But Not Too Foreign - Television Tropes & Idioms

All the Jojos introduced from Part 3 to 6 in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure are at least part-Japanese and part-British.
- Jotaro (Part 3) is one quarter American, one quarter British (Joseph, the Jojo from part 2) and half-Japanese.
- Josuke (Part 4) is half-British (Joseph, not that it's impossible...) and half-Japanese
- Giorno (Part 5) is half-British (Jonathan's body with Dio's head on top), half-Japanese and culturally Italian.
- Jolyne (Part 6) is Jotaro's daugther so, one quarter Japanese, one eighth British, one eighth American + at least one part American and one part Italian from her mother's side.
Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion is German and Japanese, and occasionally drawn in promotional materials as a blonde instead of a redhead. The North American dub pads this out with dialogue that occasionally includes German expletives and exclamations.
- In the original, she speaks German once, while on the phone with her adoptive mother. Even to people who speak neither language, the German carries an obvious Japanese accent.
  - Maybe only once at length, but she peppers her dialogue with the occasional German word or phrase — such as her "Guten morgan!" exchange with Shinji when she first arrives at his school and later her battle command, "Gehen!" (which doesn't seem to confuse either Shinji or Rei but which the English dub translates to "Let's go!" or something).
- An additional trait mentioned is being 'American', though this may have less to do with living there simply cueing the audience to expect a loud and bombastic girl.
- Asuka is actually 25% Japanese, 25% German, 50% "American". Her mother's name (half Japanese half German) is Soryu Kyoko Zeppelin. Langley is her father's name.
  - Anybody who knows the origins of Asuka's full name will also spot some fun Just For Pun. In Evangelion, there's Theme Naming with famous precursor aircraft carriers of World War 2, all of which met ill-fated ends. Soryu was Japan's first purpose built (fleet) aircraft carrier, famous for being sunk at the Battle of Midway, Zeppelin was the name of Germany's first aircraft carrier which production was stopped at 95% completion and scuttled, and Langley was America's first aircraft carrier which was sunk in 1942 (though it was a seaplane tender by then).
  - Of course, this is all rendered moot by Rebuild of Evangelion, in which Asuka's last name is changed to Shikinami (which was still a ship, just not a carrier)...
  - Rebuild also introduces Mari 'But Not Too Foreign' Makinami, who is heard speaking English with a thick French accent.
Ana Coppola from Ichigo Mashimaro is British — specifically, from Cornwall — but hides the fact she is culturally Japanese. That her name sounds Italian is probably lost on the author, since it's just an excuse for a Running Gag pun.
Many of the most popular characters in the Sakura Taisen series are at least half-Japanese, although they're otherwise from all over the place. Maria is Japanese/Russian, Orihime is Japanese/Italian, Hanabi is Japanese/French (though she looks more Japanese than at least half the full Japanese characters in the series), Gemini is Japanese/American...
- In Hanabi's case, the reason is a little different than usual for this trope: Sakura Taisen 3 takes place in France, so her mixed heritage is used to explain why a teenage Japanese girl would be living in France. Likewise, Gemini is half-Japanese to (sort of) explain the presence of a Texan samurai in New York.
Momiji Sohma from Fruits Basket is half-German and fluent, though this is left out of the anime.
In Sister Princess, Haruka is half German, Yotsuba is half British, and Aria probably is French.
Freesia Yagyu from Jubei-chan 2 is half-Russian and fluent, though her voice actor does a passable job.
Cyndi Manabe in Gokujou Seitokai is a redhead, glib Huge Schoolgirl who spoke mainly in fragmented English, when she spoke at all. She was apparently discouraged by her American mother who does speak Japanese but, to continue the gag, has extremely bizarre sentence construction.
Ritsuko Kettenkrad (Student Council President) from Kujibiki Unbalance is half-German and wears a World War II German-style helmet wherever she goes, although originally this depicted as an heirloom amongst successive class presidents.
Lieutenant Kanuka Clancy from Patlabor is a biracial Japanese American who, ironically, is drawn with a more traditionally "Asian" appearance than anyone else in the cast.
