Ethnicity of Final Fantasy characters

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

What ethnicity do you guys consider them? To me, I see them as Jpop/Malice Mizer/Kpop or Eurasian.

[Chibi Youkai]

Mostly, they seem Eurasian. Especially with all the Norse and Greek mythology that square-enix likes to draw inspiration from. It would be interesting to learn what the devs think about that, though.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Characters like Yuffie and Yuna are most likely fully Eastern. Rinoa looks Central Asian

[Depression Moon]

Mostly white and Japanese like most Japanese video games with just a few black people sprinkled throughout.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Mostly white and Japanese like most Japanese video games with just a few black people sprinkled throughout.Which characters do consider white/European and which Japanese?

[Pumpkin]

Ethnicity?

Characters from IX are mostly Gaians, FFX are mostly Spirans, etc.

Unless you mean race, in which case mostly white with some Asian like most have said

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Mostly, they seem Eurasian. Especially with all the Norse and Greek mythology that square-enix likes to draw inspiration from. It would be interesting to learn what the devs think about that, though.Well, I am going to guess they see FF characters as Mongoloid since they use Asian models and the like to use with designs. Capcom knows to make certain characters specifically European/white so they use white Actors. Plus Square brought Ferrari on board for the reason they never could make European characters before so having a westerner would help.

[Laddy]

Well in some games it's pretty clear that they're drawn on different cultures.

FFX, for example, has cultures clearly drawn from real-world ones. Yuna and Bevelle are largely Japanese inspired, most of Bessid and Kilika draw on Polynesian culture, Zanarkand seems to be a futuristic Los Angeles, and the Al Bhed have Germanic features though their culture certainly doesn't resemble it. There's also a handful of characters with clear African features.

FFVII and VIII seem to be more Modern North American, with casts possessing largely European features with notable minorities drawn on African American or Asian cultures.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Rinoa definitely doesn't look European unless you mean half European which I can get. She was modeled after a Japanese woman deliberately anyways.

Then again, Persona characters also have light features and those games take place in Japan.

[Del Murder]

They're all white except for the one token Black character required per game.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

They're all white except for the one token Black character required per game.Never knew Yuffie, Rinoa, and Yuna were white.

[Del Murder]

https://camo.githubusercontent.com/6ae484254b3139819478eca54a581e9fa86eeec1/687474703a2f2f7669676e65747465322e77696b69612e6e6f636f6f6b69652e6e65742f7072657474796c6974746c656c69 6172732f696d616765732f662f66622f5468655f6d6f72655f796f755f6b6e6f775f62616e6e65722e6a70672f7265766973 696f6e2f6c61746573743f63623d3230313331323234323333303333

[Spuuky]

They're all white except for the one token Black character required per game.Never knew Yuffie, Rinoa, and Yuna were white.I mean, 99% of white people you asked would definitely say they are white. Probably due to their white skin color, mostly.

[Depression Moon]

I see those three as Asian as well. Yuna I feel is supposed to be half Asian because her mother is Al-Bhed. The other ones I feel that are supposed to be Asian too are Edge (maybe), the guys from XV.
Non-whites and Asians: Minwu, Nooj, Barret, Donna, Sazh, Reddas, and Kiros. Half of those are non-playable.

[Fynn]

Honestly, though, pretty sure the vast majority of characters are coded Asian since it's a general trend in manga and anime to draw Japanese characters this way while people coded White are drawn differently with exaggerated features like large chins or noses or paler eyes. Same goes for dark-skinned characters - they're not really coded black until they are given any distinct features, in most cases they're supposed to be making people think of Okinawa or something. This is kind of supported by how in FFX all the pre-rendered cutscenes have all of the the characters with no exception looking much more Asian than in-game


Also, keep in mind that the concept of race is a social construct and, as such, works differently from culture to culture, which is why it's really hard to pinpoint what we consider to be race in Japanese media.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

They're all white except for the one token Black character required per game.Never knew Yuffie, Rinoa, and Yuna were white.I mean, 99% of white people you asked would definitely say they are white. Probably due to their white skin color, mostly.
East Asians have white skin color. Central Asians do as well. Besides, Yuffie and Rinoa have an undertone I associate with East Asians.

[Spuuky]

East Asians have white skin color. Central Asians do as well. Besides, Yuffie and Rinoa have an undertone I associate with East Asians.Some of them have light skin tones, but the skin color of FF characters in general is a lot closer to the European form of light skin than the Japanese form of it. Yuna and Yuffie are the most-Asian in features of any characters in any of the games, though, yes.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

To be fair, Yuffie has a pale olive color. But really though all Asians(from Middle Easterners to South Asians to Northeast Asians) have always worshiped porcelain, ivory skin tone, even before they met white European people. It shows high value and high class. The workers had dark skin color. For instance, compare the upper class Indians to the lower caste ones and there is a huge difference in skin color.

