Bunch of anon asks I got while I was asleep
How do you say your username? squee-bar? skew-ber? skew-bear? something?
Square bear or just s-q-b-r. Though some call me squibber or Satan’s Quintessential Bagel Reamer.
much as western animation tends to overexaggerate east asian characters’ stereotypical features or else just make them look exactly like the white characters (just with a different color scheme), i’ve seen both the massive-nose craggy-face approach and the palette-swapped-sameface approach in the animes i’ve seen that included both (e)asian and euro characters. although i haven’t seen as much shoujo as i’d like tbh sighoh!!!!!! and wikipedia says chihayafuru is josei but i heard there were some white karuta players in one of the tournaments, i haven’t gotten there yet but i wonder how that is portrayed
That scene is actually what inspired me! I thought how the non-Japanese (they are a variety of ethnicities, not just white) characters were drawn was really interesting. Chihayafuru is josei but I’d say art wise it’s fairly shoujo-esque.
You make a good point though. But that’s the interesting thing with heavily stylised art. Like, it was originally inspired by real life, but if you draw it for a while then try and add a NEW thing from real life the result often isn’t very consistent with the older designs. Especially if you didn’t create the style in the first place. Also some manga artists are more same-facey than others. Did Satoishi Kon ever include any non-Japanese characters? His designs always felt very heavily rooted in reality rather than working from some platonic ideal of prettiness.
(I feel self conscious opining about this, though, yet another random Western(*) anime/manga fan acting like I’m some informed art historian)
(*)Metaphorically speaking. Longitude wise I am about as “Eastern” as any Japanese person :)
