Aside from that uncommon hair colors are used in anime to immediately distinguish a character, Japanese people don't see anime characters as white, they see them as Japanese; similar to how Americans see The Simpsons as white despite Marge having blue hair and yellow skin.
I'm reminded a bit of an article talking about people stereotyping Korean beauty standards as them wanting to "emulate whiteness", when in actuality their beauty standards are far better explained by their own pre-colonialist history, and that several cosmetic procedures are decidedly not similar to the features of Caucasians.
I mean, I genuinely fail to see how western colonialism hasn't entrenched itself in Japanese and Korean standards of beauty when 20% of young Korean women undergo cosmetic surgery often times to modify epicanthic folds and make their noses look more caucasian, and when, well, a significant proportion of Anime characters have blue eyes, blonde hair, and caucasian noses along with other caucasian features. But I'd be interested to read this article, because atm I just fail to grasp the idea the pre-colonialist history has much to do with it.
Aside from that uncommon hair colors are used in anime to immediately distinguish a character, Japanese people don't see anime characters as white, they see them as Japanese; similar to how Americans see The Simpsons as white despite Marge having blue hair and yellow skin.
I'm reminded a bit of an article talking about people stereotyping Korean beauty standards as them wanting to "emulate whiteness", when in actuality their beauty standards are far better explained by their own pre-colonialist history, and that several cosmetic procedures are decidedly not similar to the features of Caucasians.
I mean, I genuinely fail to see how western colonialism hasn't entrenched itself in Japanese and Korean standards of beauty when 20% of young Korean women undergo cosmetic surgery often times to modify epicanthic folds and make their noses look more caucasian, and when, well, a significant proportion of Anime characters have blue eyes, blonde hair, and caucasian noses along with other caucasian features. But I'd be interested to read this article, because atm I just fail to grasp the idea the pre-colonialist history has much to do with it.