I am apparently the only one who simply does not care about the 'racefail' of Avatar: The Motion Picture. IMHO anime characters often skew Caucasian in their design, and Aang at least did, at least to my perspective. I agree it could've been handled much better, and there were other distinctly Asian characters who were not necessarily cast well.

That said, that picture of the kid is awkward as hell.

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Avatar (from what I've seen; I never watched it; after my time) was something of an exception, though, definitely, the characters on Pokemon and Digimon never looked remotely Japanese to me.

On the casting issue, I tend toward giving M. Night Shyamalan the benefit of the doubt there (not that the movie won't probably suck, though, based on his track record).

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Anime characters don't "skew white" unless you take the default to be white.

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SO. MUCH. MOTTO.

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Uh...huh. Sorry, but that's just ignorance. Anime characters are not skewed Caucasian in their design unless they are deliberately Caucasian. You have to have a very limited knowledge of Asian features to believe that squinty eyes are the norm. As in comics, animation depends on open facial expressions, especially for the hero. Round eyes and an open face give the hero emotional availability - the emotions are clearly expressed and also allows the viewer to put their own self onto that tabula rasa.

I would rage a bit more but instead I'll point you to a helpful source:
http://www.matt-thorn.com/mangagaku/faceoftheother.html

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Ooh, that's a good link. I really wish I could find the one that used happy faces to brilliantly unpack the racial assumptions of the viewer.

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I don't have a limited knowledge of Asian features, thank you. And I understand anime stylization. But I do think the characters are often designed a certain way to maximize certain points of identification. Please save the rage for someone who actually deserves it, as opposed to a bystander who understands the anger but does not share an unending stream of fury.

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But your perspective is not the only perspective!

Taking the time to specifically say you don't care seems a little.. mean.


OP: Despite having seen only the first.. two? episodes of Avatar, I still ship that. So thanks for the awh!

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Yeah, you definitely are the only one who doesn't care.

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Everyone is free to respectfully express their opinions here.

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Unrelated, but I saw the image from your icon on a t-shirt a little while ago. What is it from?

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... I didn't get an e-mail from this reply. NOT AGAIN, DAMN IT.

I actually have no clue! I found it floating around the internet and saved it a year ago, and I knew there'd be a time when it would become usable.

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Putting aside whether or not the characters look Caucasian (which I think the other commenters argue eloquently that they don't), the entire culture of the Avatar world is a blend of various historical Asian cultures, especially historical China.

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I certainly agree that it is a fusion of cultures, predominantly Asian, and that Asian concepts of mythology and quasi-spinoffs therein dominate the narrative.

Maybe it's just the way I personally took it, though, but I got a sense as a new viewer of the cultural lineage to be not just Asian but everything under the sun - so no one child, Asian, Latin, African, Native American, black, white, what have you, can look at Aang or Sokka or Katara, with their varied features, colors, and naming, and definitively say, "that's me, but that's NOT me." Everyone can potentially see themselves in there, I think. I saw Avatar as removed from any extremely specific or conventional definition of race - it's a fictional world with history different from others, where culture is something entirely new.

As I said, I do think they cast too white overall, given the rich cultural background of the show, but I was not surprised or appalled when a white child was cast as Aang, anymore than I was offended when people would offer up white actors to play roles in, say, a live-action Cowboy Bebop (another show where I felt cultures fused together in a new world).

Anyway, that's where I leave this.

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Whatever anime characters look like to you is irrelevant as Avatar isn't an anime and their chara desing didn't look white, and the nation's cultures were obviously based on non-white cultures.

And no, you're not the only one who doesn't care. Unfortunately, those who doesn't care keep mentioning how much they don't care every time the subject comes up.

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You have plenty of company in not caring about racism.

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