Giovanna wrote:

Yeah it's one of the few instances where I don't necessarily go with death of the author readings. Being steeped in Japanese culture before the advent of the 'global' culture...or even now...does heavily impact the use of stereotyping, for good and ill, in the show.

Like, if I were to write a story about fighting oppression (using a metaphorical oppressed class, like say the mutants in X-Men) I wouldn't want a bunch of  Alt-Right Pro-Gamer peeps interpret it as something that was about them. That'd drive me nuts. But I've heard it's what happened V for Vendetta and Fightclub, though don't know the films well enough to say.

Last edited by SaigonAlice (02-18-2017 04:09:36 AM)

Yasha wrote:

Yeah, Fight Club in particular was massively misinterpreted by idiots. It was actually a pretty scathing indictment of the kind of masculinity that needs violence to express itself, but as usual, people missed the point entirely. Tyler Durden was not supposed to be an aspirational figure.

As for V for Vendetta... that one's a bit more complicated. It sort of depends on what you're referring to-- if you're talking about Anon, there's a bunch of different facets to that. If you're talking about just the philosophy in general being misinterpreted, well, again. Idiots missing the point.

Interesting...lol. I should probably watch the films for myself but for the most part Yasha, I trust your judgement.

Yasha wrote:

Getting back to the topic at hand, I think if the writers had wanted Akio and Anthy to be interpreted as Romani, they'd probably have tried to use and subvert the stereotypes they way they do everywhere else. And yeah, I think they probably would have had... varying degrees of success. But I'm guessing they knew that would probably be the case if they tried to explore Akio and Anthy's ethnicity at all, and so they left it intentionally vague beyond the visible stuff. And to be honest, I think that was the right move. From a writing/technical standpoint, unless it tied directly to the storyline somehow it wasn't important enough to explore. Romani myths/characteristics would have been easier to invoke and weave into the storyline, but it's still an added element that wouldn't necessarily serve the narrative.

Well to be fair, it was Chiho Saito's idea to begin with to make Anthy and Akio Indian-esque looking. The rest of bePAPAS kind of just dealt with what they were given.

And speaking of Saito, look at this:

At it again with the subtly racist Indian = Exotic shenanigans! Granted the artwork is gorgeous, but it looks like Saito didn't make even a basic attempt at researching Hindu culture. See, men aren't supposed to wear Bindis - they're for women explicitly. They're meant as symbols of marriage and in the words of my Indian friend, as a "sign of ownership...kinda". Thematically it fits Anthy to wear a Bindi.

Now that I think about it, didn't Akio wear a Bindi? That doesn't even make sense in keeping with his character.  Saito really did bonkers.

Last edited by SaigonAlice (02-21-2017 05:28:21 AM)

Giovanna wrote:

Akio and Anthy aren't the first Indian characters to appear in Saito's work, and as I understand it, she did the original character designs. Changes were made in transition to the series, mostly involving hair color and uniforms, but the original call was hers.

Given that, I think a lot of the motivation was just plain old 'this is exotic'. I would ignore the names, since it's rare that non-Japanese characters appear in anime anyway--the only example I can think of is Asuka, and most of her name is Japanese. They're definitely meant to be taken for Indian; a dark skin tone alone would be ambiguous but they specify it with bindi/tilak. When you think of how anime is put together, it becomes kind of necessary to use skin tone to create exotic--an American/European character won't look much different from a Japanese one in that animation or manga style, and indeed whenever that's done it has to be made a specific plot point or people forget the character's not Japanese. They could have made the characters black, but there again in anime style that usually requires changing how the faces are drawn and such. Indian just makes sense--the style can stay, it's exotic coloring, and the bindi is a tell-tale marking.

I think in the end it's just that and that they're mystical and shit.

Aelanie wrote:

The world over, people borrow elements of other cultures and use them out of context to craft entertainment for their target audience. There is nothing wrong or malicious about this, it is simply taking interesting elements from many sources to make works more unique. I'd point out that Utena also borrows heavily from, and heavily misrepresents, aspects of European culture, but people seem more than willing to overlook that fact, if they even notice it at all - which is just as it should be.

I agree I think it was done for the exotic effect, as well as the aforementioned bindi.  I recently read an article about cultural appropriation (due to the 2017 live action Ghost in the Shell).

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/9/116125 … -hollywood

Short Synposis:  the author explains how a lot of Japanese don't care that Scar-Jo is playing a "Japanese" character because they don't look at anime characters as particularly Japanese.  Japanese people don't actually really understand the idea of "white-washing" that the American culture is up in arms about.  Anime as it is known, with the huge eyes and cute factor, was an appropriation from Disney films, culminating in Astro Boy.

I bring this up because unless an anime goes out of it's way to give a character a nationality, there's really no way of being able to give them one.  All characters are drawn with the huge round eyes (unless they are evil and then they get narrow and slanted). 

And not to further derail this, but this is one of the reasons I love Sailor Pluto from the Manga better than the original or crystal anime.  I always thought she was either Indian or unspecified-nationality-black due to her skin tone.  With every iteration of the anime her skin gets lighter (I was so hoping they would give her back her dark skin in Crystal)

As a last note, I like the idea that they are Indian because of images like Kali.  Now I want to draw Anthy as Kali...  In one hand she will have a sword and the other a rose, and another maybe Utena's hand....  Yay designing fun time!

Last edited by LadyButterflyNebula (04-27-2017 01:04:31 PM)