Hey guys welcome back to my channel and today we're going to be talking about
realistic anime fan art. So I was originally not going to make this a
video topic because I basically agree with everything that's been said and I
didn't really feel like I had anything new to add to the discourse
however Instagram has been bombarding me with white realistic Sailor Moon fan art
and I just can't keep quiet any longer. So can we please just stop drawing anime
characters as white? Alright so part one... Are anime characters white? And this is a
very loaded question and there are no simple answers. There are some anime
characters that are clearly supposed to be white like Bandit Keith from YU-GI-OH
However Joey Wheeler who has a very strong Brooklyn accent in the American
dub is supposed to be Japanese. In the original however what I didn't know is
that Pegasus is actually supposed to be American and maybe from a Japanese
perspective this makes sense but when I watched it as a kid I just thought he
was British. And an easy way out of this question would be that anime is an art
form and an art style and not set in any sort of reality. The characters look the
way they do because it not only makes them look cute, but it also shows their
expressions better in a comic type form like manga. They exist in an alternate
reality and just because they're made by Japanese people doesn't mean that there
are Japanese. But sadly anime doesn't exist in a
vacuum. Anime is not shielded from globalization
racism and other real world effects. Anime artists and fan artists, whether
they like it or not, have their own biases and I think it's worth exploring
what those are in order to create a more inclusive art world. Firstly like I said
some anime characters are white, but other anime characters look white but
are actually supposed to be Japanese. Take Serena from Sailor Moon who's
Japanese name is Usagi Tsukino, but was changed to Serena when she was
brought over to North America and in fact this is not new. Astroboy, arguably
the first anime in the States, also had their names changed
and this was done to presumably whitewash the characters in order to
make them more marketable especially with world war ii sentiment still being
very strong. We want it to be unconditional. Go ahead tell them
what I said. Roger stop it! We don't want any of your Jap crap! And it worked.
Astro Boy was a huge success in the US and paved the way for more anime to come
in the future, but of course not without some slight tweaks. A lot of Japanese
iconography was changed or just ignored altogether during dubbing I think we all
remember those "jelly doughnuts" at the game from Pokemon. These donuts
are great! Jelly filled is my favorite! Nothing beats a jelly filled donut! So
does that mean that Japanese people just hate themselves?! No of course not.
They just see anime as more of a creative outlet. Japan is a very
homogeneous society so they see white features like blond hair and blue eyes
as different and cool, not to mention that a lot of anime has sci-fi and
fantasy elements to it which calls for sometimes crazy hair and eye
combinations that aren't just blond and blue, sometimes they're aliens
sometimes they're cat people, but more times than not, they're magical girls.
And in fact anime characters are so Universal because they don't really have
any ethnic features, besides white skin but that's for another day. And in all
people from Japan see anime characters as Japanese.
And this question of "Are anime characters white?" only really comes up in
the West because we can't imagine a world where we're not default, and this
is the problem and why we get tons of "realistic" white Sailor Moon fan art. So
part two, the impacts. So you're probably thinking how does this affect me? And
what does fan art have to do with it? And if you're thinking that you've
probably never been affected by systemic racism... So like I said before, anime
characters are very universal meaning I saw myself in them. Knowing that these
creations came from Asia and were made by Asian artists was amazing to me and I
saw myself and their characters in a world where movies and TV shows were
liking any sort of diversity. And seeing realistic fan art of anime characters be
a Sailor Moon or not as white just hurts. I have seen some notable works where
some of the Sailor Scouts aren't white but nine times out of ten Serena will be
white and that just irks me and leads to the second problem - drawing white
realistic fan versions of anime characters makes cultural appropriation
okay. And because anime is so universal and does take place in alternate
realities a lot of people don't see anything wrong with borrowing from the
"anime aesthetic" and if you're cosplaying that's cool I don't care what race you are
if you're cosplaying, but some celebrities are huge culture vultures and don't care
about anime, don't care about Japanese culture, and just use whatever they want
in order to stay relevant. And yes I'm talking about you know who. I feel like a
lot of white people who do culturally appropriate anime fashion think it's
okay because anime is just an art style and doesn't exist in reality and though
that's true whenever they dress an anime garb they try to "look Asian" or "half" by
either wearing slanted eyeliner or puppy dog eyeliner, and to be honest eGirl
culture is kind stealing from the "ulzzang" look that
Korean people started almost a decade ago, only further emphasizing the erasure
of Asian beauty. We forget to that anime is created by Japanese people and we
forget what they look like and what East Asian people look like in general so
let's take a moment to celebrate the creators of all of our favorite anime...
So part three white as the default in drawing. So finally on to the problematic
fan art. Fan art of realistic Sailor Moons have been flooding my feed for
weeks now and I'm sick of it! Every time there's a realistic Sailor Moon
speedpaint she's always white, and I get it you
think she's white, but can we please just have some creativity here? And yeah I get
it were only ever taught to draw white people, we never learned how to draw
monolids or big noses or thick lips or shade in darker skin, but let's all make
a commitment to do so. There's a really great fan art of Rihanna as Sailor Pluto
but she's rare. Let's start making some creative fan art. I want to see Asian
Sailor Moon, I want to see black Sailor Moon, I want to see Latinx Sailor Moon,
and if you do see or make diverse fan art please tag me on instagram @
cheyenne_lin. So thanks everyone for listening to my rant, and a
big thank you to all of my patrons and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for
watching, do all the YouTube stuff bye :)