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{{trope}}
[[File:tokimuko3 3822.jpg|link=Tokimeki Memorial|frame|And the American is...?<ref>[[Phenotype Stereotype|The blonde one, obviously.]]</ref>]]
{{quote|''"The reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skin is because [[Lamarck Was Right|they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for two thousand years.]] [[Insane Troll Logic|If we eat McDonald's hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years]] we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair blonde."''
|'''Den Fujita''', first president of [[McDonald's]] Japan, 1971.}}
[[Mukokuseki]] is the use of ambiguous racial features in anime, with characters having traits like wide eyes, light skin, great stature, and [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|various hair colors]]. It literally means "stateless", though the term relates to more abstract anime and is used for hyperbole in this case.
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* Most of the characters in ''[[Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water]]'' are European whites and look the part, with pinker skin and such. All of the characters of different races look like their respective races. The only exceptions are the {{spoiler|Atlantean characters, who are a sort of brown skinned mukokuseki, somewhere between Indian and African.}}
* Most of [[Naoki Urasawa]]'s manga are drawn very realistically. The Caucasian looking people in his work actually are Caucasian (with huge noses though), as many of his manga are set in Europe or other exotic locales. In fact, Urasawa occasionally goes too far in the other direction. ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' 's Eva Heinemann, a German, has a slightly Asian look to her. Just about the only time he plays this trope straight is with Kana from ''20th/21st Century Boys'', who has more of a typical big eyed, fair haired "anime girl" look to her, resembling ''Monster'''s Anna/Nina, but this is probably to emphasize the character's "otherness", as she has supernatural powers.
** Also played somewhat straight with his redesigns of many classic [[Osamu Tezuka]] characters for ''[[Pluto]]'', especially Ochanomizu & Tenma, due to their comedically oversized schozzes, which could never be reduced to typical Japanese proportions without rendering the characters unrecognizable. So while they do look realistic in a sense, they don't look like people who could realistically be named Tenma or Ochanomizu. Shansaku "Mister Mustachio" Ban also suffers from this, as his character model was recycled from ''Monster'''s Dr. Reichwein, who is in turn based on the American actor Wilford "Diabeetus" Brimley. Urasawa does a surprisingly good job on Inspectors Tawashi
** That being said, Dr. Tenma, of ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' fame, who is supposed to be Japanese, is drawn stylistically ''very'' similar to several characters who are supposed to be German, even if his skin and hair color are realistic.
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' mostly avoids this, as it takes place in a [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]] of central Europe and visitors from the east like Ling are stereotypical Asian-looking for the most part. It also inverts this trope with Roy Mustang, who looks more like somebody from Xing than Amestris. [[Fanon]] has it that his mother is from Xing, but within the manga this is never commented on.
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** Compare Mustang to many, many other characters in the series, and it becomes noticeable that while he loves to mention Ed's shortness, he himself is actually not very tall. He's only a little taller than most of the women, and shorter than all but two of his subordinates. Combine this with his Asian-esque eyes and pitch black hair, and it becomes very likely that he does have Xingese ancestry.
* A curious inversion occurs in ''[[Patlabor]]''. While it plays this trope straight to varying degrees with the main cast, in order to emphasize Kanuka Clancy's [[But Not Too Foreign|otherness]] she was drawn as the the most Japanese-looking.
* Oddly played in ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]''; Syaoran and Meiling are somewhat more obviously "asian" than most of the rest of the cast (likely because they're Chinese, rather than Japanese)
* ''[[Windy Tales]]'' uses a Korean art style where the characters are very clearly not white.
* Chang Wufei in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam Wing|Gundam Wing]]'' looks recognizably Chinese. Heero Yuy falls squarely into this trope, being Japanese but possessing generic features and blue eyes. A more obvious example is Quatre who is supposed to be Arabic, but is a blond haired blue eyed bishonen.
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** ''[[Digimon Xros Wars]]'' features Kiriha Aonuma and Yuu Amano, who both are this without any explanation. Even more confusing, Yuu's sister Nene is decidedly not an example herself, having brown hair and a slightly darker skin tone.
* There are a substantial number of Japanese characters in ''[[Area 88]],'' two of whom are at the eponymous airbase. Can you tell who they are without knowing names?
* ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' does relatively well
* ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' has a wide variety of ethnicities and there is considerable effort to make them appear properly ethnic. Some of the terraformed planets have an architectural [[Planet of Hats]] with corresponding cultures like Morocco, Ecuador and Vienna. In fact, some fans theorize that Spike ''Spiegel'' is Jewish.
** His hair doesn't help, but [[Word of God]] says the name was picked because it [[Rule of Cool|sounded cool]].
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* Despite being largely responsible for this style, [[Osamu Tezuka]] himself has a few aversions. A few of his recurring characters, most notably Tonan Shipan are more distinctly Asian than most. Tezuka also often used an interesting workaround. When depicting his ostensibly Japanese characters traveling to the Western world, he would often exaggerate his foreigners' appearance; Tezuka's Westerners are usually taller than his Japanese characters, with wide shoulders and long noses. This is especially noticeable in ''[[Black Jack]]''.
