Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-112.207.82.60-20140309021854/@comment-53539-20150415194043

Black singers have a hard time getting their work established compared to White singers, and often aren't acknowledged for their work. So on a artistic level this is a big issue.

As I said there is some basis in culture itself... Blacks were traditionally "slaves", they were taken from Africa by their fellow Africans (most enslavers WEREN'T white, they were black) to be sold to whites around the world as slaves. Though slavery impacted whites and many ethnics, a lot of the focus has always been on the mass Black population enslavement because entire villages were destroy and families torn apart... So bad was the situation that decades later they still can't escape 100%. This is why you have in TV shows the "standard black guy for the sake of him being black", despite most of the cast both main and supporting, guest or bit-parts being white.

In other cultures its a more stable problem. Simply put it, if you have dark skin, it means you are a labourer such as a farmer and therefore are from the lower classes. Pale means you have a office job, a higher paying carer possibly and are of a higher class. See Merli and Aoki Lapis designs which follows this theory, as well as Macne Nana's sisters the Coco twins. In both cases their designs match their situations and each sister has pale or tanned skin to match things. I' argue in both darker toned skins cases... Its actually not a great thing this goes on... :-/

Then you get to the west where those of pale skin ethnics, such as European descent, having a tan means you can afford to be away from the desk. Ergo, its a sign of EXTREME wealth.

But always remember; anime characters represent Japanese, even if they do not have the skin or appearance to match, they do not represent westerners. Its literally just part of the manga/anime design tropes. It used to be everything on a character down to hair and skin colour was a type of colour code that was designed for viewers to instantly know what kind of person they were looking at. Fury red head.. Blond Bimbos... Black haired beauties... You see it more in the older series then the ones in the last decade. >_<

It still doesn't change how insulting the failure to acknowledge Leon or Lola as anything by White could be seen as. And I've always maintained that its not good if both are white, at least make one black if you won't make both. Soul music is also primary a black singer base and the number of white singers is much smaller.

In Leon's case, its actually just a typical westerner... Also even if people get the chance to make their own designs up, so many stick to the most popular its as bad as the situation with Roro and VY2. Nobody tries to even come up with their own design they just re-use the same crappy OC designs. Its a sign of either laziness or lack of creativity. Especially when those using Roro as VY2 will not repeat this for VY1 and vary the design greatly.