We hope everyone in the United States had a fun and relaxing Fourth of July on Sunday, with fireworks and lots of delicious barbecued meat. Since anime is filled with ridiculous stereotypes of characters from all over the world, I thought it’d be fun to explore the best American anime characters, and what they tell us about how Japanese people perceive Americans through their pop culture. Enjoy our ranking!
The 11 Most Hilarioously Stereotyped American Anime Characters!
Of course there are a lot of ways the Japanese might poke harmless fun at Americans. It’s true that, coming from Japan, the serving sizes in restaurants can be pretty huge. A small Coke in an American fast food chain will generally be larger than a Large in Japan. And when J-List would bring our 24-year-old female Japanese employee to San Diego to work conventions with us, she actually had to shop at Gap Kids to find clothes small enough to fit her.
Americans hate being like all the other countries that measure things in reasonable Metric units that are easily divided by ten, because we just like sexy feet, I guess.
One of the most common ways anime characters are represented by the Japanese is with large, bouncing… meat, as we can see with Nikumi-senpai from Food Wars.
Another hilarious American anime character is Charlotte E. Yeager from Strike Witches. She’s tall, busty, heroic and naturally lives life at her own pace.
Another fun caricature of an American in anime was Monica Adenauer from Yakitate Japan! Apparently Americans are famous for wearing American flag bikinis and constanly chewing bubble-gum in public.
And hamburgers! Americans eat so many hamburgers, day and night!
Americans are somewhat famous around the world as being a rather litigious people, and Japanese are always surprised to hear news reports about this or that lawsuit that somehow managed to win a multi-million dollar judgment. In Japan, there are almost no lawyers, as there’s no demand for most services a lawyer would provide. (There are officially registered people called scriveners who can perform basic legal functions like registering deeds for land purchases, etc.) The character Kaede from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei parodies this aspect of American society.
Japanese aren’t surprised to find Americans are anime fans anymore. As seen with characters like Patricia Martin from Lucky Star, it’s more or less expected that visitors from Japan will be fans of anime, manga and games.
The Japanese are aware of America’s unique gun culture, and back when I was a teacher I was regularly asked how many guns I had in my home in San Diego. The “gun otaku” trope is parodied in the character of Umiko from Lesbian Game Developers! New Game!, who’s into airsoft guns. She’s not American, but she’s from Okinawa, which spent 25 years as an American possession after WWII, so I guess that’s close enough.
America is always viewed as kakko ii or “cool” by the Japanese thanks to Hollywood films, and Americans are generally portrayed this way in anime. Tall, stylish, blonde, free to pick and choose what rules we want to follow without being bound to the social expectations that Japanese are constricted by.
One fun anime was Mobile Suit G Gundam, which took all the countries of the world and made Gundam mecha that parodied that country. Chibodee Crocket, who fights for Neo America, is a classic stereotypical American anime character.
Then there’s Bandit Keith, another hilarious American character from anime. His favorite food is steak, and his least favorite food is sushi.
One of the best moments in American anime parody history came in the English dub of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. It’s almost the best scene in dubbed anime history.
Thanks for reading this post exploring the most awesome American anime characters. Did we miss any interesting ones? Post them below, or reply to us on Twitter!
We’ve got even more great news for you: a new artbook from J18 Pubishing, this time featuring all the sexy artworks of artist KFR. With his special focus on sexy oneesan characters and elegant nurses who are about to examine us, you will love every page of thew new book. It’s in stock in San Diego now!
