Portrayal of Japanese characters in American comics

[stelok]

Why have all the well-known Japanese characters in American comics like Katana, Dr. Light, Sunfire, Silver Samurai and Kumori (from Blade of Kumori comic book published by Devil's Due Publishing) etc been portrayed as prideful, strict and sometimes arrogant warriors who have superiority complex towards the non-Japanese and who also hold to the stern traditions and the concept of honor and shame?

It seems kind of ridiculous and stereotypical, that all Japanese characters have the same attitude and lacked diversity.

Not all of the Japanese are like that.

Is there such a Japanese superhero in American comics, who is a dirty-minded, lascivious, carefree and shameless pervert like Eikichi Onizuka from GTO, Hibiki Amawa from I My Me Strawberry Eggs, Fumihiko Matsumaru from REC or Keitaro Urashima from Love Hina? Or a whiny, timid but big-mouthed (talking big) guy like Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion, or Rock from Black Lagoon. Or a dense, stubborn blockhead like Kouhei from Tsukuyomi Moon Phase or Aoki Daisuke from Kodomo no Jikan

Ironically, most of the Japanese characters in the anime and manga do not have the similarly arrogant, proud attitudes and the superiority complex of Sunfire, Kumori or the female Dr. Light.

Even Kenshin Himura from Rurouni Kenshin, Demon Eyes Kyo from Samurai Deeper Kyo, Ranma from Ranma 1/2, Shirou Emiya from Fate/Stay Night and Shin Kudou from Macross Zero are not similar to the American-depicted Japanese characters.

[DaeJi]

Simpily, there are less Japanese characters in American comics than manga (go figure). Most of the time ethnic characters tend to conform to a stereotype, and unfotunately the arrogant Japanese person is a stereotype. Not to say all Japanese characters are like, but a lot of more famous ones created back in the day were cut from that cloth. And this isn't likely to change soon, since American comics primarily deal with American or American-like heroes for an American audience, unlike manga with is done with Japanese characters for a Japanese audience.

[darth mongoose]

On the flip-side, have you seen how gaijin are portrayed in manga? Blonde with scary pale blue eyes and rugged faces, either really big or buxom. Americans are loud, brash, incapable of coming to terms with the Japanese language, and the English are insanely refined, cultured, dress like it's the 19th century etc.
...Heck, come to think of it, we brits get a pretty bad deal in American stuff too. Who are our superheroes? Well, I don't know much DC, but in the Marvel stuff we have two types of characters:
1. Refined, impeccably dressed, snooty and either good, witty and self-righteous or bad and intimidatingly suave and arrogant. Lives in a manor house somewhere. (Captain Britain, Emma Frost (is she even British? I dunno, I'm confused, she seems to come from America while speaking with English dialect words and being part of this stereotype.) pre-'zomg look I'm now a sexy asian ninja!' Psylocke (okay, that's a given since she's Cap Brit's sister) Black Tom. (What the crap, why are all the British characters related to each other anyway!? We're not inbred!)
2. Scruffy, rude, uses lots of slang words, fights dirty, takes the piss out of team mates, comes from London (because that is the ONLY city in England, don't you know?). Chamber, Pete Wisdom, Toad.
3. (okay, I said two, but there's ONE exception) Not English. This applies to only Irish and Scottish characters (Wales doesn't exist in comics), who will almost invariably be interesting and cool, like Banshee, Wolfsbane, Moira McTaggart etc.
...No wonder 'New Excalibur' is almost entirely made of Americans. Most of the British supers are pretty lame. In a way, I'm glad, since when American writers write British Characters it's....painful to read.
"Oh blimey mate, it looks like that git Black Tom is going to use the bloody plot device!"
*shudders*

By comparison, I think the Japanese get off lightly. Though one thing that bothers me is how many more Japanese characters there seem to be around than Chinese! I mean, there are LOADS more Chinese people, and certainly more people from Chinese immigrant backgrounds than Japanese living around the world. There aren't many Korean or Filipino characters around either. Weird, huh? Why is Jubilee one of the only Chinese-American mutants we see? Shouldn't there be quite a few...well, okay, maybe not now after M day... But still.

[Metamorpho]

You wanna see stereotypes, check out some golden age comics.

[Dan Apodaca]

You have to understand, that's the way Japanese people sound to us when we're pretending to listen to them.

[Jack Zodiac]

You mean purely Japanese characters, right? Characters from Japan, not characters of Japanese descent who were born in America.

