Borkachev on 10 July 2008
So why the main characters have to be white to "cater" to white audiences? How about the Japanese that buy games like DQVIII in droves even when every single human in that game is white?
I read an interesting discussion about this recently, though I can't find it now. Basically, the point was that the Japanese don't see the characters in their games as white. They might have blonde hair and blue eyes, but to them these are Japanese people with those features. These superficial differences are just the differences they see among themselves represented with a bit of artistic license. They're an expression of the universal character that everyone identifies with themselves.
To me this makes a lot of sense. And if you look at the characters more closely, they seem to support this: at lower detail they're usually stylized anime characters, while at higher details (like in the FF FMVs or Advent Children) they take on distinctly Japanese facial features.
