This was kind of funny.

So I got off the phone an hour ago with Doug Bendo, whose ROBOTECH podcast I was invited on as a guest. A large chunk in the middle of the conversation was taken up with trying to make the argument to Doug that anime characters only look like white people to American eyes because -- well, because we Americans are raised in a sea of white people, and the fact of the matter is that anime characters are so streamlined that without certain coloration or exaggeration you honestly couldn't tell WHAT nationality they're supposed to be. He was using this concept to support making the anime "right" by changing the names for international sale because "that doesn't look like a Kazuki to me."

I've still got the discussion rattling around in my skull hours later (maybe that's why I have a headache), and I hopped onto Google to answer the question for myself -- Am I totally off base here? And I looked up, in a Google image search, "Shinji." And of course I found Shinji Ikari, from Evangelion, and I also found THIS guy.



I guess this guy is a race car driver? The point is, his name is Shinji. He's a Japanese dude. And I looked at him and I just kind of smiled, because during the discussion, Doug was talking about Macross II protagonist Hibiki Kanzaki, and how to his eyes the dude looked Hispanic, not Japanese. But I don't know, doesn't the skin and hair coloration of that guy look an AWFUL lot like --



-- THIS guy?

I also think Doug's arguments against the Japan-centrism of anime (dude, it's their pop culture, made for them, not for us) would be blunted somewhat if we -- by which I mean the U.S. of A. -- were making anything even remotely like it. I mean, geez, the main reason I got into anime was because Japan was making the kind of action animation I wanted to see, and the U.S. wasn't. If the U.S. was doing the work and making some worthwhile animation I wanted to watch, I wouldn't even bother with Japan -- especially these days, when most of what they crank out is dreck. But even if a lot of it is dreck, it's still better than what the U.S. is doing, which is crap like the ugly, badly-animated Adult Swim garbage and Family Guy and what-have-you.

I also would have liked to have spent some time complaining about the result here in the States of the rise of anime culture -- American kids making up bad comics and stories and stuff where everybody's got Japanese names, in emulation of what they're watching and reading -- anime and manga (and more predominantly the latter, these days).

But back to the image thing ... I'd really like to make a little illustrative chart showing the very small shades of difference between a generic Japanese dude and a generic white dude and stick an anime guy -- Shinji Ikari is a perfect example, because he's such a generic character design -- in the middle and point out how Shinji could easily be a drawing of either of them. But it's late, and it's not like Doug would ever see it anyway, and I should just put the discussion behind me. But it's nagging at me, because I've seen this discussion a thousand and one times, and a lot of people who've actually studied the Japanese have said, "No, dude, really, they think these characters look like they do. And they're not delusional, the character designs are just that bland and streamlined, so it winds up looking like both."

*sigh*