The only Japanese character that springs to mind is Loeb's Toyman, who is a Japanese teenager who makes giant toys. Granted, he makes stereotypically Japanese toys, like giant mechs and flying big-eyed Superman dolls, but he doesn't act strict or ceremonial, and his pride and arrogance come from his career, not his heritage.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

And this isn't likely to change soon, since American comics primarily deal with American or American-like heroes for an American audience, unlike manga with is done with Japanese characters for a Japanese audience.

Well that, and after Vaughn wrote a rounded Japanese character with faults, he was hounded by a stalker who kept accusing him of racism.
In a such a small industry, I doubt any other writer is keen to get that treatment.

[stelok]

darth mongoose, if you consider Captain Britain a stereotype, then ironically, Captain Britain is created by Chris Claremont, a British-born writer. The one who defined and enriched Capt. Britain's character development the most are also other Britons, Alan Moore and Alan Davis. Alan Moore and Chris Claremont were, according to Wiki, born in England.

Canadian superheroes, such as Wolverine and Alpha Flight didn't seem stereotypical to me. It's not a surprise since the creators Chris Claremont and John Byrne grew up in Canada.

Jack Zodiac, yes, i mean purely Japanese nationals, not characters of Japanese descent. Now that you mention it, I remember Japanese-American characters such as Storm Shadow from the G.I.Joe comic book doesn't fit the stereotype of a strict, traditional, proud and duty-bound, honor-bound Japanese. After reading lots of G.I.Joe issues, Storm Shadow seemed like a real person rather than a classic stereotype. Storm Shadow's real name is Thomas S. Arashikage (Arashi = "Storm" and kage = "shadow" in Japanese).


DaeJi, you're quite right. The stereotype of the proud, short-tempered and impulsive Japanese like Doctor Light, Katana, Sunfire, etc is no different than the angry black man stereotype or the angry, sulky American Indian stereotype.

EDIT: in my first post of this thread, I accidentally misspelled Doctor Light's codename as Dr. Bright.

[DaeJi]

Well that, and after Vaughn wrote a rounded Japanese character with faults, he was hounded by a stalker who kept accusing him of racism.
In a such a small industry, I doubt any other writer is keen to get that treatment.

:eek: ...That is... I'm at a loss for words...

[Ryan Day]

Crossing Midnight has an all-Japanese cast that's pretty diverse.

[shaunyc56]

Well that, and after Vaughn wrote a rounded Japanese character with faults, he was hounded by a stalker who kept accusing him of racism.
In a such a small industry, I doubt any other writer is keen to get that treatment.



OMG, that's horrible. What was this character? I'm drawing a blank. As a black man, I see some awful sterotypes, but at least i see the attempts at rounding out some black characters. Currently Luke Cage, Mr. Terrific (in outsiders), and Hudlin's Black Panther come to mind. But unfortunatley, you have mostly white writers, writing what they know of a certain minority, which may be only stereotypes.

[MartinRedmond]

Wouldn't a perv obsessed with panty shots be a lame stereotype too?

[Jack Zodiac]

Crossing Midnight has an all-Japanese cast that's pretty diverse.

Yeah, I almost forgot about that book. I stopped reading it after the fourth issue.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

OMG, that's horrible. What was this character? I'm drawing a blank. As a black man, I see some awful sterotypes, but at least i see the attempts at rounding out some black characters. Currently Luke Cage, Mr. Terrific (in outsiders), and Hudlin's Black Panther come to mind. But unfortunatley, you have mostly white writers, writing what they know of a certain minority, which may be only stereotypes.

Dr. Mann in Y: The Last Man.
Not sure how it was racist, but it came out after a con last year, where the person started screaming at him in a Q&A, and after they were escorted out, Vaughn explained that the person had been stalking/hounding himself and his family.

[dancj]

Dr. Mann in Y: The Last Man.
Not sure how it was racist, but it came out after a con last year, where the person started screaming at him in a Q&A, and after they were escorted out, Vaughn explained that the person had been stalking/hounding himself and his family.
The guy is a sci-fi author and is obviously completely loopy. There's a you tube clip of him being interviewed on telly. He hates anyone who's not asian (which makes any accusations of racism from him ridiculous) and IIRC believes some weird conspiracy theories involving dragons.

[DaeJi]

The guy is a sci-fi author and is obviously completely loopy. There's a you tube clip of him being interviewed on telly. He hates anyone who's not asian (which makes any accusations of racism from him ridiculous) and IIRC believes some weird conspiracy theories involving dragons.



