that's the common perception among western audiences because westerners assume a white default for characters while japanese audiences assume a japanese default. for a character to read as "japanese" to a westerner they have to basically have slit eyes, and for a character to read as white to a japanese person they have to have a triangle nose. sure maybe some of it can be blamed on the US cultural hegemony's effect on character design but I think way more of it has to do with viewer expectations.
It gets kinda tricky when you're talking about stylised characters though. Can you really say Western cartoons are an accurate depiction of the occidental skull shape or are you just filling those blanks in yourself?
They're not going for accurate representations of racial phenotypes in these semi-anime styled games. Would you call these doll people especially real looking representations of white people?
My point is that this specific kind of (very common) art style has its roots in anime, which is very stylised and not especially realistic, and when you start from that and try to build realistic high definition 3d models out of that, you end up in a weird uncanny valley. I'm reminded of the Miyazaki quote about most Japanese anime being made by people who can't stand to look at real humans.
I’m talking about depicted eye shape being changed through cultural imperialism.
I find it kind of iffy to look at a product of another culture and just simplify it down to "Ahh, clearly they're trying to look more like ME". That's just the most common airbrushed anime style though, there are other styles out there- Lost Odyssey (if anyone remembers that game), for example, had a different -yet still stylised- take on its characters.
All of this is not to say that Japanese/Korean media doesn't have problems with racial representation or that the guy depicted in the OP isn't a massive asshole though
that's the common perception among western audiences because westerners assume a white default for characters while japanese audiences assume a japanese default. for a character to read as "japanese" to a westerner they have to basically have slit eyes, and for a character to read as white to a japanese person they have to have a triangle nose. sure maybe some of it can be blamed on the US cultural hegemony's effect on character design but I think way more of it has to do with viewer expectations.
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It gets kinda tricky when you're talking about stylised characters though. Can you really say Western cartoons are an accurate depiction of the occidental skull shape or are you just filling those blanks in yourself?
In the Gamecube Resident Evil games, Rebecca Chambers' facial model was the Japanese pop musician Ayumi Hamasaki, and she just looks kind of generically anime.
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They're not going for accurate representations of racial phenotypes in these semi-anime styled games. Would you call these doll people especially real looking representations of white people?
If anything, these semi-realistic anime games tend to look very racially ambiguous to me. Just look at what Barrett looks like
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My point is that this specific kind of (very common) art style has its roots in anime, which is very stylised and not especially realistic, and when you start from that and try to build realistic high definition 3d models out of that, you end up in a weird uncanny valley. I'm reminded of the Miyazaki quote about most Japanese anime being made by people who can't stand to look at real humans.
I find it kind of iffy to look at a product of another culture and just simplify it down to "Ahh, clearly they're trying to look more like ME". That's just the most common airbrushed anime style though, there are other styles out there- Lost Odyssey (if anyone remembers that game), for example, had a different -yet still stylised- take on its characters.
All of this is not to say that Japanese/Korean media doesn't have problems with racial representation or that the guy depicted in the OP isn't a massive asshole though
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