Code Geass, Avatar, and racial coding in animation.

[nenena]

Went to the bookstore today. Hooray!

I picked up Ah! My Goddess volume 38, with Chrono on the cover. In the manga canon, I guess she's officially strawberry blonde, now.

So I guess Crono is important enough to rank among Rind, Chihiro, and other supporting characters who have gotten their own volume covers. I'm... not sure how I feel about that. I mean, Crono is just so... stupid. But oh well. There are enough better characters in the cast that I really don't care whether Crono deserves her moment in the sun, or not.

The big surprise was an announcement in the back of the book: the Ah! My Goddess "Total Illustration Artbook 1998 ~ 2008" hits the shelves on Christmas Day! Holy crap!! I can't believe that date wasn't announced in last month's Afternoon. Uh, way to advertise your release dates well in advance, guys. Or not.

Speaking of release dates... How to Make Deathscythe was supposed to hit the shelves today, too. But of course, Squeenix has yet to ship any copies to any bookstores in the southern Nagano area. Of course. This always happens, argh! But that's what I get for living in a backwater.

Oh hey, and since I do live in a backwater, today was the first day that I found a copy of Mutuality on the bookstore shelf. Of course I immediately bought it. ;) Yes, yes, I know, the book has been out for three weeks already. But hey, backwater living! Gotta love it.

Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar, Mutuality is the big giant artbook collection of all of CLAMP's illustrations for Code Geass. And it is, absolutely, in a word, stunning. Worth every single penny. Say what you will about Code Geass - and you know I'm not shy about repeatedly stating that I think that it's utter shite, albeit extremely entertaining shite - but it's impossible to deny that CLAMP's artwork for the series, both production designs and promotional materials, really do represent the pinnacle of modern manga artistry. (If you can stand how overwrought they are, that is.)

Anyway, the book is gorgeous, almost mind-blowingly so, and contains many paintings so visually complicated that I could stare at them for hours and still not be able to appreciate every single detail. The best part of the book, however, is an extensive section of all of the early, rejected character designs that CLAMP churned out. Some of them are outright LOLarious. And some of them are extremely... telling. I know that I've written about this phenomenon before, when the original Lelouch and Suzaku character designs were first revealed in an issue of Newtype. But it still *fascinates* me to observe the process that CLAMP applied to evolving those two character designs from their rough versions to their final versions.

In their original designs, CLAMP clearly intended to emphasize the respective ethnicities of Suzaku and Lelouch, as Code Geass starts and ends with a race war and, well, the ethnicity of each character is super-important to the plot. Hence, Suzaku was given spiky black hair, narrow black eyes, and sharp, angular, "Asian"-looking features. Lelouch, on the other hand, was given blonde curly hair, and round blue eyes. Because he's Brittanian royalty, and therefore SUPER!Caucasian, of course.

The problem, however, is that these character designs wouldn't work in the anime medium. The reason is that anime audiences are used to a visual language of character design that codes characters in terms of their personality and role in the story, NOT in terms of their race.

Hence, the final version of Suzaku ends up with curly, lighter-colored brown hair, and round, green eyes. These features emphasize his purity and moral goodness. Lelouch, on the other hand, ends up with spiky black hair, narrow eyes, and sharp, angular features - to emphasize the fact that he's a cunning, amoral manipulator. The facts that Suzaku is Japanese and Lelouch is Brittanian don't need to be coded into their character designs, because the actual story (and heck, even the names of the characters) emphasize that plenty enough for us. Heck, practically every episode has Suzaku reminding the audience that he is SUPER!Japanese, whereas Lelouch is constantly reminding viewers that he's ZOMG!Brittanian. The race of these two character isn't exactly handled in a subtle fashion. In fact, their respective racial backgrounds become so vital to the plot that, like I said, they're mentioned several times in nearly every episode.