** This is mostly averted in ''[[Adolf]]'', wherein the German characters and the Japanese characters look noticeably different.
* ''[[Mushishi]]'' almost entirely adheres to probable Asian eye colors, hair colors and facial features—which, of course, makes the [[White-Haired Pretty Boy|white-haired]], [[
** Well, when Ginko was designed the writer was imagining the story set in the modern era, with the first story set in a traditional house deep in the woods, but it somehow slipped into an alternate feudal era, leaving him with his anachronisms. At least according to the author's notes. But then, he's supposed to be a freak, anyway. His hair and eye(s) are justified: {{spoiler|they're the result of a mushi}}.
* The cast of ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' tends to look authentically Japanese but most of the young female characters are subject to [[Generic Cuteness]], though to a lesser degree than usual. The manga has been advertised as "NO big eyes, NO magic powers, NO giant robots".
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* If the movie takes place in Japan, [[Hayao Miyazaki]]'s characters tend to have dark hair and eyes. Fair-haired people crop up on occasion in the backgrounds, but most of them only appear if the setting is meant to be European.
* Averted in ''[[Beck]]''. To keep with the indie-film feel, the whole cast have rather realistic hair colors and rather look Asian. Of course, the series throws in a couple Black people and a few Whites for contrast.
* ''[[Kyo Kara Maoh!
** Like the third season's inexplicable soukoku Berias. Spoiler tag hides major twist. {{spoiler|Who turns out to have been concealing his actual identity as a blond elf prince.}}
** Played straight with the main character's mother (who may be Japanese-American although she's now living in Japan), who has curly light brown hair and [[Generic Cute]] features, though in one flashback scene in Boston she refers to herself as Japanese.
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* All the characters in ''[[Gokusen]]'' including Kumiko actually Japanese. Even the many [[Gonk]]s have that ''asian'' look to them.
* ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'' is a bit of an unusual aversion—there ''are'' characters with strange hair and features that don't seem to fit under any particular nationality, but [[Our Demons Are Different|they're not human at all]]. The characters that have blond hair and blue eyes are all Americans, but there's also Americans seen with brown and black hair. Two German characters have red and brown hair, respectively. There ''is'' a [[White-Haired Pretty Girl]], but she has red eyes and is probably supposed to be an albino (and she ''is'' supposed to be a little strange, as well). On top of this, in the manga a minor character appears obviously Japanese next to the Caucasian characters.
* Most of [[Junji Ito]]'s characters look quite realistic, though he has a strange habit of giving his main female characters slightly more European-looking hair & eyes (most notably Kirie from ''[[Uzumaki]]''). The funny thing is, though, that because of his art style, these features look slightly unusual with the rest of their faces, giving his women a somewhat unreal, doll-like sort of beauty. Come to think of it, most of his heroines look an awful lot like [[Smallville|Kristin Kreuk]]...
* In ''[[Sword of the Stranger]]'', the Chinese and European warriors all look significantly different from the Japanese. However, the title character somehow manages to hide his non-Japanese ancestry merely by dying his hair.
* ''[[Noir (anime)|Noir]]'' does well with this. Especially noticeable since the main characters travel around the world doing their job, you see the differences clearly.
* A few characters in ''[[Eureka Seven]]'' are distinctly Asian-looking. Talho Yuki is a bit of an odd case. Her Japanese-sounding surname gives the impression she's playing this trope straight to a degree, then we meet the slant-eyed, small-boned Rei and wonder what the heck Talho is supposed to be, since she's certainly not what Rei is...
* ''[[Turn A Gundam
* Combined with [[Phenotype Stereotype]], in ''[[Samurai Champloo]]'' a one-off character was eventually shown to be from Holland and merely visiting Japan. The characters only notice he was a foreigner because he had light/wavy red hair and blue eyes. Otherwise the difference between him and all of the other Japanese characters was almost unnoticeable.
* ''[[Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade]]''. Everyone had black hair and looked very Japanese.
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* While played straight in ''[[Shaman King]]'', some of the non-Asian characters, especially Silva, have narrower eyes than the Chinese and Japanese characters.
* In ''[[Ai Yori Aoshi]]'', the natively Japanese characters have a "yellower" cast to their skin than the American Tina (except for Chika, who's darkly tanned). This is particularly noticeable when Aoi and Tina are seen together. Of course, all characters regardless of race have anime-style eyes and (save Kaoru, Chika, and [[Hair of Gold|Tina]]) [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|unnatural hair colors]]
* ''[[Parasyte]]'' characters look very Japanese, especially Mori Uda.
* ''[[Durarara!!]]'' characters are [[Averted Trope|convincing]] as the two other foreign characters (Celty and Simon) are designed differently. Any character with blonde hair are shown to have dyed it.
* Rushuna of ''[[Grenadier]]'' appears and is even assumed to be foreign because of her blonde hair and huge bust.
* The ''[[Wandering Son]]'' characters are all noticeably Japanese. Everyone has either Black hair or Brown Hair, and everyone has either [[Brown Eyes]] or [[Black Eyes]]. The anime adaptation subverts this though, as they gave essentially everyone new eye colors (typically [[Technicolor Eyes]]).