Neil Nitin Mukesh is an example of an upper caste Indian.

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And here is a lower caste Indian:

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Of course their skin is going to be extremely pale. It's idealized in all of Asia. But I have seen many East Asian women with extremely fair skin. Many even whiter than Europeans.

[Laddy]

the guys from XV.
Eh, I get the feeling Prompto is supposed to have stereotypically "white" features: blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin, freckles, but it could just be me being a white guy so

[Depression Moon]

You're a man Laddy? I always thought you were a woman? Mind blown!

I mostly assumed because of the Brotherhood episodes and then sometimes in games and anime they still claim people as 100% Japanese with those features like Naruto.

[Fynn]

You're a man Laddy? I always thought you were a woman? Mind blown!

NOT the first time that's happened to you, eh? :roll2

[Laddy]

That's literally the origin of the screen name; everyone thinks I'm a girl online. xD

[Fynn]

It's not just you, Laddy. Apparently I get that a lot too XD

[Del Murder]

Why would anyone ever assume people are girls online? Obviously everyone online is a dude.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Prompto in Versus looked like a Korean pop dude with dyed blonde hair and colored contacts. He looks more westernized now but XV isn't really a good example to judge.

[Psychotic]

One thing I did notice about ethnicity is in FFX characters have notably more Asian features during FMVs than their in game models do.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

One thing I did notice about ethnicity is in FFX characters have notably more Asian features during FMVs than their in game models do.Well, FMV's look more realistic.

[Shauna]

Probably relevant

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

Probably relevant

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/I have been watching anime and reading manga for as I long as I can remember and I have personally never seen anime characters as white. Then again though, I am not white myself so I don't know.

[Spuuky]

Probably relevant

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/I've seen this before and while there's some truth there, it's also pretty easy some flaws.

For instance, people think Marge is white because she, and her family who are the same color as her, live in a community with people who are not white (and are represented by other skin tones) and speak with an accent and lexicon associated with white people. This is an extremely justifiable belief and runs very counter to the example they want to present.

The "foreigners" are clearly marked in anime (sometimes) by blonde hair, long noses, etc - but they have the same skin tone as the "Japanese" characters. This is pretty compelling evidence to see the "Japanese" characters as also being white, or at least drawn to look like white people.

[Del Murder]

It also doesn't help that white is also the absence of pigment so a black and white manga character or a simple stick figure is just going to appear white due to the lack of shading in the drawing. White is just a terrible word to describe people of European descent.

As for a serious answer to this topic, I don't associate the FF characters with being white or Asian or any other race of Earth since those areas don't exist in the FF worlds. They are whatever race exists in that world. Some of them are different races in that world, some of them are the same. Different races of homo sapiens has never really been the focus of FF and the racial tension in those games tends to be more between very distinguishable groups (Espers vs. humans, whatever race Zidane was vs. humans) where skin color or facial features have not been a factor.

I will say that I was thrown aback in FFX at first when Tidus and Yuna had very distinct Asian features, particularly in the FMVs, but that was mostly due to my lack of exposure to Asian people up until that point and that graphics didn't really allow for that kind of distinction before then other than having the token black character. I don't feel that way any more and I appreciate when Japanese games actually feature characters that look Japanese and don't hide the fact that the game takes place in Japan. It's not weird when Americans do it so it shouldn't be weird when anyone does it.

[Squall Leonhart Loire]

I think to them (the Japanese) they do look East Asian, Del Murder. Maybe to us, not so. With how many people who still think anime characters look white in the west it is just a matter of perception.

[Depression Moon]

Probably relevant

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/30/guest-post-why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/I've seen this before and while there's some truth there, it's also pretty easy some flaws.

For instance, people think Marge is white because she, and her family who are the same color as her, live in a community with people who are not white (and are represented by other skin tones) and speak with an accent and lexicon associated with white people. This is an extremely justifiable belief and runs very counter to the example they want to present.

The "foreigners" are clearly marked in anime (sometimes) by blonde hair, long noses, etc - but they have the same skin tone as the "Japanese" characters. This is pretty compelling evidence to see the "Japanese" characters as also being white, or at least drawn to look like white people.


I agree with that comment on Marge. If they wanted to do the same thing they should've picked the cast of Doug, but anyone who's not in Doug's fam.

[Psychotic]

Also with the Simpsons they have black and asian characters drawn and represented distinctly different from the yellow characters, and real life white celebrities who have been shown on the show have all been yellow.

[Depression Moon]

Actually has the Simpsons ever had a Latino character other than the Bumblebee man?

[Laddy]

Dr. Nick!