Left: Suzaku's original character design. Note: Spiky black hair, angular black eyes, sharp little nose.
Right: Lelouch's original character design. Note: Softer hair shape and color, round blue eyes, rounder nose.


Lelouch's final character design, sans colors.
Translated from CLAMP's notes: "Once we decided that Lelouch's theme color was 'black' and Suzaku's
was 'white,' we of course had to give Lelouch pitch-black hair, despite the fact that he wasn't Japanese."


Suzaku's final character design, sans colors.
Translated from CLAMP's notes: "His hair just started getting curlier and curlier..."


Final designs, with colors. There's only one Asian character in this picture... And he's on the far left, dressed in white.

And that's how anime works. It's not that race is never coded visually. I'm sure we can all think of examples of Caucasian anime character saddled with blonde hair and big noses, or God, a thousand times worse, characters of African descent stuck with big noses and big lips. BUT those visual racial codings are usually only allowed to happen if they don't conflict with the visual personality codings.

Japanese audiences might not have accepted a Suzaku with narrow black eyes and an angular face. That's because in the usual anime shorthand, features like "narrow black eyes" and "angular facial features" are meant to indicate deviousness, cunning intellect, and general untrustworthiness. Suzaku is none of these things; he's meant to be the White Knight, the polar OPPOSITE of all of the above. Hence, if he had been designed to have angular "Asian" features, his visual cues would have conflicted with his character's personality. So CLAMP ditched their attempt to visually code Suzaku's race, and instead embraced a character design that reflected his personality in a visual shorthand. And that, in short, is what anime viewers are used to.


Which one is Japanese? Which one is a British prince?

When I think of examples of characters who do look coded racially, particularly in Code Geass, it often happens to be a coincidence of that character's personality matching up with the appropriate quote-unquote "racial" codings. (Which really aren't.) I.E., Todou, who is like even more SUPER!Japanese than Suzaku, gets the spiky black hair, the narrow black eyes, and the angular face. But that's because he's a hardass, not necessarily because he's SUPER!Japanese. (Other SUPER!Japanese characters, like Kaguya, have round features and big eyes. Because it all comes down to personality, not race, remember?) And most of Lelouche's Ashford friends have big eyes and round faces, but that's because they're all sunshine and rainbow sparkles. Not because we're meant to be reading them visually as "Caucasian." It's because we're meant to be reading them visually as friendly, sunny people. Or shy and demure, as in the case of Nina. And on the other hand, the more devious/intellectual Caucasian characters, such as Deithard or Cornelia, end up with narrow eyes and angular faces. And as for hair color, well, forget about it being an indicator of race: some Brittanian characters have black hair (Lelouch, Nina, Marianne, and even Rivalz in CLAMP's illustrations), while plenty of Japanese and/or Chinese characters have rainbow-colored hair. If anything, once again, we can maaaaaaaybe point to black hair as indicating SMARTS and/or hardassness, whereas more light-colored hair tends to be assigned to the more pure, innocent, or just plain stupid characters. Regardless of race. Although there are notable exceptions. Schniezel and Rivalz, much? (Rivalz was ultimately given lighter-colored blue hair in the anime, but that may have been done simply to visually contrast him to Lelouch, rather than as a reflection of his happy-go-lucky personality.) Anyway, I think the exceptions just serve to further prove the point that a character's hair color may or may not have anything to do with his or her race.


One of these characters is SUPER!Japanese. The other is blue-blooded British royalty. Guess which is which.

In terms of coding personality over genetics, I think it's interesting to look at Lelouch's character design when compared to that of his sister Nunally, too. Lelouch has plenty of half-siblings, but only one real sibling-sibling, his sister Nunally. And yet Lelouch and Nunally look nothing alike. I remember when Code Geass first started airing, and plenty of English-speaking fans commented on the fact that Nunally looked more like she was related to Suzaku than to Lelouch. In fact, I think I remember a conspiracy theory or two being sprouted from the simple fact of that uncanny resemblance. However, it turns out that Nunally and Suzaku aren't related after all. The reason that they look so similar is that they have similar personalities. And likewise, because Suzaku has a personality that's almost the polar opposite of Lelouch, and Nunally also has a personality that's almost the polar opposite of Lelouch... Well, you can see where this is going.

