Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-112.207.82.60-20140309021854/@comment-5051846-20150415171856

MahApplez wrote: Alright you have a point.

Then again, why are we arguing about skin color?

Rin has blonde hair and her voice provider doesn't. Gakupo has blue eyes and his voice provider doesn't. These designs are racist because Japanese people don't have these qualities.

If you think about it, this is exactly how this argument sounds (no, I don't think that's actually racist). I really don't think many Vocaloid represent their vps very well so why is skin color a big deal? It's just what people want to draw. I don't draw black people much, purely because I draw in pencil and it would a) waste lead b) smudge everywhere c) be hard to drawl facial features. The issue of skin colour is a lot more important than hair colour. ): This is because the crux of this discussion relates to the major problem of POC representation in media. The unrealistic lack of non-white people in TV, movies, and pop culture in general has huge knock-on effects which has made it one of our biggest recent cultural concerns.

Although it's just a drop in the ocean, Leon and Lola's presentation could be furthering this phenomenon, as is the current lack of representation in Western Vocaloid overall.

I know it's just a Wikipedia article, but hopefully you can find some useful sources explaining the subject in more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_African_Americans_in_media