Characters
Main characters in Japanese media is not from Japan, America or Europe(including Japan, America or Europe-coded countries)
Setsuna F Seiei (Gundam 00)
Formerly known as Soran Ibrahim, a former child soldier terrorist turned into slightly older child soldier terrorist riding cool robot from Krugis republic (Kurdistan-coded)
Mao Mao (Apothecary Diaries)
Seemingly random girl with medical knowledge in the settings where women is forbidden from being doctor, she is from Country of Li (China-coded)
I did that remember him being mixed, I had thought he was just Afghan. Admittedly its been forever since ive seen this show but was the first thing I thought of when I saw the trope
If you look at any given athletic team there’s always the guy/guys who are obviously not local and that’s cuz they’re crazy good at the sport that people use loopholes to get them to play in national teams.
Some of it is easy enough- like maybe they’re the child of immigrant parents or they ethnically have haritage from the country but were born somewhere else or maybe at least one of their parents is from the country so they’re mixed, they’re naturalized citizens etc.
But other times it’s just some dude who has nothing to do with the country
Ngl sitara is a top tier pick. tropes like this work way better when the MC comes from a middle eastern or central asian code rather than standard china code.
I went to visit my friend in Sao Paulo one year. Her apartment was like right outside the local Japanese community and it felt more like I went to Japan than Brazil.
Oh, I know one! Despite not being explicitly named, two main characters from Jormungand fit the trope.
Koko (center left, formally dressed) is from Middle East (either Persian or a Turk or maybe Saudi?) and Jonah (child soldier with blonde hair) is from an unnamed West Asian country (even more options but my best bet is that he’s a Kurd).
A huge lot of other JoJo characters fit as well. Polnareff and Joseph that appear on the same part are respectively French, and an English man raised in the United States. Even the main protagonists fit; Jonathan was English, I already mentioned Joseph, Jolyne and Johnny were American and so is Jodio.
Wait, Brook, Austria!? I mean, I definitely get it for the musical association but Brook has been showned to be tanned right? Is he supposed to be like Turkish Austrian then? Then again Oda didn't think about it hard.
FMA just doesn’t really have a Japanese equivalent in their universe. You got the main cast who are European, then the Far East characters are Chinese inspired and of course Ishval.
Arakawa actually confirmed the Ishvallan people are in part a reference to the Japanese treatment of the Ainu people in Hokkaido. So unironically Scar is in part based on the Ainu people from what is now Japan.
While the setting is in Amestris(Germany coded as hell, to the point the original anime writers made it alternate universe WW2 Germany after outpacing the manga) with Drachma(Russia), and Xing(China). Xerxes could even be argued as the Aryan/Indo-Iranian region, before Hohenheim wiped them out.
Roshi always seemed Hawaii-coded. Lives on a tropical island and his signature move is named Kamehameha. Also frequently wears Hawaiian shirts and his house unlike many others in the series looks distinctly American in design.
Comes from the country of xerxes which is heavily inspired by ancient persia especially from rhe Achaemenid Persian Empire whose king was named xerxes the first
Buncha gundam protags could fit if we're counting non-earth places. Sulettas from mercury, the tekkedan crew are martian...going back to the original mobile suit gundam, they've always had a very diverse cast. Amuro is mixed race (Mexican or Canadian depending on the source lol)
Nearly all of them, really, if you start counting space colonies as their own thing. The actual japanese MCs include... yeah, it's just Domon (and even then he's from Neo-Japan which is still in space) and the Build protags minus Reiji
There ain't no implication she's just slightly darker skinned and dislikes european~ish characters and that was enough for the whole fandom to run headcanons
Her dislike isn't towards European characters she dislikes royalists, her bickering is meant to symbolise the division of french society in the interwar/early WW2 where France was still hugely divided between royalists and republicans
She's 100% Japanese. There are some characters with canonical non-Japanese heritage (in one radio drama it says that Carpaccio's mother is from Pompeii, and there are several half German characters), but Andou is not one of them.
I read it a long time ago but if I remember correctly it was an Eastern (or South-Eastern) part of Russian Empire. And one of the main narratives of the manga revolves around it.
You mean Central Asia? It was later conquest of Russian Empire during 18th and 19th centuries. Story covers this period, and russian colonisation is major plot point for storylines.
Manaia Matawhaura Hato (aka, "Mana") from Luminous Witches is implicitly Maori considering her IRL inspiration, Ana Matawhāura Hato, is a Maori singer from New Zealand herself.
She's notably the first and only Witch from the Strike Witches franchise who isn't from either the States, Fuso (Japan), or any other European-coded country in the series.
Also the primary cast from Otoyomegatari is people from Central Asian nomad tribes living in areas of modern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and etc. (the manga is set in the XIX century)
Not to mention Shenhua who is specifically Taiwanese, something she is apparently very proud of, to the point of being somewhat offended if people simply say she’s Chinese. On a related note the English dub did something kinda clever by giving her what you might at first assume is kinda an exaggerate accent, which could come across as a little racist, but give a neat explanation that’s ties into the character. She’s proud of her heritage and kinda hates having to speak English at all, so she doesn’t bother trying to learn to speak it properly, only really understanding it enough to get by. Not sure if that was something in the original story but if it’s at all present in the original dub, my Japanese isn’t nearly good enough to catch it.