Very creepy... happen to have a link to that YouTube video?

[Tazirai]

You wanna see stereotypes, check out some golden age comics.



LOl for real. i read them alot.. man the stereotypes in them are ... well.. man.. you have to check them out.

[Shellhead]

For the longest time, superhero comics were mostly about white characters. Japanese heroes tended to be samurai wanna-bes, like Sunfire, Katana and Colleen Wing. Japanese villains were more likely to be either ninjas or sinister masterminds. Comics only started to get significantly more multi-cultural in the 70s and 80s, a time when Japan vaulted from third world status to a major player in international business. Interviews and books coming from Japan at that time were often characterized by a strident, arrogant tone, especially by the mid-80s when zaibatsu like Sony and Mitsubishi started buying out big american companies.

[hmnut73]

i think the perfect example of how white people view the Japanese is shown in what they did to Psylocke. Let's see she started out as a well rounded White character, then to give her an edge they literally made her Japanese. Did they make her a Japanese school teacher, medical doctor, geologist? NO!! She was a Ninja! What a shocker, one day she is white, the next day she is Japanese so of course she is an Ninja.

[The Mirrorball Man]

Wales doesn't exist in comics
Pixie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_%28comics%29) is Welsh.

[dancj]

I was watching Lost a few weeks ago and Jin got in a fight. I pointed out to my wife that Jin is an Asian and on telly and it therefore follows that he's a martial artist.

As second later Jin does a perfect roundhouse.

[Sir Tim Drake]

Jack Zodiac, yes, i mean purely Japanese nationals, not characters of Japanese descent. Now that you mention it, I remember Japanese-American characters such as Storm Shadow from the G.I.Joe comic book doesn't fit the stereotype of a strict, traditional, proud and duty-bound, honor-bound Japanese. After reading lots of G.I.Joe issues, Storm Shadow seemed like a real person rather than a classic stereotype. Storm Shadow's real name is Thomas S. Arashikage (Arashi = "Storm" and kage = "shadow" in Japanese).

It's worth noting that Larry Hama, who, I assume, created Storm Shadow, is himself Japanese.

[Marked Man]

I was watching Lost a few weeks ago and Jin got in a fight. I pointed out to my wife that Jin is an Asian and on telly and it therefore follows that he's a martial artist.

As second later Jin does a perfect roundhouse.

That was cringe-worthy. Although I guess you could make the argument that because Jin was in the military, he would have some hand-to-hand combat training.

Sorry for the thread interruption.

[Tommy]

You wanna see stereotypes, check out some golden age comics.

http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/3605/9740000058ee8.jpg

[Alex L]

The guy is a sci-fi author and is obviously completely loopy. There's a you tube clip of him being interviewed on telly. He hates anyone who's not asian (which makes any accusations of racism from him ridiculous) and IIRC believes some weird conspiracy theories involving dragons.

A little late to the discussion, but I would also like to see that video.

[BizarroBeachHead]

This (http://youtube.com/watch?v=TK4fjMhGn-I) is the guy who stalked BKV.

Calling him an author is pretty generous. He wrote a short book about wicked cool cyber dragons.

The interview is phenomenal. He's nothing but a loudmouth trying to get attention, as evidenced in the interview when all he does is try to plug his book.

It's worth noting that Larry Hama, who, I assume, created Storm Shadow, is himself Japanese.Yes, he did create Storm Shadow.

[areacode212]

This (http://youtube.com/watch?v=TK4fjMhGn-I) is the guy who stalked BKV.

Calling him an author is pretty generous. He wrote a short book about wicked cool cyber dragons.

The interview is phenomenal. He's nothing but a loudmouth trying to get attention, as evidenced in the interview when all he does is try to plug his book.

Yes, he did create Storm Shadow.

I haven't seen the interview, and I came late to that Vertigo panel at NYCC, but when I heard about the incident, I knew that it had to be Kenneth Eng (Google him). Am I right? I read a month or so back that he was arrested recently, as well.

[Kareem]

lol what an idiot

[Alex L]

As an Asian person, I now feel obligated to apologize for him.

Sorry, world. :(

[hyzmarca]

http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/3605/9740000058ee8.jpg

Well, war propaganda is rarely flattering. But this isn't a stereotype so much as it is an intentional racial slur.

The portrayal of Japanese comic characters is heavily colored by 80s Niponophillia, which is based around the holy triumvirate of 80s Niponophillia, Ninjas, Samurai, and Giant Robots. So, most Japanese comicbook characters are either Ninjas, Samurai, or Giant Robots.
The only exception are those characters who were inspired by 80s Niponophobia, who are invariably automotive executives bent on taking over all American industry and replacing Midwestern auto workers with giant robots.