Lelouch, on the other hand, bears much more of a visual resemblence to his more devious/intellectual half-siblings, than he does to his full-blooded sister. Once again, this is because the visual language that codes personality types is more important, at least to CLAMP, than representing genetic family resemblance in their character designs.

We don't need to visually "see" that Lelouch and Nunally are related; the story emphasizes that plenty enough for us. And either way. in the penultimate episode, when Nunally's eyes are revealed for the first time, it turns out that she DOES have the same eye color as Lelouch. As eyes happen to be incredibly significant for this particular pair of siblings, that's probably the only family resemblance that could possibly matter, in terms of *having* to be coded visually.

I guess the point of all of this is, I still find it really, really fascinating, the way that anime uses visual tropes to code for things like a character's personality, to the extent that visually coding for other things - such as a character's race - must take a backseat to the more important personality-based considerations. And that's clearly the concern that was driving CLAMP as they designed and then re-designed Lelouch and Suzaku.

This is also, by the way, the reason that it infuriates me every time somebody criticizes anime by saying that all of the characters look white. Um, NO. Visual features like 'big eyes' and 'curly blonde hair' might very well have nothing to do with a character's race. They're meant to indicate something about a character's personality. Especially when said features are present on a character named, say, Takara Miyuki, it should be obvious that said character isn't meant to be white, and to argue otherwise is pretty much asinine.

Insert standard "WHITE IS NOT THE DEFAULT VISUAL MODE IN ANIME" argument here.

The same is true in spades for Avatar. Dumbass Western viewers argue that Aang looks "white" because he has big blue eyes and, um, no hair. I guess. But that's an argument from the assumption that "white" is the default state in the Avatar universe. IT'S NOT. The "default" character design in the Avatar universe is vaguely Eastern Asian. (Other races, such as the Kiyoshi island people and the polar water bending tribes, are clearly marked by either skin color or specific dress.) So the assumption, then, is that Aang is Asian. He's given big blue eyes as a visual shorthand for his purity and innocence. It has nothing to do with his race, because the animators assumed that the audiences would be smart enough to figure out that Aang was Asian (specifically pseudo-Tibetan), without them having to code it visually. Aang's name, dress, culture, behavior, mannerisms, and everything else about him takes care of that racial coding quite thoroughly.

So Aang, like Suzaku, ended up with a character design meant to reflect his personality, not his race. Even if it can be said that race (or more specifically, culture?) plays a large role in both Suzaku's story and Aang's story, they both STILL ended up with big shimmering blue/green eyes, because the animators were utilizing a visual language that emphasized personality over ethnicity.

The same is true for other Avatar characters as well. Katara and Ty Lee have big round eyes because said big round eyes provide visual clues about their personalities - namely, that Katara is optimistic and pure-hearted, and Ty Lee is... well, Ty Lee has a sunshine-and-rainbows personality on the surface. Likewise, grumpypuss characters like Zuko and Mai get narrow eyes and more angular facial features. Azula gets pointy eyes and a narrow face because she's cunning and manipulative - another visual trope that Avatar has borrowed from anime. And yet! Ty Lee, Zuko, Mai, and Azula are clearly meant to all be part of the same race. But they look different. That's because we're assumed to KNOW that they're of the same race without having to be visually told, hence, the character designers gave them varying physical features to reflect their varying personalities. Neat how that works, huh? And likewise, despite the fact that they are different races, Suki and Katara have similar eye shapes and facial shapes, because those features are meant to code similar traits in their personalities. Once again, because visual design features aren't coding race here, they're coding something else!


Same race, different personalities, therefore different character designs.