Tamaki Suoh of Ouran High School Host Club is half-French, using the romantic nature of the French to charm clients at his host club.
Rebecca Miyamoto in Pani Poni Dash has a Japanese mother and an American father.
Full Metal Panic!'s original light novels mention several examples of this: Belfangan Clouseaux is a posterboy for the outbreeding effect, while Kurz is an ethnic German born and raised in Japan, and Sousuke is ethnic Japanese and ended up raised in Russia and later Afghanistan. The anime, meanwhile, doesn't seem overly concerned with adding a But Not Too Foreign factor to anyone, as all of the above is mostly glossed over.
Lupin III, in the series of the same name; his father, Arsene Lupin, Jr., was the son of the original Lupin, main character of a famous French pulp adventure series of the late 19th and early 20th century. He would encounter the grandchildren and great-greatchildren of other famous fictional (and in some cases historical) figures, and in most cases, they would have a Japanese mother or grandmother.
- Jigen, on the other hand, might not have a single drop of Japanese blood in him. His name structure is awkward and inconsistent, and more that once it's been suggested that he was actually a mobster in Chicago before joining up with Lupin. Several times over the course of the franchise he as been shown to have tastes and habits that are decidedly un-Japanese.
Mamori from Eyeshield 21 is quarter-American (on her mother’s side). Although she is the quickest to pick up the rules and nuances of Football (faster than the rookie players), according to the manga writer, her ancestry wasn’t planned to explain this. Instead, he came up with it as way to explain why such an upright/uptight character (and member of the school’s disciplinary committee) had brown hair in the color art. (The blond and brown-haired boys in the cast are assumed to have dye-jobs.)
L from Death Note is part-Japanese, although he grew up in Britain.
- Word Of God states that L is a quarter Japanese, quarter English, quarter Russian, and a quarter of either French or Italian.
- Raye Penber is also a case of this trope: mixed Japanese and American. Justified in that the CIA wanted to send someone to Japan who wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. The artist admits to playing up the character's "foreignness" when drawing him.
In each of the Digimon anime, there is a token case of But Not Too Foreign.
- Yamato and Takeru (Matt and T.K. in the dub) from Adventure and 02 are at least quarter-French. This is known because one episode in the World Tour arc features their French grandfather.
- Takeru asks their grandfather about their grandmother who is also in Paris. But in the Digimon movie, Yamato and Takeru are visiting their grandparents in the Japanese country-side. This would mean that one parent is Japanese and the other is French. The reasonable guess would be that Natsuko is the French parent, despite a lack of effort to make her look or behave in any way that would indicate her as a foreigner.
- Tamers' Lee Jianliang and Xiaochang (Henry and Suzie) and their two older siblings are half-Chinese. Jianliang's Digimon partner, Terriermon, even speaks Cantonese.
- Orimoto Izumi (Zoe), The Chick, was born in Japan, but spent most of her formative years in Italy and often uses Italian expressions in her speech. This actually plays into her character development, however, as it has resulted in her being much more individualistic and independent than her peers.
- Touma (Thomas) H. Norstein from Savers is the son of a Japanese woman and an Austrian aristocrat. Implied to have been born out of wedlock, he was outright rejected by his paternal grandmother after his mother's death, and his father couldn't bring himself to oppose her. This lead to a serious rift between them. While never opposing one's mother is typically Japanese, it is not very Germanic.
Shirayuki Berii, The Wesley of Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode, is half-French apparently just for the sake of being a cute Aryan, because it's explicitly pointed out throughout the story but has nothing to do with anything. Hwang Bu-ling, a previously established character, is fully Chinese, but fits the trope a lot better than Berii, practically advertising her ethnicity in her dress, speech and mannerisms.
Eri Sawachika of School Rumble is referred to as a "halfie" (her father is British), which she demonstrates with her long blond hair and occasional mangled English ("Never dream of it").
Yomiko Readman of Read Or Die (pictured above) is half-British, half-Japanese.