(okay, I said two, but there's ONE exception) Not English. This applies to only Irish and Scottish characters (Wales doesn't exist in comics), who will almost invariably be interesting and cool, like Banshee, Wolfsbane, Moira McTaggart etc.
Few people outside of Great Britain know the difference between England and Wales. Wales just isn't internationally high key. The only way to rectify this is for Wales fight a bloody and well-publicized war of independence.

[Kid Kamikaze10]

I know this is a bit off-topic, but the reverse is also true.

In many cases in many mangas and animes (and some European comics), Americans aren't portrayed that well, either. Especially African-Americans.

In fact, There are few mangas and animes that I've seen that portray black people in a decent way in general. And this doesn't only apply with stuff like DBZ.

I'm not trying create a racial conspiracy or anything, but it's just something that I, and a more avid manga/anime fan have noticed.

[BouffonVert72]

Stereotyps ?

I like very much the character of Cassandra Cain (Batgirl) who is asian. And it doesn't seem to me that her character is ridiculous or stereotypical...

It seems to me that Jolt (Thunderbolts) was also Asian... Not of carricature there either...

I am not be able to say if Cassandra Cain and Jolt are of Japanese or Chinese origin or korean. For me it doesn't much matter, they are Asian, and that interests me... That's all.

In fact, I see much more stereotypes in Clark Kent or Peter Parker... :evilsmile



Particular audience ?

Ah, also, I'm an european-goblin, not anglo-american at all, and I consume many american comics, and american tv series, and films, and a few series-animated made in japan, and well I don't think that each author of these different medias does their product for a particular audience...

I think that most of the authors have included well that the world is now completely opened, especially with the new techniques of communication...
Perhaps I make a mistake, but at present I feel that the authors would want rather to widen the base of their readership...

There lot of people in America who read manga, lot of Europeans who read manga and american comics, lot of Asian who read american comics, etc...
So, I can't see a particular audience...



BV72, opened or purple... Argh, this joke doesn't work in inglish... :D

[MartianBlonde]

This is a bit off topic, but in terms of the portrayal of foreign (non US, in particular non first language English speakers) characters: I always found it ridiculous that they have to say at least a word in their own language per dialogue balloon. Take Nightcrawler, for example: he must have lived in the US for ages now, but he still throws a German word in the conversation from time to time. Obviously, you can't reproduce the accent in a comic book, but it still comes out as corny to me like that.

[stelok]

This is a bit off topic, but in terms of the portrayal of foreign (non US, in particular non first language English speakers) characters: I always found it ridiculous that they have to say at least a word in their own language per dialogue balloon. Take Nightcrawler, for example: he must have lived in the US for ages now, but he still throws a German word in the conversation from time to time. Obviously, you can't reproduce the accent in a comic book, but it still comes out as corny to me like that.

Blame it on the writers who were not fluent in German. The X-Men writers' knowledges of German language are faulty.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Nightcrawler



To keep authenticity, the writers - especially Chris Claremont - made Nightcrawler speak German phrases. But due to poor translation, these phrases were often a source of unintended comedy for native German speakers. Notable errors were:
English word-----False translation-----------------------Correct translation
Kitten-----------Katzchen (his pet name for Kitty)-------Kätzchen
Darling----------Leibchen (Shirt)------------------------Liebchen or Liebling
Understood?----Verstehen? (To understand)-------------Verstanden?
What?---------- Vas?----------------------------------Was? (pronounced Vas?)


In addition, the X-Men writers often did not realize that German nouns have three different grammatical genders, causing Nightcrawler to talk with obvious grammatical errors. Also, in German one would mostly say 'wie', meaning 'how', rather than a direct translation of 'what', but 'was' is also used in German. The same rule applies in other languages, such as Spanish, where the replacement of the English query 'what?' would be '¿cómo?' (meaning 'how') instead of '¿qué?' (meaning 'what') - '¿qué?' is also used, but it is considered rude.

[Nitz the Bloody]

I'm not bothered by Japanese characters having elements of anime culture ( ninjas, samurai, giant robots, etc. ) incorporated, so much as I am bothered by when those elements are hijacked by non-Japanese characters. Such as the fact that Iron Fist, a chi-channeling martial artist, is Aryan poster boy Danny Rand. Or that the new Ronin identity has been occupied by a Chicana/Indian woman and a rather redneck man. Stealing the culture without giving so much as a thank you note....though I suppose that's not a surprise...

