#awgh so many links

[so-bitya]

Whitewashing in Anime - Agni ft. Cithis

Browns of the Same Shade

Hello again! I decided to revisit this topic again now that we have Agni's official appearance in the anime. I also wanted to go over some aspects that I did not get to include in my first post.

In the end, Agni also got lightened! His skin tone was always somewhat darker than Soma's in both the anime and manga appearances. Yana does describe his appearance as a "dark-skinned woman" in her genderbend sketches. So, for the anime to lighten him this much to such an degree is disappointing.

The skin diversity in the anime has been pretty lacking so far. Once again, A1 studios was not perfect, but they did manage to give all three Indian characters different dark skin tones, while this anime has every Indian generally the same lightened shade.

(every indian character in the anime are the same skin tone... cloverworks stand up, you can't let a-1 studios beat you like this)

Personal opinion of mine, I feel like animation studios aren't willing to play with skin color values as much anymore. I remember even seeing white characters being various shades of brown, especially under certain lighting and environments. Unlike now, when every character looks bleached the second they hit the sun.

I also wanted to review what I think of Soma's appearance. Soma's skin tone isn't any darker than it was in the teaser shot sadly, so we can't blame the lighting. I already was expecting it, but it's still a shame.

One positive feature I'll give to the anime is that Soma's nose isn't pronounced all the time. In certain scenes, his nose isn't as sharp as it would be for other characters. I believe that's just the style for the anime and its dependent on the shot.

Anyway, I felt this image was pretty on topic with Soma and Agni's situation and just anime remakes/reboots in general lately:

Brown ≠ Grey

Something I'm embarrassed I forgot in my last post is saturation! I mentioned often how darker skin tones tend to be neglected, but not only that, but the color! The vibrancy in the skin, the life!

A common feature I noticed, especially in East Asian media, is how they avoid the "brown" in dark-skinned characters, by constantly making their skin tone duller, ending up with more grey-toned skin.

I often see art advice for digital artists that they should pick desaturated colors or colors in the "grey zone" as to not overwhelm the art piece. Which is fine most of the time! But when you apply that advice for brown skin, what you get are mostly grey tones, and end up having your character look like a zombie.

Here are some colors I randomly picked. The colors on the left are those sandy, dull grey tones I was talking about. If you want to get those richer, deeper-toned browns, you need to pick colors with more saturation like the ones on the right.

Now of course, color is relative and you can't just color pick your way around without considering how it fits in with the rest of the piece. You can even end up washing out your brown character despite choosing a strong brown color. You have to consider the background, lighting, undertones, the environment, and how they'll affect your character. There may even be times desaturated colors work better, but you have to at least consider why it works "better".

Let's take a look at everyone's favorite manga artist right now, Ryoko Rui! Ryoko Rui is praised often for her diverse character roster and creature design, however I always found her darker skin tones rather... lacking, as such for the elf Cithis.

(I color picked her skin tone and it matched my light grey shades above lol)

Her skin tone is very washed out and grey. She not nearly as dark as she appears in the manga. Once again, there's that dissonance between skin tones. Now take a look at the manga's grey tones.

When you see this, what skin tone do you imagine for her? Do you imagine the greyish, washed out tones from above or do you imagine something more akin to these black fae models I found?

(credit: @jaharajayde on twitter and @glassmarigolds on pinterest)

I'll give Rui credit that her color illustrations of Cithis improved and she's gotten better giving Cithis stronger undertones. I really like how the fandom has been illustrating her too, there's been some amazing fanart of Cithis such as these (the lighting in the last one is lovely).

Just adding saturation helps so much with skin tone. I even found an fan edit of Soma that added more color back into his skin, and he looks so much better for it.

One might say, "Oh what's wrong with having grey skin tones in a fantasy story!" Well... nothing really! You can have green or purple or blue characters if you like. But when there's already a startlingly lack of brown characters in a fantasy story, it can get awfully uncomfortable seeing the story portray different fantasy "races" with obviously non white racial features... but don't want to include any black/brown skin tones.

(fantasy artists would sooner give an orc dreads than a human, forget a "noble" creature like an elf... such decisions only reveals the artists' viewpoints)

It all just comes back down to avoiding that dreaded "brown". When it comes to these "reasons", we have to question whether they aren't just more excuses to not include black and brown people in stories, which makes me come to my next point:

Essence of Brown

There's some severe misinformation I want to address about Soma. I saw a fan a while ago say that Soma has a white mother which explains why he has light skin.

Firstly, that information is false. It was a concept Yana had for Soma, but quickly decided to drop it. Soma is not half white.

In the early drafts of the series, Soma had a white mother and, thus, white skin. However, this was later omitted in final revisions.

(quoted from the official kuroshitsuji wiki as an excerpt from the character guide)

Yes, you can have mixed parents and any kind of skin tone really! But it feels... dishonest to create "reasons" why the manga's first major Indian character, joining a cast of white people in a European country, should have white skin as well. Especially considering Yana's artstyle, without Soma's skin tone and Indian wardrobe, is his physical characteristics like his face even distinguishable enough for him not to be mistaken as white?

Imagine I wrote a story set in France, and teased an appearance of an African character in story that only had white characters until now, only for him to be completely white in appearance, and identical to every other white man, except for the occasionally exotic dress and other drab stereotypes.

What would you think? That his race is only a dressing to fulfill an exotic need at times? That he's a supposed homage to another culture, but it's wrong to have him actually look like the majority of people who made said culture? Why is he even this way?

Did he have a white parent? A white upbringing? Lived in a white culture, lived a white life? Maybe he was separated from birth! From his hometown, his country, his people, anything to justify why my "brown" character is so divorced from that part of his identity, from that side of the family whose skin tone runs a little too dark.

And I think that's why Yana decided to drop the concept of giving him a white mother. Why go through all those loopholes and explanations? Why all that justification for him to have white skin?

It's just another way to avoid the "browness" again for a character, what makes them brown in the first place and related to black/brown cultures. It's what we should consider in the future when we find ourselves coming up with "reasons" why black/brown characters should be anything but themselves.

Whitewashing in Anime - Soma ft. Usopp