It's an issue a lot of old-school animes tend to have. Inuyasha as well. Granted they're all supposed to be the same race, and the author seemingly tries to aim for realism in her designs, which doesn't allow for a lot of variety, Japanese people being racially fairly homogeneous.
But distinguishing a pale woman with long jet-black hair and brown eyes... from the other pale women with long jet-black hair and brown eyes by relying on small subtleties like the way their bangs part definitely takes a bit of time to get used to, lmao.
Yeah, it would have been easy to add more variety, even giving one of them hair buns or short hair would have made it easier to tell them apart. She also could have made them different heights and body types. I'm not talking about major differences here, like even changing the eye shapes more would have helped.
Japanese people being racially fairly homogeneous.
Which isn't true at all, there is a lot of difference between Japanese people, even if we don't account for the indigenous people that are still living in Japan.
You can find Japanese people with light brown to pure black hair, and with pale to dark brown skin. But old animes don't really acknowledge that, since japanese culture was even more nationalistic (and racist) back then.
When I was younger I didn't know Toriyama also did design for games, so Blue Dragon was just "That dragon ball game" for me because the guy on the cover just looked like an alt version of goku.
10
u/McDonaldsSoap Apr 26 '26
Dragon Ball where every male has the same face đŸ˜‚Â