting little figurines and living in my parents’ basement. Others weren’t so lucky.
It amuses me that years later the fodder for my adolescent fixations has suddenly acquired coolhunting cachet. We in America like to poke fun at the Japanese for their use of Engrish and their appropriation of the most ridiculous bits of American culture, but I’m quite certain they feel the same way regarding our fetishizing of “deviant” Japanese sexuality and otaku culture.
I heaved a wistful sigh and decided to share this little anecdote when I stumbled upon this guide to drawing manga characters (for the uninitiated, just think graphic novels—I know some purist living in his mom’s basement is shaking his fist at me right now). As you scroll through the illustrations pay close attention to the physical ideal that’s being presented here. Though I still consider myself somewhat of a manga and anime fan, the hyper-westernized, almost pedophilic character of the artwork never sat well with me. Clearly Asian characteristics are usually reserved for old folks or else very one-dimensional minor characters.
It’s perhaps not surprising that a society which perpetuates racism versus outsiders also struggles with internalized racism—this duality lies at the core of all forms of irrational discrimination.
[Via Sexoteric]
More: Asian, Japanese, Manga, Stereotypes, Racial Bias
# Hiromi 13 March 06
Hey, thanks for linking to me – I was really pleased to find your blog. I, too, have been disappointed by what seemed to be a dearth of “ethnic” sex blogs.
Anyway, about your typical manga characters. To be fair, animators like the visionary Miyazaki don’t do this crap, although his characters’ eyes do seem pretty large and round. There does seem to be a trend in the more “legit” (I can’t think of a better word) forms of manga and anime to move away from this stupid BESM (big eye small mouth) B.S.
About the characters you describe: if you talk to Japanese people about this issue, they will hotly deny that manga characters are meant to look Western; to them, the characters are Japanese. I don’t get it, but that’s what they say. I’ve also heard Japanese people characterize complaints of racism against Japan as figments of the imaginations of Asian-Americans.
You have to wonder, though – would anime be so popular, with such ardent fans, if the characters were racialized? Also, think how carefully anime is dubbed (versus, say, Godzilla).
# Laughing Man 14 March 06
It is certainly changing, albeit slowly. The whole fan-service culture that surrounds much of even the quality manga/anime (I remember those awful upskirt trailers for Evangelion) still holds the medium back.
And yeah, I’m not surprised that many Japanese deny what’s going on—we do the same thing here in the States.