Minority Anime Characters?

[Golden_Griff]

I've been thinking about this for a while. Are there any minority anime characters out there? The majority of characters seems to be either Caucasian or Asian. Just curious

[Debitt]

>>; There's Pedro from the Excel Saga....XD

[Nate]

The only ones that come to mind are...

Claudia from Macross (Robotech) and that girl from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Um, in games, I can think of Barret from FFVII and Kiros from FFVIII.

There's probably more, but I can't think of any at the moment.

[Rev. Doc]

Cowboy Bebop has quite a few minorities including African Americans, Hispanic, and Native Americans.

[Golden_Griff]

Cowboy Bebop has quite a few minorities including African Americans, Hispanic, and Native Americans.

Native Americans? Coolios I do remember one African-American lady with an afro from a commercial; she reminded me of Foxy Cleopatra from Austin Powers Sounds like Cowboy Bebop is very diversified.

[Yojimbo]

Yeah Cowboy Bebop has the most minorities I've ever seen in one anime series.

[Technomancer]

It's not surprising that the shows don't have too many minorities on them. Most anime are set in Japan, which is a pretty homogeneous country and their culture/citizenship policies contrive to keep it that way. As a consequence most non-Asians in Japan are either "guest workers" or American military personnel. Even those Asians who do live in Japan, don't have the same status or visibility.

[Ssjjvash]

I didn't really notice any minorities on Lord of the Rings either. Um, well, that might be another topic or something...*sigh*

On Kenshin--in later episodes--they had a few people come in from Holland or something like that, and Germany. They spoke Japanese though.

[MorwenLaicoriel]

Hmm...I know in the 2nd season of Digimon they had this (weird) 'world tour' story arc where the main characters went to different parts of the world. There was an african american in the US, an Indian girl (wearing a bindi...so wrong...only married women wear bindis), and a Hispanic girl that I remember...there might've been more, too. That's the only one I've seen that I can think of, though.

As for LOTR, it's supposed to be set in a sort of pre-history England, so that's why most of the people are...well....English looking.

[TheMelodyMaker]

The Bush Baby takes place in Kenya, so Africans are quite abundant.

[Ashley]

Though it's a slightly dated series, the Yorodien Samurai Troopers OVA "Kikoutei Dentsu" (sp?) took place in Africa and had two prominent African characters. The only other one I can think of at the moment has already been mentioned: Cowboy Bebop.

[Aka-chan]

Shaman King has characters from all over. Chocolove has an African heritage and Native Americans (albeit a fictional tribe) play a significant role in the storyline. I think there's even a minor character who's Mexican.

[LorentzForce]

Granzort has moon-rabbit people with bunny ears and blue hair. Pwned.

[edit] I firmly believe they do exist, so therefore they ARE a minority most likely due to me never seen a real one before.

[Kisa]

Cowboy Bebop, Dragonball and DBZ have a few, Barret in FF7....
can't think of any more >_<

[termyt]

I guess this begs the question of what a minority is. The biggest minority in Japan is Korean, and we Americans have a tough time telling the difference between the two. I believe Korean names are somewhat common in Anime, indicating a decent minority presence. Not to mention the number of anime focusing on Americans (aka white, non-Asians), which would be a minority to the Japanese.

They don’t run into too many people with different skin or hair color - just foreigners – so they wouldn’t be expected to show up in anime by the average Japanese viewers. They started changing hair color early, mostly to help viewers with character identification, so they got accustomed to wild hair colors, but not skin colors. A little off topic, but the strange hair colors have been disappearing from anime lately – I believe that is an American influence on anime because we had difficulty with hair colors that were not normal.

Anyway, all that said, there was a major anime with an African main character set in the West – Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.

[Locke]

how bout the dudes from Cyborg:009? that had people from all over who were kidnapped

[Golden_Griff]

I didn't really notice any minorities on Lord of the Rings either. Um, well, that might be another topic or something...*sigh*

On Kenshin--in later episodes--they had a few people come in from Holland or something like that, and Germany. They spoke Japanese though.

Germany? Holland?? Oooo ....I love their accents

Sorry, off topic

Cyborg 009 (which I've seen once) has many kinds of people of all ages. The baby really surprised me

[Mave]

Shaman King had quite a number of diverse characters, if I recall it properly. ^^

[AsterlonKnight]

>>I didn't really notice any minorities on Lord of the Rings either. Um, well, that might be another topic or something...*sigh* <<

Have you seen The Two Towers? There are Indian-ish characters in that. They're heading for Mordor and wear some really nifty coustumes. And some of the Mordor guard as well are not "English" types. Other than that, there aren't any minority minorities because of the time frame and the setting. IIRC from the text, Tolkien wrote LotR so that England could have a legend/story that was truly it's own. Not exactly very many Africans, Asians, Arabians, or other Middle Easterners running about in England then...