[EmeraldCity]

I majored in Japanese history and now I live in Yokohama. This has bothered me on a lot of levels in comics, and it doesn't stop with Japanese. Blacks, Chinese, and so on. I think it is just the writer's exp with said people. I have been writing my comic for some years (shameless plug) and feel that the people I have spent the least amount of time around are the hardest to write for. I don't think it is done on purpose and I try to study about certain people but it isn't the same as dealing with them in real life. That being said I hope I have done Japanese people justice in my book! :D


I'm not bothered by Japanese characters having elements of anime culture ( ninjas, samurai, giant robots, etc. ) incorporated, so much as I am bothered by when those elements are hijacked by non-Japanese characters. Such as the fact that Iron Fist, a chi-channeling martial artist, is Aryan poster boy Danny Rand. Or that the new Ronin identity has been occupied by a Chicana/Indian woman and a rather redneck man. Stealing the culture without giving so much as a thank you note....though I suppose that's not a surprise...

Psylock was the one who bugged me the most...

[Lobsterdom]

I majored in Japanese history and now I live in Yokohama.

Whoa! Might have brushed past you several times.:D
Are you intending to publish this comic in anyway?

On topic...I ditto most of everyone's comments.:(
How about Fuji(Toshiro Misawa) from Stormwatch?
He wasn't that of a stereotype...calm-minded and quite playful at times.

[pariah-1972]

why is it that every Japanese character in Marvel comics are somehow related it seems like?
i know its a fairly small island but sheesh
i wouldnt be surprised to learn that the Mandarin is somehow related to Silver Samurai and the rest of that nutty family.

[hyzmarca]

I'm not bothered by Japanese characters having elements of anime culture ( ninjas, samurai, giant robots, etc. ) incorporated, so much as I am bothered by when those elements are hijacked by non-Japanese characters. Such as the fact that Iron Fist, a chi-channeling martial artist, is Aryan poster boy Danny Rand. Or that the new Ronin identity has been occupied by a Chicana/Indian woman and a rather redneck man. Stealing the culture without giving so much as a thank you note....though I suppose that's not a surprise...

The American Ninja being better than Japanese ninja has been a sterotype for a very long time, ever since American Ninja.

[Royal]

The American Ninja being better than Japanese ninja has been a sterotype for a very long time, ever since American Ninja.

Judomaster.

*shivers*

[EmeraldCity]

Whoa! Might have brushed past you several times.:D
Are you intending to publish this comic in anyway?


fully intend to! :D

[Erebus]

I'm not bothered by Japanese characters having elements of anime culture ( ninjas, samurai, giant robots, etc. ) incorporated, so much as I am bothered by when those elements are hijacked by non-Japanese characters. Such as the fact that Iron Fist, a chi-channeling martial artist, is Aryan poster boy Danny Rand. Or that the new Ronin identity has been occupied by a Chicana/Indian woman and a rather redneck man. Stealing the culture without giving so much as a thank you note....though I suppose that's not a surprise...

I don't mind at all, as long as those cultures are treated respectfully. Look at the list of manga taken from Western concepts: One Piece, Trigun, Cowboy Behop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Samurai Champloo, etc. In fact, I think the West has contributed more to Japanese media then they to us.

[Omar Karindu]

I dunno on Danny Rand. On the one hand, his martial arts background and origin aren't exactly ethnically specific: Kun L'Un owes far more to Lost Horizon and the Western mythology of Shangri-La than it does to any real Asian nation, and likewise the curious iconography of stealing extra chi from the heart of a slain dragon is less Shintoism, Taoism, or Buddhism than it is St. George by way of Bruce Lee and New Age spirituality. It's a land ruled by an evil wizard that fights plant-monsters and has young men slaying dragons for rank and power; that's certainly not the "authentically" Chinse or Japanese take on dragons or samurai or Sun Wukong to begin with.

On the other hand, those Westernized myths of "the Orient" that form the character's background are just that: Orientalist mythologies, which can't be accused of stealing cultural tropes because they're too busy imposing Western tropes to start with. It's the Western take on chi and martial arts that Iron Fist wallows in; the borrowing has already long since been done by the wider culture, and Iron Fist borrows not from the original source but from the borrowed and distorted verson already extant, already in circulation.

