Why are all pokemon characters white?

[Dragon Houou]

^ how many people have the color of James's hair in Japan?

^Apparently no one in japan has that type of hair color unless he or she dyes it. Also, there are japanese people with different eye colors, but I think that those individuals are mixed with another ethnicity (correct me if I am wrong, don't have that much knowledge on this). Anyway, I don't think that there is such a thing as race in the anime, only different shades of skin color. But if they were to put a black person in the anime, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

 

[Rainbowdashtheawesome]

n00b u not teh 1337 teh pokemans is teh kkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111
teh pokemans maek u teh white supremacist do not obey teh hitlers of teh pokemans company foools you will become teh neo nazi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! do nat follow teh swastikaz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111

First of all, can you say that in english?
Second of all, who are you calling a n00b?
Third of all, as I said in my first post, I love the entire series and don't have anything wrong with it whatsoever; this thread was to discuss the peculiarity of this particular consistency of the show; not to accuse the creators of being racists.

 

[raichu2626]

I just think they never did it. You can't say its all Japanese people because Brock clearly isn't japanese. And if it were they all would have dark brown eyes, and dark brown/black hair. But then again I guess all anime has characters with random hair colors.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Honestly I'd consider them Generic Anime Race. They're based on Asian, and apparently Brock "looks Asian" and Tracey "looks white" according to the directors (damned if Tracey doesn't look like everyone else though. What qualifiers were they using? Is there something subtle that I'm missing?). But it's all filtered through the Pokemon world, which, while it's similar to Earth, has distinct differences that extend to the human population as well.

 

[Sayho1234]

OMG, celebitrainer! You can't just ask people why they're white!

 

[randomspot555]

The reason why most characters look the way they do is because most have a game counterpart that, if not IS their character, is pretty close.

 

[Rex Kamex]

...I think it's because they might of forgotten to put black people in the 1st season so if they start doing it now, it might look racist.

The thing is... all of the makers of the show wouldn't forget to put a race of people in it, they didn't give the show seasons, and it wouldn't look racist to add black people in the show...

 

[Rainbowdashtheawesome]

OMG, celebitrainer! You can't just ask people why they're white!

I don't get what you mean. In real life I could never ask a real person why they are the ethnicity they are, but when I'm referring to fictional characters it is just fine if I ask why the animators chose that ethnicity for the character.
These characters were all drawn by hand to begin with; I just find it odd that the animators didn't feel like drawing any minority characters. Come on, just because the character is a different ethnicity than the animator does not mean that the animator is racist; heck, the animators are Japanese and none of the characters are, so they've been drawing characters to represent a race other than their own from day 1.

 

[diablo_200525]

Hmmm, I have seemed notice that as well. I just never asked myself that question though. Although tbh, even though i notice i kinda let it slide cause, well, yeah xD, just didnt really pay too much attention to it

 

[yeminied]

I reckon it would look ... strange to have a darker skin toned person in the anime, actually, are there many dark skinned anime characters? I can't say I have seen any.

 

[ChaosMage]

Most anime characters tend to have that same standard skin colour, with few exceptions. And I can't think offhand of any darker skinned characters who were created for the anime rather than for the games... Brock, Phoebe, Bruno, Spencer and Dahlia were designed by the game designers, not by the anime designers who do seem to stick to one skin colour

 

[NES]

They aren't Japanese, except for maybe Brock the rest of the cast doesn't look like having Asian features.

They don't seem to base any character in real people anyway, the eyes, the hair, everything "anime" style is just NOT possible IRL(they may be humans but the art style is just a resemblance). So i guess such things as races as we know them are not present in the pokemon world.

 

[Sayho1234]

I don't get what you mean. In real life I could never ask a real person why they are the ethnicity they are, but when I'm referring to fictional characters it is just fine if I ask why the animators chose that ethnicity for the character.
These characters were all drawn by hand to begin with; I just find it odd that the animators didn't feel like drawing any minority characters. Come on, just because the character is a different ethnicity than the animator does not mean that the animator is racist; heck, the animators are Japanese and none of the characters are, so they've been drawing characters to represent a race other than their own from day 1.

LMAO, it was a joke in reference to the movie "Mean Girls" .

 

[Rainbowdashtheawesome]

^Oh, never seen the movie; so you can probably see why I didn't get the reference.
Ah well, normally I'm the one to make references that people don't understand.

 

[Ash-kid]

So people told you! Phoebe, Dhalia, a kid from Hoenn league.

 

[getto89]

i notice that when brock first appeared his skin tone was darker i noticed that 75% of the COTD people are woman just so they can do the brocks in love cliche

 

[Dragon Houou]

I reckon it would look ... strange to have a darker skin toned person in the anime, actually, are there many dark skinned anime characters? I can't say I have seen any.

Why would it be strange to have a darker skin toned person in the anime? I could name several anime series' or anime movies where there have been darker skin tonned characters. For instance, Cowboy bebop, Love hina, and street fighter which spawned three animated movies. But I am pretty sure that there were more anime that implemented this feature.

 

[NES]

Yet, there is 1 "black" anime character for 999 "regular anime base" characters. Seriously i don't want to provoke anyone, but most anime series out there look pretty much the same, they may be good at drawing in their style, but they rarely draw "different" things, like fat people, or other different features than the typically slim young male/female.

Just an opinion.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

You guys seem to be confusing "black people" with "dark-skinned people" (who can be of any race).

 

[ChaosMage]

PESSIMISTIC ANSWER!!!

The creators of the anime (and this has been confirmed in that infamous interview) have had problems over racial stereotypes on the show before with Jynx, and they even got rid of Brock for a short time because they were worried about similar problems. In anime style, where everything is exaggerated, it's hard to draw somebody of an ethnic minority without somebody or other accusing them of racism. It's easiest to stick to one uniform skin tone.