OK, now I need to know what “Korean characteristics” are. Without making any jokes about scratch-and-sniff kimchi overlays, what’s to exaggerate that’s so different from Japanese characteristics?
The older anime used to be hand drawn in a very sweatshop-like environment. The hair colour treatment was to allow the cel colourists to not make mistakes. Character “A” has blue hair, Character “B” has green hair, etc. Making mistakes on the assembly line costs money and time and the shows that I remember from the 70s and 80s were on weekly. Delays were not acceptable.
As to the problem with racism and Koreans in particular (and foreigners in general) that would require a number of books, none of which I would write myself. There is a lot of duplicity and downright racism coming out of Japan and has been for quite a long time. I learned this from friends living there as well as subtle references given by many long time Japanese friends. I really have no interest in Japan anymore though I started out enamoured with Japan by the first run of anime fan movements in the mid to late 70s…
Younger Japanese seem to have found their identity again though. How many of the main characters in anime or manga now come from mixed marriage families (Japanese parent and American parent)? None that I can name BUT there are lots of them from the 70s and 80s when America was still king of everything…
What an unsettling combination of username, request, and context. :eek:
I recently read something, I think on the SDMB, that would help explain this, but I have search and cannot find it.
Anyhow, someone with Asian art expertise explained that some time in the last century or two, there was an art fad in Japan where they were trying to emulate the West, and drew people with round eyes and other Western-looking features.
It was an interesting thread, I wish I could find it.
I agree, and I’ve seen exactly this happen.
The daughter of some friends, who had been raised mostly in Japan, had started reading the TinTin books when she was about 10. She once asked me why all those Japanese people were living in Europe in the 1930s and all the Europeans were living in India or the Middle East. She pointed out TinTin, Calculus, the Thompsons and so forth were all obviously Japanese with small eyes, short noses etc. The only Europeans were shown in books set in India or the Middle East.
And she’s quite right. With the possible exception of Capt. Haddock with his beard and bulbous nose none of the TinTin regulars are obviously European. They are just generic people in generic clothes, but objectively they look more like east Asians than classic Caucasians. In contrast the Indians, Arabs Negroes and so forth are drawn so generically “foreign” that they don’t look like ‘us’ no matter who ‘we’ are.
As a result the ‘foreign’ characters in the form of Indians or Arabs look generically European to a Japanese because the very characteristics that make them Caucasian have been exaggerated to highlight that they are foreign to a Caucasian audience.
I can’t answer specifically, but it might help you to think of the way that you know that characters on “The Simpsons” are Australian or English. Given the shared history there is presumably even less to exaggerate in the difference between Australia, the US and England, yet the artists do it. It’s not just the accent, it’s the clothes, the way they walk and move and the mannerisms.
I suspect the Japanese Korean portrayal are much the same. Exagerate all the stereotypes of the target. Just as everyone ‘knows’ that the English make very minimal movements and walk as stiffly as they talk everyone in Japan presumably ‘knows’ the same things about Koreans.