In GetBackers, Midou Ban is one-quarter German; of course the German grandparent is the only one we ever meet.
Of the 14 people who are to decide the fate of the planet in X, 12 are Japanese, one is an artificial construct with the brain of a Japanese girl, and one is half-Japanese, half-generic-Caucasian. It's nice to see the rest of the Earth get a little representation.
The characters of Saint Seiya come all over the globe, but the Five Man Band of main characters are all Japanese... except for Hyouga, who is half-Russian. He's blonde and blue-eyed (like his Missing Mom), has cold-based attacks some of which have Russian names, and he gets most of the (W)angst.
- Justified in the manga, though, where the man that put them through the Training From Hell, Mitsumasa Kido, was actually their absurdly promiscuous father, and since he was Japanese...
Nishikiori Michiru from Kamichama Karin is half-English, half-Japanese.
Michael Okita from Slam Dunk is mentioned to be half-Japanese (per father's side) and half-American. He also has blue eyes and blond hair, is bilingual and was supposed to be under the watch of the NBA. Not to mention he's quite the Genki Guy when off-duty.
In Cyborg009, Joe Shimamura aka 009 is also half-Japanese (mother), half-American (father), and in the manga he was bullied because of that. So are three friends of his (Mary, Shinichi and Masaru) who are turned into killing machines against their wills by Black Ghost, so he has to fight them and KILL them.).
Kaede Kimura, from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, is half-Japanese half-something-or-other (her absurd descriptions of her home country's customs make it impossible to tell where she's actually from or if she even has mixed heritage), and has developed a split personality based on her two home nations' stereotypes: Her Japanese half is extremely polite and gentle (and in love with Itoshiki-sensei), while her foreign half is loud, obnoxious and eager to sue her classmates at the slightest provocation.
- Gosh, what lawsuit-happy foreign country could her other half hail from?
  - I'm pretty sure that no part of America has rusty screws as part of its native cuisine.
  - You must not have spent much time in the Marines, maggot!
In Bleach, Yasutora Sado or 'Chad' is half-Mexican half-Japanese and spent most of his childhood in Mexico. This is reflected in that he is drawn rather differently from the other characters, has darker skin and is much, much taller (being large even by non-Japanese standards).
In Mahou Sensei Negima, Mana is half Puerto Rican.
- Rich, Caucasian looking, girl Ayaka Yukihiro is also said by Fuuka Narutaki to be 'half breed', although Ayaka herself protested at being called that.
- Negi himself is half-British/half-Ostian.
From Ghost Hunt (though it was only revealed in the novels), Shibuya Kazuya was born in Japan but raised in ~~America~~ England. Also, there's John Brown, who's Australian.
Amuro Rei from Mobile Suit Gundam is arguably one of the most famous examples of this trope in all of anime, although his background rarely comes up in conversation. In most versions his mother Kamaria is Canadian, although in the recent Gundam: The Origin manga she was changed to Mexican due to the action in the North America arc being shifted a few thousand kilometers south, as world events have made the image of a bombed-out, foreign occupied NYC less than conducive to a US release.
Gundam 00 have such characters. There's H/Allelujah Haptism, a Russian-Chinese. Sumeragi Li Noriega an American born Japanese-Spanish. And three Japanese-Americans; Saji Crossroad, his sister Kinue and Billy Katagiri.
Lemmy from To Heart is another prime example. She's half Japanese and half American. this is expressed by her having blond hair, blue eyes, being a Huge Schoolgirl, having a fairly good sized bust, her use of English (Which is not so bad she usually sticks to one word phrases or simple phrases "Good Morning" or "Fantastic".
Ai Haibara a.k.a. Sherry of Detective Conan is half English.
- However, she was visibly Caucasian, and did mentioned that people with visual foreign traits like her are subjected with prejudice.
Jun Honoo in Great Mazinger is one of the first examples (half-black, but the exact nationality of her father is not given), and also notable in being the hero's love interest in the series, something very unusual for these years.
Karen Kouzuki/Kallen Stadtfeld from Code Geass is half Japanese (mother), half Britannian (father, stepfamily). So is Rai, the main character from Lost Colors: his father was a Britannian noble and his mother was from the Sumeragi clan.