It's a shame that so many Avatar viewers are too dumb to see past Aang's big, shimmering blue eyes. Aang, like Suzaku, has those round shimmering colorful eyes because he's young and pure-hearted. Not because he's white. Because Aang ain't white!

Edited to add: Now with visuals! Hooray!

Edit again: Another thing just occurred to me. I originally wrote this post with the intent to debunk the "Aang looks white" meme, but there's a more insidious meme out there that can be addressed here as well. That would be the "Avatar characters are raceless" meme. The most common justification for which seems to be the idea that because the main Avatar characters have such varied facial features, they aren't meant to all be of the same race! Mai and Ty Lee look so completely different, that they couldn't possibly both be of the same race, right? WRONG! This is a stupid idea, because it assumes that there's never any physical variations between people of the same race. It is an insidious packaging of the same old racist belief that a) only white people have varied facial features and b) all Asian people look exactly the same. Oh, barf. The character designs in most anime series, as well as in Avatar, directly defy that idea. But, you know. Viewers are still people, and people are still stupid.

Edit the Third: Just added a bunch more images, including scans of CLAMP's original character designs for Lelouch and Suzaku.

Edit the Fourth: Ampersand links an old essay by Matt Thorn about the same dealio, and a fascinating discussion ensues in the comments.

Comments

[imorca.livejournal.com]

Now, I know this could get you very angry, but I really just want to read your response after this very awesome entry. It is clear that you wish to defend anime because the visual can code something /other than/ race. Yet, you were also pretty upset that the producers for the Avatar live-action were not using racially "appropriate" actors to play the parts. Thus, is your final analysis that animation can visually code for personality while other visual art forms cannot, and /must/ absolutely correspond skin color, hair color, etc. to race? In this entry, you argue that the /story/ tells us enough to know relationship that are blood bound (when that is necessary), but it would seem that such is not the case in other visual forms?

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I think the answer to that is pretty simple:

Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Draw two dots for eyes and a smiley mouth. So now you've got a face. Question! What race is the character that you just drew?

Well, that depends on context. "A circle, two eyes, and a mouth" is the demarked state (aka the "default") for most animation. So any character with that sort of design is going to be the "default" race. If your cartoon is set in a basically Anglicized world, the default race is probably white. If you're Walt Disney and you're making a cartoon entirely about anthropomorphized mice, then the default race is "mouse," unless otherwise noted. If your cartoon is set in a Japanese high school, then your default state is a Japanese character. And if your cartoon is set in the Avatar-verse, then your default race is Fantasy East Asian.

Simple design = unmarked state = default race.

Unfortunately, that only works in animation. It doesn't work in real life.

Animation can get away with using design to not code for race, because the animators can define from the outset what the default race in their universe is. Hence, because it's blindingly obvious that Avatar is set in an Asian world, there's no need to make the characters look "Asian" because we already know that they are. That's also why most anime series that are set in Japan never visually code for race. Why would you need to make Suzumiya Haruhi or Tsukino Usagi have black hair and "Asian" racial features? It's blindingly obvious that they're already Japanese, so the animators can play with their features in other ways.

That doesn't work in real life.

Imagine this: Live-action Sailor Moon. Tsukino Usagi is cast as a real blonde with blue eyes, Ami is also a Caucasian with enormous blue eyes, Makoto is a busty American girl with white skin and curly brown hair...

Would you believe, even for a second, that any of those characters were Japanese? At all?

Of course not. That's why then TPTB actually did make a live-action Sailor Moon, they cast Japanese actresses in all of the roles. And kept those actresses in their "natural" states of having black eyes and black/brown hair, when they were supposed to be normal Japanese high school students. Only when they magically "transformed" did they bust out the multi-colored wigs.

Real people can't be reduced to a circle-face, two dots for eyes, and a smiley mouth. They have too many actual features that get in the way. There is no such thing as a "default design" that can be visually modified in real life. Hence, we can't expect audiences to look at real white faces and believe that they're "Asian" just because we tell them to. It doesn't work.