* In ''[[
▲* In ''[[Mai-HiME]]'', while most characters are straight examples, Natsuki, in the side novel, "Natsuki's Prelude," finds it suspicious that "Yamada," her informant, "didn't look Japanese at all," and suspects that Yamada is not his real name. Yamada briefly thinks back to the time in the service of "his country," but it's never revealed where he is from.
* In ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'', every human looks realistically Japanese, with standard black or brown-variation hair, except for Kuwabara and Kurama. Kurama's odd red hair color is likely a result of altering the genes of the human fetus he possessed. In Kuwabara's case, his hair looks like the result of a Japanese person dying their hair blonde without bleaching it first. This was actually a common trend among Japanese juvenile delinquents in the 90s. This trope is completely averted in the manga, however. In colored manga images, Kuwabara and Kurama both have standard black hair.
* In the ''[[Lone Wolf and Cub]]'' manga, all of the characters look authentically Japanese.
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* In ''[[Tsuritama]]'' the Frenchmen and Indians don't look significantly different from the Japanese characters - little things like Yuki's red hair or Akria's darker skin are the only clues to their non-Japanese heritage.
* ''[[Detective Conan]]'' versus ''[[Lupin III]]'' has an egregious example. People from Vespania are portrayed with varying hair colors (while Japanese people in the series all have dark hair), and all the trappings of Vespania are European in style (although no location is explicitly mentioned). Yet Ran, who is Japanese, is a double for the princess of Vespania.
* Played with in ''[[K-On!]]'' -- twice. Tsumugi is ethnically Japanese, but is ''explicitly'' blonde and blue-eyed in-universe despite this -- and no one seems to think it's odd, even though for two seasons of the anime and six volumes of the manga she is the ''only'' natural blonde to appear in the series. Once she heads off to college another in-universe blue-eyed blonde, Sumire, joins the Light Music Club -- whose family turns out to be Australian but who changed their names when they moved to Japan. Despite this, no one even realizes she's not ethnically Japanese until she outs herself.
* [[M. Night Shyamalan]] responded to criticisms of the [[Race Lift]] in his film, ''[[The Last Airbender]]'' with this trope, stating that the characters in the [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|original cartoon]] don't match up perfectly to any real-world race, though they are in many ways [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]s to a number of real ethnicities.▼
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The ''[[History Bites]]'' episode ''Samurai Goodfellas'', featuring Ron Pardo as [[The 47 Ronin|Oishi Yoshio]] probably counts as a straight example.
▲== [[Live Action Film]] ==
▲* [[M. Night Shyamalan]] responded to criticisms of the [[Race Lift]] in his film, ''[[The Last Airbender]]'' with this trope, stating that the characters in the [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|original cartoon]] don't match up perfectly to any real-world race, though they are in many ways [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]s to a number of real ethnicities.
== Video Games ==
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* [[Canon Foreigner]] You Ji from ''Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War'' completely (and pleasantly) averts the Mukokuseki principle - his look is unambiguously and realistically East Asian, amongst a cast of caucasian English and French characters. It's arguably a double aversion in You Ji's case, as Bladestorm originates from the Koei stable, who are ''notorious'' for employing Mukokuseki principles across their hero-series [[Dynasty Warriors]], where auburn/red/light-brown/blond haired, green & blue-eyed asians abound in ancient China....
==
* ''[[Homestuck]]'' would be a rare Western media example. The "playable" human characters are rendered with completely white skin, while actual Caucasians (like Andrew Hussie's [[Author Avatar]] and ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' authour Ryan North) are rendered with not-quite-flesh-tone skin that's more orange than anything. [[Word of God]] has specified that the blank white characters [https://web.archive.org/web/20130312064059/http://mspandrew.tumblr.com/post/15937434515/predictably are supposed to be a-racial], so it's left up to the reader to decide what race they are.
* ''[[Hark! A Vagrant]]'' offers [http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=40 a rare non-anime example in Beaton's portrayal of] [[Miyamoto Musashi]].
{{examples|[[Discussed Trope|Discussions]] of this trope}}▼
▲{{examples|[[Discussed Trope|Discussions]] of this trope}}
== Web Original ==
* This blog post entitled [http://kotaku.com/5627268/why-do-japanese-characters-look-white "Why do Japanese characters look white?"] considers two possible reasons for [[Mukokuseki]]. The first is that anime characters don't look white to Japanese people (because the assumption in Japan is "Japanese unless marked otherwise" instead of "Westerner unless marked otherwise" like Westerners are used to). The second is the heavy importation of Western culture to Japan after [[World War 2]].
* An old [[YouTube]] video, entitled "Are anime characters Japanese or Caucasian", argued that large eyes and pale skin are not necessarily Caucasian traits. Though the video has since been removed, some of the responses remain.
== Real Life ==
* As noted above, [[Mukokuseki]] is cited by [[M. Night Shyamalan]] to justify the [[Race Lift]] of characters in ''[[The Last Airbender]]''.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Japanese Visual Arts Tropes]]
[[Category:Race Tropes]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Anime Reality]]
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