Surprisingly, Race and Skin Color Still Matters in Eroge? Why This World No Escapism for Black and Dark-Skinned Otaku/Nerd Anime Fans...

[Nokiti Anzu]

So I noticed that things such as Race and Skin Color actually matter even in an Eroge.

When I was young I was naive to think that fantasy worlds are a world we can escape to and be our own heroes in those lands, but surprisingly even when Japanese Eroge can make Orcs as male partners and even co-leads alongside heroines in some eroge, we still can't see any dark-skin protagonists that even vaguely resemble Black people in hairstyles and skin color... And when Black men appear they mostly appear in contemporary Japanese modern NTR settings... and never in Western-inspired settings whether it's fantasy or sci-fi......

Makes you think that all those long history Black people have in Western history means nothing for Japanese people, right? To the point they have to make fantasy or Western-setting Eroge all starred by White Male Protagonists...

I think it's the color of the skin... Japanese relate more to White Men because the skin tones of White Men and Japanese Men are not too vastly different... That's why Japanese Eroge and even normal games like Resident Evil can have White Male Protagonists, but not Black Male Protagonists, because Japanese Men can't relate to Black guys because the skin color is too different to self-insert as compared to a White Caucasian Male.

So it's kinda vexing that even in 2025, people are still judged and liked or ostracized and othered because of different skin colors, right?

I have played many games where the MC doesn't share the same color and race like me and enjoyed them as much as ones where the MC is the same color as me, so I am not racist, but apparently the Japanese are so racist they can't even make or play one Western-setting Eroge with a Black Male MC in NTR or any genre???

Yeah, so "White Privilege" is alive still in Japan...

If your White, you're the subject of adoration and relatability in Japan?

But if your Black? Hah, you might as well look like "gorillas" to those Asians obsessed with Caucasian light skin aesthetics, as they have a very very specific set of beauty standards, even though from my eyes I can see many Japanese Men IRL who many have below-average plain looks that seem even less attractive than some Black Men who have handsome faces...... So they labeled Black men as "less attractive" for stylized content when some real-life Japanese Men look even more nerdy and less aesthetically pleasing in the facial attractiveness compared to some hot Black men, forgetting is not the color of the skin but the facial features that actually determines relative good looks.

Anyway, that's all my rant for today...... I just had to get this off my chest, disappointed that JP Eroge isn't as diverse as Live Action JAV Pron that has too many Black Male Actors...

Black Men should boycott working for JAV studios until more Black Representation in Eroge is fulfilled......

 

[hellandeggs371]

Without going too deep into a rabit hole:

1. Beauty standards are subjective. There are cultural influences to this as well as historical.
2. Eroge, nukige, or any product of media is first and foremost business.
3. Target audience - making sure it's as big as possible. (I'm not gonna talk about otome since I'm not too familiar with that genre.) I would assume, that the target audience for most eroge-nukige are Japanese males age 16-25. Thus, obviously (unless the genre-concept needs something different) they will craft a character that would be similar to the target audience - be it looks, or life situation. Poor student, overworked salary man, etc...

Again, it all comes to... Money. If the producers could be sure there is a market for whatever ideal vn you have in mind, they will make it. I'm not saying personal or cultural bisaes are not there, but in front of a hard cash? It's nothing.

 

[Tanngrisnir]

To add a few things here:

1. The black/negroid people of Africa are genetically distinct from Europeans and Asians, which is why we share less genetic material and thus have also a lot of phenotypic differences that oppose the natural instinct to not mix with alien gene pools.

2. Japan is still mostly mono-ethnic, which is why they are mostly in cultural exchange with European countries as they were the ones who knocked on their door first. Africans were never developed enough to have historical ties with Japan, so they don't care about Africa as a whole.

3. Because of the lack of African civilization, there is little you could put black/negroid people in charge of. I doubt you'd like to see them depicted as cannibalistic barbarians, slave hunters or voodoo shamans concocting potions made from human body parts and creating zombies.

4. The Japanese companies actually are depicting fantasy settings "realistically" (sounds strange but it's true), meaning that most of the time, you have dark-skinned peoples as desert dwellers (representing the Semitic people of the Near East) and light-skinned people as dwellers of deciduous forests and plains that resemble Europe (representing White Europeans or East Asians).
There are close to no games that have tropical rain forest in a continental setting, and if they have, it's more likely they have light-brown /"red"-skinned inhabitants (representing Ameroindian peoples).
And it makes sense, because those areas are very unlikely to have developed any civilization useful for a fantasy setting as the inhabitants would be savages / stone age people living on hunting & gathering.

5. Fantasy as a whole genre is a White genre, which is why these stories depict mostly European mythology rather than East Asian mythology, meaning the Japanese are actually reproducing European standards rather than their own. The black/negroid person simply has no place in Fantasy, especially not as a protagonist (since self-reflection/identification would be gone if the protagonist was of a different race/sub species of humanity, they could at best play the villain or savage on the sideline), they have their space in their own shamanistic/tribalistic folklore, so why would you force-introduce them anywhere else?


All in all, I think the way the Japanese reproduce Fantasy is decent.
Africans should make their own stories based on their own tribal folklore without the elves/dwarfs/giants/etc. from European folklore and not force the Japanese to insert some of their dark-skinned brethren as a protagonist, creating a game that none would buy in Japan (which is still the main market for the games created by Japanese companies).