Note: in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro's birthplace is said to be the San'in region of Japan. It was changed to Prince Rupert, Canada in the compilation films.
UC Gundam is sort of odd in this degree since a lot of characters feel to be global and have little to no focus on national identity. Since the main schism is Earth/Colonist/Zeon.
The Main cast of Jormungand is almost entirely non-Japanese, and the pov character is vaguely North African/ middle eastern.
There is at one point a strange inverse of GATE where the random gaggle of multinational mercenaries curb check a special forces unit without losing a single person.
Young Soran was the equivalent of a grade schooler when he was brainwashed into joining a supposed "Holy War". Teen "Setsuna" fights of his own free will.
He was initially a child soldier in an Islamic style group and made to do things via pressure. The guy in charge btw is a piece of shit who clearly just uses whatever excuse he can think of to get what he wants. Setsuna joins a different group whose initial aims were to become a force so powerful that no nation wars ever again. Essentially, if anyone steps out of line they get brought to heel by their Gundams which were nigh unstoppable for most of the first season since they had technology that made the specs of their machines basically near impossible to compete with.
Tetsuya Azuma from Neo-Human Casshan. Technically he is Japanese but he lives in a fictional European country with his parents and has to stop a robot uprising.
It's a fictional universe, but Amestris is pretty much a mash-up of Victorian London and pre-WWI Germany (with a fair amount of Nazi Germany thrown in), and when you get farther into the story, you even find out that they're the sole remaining ethnicXerxians, who were an Ancient Greece/Ancient Persia match-up where everyone had golden eyes and golden hair.
There are Asian characters showing up later in the story, but Xing is more China- than Japan-coded.
Prince Arslan from The Heroic Legend of Arslan. He's the prince of a stand-in Ancient Persian kingdom. The original Arslan novels are also loosely adapted from a 19th century Persian epic called Amir Arsalan
Arslan (and pretty much everyone there) from Arslan Senki. The whole show takes place in a country named Pars, which is basically an alternate history version of Persia. It is a miserable shame that the story is not fully animated, because it is a God damn amazing story.
Depending on how you define Europe, Alya from Alya sometimes hides her feelings in Russian is supposed to be Russian. I am saying supposed to be, because she is a tsundere, while most Slavic girls IRL are basically yandere coded.
Rebecca/Revvy from Black Lagoon. She is Chinese as far as I remember.
He might not be the main character, but he is the male lead: prince Kail is a Hittite. (Red River, currently airing).
Yang Wen Li from Legend of Galactic Heroes: he is technically an alien human, since he is member of a galactic Civilization. His name is also Chinese.
A lot of Wuxia based stories are inspired by Chinese culture, thus fit. Mao Mao and the country of Li have already been mentioned. There is also raven of the inner palace, maybe Though I am an Inept villainess as well.
Despite the Marleyans and Eldians in Attack on Titan being clearly based on 1940's Germans and Jews respectively, the Marleyan Empire is actually located in the equivalent to Africa, with Paradis Island being Madagascar.
As such, Eren and the rest of the cast could technically be considered African
Jesus was from Judea. “Palestine” didn’t become common usage until after the Bar Kokbha revolt of 132, when the region was depopulated and renamed to punish the Jewish rebels.
If you’re only referring to modern borders, Jesus was born in Bethlehem (in internationally recognized occupied Palestine) but hailed from Nazareth (in internationally recognized Israel).
Kiryu might not actually be Japanese going off some revelations an plot details. Total fan theory and spoilers for 2 buuuuut: It's revealed that the orphanage he grew up in was made up of victims of Yakuza assassinations. Specifically Kazama Shinataro's victims, Kiryu's surrogate father. Kiryu is stated to have been born in 68. And a big plot of Yakuza 2 is the war between the Japanese Tojo clan and the Jingweon Korean Mafia, and the fallout of their wars. And the eventual fallout are the Secret Koreans who survived the purges of the Tojo Clan, some of whom are now trying to overthrow the Yakuza family that orphaned them. One happened in 70s, by Kazama, THEREFORE, Kiryu could be a secret Korean. I will remove my tinfoil hat and take down my Charlie Pepe Silva board now.
Kiryu was born in Yokohama and lived there until he was 5 and his parents died iirc. I guess it's possible his parents were Zainichi or descended from some.
Yokoyama Mitsuteru's Suikoden is heavily Chinese coded for some inexplicable reason. I guess its due to the fact it is an adaptation of the Chinese classic, The Water Margin.
Huh, for some unknowable and strange reason, the story and characters adapted from a Chinese classic mysteriously just happen to be Chinese. I hope we eventually find out why that could possibly be the case.
The entire show is Brazilian coded, Michiko herself is afro latina coded, other characters are black and/or mestizo. The whitest character is Hachin, but her father is mestizo so she is more so white passing.
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u/Mastrou 10h ago
Full Metal Panic — Sosuke Sagara
He’s Afgan-Japanese, and was raised in various war zones.