"Anime seems white to me"
My opinion on this issue: we have a tendency to identify non ethnically emphasized character as familiar ethnic person especially in childhood due to egocentric world view and limited experience of "diversity," contrary to juvenile altruistic self image.

And vice versa. The more unfamiliar characters& #39; ethnicity are, the more distinguishingly they are depicted with ethnic signs.
Thishttps://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="⬇️" title="Downwards arrow" aria-label="Emoji: Downwards arrow"> maybe came from Chinese sphere and I, as a Japanese, generally agree. We know each other that not all east asians have slanted eyes, but……

when it comes to picture, emerges the temptation to roughly impose ethnic signs on dissimilated others.
what distinguishes ethnic signs from not depends on your living cultural environment and times. As you know, during pre modern era east asian cultures preferred narrow eyes…

regardless of not a few compatriots with relatively chiseled features and big-eyes.
I don& #39;t know (maybe under the western influence) when, why and how this trend changed. (note: preference for flat features and narrow eyes remains bc we already have lived in diversity of taste)

While whether standard or not has altered along with aesthetic trends, Japanese feel standard characters as Japanese or, especially in SF, fantasy, and gag, mukokuseki (google it if you don& #39;t know. I think this word& #39;s nuance can& #39;t be conveyed through replacing a word for a word)

Japanese anime has prevailed all over the world. Various ethnic children has grown up watching and feeling close to anime. A sort of tragic and comedic fuss would be kicked off here: Whites easily recoganize fair skin characters as white, and Blacks do tanned skin ones as black.

According to general Japanese iconology not restricted to otaku, fair skin without a long nose nor colored eyes means in most cases just fair skin asian or mukokuseki. And tanned skin without a round nose nor thick lip means in most cases just tanned asian or mukokuseki.

Mukokuseki can include white or black as you like it, but its core value is to let the character be as it is, not related to real social issue nor politics. Fiction is fiction. You might be irritated with our ambiguousness, but WE are confused by western political stiff demand.