jesus christ some of you need to look up what racism means
What was used in this manhwa was an artistic resource to better identify the characters and relate them to themselves in the present. Before saying "asians" do this or that, which I remind you is racist itself. Jesus Christ is portrayed in glorious strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes, born in the Middle East!
I actually was trying to give benefit of doubt, because I read other comments mentioning that it was racist right away, when we don't really know why the author made that decision. I'm just personally not so sure if it's ok to deny racism because I know that many asian people (as people born and raised in Asia) don't really know much about racial issues from the western world, and can become kind of racist from that
I understand that, that's why I made an analysis on literature genres, I was purpously doubting why people where calling it "racist" right away when none of us REALLY know why the author decided on keeping the skin color of the protagonist's past life white, I ain't no expert in australian native culture to know how accurately the author portrayed the topic in general, we don't know how much of what has been told is pure fiction or based from actual historical facts (do you?). But I personally don't deny the possibility of being a decision out of racism by ignorance. And when I said "asian people" I was not referring to race, I was reffering to "people born and raised in Asia" which can be misleading so I apologize about that not being clear, the thing is that people from Asia have had some history of being racist because of lack of knowledge on racial issues in the western world, plus I know that japanese people can be VERY racist towards non-asian looking people, because well, I lived there for a year! And of course I'm not saying EVERYONE, that's why I say "can be" or "have been", I never said "asians are..."
On the funny side, we are kind of assuming the author is korean, but that is to be expected from a Korean Webtoon lol, maybe it's some foreigner who speaks korean fluently and lives there lol
Sorry if I sounded harsh. It's just that we are here like just conjecturing anyways :) Although I not always agree, as working as a scenographer I've seen all kinds of distortion scenarios in the name of art. Also, eastern cultures are naturally closed to western(not that i agree on), but the opposite is also true. I visited and lived in a whole lot of places, and witnessed all kinds o racism, open or not, I agree their mentality are way closer on the subject. But I now live in a place were there is a huge japanese community and I must say, they suffer their share in the west too, in the western art also, I must say. But oh well, humanity has a long way to go in learning about equality and unity right?
Yeah that's true ^^ thanks for taking your time to answer!
Long opinion ahead... (sowwy)
I want to believe that the indigenous representation being inaccurate, to the point of being racist by ignorance (exhibit A being: white skinned indigenous people in Australia), is because this webtoon is tagged as "supernatural", so these indigenous people are just completly an element of the supernatural and ficticious part of this story. Which makes me believe that magical realism is something that asian literature culture doesn't really know much about, because this story might seem more like being magical realism instead of supernatural, but doesn't fully get to be it because it lacks accuracy to properly have the "realism" part of it. So I can forgive this, just ever so slightly, because this is not the first time asian people have been racist by ignorance :^))))))