#btw don't think i'm not aware that i didn't address in-fandom racism at all

[evilkitten3]

ok so i'm going to preface this by reminding everyone that i'm white and therefore can only come at this from a white person's perspective; on top of that i am in no way qualified to talk about race, racial prejudices, or colorism as it affects any country, least of all a country i have never been to on a continent that i have also never been to. anything i have to say on the subject should be treated exclusively as my best guesses unless i'm including a link to something by someone who knows more than me. ok? ok.

so i'll start with this:

hashirama's skin tone in the anime is somewhat different from his skin tone in the manga (rather, his skin tone on the cover of volume 64, which is the one that i own and am the most familiar with). there are, as far as i am aware, not really any signs i'm aware of in the manga that hashirama is intended to be darker than madara, but since most of his appearances there aren't in color, it likely wouldn't show up much.

if i had to guess why he's noticeably darker in the anime, my first guess would probably be to contrast with tobirama's color scheme (dark hair vs light hair, red clothes vs blue clothes, dark skin vs light skin), as both of them showed up way back when orochimaru first invaded during the chuunin exams which i think was before madara was a properly thought of character, and which i'm fairly certain was before he'd been mentioned at all.

interestingly, this isn't hashirama's only color change - in the manga, his sage mode markings are red, while the anime has them as green.

now typically i'd say something like "well perhaps people are just going with the source material rather than the adaptation" bc i tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. but most fanart of kidoumaru from the sound four/five/six/five-and-a-head seems to lean pretty strongly towards the anime's version

here's kidoumaru and sakon/ukon in the anime:

and here they are on the cover of volume 24 of the manga:

on the other other hand, iruka is in the same boat as hashirama (lighter in the manga, darker in the anime), and yet fanart pretty much only contains the anime's version

so as much as i'd love to come up with an answer for you, all i can really do here is give you a very bewildered shrug

something I notice when seeing Hashirama's fanarts are how they whitewash him, like it's so strange and weird why can't ppl just draw him dark skinned like in canon?

@narutobrainrotstuff @evilkitten3 @anubisthe1