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Japanese anime: slant-eyed Chinaman fights Nazi

China vs. Germany

An old scene from the Kinnikuman anime in which Ramenman (from Chinese) battles Brocken Jr. (from German):

According to the Wikipedia, the series was banned in France because Brocken Jr. was depicted as a “good Nazi.” When Kinnikuman figures and an NES game were released in the United States under the M.U.S.C.L.E. brand, Brocken Jr. was replaced with another character. Somebody eventually realized he might be offensive, so in later cartoons the swastikas on his uniform were replaced with Death’s Heads.

Other notable Kinnikuman characters include the Indian guy with a bowl of curry on his head, the toilet paper mummy from Egypt, the charging bull guy from Spain, the Chilean with a Easter Island Moa head, and TeaPacMan from Sri Lanka. Japan is represented by a samurai and a ninja.

Is this cartoon offensive?

[hat tip to Ken Y-N of What Japan Thinks, who has an article up about all you ever wanted to know about Kinnikuman.]

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27 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - August 25, 2009 at 8:47 am

Categories: Otaku & Anime Tags: china, germany, japan, nazi, racism

b

I’m an alien fishman, so yes, this is very offensive to me and my people.

James

I think you need to join AFRANCA (Alien Fish Residents And Naturalized Citizens Association of Japan) and fight for your rights.

gtg

well played sir

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

Thanks for the link, and I also have a survey on far too much data regarding Kinnikuman and friends.
http://www.smallfish-bigpond.com Kerensky97

It’s nitpicking but the Nazi swastika also has a quarter turn to it. That’s how you can tell real nazis from poseurs (or at least knowledgeable poseurs).

Maybe they deliberately left that detail off the Kinnikuman cartoon to be less politically sensitive or the animators were just ignorant. My guess is the latter.
Yom

this is no more racially offensive than anything the WWE/WWF produce during the 1990′s
DC

Of course it’s not offensive. This is Japan. Racial caricatures (of non-Japanese) are not offensive in Japan. Anyone who thinks this is offensive should back their home country.

http://talesovercoffee.blogspot.com Brad F.

I’m getting really sick of hearing the phrase ‘if you don’t like it you should go back to your home country’ in it’s many different forms. It’s the sign of a weak mind and a weak argument, because the person can’t find a way to justify what’s going on and really wants to.

Just because something’s not offensive to Japanese doesn’t mean it should be played. How would Japanese feel if we made a caricature of a Japanese person whose head continually produced nuclear mushroom clouds, regardless of where it was aired?

JohnnyM.

Many times people comment with the “if you don’t like it go home” phrase, because there is little effort on the person that is offended to understand Japanese culture. They often come off as “if its not the way I believe it should be, then its wrong and Im offended”. They try to force their own country’s culture/values or whatever on Japan.

“Just because something’s not offensive to Japanese doesn’t mean it should be played”
If we went by that rule, nothing would get played. There is always someone out there who is offended by something.

Brian

People who are offended by caricatures need to stop raging and learn to live a little bit. What’s wrong with caricatures? Where I come from, you can go to the state fair and get them. If you’re an Indian and you’re offended by a caricature of an Indian with curry on his head, it just shows me that you’re ashamed of your culture. Or if you’re Chinese and offended by slanty eyes, it shows me that you’re ashamed of a common trait of your country.

A good example of caricatures/stereotypes — the anime Hetalia. I highly recommend it to everyone. It’s an anime with episodes that are only 5 minutes long, and it’s a slice of life comedy where each of the characters represent a country during WWII. So Germany is blonde, blue-eyed, and serious all the time. And America is loud, eats lots of food, listens to nobody and is ALWAYS the hero. It’s funny because it’s true; as an American, that’s a funny stereotype of how we are. Of course it’s not true all the time, but c’mon — learn to laugh at yourself a little bit.

Canadian

As a Chinese-Canadian, I couldn’t care about this anime when I was a kid because this was a very crappy anime to watch.

Giant Robo (that 7 episode ones) has a Nazi salute for crying out loud and nobody complained seriously about this.

weirdo

You have no taste, Kinnikuman was awesome.

Canadian

Sorry. Computer problem.

http://tokyoscum.blogspot.com Voidmare

Just to keep the facts straight, Ramenman is fighting Brockenman in that clip, Brocken Jr.’s father. Brockenman was an evil character that fought dirty, not a nice Nazi by any means.

When Brocken Jr. fights Ramenman (who is depicted as the wisest, most respectable character on the show) to get revenge for his father, he learns the errors of his ways and throws away his Nazi past to become a “Seigi Chojin”, a hero of justice.

You also forgot to mention Terryman, an American with *gasp* blonde hair in your list of racist characters. He even refers to himself as “me” instead of “ore” in Japanese once in a while! Oh no!

Is it really even valid to dig up a manga series written 25 years ago to further this whole Japan is offensive thing? Hasn’t anyone been banned from an onsen lately?
Anonymous

Of course it is offensive: It’s friggin’ Kinnikuman!!!
Canadian

I’m a Chinese-Canadian and I find Kinnikuman a very tasteless anime when I was a kid.

Ryry

Okay, you can stop saying that now.

qefcqw2

looks like the stereotypical image of fu manchu
westerners portray fu manchu as evil
Marcello

How about Street Fighter 2!
http://tinyurl.com/m47tyc
Damn it, I loved that game!
Eddie

Cmon, really, what kind of weak individual would be offended by this?

I, for one, love stereotypes of this kind in cartoons and video games. It’s the one thing everyone should be able to laugh at.
Ra

I find DISNEY animations based totally on somebody smoking a doobie to be totally offensive.
Ra

I loved Kinnnikuman when I was a kid. Read the entire comic-book series from beginning to end. It was awesome.
http://witzl.blogspot.com/ MaryWitzl

When I was a kid, my family went to Mississippi. At a hamburger joint there, we saw posters that depicted black people with inner tube lips sitting on a fence, eating watermelon. They were just over-the-top cringe-worthy, surreal in their awfulness, and I could hardly stand to look at them. That’s what these cartoons remind me of. They ought to embarrass the artist far more than the people that are being stereotyped.

Eddie

Kinnikuman is nothing like posters from Mississippi!

In Kinnikuman, every character is a stereotype, no race is singled out! And it’s not done in an intentionally offensive way. Do you not have the intelligence to differentiate from the two?

weirdo

Though that’s bad, as an american (I assume), you’ve probably been conditioned to think that anything that’s remotely racist towards black is “HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT’S SO BAD OH GOD I’M GONNA PUKE”. Whereas american reaction to stereotyping of asians such as xiaolin showdown (he’s actually freaking yellow), or stereotyping of whites (frail, afraid of minority rich jerks, rednecks with heavy slurs) recieves far lesser reactions, if any.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Oddly enough, Xiaolin Showdown was created by a Chinese-American woman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christy_Hui

weirdo

A big lipped, watermelon eating, black caricature is still received with shock no matter who created it. The origin of the creator is irrelevant as I am discussing the reaction, not the creation.

Japanese anime: slant-eyed Chinaman fights Nazi

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