Urd from Oh My Goddess has no Japanese blood, but shares the insecurities/issues of many other cases of this trope because of her own mixed heritage... her mother is a demon ( the Queen of Hell to be exact).
Reira (Layla) Serizawa from NANA is half-American, but is forced by her record company to lie about it because apparently the Japanese public would expect beauty and singing ability such as hers from a mixed-race, but not a full-blooded Japanese.
- ...someone more familiar with the series might want to clarify the above entry, because I don't understand what is being said there.
Syaoran Li, if that is his real name, from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has a Chinese dad and a Japanese mom.
- Don't forget Clow Reed himself, who had a Chinese mother and a British father. (This troper always wondered how they met.)
  - Hello? Hong Kong?
- Eriol Hiiragizawa is half British, half Japanese, and is the reincarnation of the aforementioned half Chinese, half British, Clow Reed.
- Watanuki is probably also half Chinese, considering that he's kinda sorta bizarrely the twin brother/clone/son/something of Syaoran...look, it's complicated, okay?
Sakura Yamazaki from Blue Seed may be a full-blooded Japanese miko but she was raised in America (by the CIA no less) so she's stereotypically brash and prone to spouting off exclamations in Gratuitous English.
Urara Kasugano of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 is half French, half Japanese. This would appear to be a Hand Wave to explain her blond hair, except that You Gotta Have Blue Hair is in effect. Amusingly, this makes her the character who matches the setting the best.
In the manga FAKE (set in NYC), we have Randy Ryo McLean. Despite initially going by "Randy", both partner Dee and future-foster-kid Bikky both correctly identify him as part-Japanese based off of his eyes alone when they first meet him and insist on calling him by his middle name. Soon they have practically everyone else calling him that too. While Dee's ethnicity is unknown (abandoned as a baby), Bikky himself is half-black, half-white.
Firo Prochainezo from Baccano! (set in early 20th century America) is half-Italian (the other half being British-descended American), and identifies himself as a second-generation Italian immigrant. With the exception of Japanese-American Yalgumo, most other characters don't have their ethnicity particularly focused upon — although many of the supporting characters are decidedly not American-born simply on the basis that they're a good sixty years older than the country itself.
Tina Foster from Ai Yori Aoshi is an excellent example. She's an American raised in Hakata until middle school. She was unable to made friends in elementary and middle school in Japan due to her being "too American" and also in high school in America due to being "too Japanese." She covers up her feelings of being culturally lost by constantly trying to show how "Japanese" she is at heart (one of the other characters comments "You're almost more Japanese than we are!"). She desperately wants to be Japanese (and probably practically is after being raised in Japan during her formative years) and is a very tragic and lonely figure despite being a BottleFairy (to the point of overt alcoholism) and overall GenkiGirl and semi-lunatic. One of the most sympathetically played "Not Too Foreign" characters in anime and manga.
Jun, from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman is half American, half Japanese.
Unbalance X Unbalance a manhwa features a British-Korean character who is a younger half sister to one of the main characters.
Fumio Kirisaki of the Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo is three-quarters Japanese, since her grandfather immigrated from the US. She laments the fact that she didn't seem to pick up the standard physical traits from her western heritage.
Gokudera Hayato from Katekyo Hitman Reborn has a Japanese mother and an Italian father.
Remy Shimada from Go Shogun is part-French, part-Japanese.
(Meister) Sylvan Kirisaki and his sister Sophie from Yakitate Japan are half-French. While Meister is now the manager of the Pantasia Main Branch and a bread judge in Japan, Sophie remained in France as a baker.
- Spencer Henry Hokou aka "Sachihoko" is an odd case. He is 100% Italian-American, but has a mentality of a dude from Nagoya. He starts to lose his Nagoya-ness once he returned to America though.