Though the "truly it's own" part could be argued. There are a lot of simmilarities between it and the Ring Cycle opera...

As for minority anime characters...someone already mentioned the ones I knew. Anthy's brother counts, too.

[And on a completly random note: Ashely's title always reminds me of Wolf's song from The 10th Kingdom. XD "Shepardess makes quite a mess, but little lambs are lovely..."]

[uc pseudonym]

I would primarily agree that there is a lack of traditional minorities (keeping in mind the Korean presence) due to the homogeneous nature of Japan. Instead of posting yet again any anime that have minority characters, I will instead relate a humorous incident regarding this.

At one point a highly-placed leader of Japan was asked why his country scored so much higher than America on standard intelligence tests. What he meant to say was that the country was homogeneous and hence there were no cultural difficulties that brought down overall test scores; what he actually said was "Because we have no black people."

A correction was quickly issued.

[AsterlonKnight]

Humorous that is not. -_-; Idiot man....(not you)

IQ tests are a fallacy anyway. They don't tell how smart you are, they just show how "smart" you are compared to the test maker(s)....

[uc pseudonym]

I am relatively certain that said "idiot man" felt pretty bad for making such a bigoted sounding statement. He had a decent position: there is good reason to believe that IQ tests are made primarily for one ethnicity, and use terms and connotations that only that one ethnicity will understand properly. Hence, having only one ethnicity would mean that the test would be far better understood overall. In my mind what makes it somewhat funny is his accidental shift from a decent answer to something that makes him sound terrible.

However, I truly post to say that I hope no one was offended by the ancedote.

[Gypsy]

I've noticed the lack of minorities in anime and have always chalked it up to culture. I do have a few original characters that aren't white caucasian that you will meet shortly ... but that's another thread (not to mention a semi-mysterious yet unabashed plug ).

[Ashley]

Shortly, may I rememind you, is a relatively loose term when it comes to Gypsies *cough BelCanto cough*....(and may she prove me wrong )

[Ssjjvash]

As for LOTR, it's supposed to be set in a sort of pre-history England, so that's why most of the people are...well....English looking.

Oh, that makes sense then.

[Golden_Griff]

[quote="Gypsy"]I've noticed the lack of minorities in anime and have always chalked it up to culture. I do have a few original characters that aren't white caucasian that you will meet shortly ... but that's another thread (not to mention a semi-mysterious yet unabashed plug ]

Yeah, I've had a few people comment that I have a good habit (for lack of a better word) of drawing people of all ethnicities. I think it's more interesting for myself when I have all sorts of characters. I may not know much about other cultures but hey, they're thrown in the mix

Great...now I'm in a drawing mood...*goes off to find some paper*

[termyt]

[quote="AsterlonKnight"]Humorous that is not. -_-]

Now, now, it's not fair to judge him based on our culture and racial sensitivity. Actually, despite it's homogeneous appearance to us, Japan can also be a very segregated and intolerant place. They are somewhat known for their taking stereotypes to the extreme and then applying them to everyone like a thick coat of glossy enamel. Trying to break out of that box can be very difficult. Azumanga Daioh constantly makes references to this.

But, they also don't seem to be as sensitive to this as us, either.

[Gypsy]

Shortly, may I rememind you, is a relatively loose term when it comes to Gypsies *cough BelCanto cough*....(and may she prove me wrong )

I told you from the get-go that it was an experimental, unfinished, and more than likely dead-end project! Oh ye of selective memory ... ]Bel Canto[/url] if you're new and/or bored and you have a spare fifteen minutes to kill.

[AsterlonKnight]

Now, now, it's not fair to judge him based on our culture and racial sensitivity. Actually, despite it's homogeneous appearance to us, Japan can also be a very segregated and intolerant place. They are somewhat known for their taking stereotypes to the extreme and then applying them to everyone like a thick coat of glossy enamel. Trying to break out of that box can be very difficult. Azumanga Daioh constantly makes references to this.

But, they also don't seem to be as sensitive to this as us, either.

I am not judging him from an American pov or from racial sensitivity even though I am black. I called him an idiot because that WAS an idiotic thing to say anyway you look at it. If a black leader of a Caribbean isle said the reason his people were smarter than America is because they don't have any Japanese, I'd call that guy an idiot, too. Spin it however you wish, it's idiotic to suggest that a lack of/presence of any minority (race, political view, religion, etc) is the reason things are the way they are. Makes you look bad (idiotic) and also reflects poorly upon your country and it's inhabitants. Look at Hitler if you don't understand.

And don't patronize me. :| I don't know you, you don't know me, and I'd really rather not dislike you nor cause this thread to be locked.

[Gypsy]

Time out guys. This thread has taken a dive as far as the topic goes. Please take it off the boards if you wish to turn this to an extreme debate. Other than that, carry on.