This IS going to be controversial, but it's embedded into anime culture and thus not going away anytime soon.
I'm sick and tired of Japanese Anime and Manga creators always designing their characters to look like white people and not like . . .well Japanese people! and I understand why they do it. They want they're characters to be instantly noticeable, and distinct! But. . . it comes off as problematic sometimes.
Look at this example. . . On the right Sakura from Naruto as she looks in the manga! On the left, how she'd look in real life!
Even more sophisticated and less cartoony series like Death Note are guilty of it! How they'd look in real life! How they look in the anime!
Sailor Moon! One of the most popular anime characters, has Blonde hair blue eyes! Hitomi from Escaflowne! Blonde hair blue eyes! Naruto! Blonde hair blue eyes! Goku! At his most powerful when he has blonde hair and blue eyes!
: You know what Toriyama is really sayin'! He's sayin' deep down, Asian people all wants to be white!
: Well isn't that true?
I don't want to assume, but after a while it seems like the Japanese people are inherently ashamed of being Asian, and in their anime and fiction seek to absolve themselves of being Asian. Due to both cultural shame about what they did to other people in the past, and the influx and reformation of their culture in the image of the west after WW2! They've been conditioned from birth into desiring whiteness! Wanting to be white! So these animators and mangaka keep designing the characters in their anime to be white people, to fufill this racial power fantasy instead of being proud of their heritage and designing their characters to look realistically Japanese!
This is also the reason why Japanese anime is popular globally, while Japanese actors are lucky to get any role in an American film that isn't a racist stereotype! American people, and the idiots in Hollywood who make live action movies based on our beloved Japanese properties (I'm lookin' at you Rupert Sanders! I hope your POS ghost in the shell movie tanks both critically and financially!) People in the west, the ignorant masses think that just because a character has blue hair and eyes she's instantly not intended to be Asian! Guess what ignorant masses, in Anime EVERYONE who isn't specifically designated to be another race, is instantly assumed to be Asian! Even those based around your oh so precious white blonde and beautiful standard of beauty!
What's wrong with having a character with a blunt nose? Blunt is beautiful! What's wrong with having an anime character who looks like an actual Japanese person and not like the blonde blue eyed Aryan archetype you've been brainwashed into accepting!
Japanese people! You look beautiful! Your black hair is beautiful! You don't have to make yourself look white in your fiction to make yourself better!
That's my controversial opinion. . . .
I'll be in my cell awaiting my inevitable crucifixion.