Taken in that way, Rand is white for the same reason Natty Bumpo is white: he's another avatar of "the [white] man without a cross," the white man who is absorbed into a (usually distorted and fictive) Other culture and turns out to be a better exemplar of it than the "natives" or "Others." The idea being that he's better than them because he's white, and better than other whites at navigating that culture because he "blongs" to it. This latter sense of "belonging" to an "alien" culture is why he lacks a cross; he lacks, in short, Western religious tradition and, synechdochically, the burdens of Western culture even as his ethnicity grants him certain presumed benefits.

Ironically, a lot of the problem with Iron Fist's cultural borrowing is that Claremont tried to reauthenticate the Western myth by using names from Chinese mythologies and folkloric traditions, and by actually bothering to learn a litle about real martial arts. In short, he made a genuine effort to incorporate some trappings of the culture that had been covered over by the Orientalist myth.

Of course, it also causes problems when, Master Khan and Yu-Ti aside, pretty much everyone in Kun L'Un was usually depicted as, well, Caucasians in Oriental drag. (I use the word Oriental carefully; they dress, not like Asians, but like fantastic "Orientals.") Had the characters been depicted as ethnically Asian, there'd be a real question of direct racism. The Orientalist myth laded onto broadly Caucasian characters, on the other hand, generates a more complex (if not necessarily more ethical) racial politics.

I'd have to argue that, in many ways, Shang-Chi is (at least at the start) a far more problematic character in terms of racialism -- not to say racism -- than Iron Fist. But then, he's also tied up with Rohmer's originally racist Fu Manchu mythos...

[zuludelta]

the curious iconography of stealing extra chi from the heart of a slain dragon is less Shintoism, Taoism, or Buddhism than it is St. George by way of Bruce Lee and New Age spirituality. It's a land ruled by an evil wizard that fights plant-monsters and has young men slaying dragons for rank and power; that's certainly not the "authentically" Chinse or Japanese take on dragons or samurai or Sun Wukong to begin with.

Excellent insight... while I always thought that the idea of "killing" a dragon to gain power is antithetical to the philosophies and belief systems associated with the traditional Asian martial arts, I never really made the connection with St. George and the Dragon.

Taken in that way, Rand is white for the same reason Natty Bumpo is white: he's another avatar of "the [white] man without a cross," the white man who is absorbed into a (usually distorted and fictive) Other culture and turns out to be a better exemplar of it than the "natives" or "Others." The idea being that he's better than them because he's white, and better than other whites at navigating that culture because he "belongs" to it. This latter sense of "belonging" to an "alien" culture is why he lacks a cross; he lacks, in short, Western religious tradition and, synechdochically, the burdens of Western culture even as his ethnicity grants him certain presumed benefits.

Media portrayals of the "[white] man without a cross" is almost a genre unto itself at this point (curiously and almost uniquely American for the most part, I find), stretching all the way from Natty Bumpo/Hawkeye of The Leatherstocking Tales to Dances With Wolves, and The Last Samurai. You could even argue that a similar interaction is at play with the overwhelming popularity of ostensibly Caucasian hip-hop artists such as the Beastie Boys and Eminem (although it goes without saying that I'm simplifying things there).

[EmeraldCity]

I know this is a bit off-topic, but the reverse is also true.

In many cases in many mangas and animes (and some European comics), Americans aren't portrayed that well, either. Especially African-Americans.

In fact, There are few mangas and animes that I've seen that portray black people in a decent way in general. And this doesn't only apply with stuff like DBZ.

I'm not trying create a racial conspiracy or anything, but it's just something that I, and a more avid manga/anime fan have noticed.

I missed this post the first time I went through here. Again it comes down to the experience of the writer/artist with the said group of people. In Japan it is still a whopping 94-96% Japanese people only.. that leaves at most 6% of the population to be a mix of other Asians, blacks, whites... While it is no excuse we can see that they have little access to other people. You can tell right away mangas that have people who have indeed met, and respect American black people and the culture we have. Slam Dunk is one of them.

That is why I love living here because I have the chance to change the view of how people look at other people. They have a lot of stereotypes but most of them are secondhand and easy to break, because they have no history dealing with many other people.

Now with that being said, it doesn't excuse them from drawing big lipped funny speak black people. And because they do it doesn't mean that there is a green light for western comics to be ignorant as well..

[Pink Bat Max]

You wanna see stereotypes, check out some golden age comics.

Or some silver age ones!
http://www.reappropriate.com/aaheroes/images/eggfu.jpg

Of course, things are much better now:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v354/ianbrill/DC52Week25-021.jpg

See? No mustache!