What happens in the Avatar cartoon (and lotsa anime) is different, though. It's not that audiences are shown a "white" face and told to believe that it's Asian. Audiences are just shown a FACE, period. There's nothing inherently "white" about a circle face, two eyes, and a mouth. The racial information is filled in from other cues, such as a character's name, dress, language, culture, food, religious beliefs, etc.

(The problem in Avatar fandom is that so many viewers are used to thinking of white as the default, that every time they look at a simple face - a circle, two eyes, and a mouth - they assume that it is inherently "white" regardless of other evidence to the contrary.)

This also goes back to the idea of the paper mirror. One reason why Avatar is so special is that it's a show set in a universe withOUT white people. It's one of the few examples of mainstream Western media that casts Asian and Inuit characters as totally kickass awesome action heroes who aren't eye-rollingly stereotyped or ridiculous. And that's a powerful thing to be exposed to, for children of all races, but especially for children who can see themselves reflected and hero-ized in Aang's world.

And one reason why the whitewashing of the Avatar cast is so horrific is because it undermines exactly that - which is a big part of why Avatar is so awesome in the first place.

Er... does that answer your question?

(It's a good question; I'm not angry.)

[imorca.livejournal.com]

That's great ^_^! I asked the question b/c I thought your answer would be well thought out and informative, and a good counterpart to your original post. Merry Christmas! I'm leaving for the long drive to my parents - the land of no internet and no cell service.

[the-terrible.livejournal.com]

Perfectly stated, and completely agreed.

[furikku.livejournal.com]

This is pretty interesting. I'd like to see more from you about visual tropes in anime design. :D

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, that was really informative. I sort of knew about the whole "race is not as important as a characters' personality" thing when it comes to design, but you really presented the whole idea well, using Code Geass as a great example. This is obviously one reason why anime is so popular all over the world and not just in Japan; most of the characters don't look like any specific ethnic group, which makes them more universally appealing. Their personality is emphasized the most, even if their culture and origins are Japanese or whatever.

And here's something that John, from AnimeNation.net, said about this topic (he traces it back to the 60s and 70s, when modern anime was starting out and Japan was still very influenced by the West) "...Japan looked to the West in its innate yearning for success and saw that such a degree of freedom as that, would be impossible to attain in highly formal and polite Japanese society. Anime, being an escapist medium, highlighted this yearning by making its characters look "Western." This allowed its Japanese viewers to immerse themselves in worlds that were completely different, with different cultures and people who looked more universal. Even in anime shows that take place in modern-day Japan, the unique look and design of the characters still create a feel that's a bit more wild and adventurous than the Japan in reality. The fact that anime characters look Western but act Japanese and have Japanese names helped bring some connection between them and the Japanese audience. The Japanese audience could see the characters as Japanese people like themselves, but with a bit more worldliness, freedom, and diversity in them."

Well, anyway, very insightful post ^_^

---Yumeka
http://animeyume.com/blog

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I sort of knew about the whole "race is not as important as a characters' personality" thing when it comes to design, but you really presented the whole idea well, using Code Geass as a great example. This is obviously one reason why anime is so popular all over the world and not just in Japan; most of the characters don't look like any specific ethnic group, which makes them more universally appealing. Their personality is emphasized the most, even if their culture and origins are Japanese or whatever.

Um... I really don't want to come across as saying that race isn't important in anime. It's hugely important in Code Geass. It's often an important but taken-for-granted factor in many slice-of-life anime series set in Japan. And it's obviously a big factor in Avatar.

I guess my point was, I'm not trying to say that race isn't important in anime. It's more like... in terms of pure character design, race sometimes takes a back seat to considerations about other visual cues that anime has developed that relate to a character's personality. Even if race is still hugely important to the story.

