Why Blonde-Haired, Blue-Eyed Sailor Moon Is Neither White Nor Japanese
An online challenge to redraw the beloved character in one’s own style sparked a kerfuffle among users that drew them into the eternal question of why Japanese anime characters look white to them.Earlier this year, a Twitter storm erupted over drawings of Japan’s eternal anime superheroine, Sailor Moon (セーラームーン). A redraw of the blonde-haired character that gave her Asian facial features drew rapt approval from Twitter users writing in English, before a swift backlash from Japanese and other Asian users who decried it as stereotyping. At the heart of the storm is a question of how manga reader...