People often ask:
why do characters in anime look white?
The answer is because you come from a majority white country, and due to
the tropes of animation. Most of the
time, anime characters are not drawn to look white; they are cartoons and cartoons
are meant to be cyphers. Understanding
the implied ethnicity of a cartoon character comes down to a conversation
between the audience and the creator, just like all art. Cartoons, be they western or Japanese employ
a visual language known to the creator.
Visual languages are constructed through context, and the audience may
miss an awful lot of the language if they do not share the creator’s context,
leading to misunderstandings. This
happens to all art. The audience brings
their own context to the piece. If you
have the same context as the creator, you are likely to understand them more
easily. But we Westerners bring our own
context when we watch foreign media, and vice versa. Animation is a global medium now, and
animators influence each other from opposite ends of the globe.