This is problematic because a lot of times when Western viewers approach anime (or Avatar), they assume that certain features meant to code personality traits - i.e. big round eyes or curly hair - are actually meant to code "whiteness." But they're not.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I guess I didn't word that right, but what I meant is that a character's personality and role is more important than race when it comes to the design of the character...not that race is unimportant to anime in general. Like you said, it's very important in Code Geass. But I also know that in some anime where there's one important foreign character among Japanese characters, they're usually given blond hair and/or blue eyes or some physical feature to make them stand out as foreign against the other characters. So I guess when it's necessary animators will incorporate race into design but it doesn't seem to be the top priority.

But I got to wondering, is there any anime out there where the characters are made to look specifically Japanese (rather than just act Japanese?) I can't think of any off the top of my head...

---Yumeka
http://animeyume.com/blog

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, tough question.

There is an entire subgenre of manga that makes the characters (and artwork in general) look like old school Asian paintings. I.E. Blade of the Immortal, etc. And sometimes that gets translated into animated versions.

In general, however, I'd say that the more cartoony, Disney-influenced style of anime is more prevalent than examples of anime with all-Asian casts that actually look Asian.

[charis]

I suppose things like Grave of the Fireflies don't really count ...

[furikku.livejournal.com]

is there any anime out there where the characters are made to look specifically Japanese

There might be something in that vein in Japanese historical anime, but it's sort of a weird question to answer, since "Japanese" is the default and there's such a wide variety of Japanese traits. It's sort of like asking about Western characters designed to look specifically white; they're usually assumed to be so, so there's not much of a design stereotype to go by.

YES!

[peachyindeed.livejournal.com]

That is an epic entry of anime culture. Big eyes mean innocence, of course, but I've never thought my way through a character's entire look before. Character tropes and coding, that's brilliant! And it's so obvious now that you've brought it up.

Ang's eyes never bothered me. My nephew says they're blue 'cause he can fly. We'll, they're certainly more visually interesting as a sky blue. Can you imagine him with dark brown eyes? His design would definitely lose a little spunk!

Re: YES!

[nenena.livejournal.com]

To be fair, though, in terms of thinking the character design "all the way through a character's entire look," some artists are waaaaay better at that than others. CLAMP is very good at varying their facial structures, eye shapes, mouth shapes, noses, and body types. Other character designers... aren't. Like Aoi Nishimata, who can only vary the hair color and eye color of her characters, and nothing else. :(

Re: YES!

[furikku.livejournal.com]

My nephew says they're blue 'cause he can fly.

Your nephew is brilliant.

[keiichi-chan.livejournal.com]

So I guess Crono is important enough to rank among Rind, Chihiro, and other supporting characters who have gotten their own volume covers.
I guaruntee you it's mainly because she's simultaneously Lolita AND a Maid. She's very otaku-fanservicy in that way and thus guarunteed to get certain types interested in checking out the volume for the cover alone.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

That is so depressingly true. :(

[mekosuchinae.livejournal.com]

This is a wonderful, informative post, one I imagine I will be returning to in the near future and recommending to those who still do not understand why, well, Aang ain't white.

Thank you. :)

(Here via lacewood.)

[eatsyourface.livejournal.com]

(Also here via lacewood, though I do stalk your LJ here and there.)

THIS. Your post really addressed the question of character designs in anime/manga, and how they look caucasian, really well. (My response would've pretty much been, "SUPERFICIALLY, but NONONONONO. x infinity.") Putting into memories!

I'mma just going to friend you? Your posts are really interesting.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Why thank you! (*is flattered*)

[cykstar.livejournal.com]

By now it should be a given that anime (and I still think Avatar should be considered anime but whatever) character designs are based on their personalities, and when their personalities switch so do their appearances (supposedly innocent character's eyes get slanty and evil like when true nature comes out).

While we're on Avatar, Toph would be a little different, since her eyes are hidden and despite looking like a sweet girl she's generally rough and tough. Yet with a gooey inside. Oh deception...how much more...deceptioning...can you get?