Tbf to them that’s just how anime be. Come to think of it, Naruto was actually insanely woke in its anime time for having actually black characters (even when it made the most prominent one a rapper), that’s something even the otherwise wildly leftist Ghibli works tended to avoid.
Though I think you could argue that characters like San from Princess Mononoke are inclusive of indigenous Japanese groups in a way that’s both underacknowledged and more relevant to daily Japanese life.
The way Ghibli’s villains work says something special to me.
The ultimate villain in Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t the Witch of the Wastes or the heart eating fire demon. It’s the court magician causing a war.
The ultimate villain in Spirited Away isn’t the uncaring parents or the dragon no one trusts or the scary spider dude or the grumpy frog guys or the giant baby who hurts Chihiro or even the greed demon. Or the woman who tries to kill the love interest. It’s the woman what owns the bath house.
In Porco Rosso the villain isn’t the air pirates who kidnap children or the asshole rival ace or Porco’s last male friend who joins the fascists. It’s the secret police. It ends with everyone making peace to flee the fascist Italian Air Force.
In Castle In the Sky the air pirates are big softies. The villains are the military and the intelligence officer with the nuke.
That isn’t to say the other villains aren’t bad. The air pirates shoot up a town and rob people. The Witch of the Wastes is cursing everyone. Noh Face eats people! But they are redeemed in my heart. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because everyone lives after Noh Face vomits them up. Or because the air pirates can’t hurt the kids they kidnap.
I love The Witch of the Wastes. She never stops being bad. Never stops hurting people. The state cripples her and she still fights back. She fights everyone. Hurts Calcifer. Taunts Howell. She’s so angry. So broken. If she had the power of the state she’d be worse than Madam Sullivan. But she doesn’t.
Porco doesn’t look at the camera and say, “It’s better to be a pig than a fascist.” The whole thing just… Says something. To me at least.
There’s a ton of commentary out there on this but tl;dr Miyazaki was a Marxist in his youth and is probably best recently described as an ecosocialist and all his works reflect values of anti authoritarianism, rejecting patriarchy, environmentalism, and pacifism or at least the rejection of militarism.
He is, in short, a Japanese Green (not literally since there is a Japanese Green party but also possibly literally)
While anime as a medium has a long history of being really, really shit at dark skinned characters, that doesn’t excuse the fact that these models are completely fucking incapable of creating a darker skinned character as a result
Yes, it’s a direct result of how skewed their training data is, but that just calls out how fundamentally flawed the whole process is. A good artist is capable of adopting an anime style while still creating things that are unusual within that style. Just look at the Avatar series. Korra, Kotara and Sokka can all be darker skinned characters that look amazing in a show that still has a distinctly anime look to it.
Characters in anime are not required to be light skinned. That’s a flaw, not a thing to be preserved as if it’s a requirement of the style. Even in actual anime we’re finally starting to see this change for the better. But LLMs cannot produce things that are new or unusual, they can only regress to the mean.
Chani being barely a shade darker than Paul is very sus to me
though given the context I can’t say I’m surprised
Tbf to them that’s just how anime be. Come to think of it, Naruto was actually insanely woke in its anime time for having actually black characters (even when it made the most prominent one a rapper), that’s something even the otherwise wildly leftist Ghibli works tended to avoid.
Though I think you could argue that characters like San from Princess Mononoke are inclusive of indigenous Japanese groups in a way that’s both underacknowledged and more relevant to daily Japanese life.
I love Ghibli, but “wildly leftist”? Did they make an anarchism PSA or something that I wasn’t aware of?
The way Ghibli’s villains work says something special to me.
The ultimate villain in Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t the Witch of the Wastes or the heart eating fire demon. It’s the court magician causing a war.
The ultimate villain in Spirited Away isn’t the uncaring parents or the dragon no one trusts or the scary spider dude or the grumpy frog guys or the giant baby who hurts Chihiro or even the greed demon. Or the woman who tries to kill the love interest. It’s the woman what owns the bath house.
In Porco Rosso the villain isn’t the air pirates who kidnap children or the asshole rival ace or Porco’s last male friend who joins the fascists. It’s the secret police. It ends with everyone making peace to flee the fascist Italian Air Force.
In Castle In the Sky the air pirates are big softies. The villains are the military and the intelligence officer with the nuke.
That isn’t to say the other villains aren’t bad. The air pirates shoot up a town and rob people. The Witch of the Wastes is cursing everyone. Noh Face eats people! But they are redeemed in my heart. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because everyone lives after Noh Face vomits them up. Or because the air pirates can’t hurt the kids they kidnap.
I love The Witch of the Wastes. She never stops being bad. Never stops hurting people. The state cripples her and she still fights back. She fights everyone. Hurts Calcifer. Taunts Howell. She’s so angry. So broken. If she had the power of the state she’d be worse than Madam Sullivan. But she doesn’t.
Porco doesn’t look at the camera and say, “It’s better to be a pig than a fascist.” The whole thing just… Says something. To me at least.
“I’d rather be a pig than a fascist” sounds pretty leftist to me.
Maybe these days. But there’s a gap between being anti-fascist and leftist that includes ideologies that range from center-right to center-left
At least there used to be.
There’s a ton of commentary out there on this but tl;dr Miyazaki was a Marxist in his youth and is probably best recently described as an ecosocialist and all his works reflect values of anti authoritarianism, rejecting patriarchy, environmentalism, and pacifism or at least the rejection of militarism.
He is, in short, a Japanese Green (not literally since there is a Japanese Green party but also possibly literally)
While anime as a medium has a long history of being really, really shit at dark skinned characters, that doesn’t excuse the fact that these models are completely fucking incapable of creating a darker skinned character as a result
Yes, it’s a direct result of how skewed their training data is, but that just calls out how fundamentally flawed the whole process is. A good artist is capable of adopting an anime style while still creating things that are unusual within that style. Just look at the Avatar series. Korra, Kotara and Sokka can all be darker skinned characters that look amazing in a show that still has a distinctly anime look to it.
Characters in anime are not required to be light skinned. That’s a flaw, not a thing to be preserved as if it’s a requirement of the style. Even in actual anime we’re finally starting to see this change for the better. But LLMs cannot produce things that are new or unusual, they can only regress to the mean.
The eyes are also white rather than blue. This was mentioned a few times in the books. I haven’t seen the movies so this might be a criticism of both.
And the eyes aren’t even blue