Your thoughts as to why Nagatoro has dark skin......

Horn_dawg_2019 said:
Ok, so we have a female MC who has dark skin, so the question, why???

No racial profiling intended.

Hydraze0 said:


As an Asia born-and-raised Asian that frequently interacts with multiple ethnicity group and people from different nations, your interpretation is mostly correct.

Japanese animation rarely have darker skin (or tanned skin) Asian and Black people for different reasons.

Since Japanese animations are made by and made for the Japanese, it is important to create animation that is relatable to the locals to promote sales. Especially with slice of life anime that you listed, since one of the point in the genre is to remind audience of their past experience (e.g. high school life, youth).

For non-Japanese ethnicity:
If frequently adding multiple ethnicity, it is harder for the audience to relate and causes disassociation between the plot and the experience that audience acquired needed to relate to the anime.

Not everyone is privilege like me who have a family that is wealthy enough to allow me to enter an private international school with diverse ethnicity in the past and live abroad, and certainly most anime creators probably are not privileged to have the same treatment. Without such experience, both anime creators and Japanese audience wouldn't even expect to have characters with other ethnicity in the anime since they have no experience of interacting with them at all.

For darker skin or tanned skin characters:
Japanese animation likes to promote products outside of the animation itself, such as figures and body pillows. The Asian culture is obsessed with whitening due to being one of the major trademark of beauty, which is sculpted by thousand years of culture and history. Individuals with darker skin tone are not the majorities aesthetic preference due to cultural influences, and promoting an character with darker skin may hinders sales. That's why you rarely see any tanned or darker skin characters in anime.

Secondly, tanned skin is very 2000s that integrated into the 'Gyaru' trend. And these gyaru are often associate with being 'popular' and tendency of bullying. There are some anime focuses on that, such as:

My First Girl Friend is a Gal:


The Disastrous Life of Saiki K:


The bullies from Durarara:


These tanned girls are either main characters of anime that focuses on the theme of "You've wronged them, they are nicer people than you expect" or straight up just make them villain.



I totally agree with you when artist does that. I rather them not adding other ethnicity or nationalities if they have never interacted with them, because sometimes just pisses me off since I'm Chinese. The characteristics of every Chinese characters in anime is ONLY about them knowing Kung Fu and other times with Black people ONLY portray them as rappers, which is really forced and makes the characters really shallow.

However, the artist (also draws hentai) draws a lot of fetish art and knows that there is a market for tanned girls (you can find this category in JAV being quite popular) like Nagatoro but absent in the anime industry. So he just took the opportunity and capitalizes it, and it worked.

Nagatoro's design is literally an erotic stereotype that every teenage boy in Japan fantasize about, the tanned girl from the swimming club.

Other stereotype are something like the freaky quiet library girl (e.g. Mysterious Girlfriend X), tutor/teacher that comes to your house everyday (e.g. Why the Hell are You Here, Teacher!?, Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai's Kurisu), Gyaru, the school nurse (or just nurse; e.g., (again) Why the Hell are You Here, Teacher!?), your sister (We already know there are like hundreds of anime about that), and more I can't think of right now. But you get my point.

Rinrinka said:
Why don't you also ask why other anime girls have white skin OP?

bastek66 said:
Are MAL users getting stupid? She's tanned.

bastek66 said:
Are MAL users getting stupid? She's tanned.