Close Anime

Suki Leiber of the American manga Goofyfoot Gurl is half Japanese and half Jewish.
The Mandarin, one of Iron Man's most implacable foes, is half-Chinese, half-white.
Cheshire, a supervillain in The DCU, is Vietnamese/French.

Close Comic Books

Played for laughs in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; the titular hero is the inexplicably blue-eyed son of Japanese physicist, Masado Banzai, and Texan-of-Scottish ancestry, Sandra Willoughby.
In Kill Bill Volume 1 O-Ren Ishii is half Japanese and half Chinese-American. When she becomes head of the Yakuza she tells off her new Japanese underlings in English "Just to be absolutely clear." (i.e clear to the audience) while her half-Japanese, half-French assistant translates for her.
- Note that the telling off was after beheading a man for insulting her heritage and daring to express his disgust that someone like her was head of the Yakuza.
In the movie The Hot Chick, Ling-Ling is black, with a Korean mom. She's also one-quarter Jewish.
Elvis Presley played a half-breed Indian in 1960's Flaming Star..
Welshman Anthony Hopkins played a mixed-raced man in The Human Stain. By contrast, Wentworth Miller, who played the younger version of the same character, actually is of mixed race descent (see below).
Nulla in Australia is a half-Aboriginal boy, who has to deal with the Real Life issues that half-Aboriginal children had to deal with... that is, becoming part of the Stolen Generation.
Frank Hopkins in Hidalgo is half-white and half-Native American. It's uncertain if the real Frank Hopkins really was, since he was known to be a pathological liar.
Martin Pawley from The Searchers is 1/8th Cherokee. His racist uncle Ethan gives him a hard time for this, but ultimately comes to respect him, in a way.

Close Film

Super Sentai has numerous instances of Rangers who were raised elsewhere, but the writers find a way of sneaking in that they were truly born in Japan. Sometimes, homogeny is apparently the culprit, but sometimes it seems that Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe and it won't do for a member of the Five Man Band to be from elsewhere. Particularly egregious examples include:
- This goes back to the very first Super Sentai series, Himitsu Sentai Goranger with the half-Swiss/half-Japanese Peggy Matsuyama, played by half-Japanese actress Lisa Komaki. Interestingly, the female members of all 1970s Super Sentai series were all half-Japanese (JAKQ Dengekitai's Karen Mizuki and the below example); they didn't start casting full-Japanese actresses until 1980.
- Battle Fever J was as close as sentai gets to an international team: each Ranger had learned his or her particular fighting style in the country his or her Ranger identity was named for, but with the exception of Miss America, all were born in Japan, and even Miss America was half-Japanese (both Miss Americas, actually).
- Choushinsei Flashman starred a team visiting from the Flash solar system, and the environment was only compatible enough for them to stay for about the length of your average sentai series... except it turns out they were kidnapped from Earth long ago.
- The best is probably Ninja Sentai Kakuranger's Jiraiya who despite having a Japanese name was raised in the US and had only come to Japan recently as the series began. He was played by an actual Japanese American actor, spoke perfect English (to the point where his voice notably stood out in the Roll Calls and posing)and had an American accent to his Japanese and had notably different manerisms and personality than the Japanese characters.
- Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger's Tetsu is a Raised By Wolves-ish Human Alien... no, wait, he's just lived offworld since a villain accidentally killed his parents. Deka also has Ban, whose only sign of an Earthen origin is a flashback to his samurai ancestor (though this time, Tokyo isn't the center of the universe: This episode, present and flashbacks, took place in Kyoto.)
The titular protagonist of Kamen Rider Amazon was born in the Amazon jungle. However, it turns out that he's a Japanese who was simply abandoned in the Amazon, Tarzan-style. His Suspiciously Similar Substitute in Kamen Rider Decade is played by an actual South American, though he's still half-Japanese (specifically, Japanese-Peruvian, and he has the mixed name of Enrique Sakamoto).
Ashiya Mizuki in the Jdrama version of Hana Kimi (yeah, the one with Tendou Souji and Otoya in it) is rumored to be American.

Close Live Action TV

Battle Tech has specifically mentioned that with humanity spread across several thousand star systems in a 2000 light year diameter sphere (plus more distant colonies) unusual genetic combinations are much more regular than you might think. One novel refered to it as the 'great geneplasm bingo'

Close Table Top Games

Aya Brea of Parasite Eve fame is half-Japanese.
Ken Masters, co-protagonist of the Street Fighter series, is a martial arts master who is 3/4 Japanese and 1/4 American (he was originally Japanese in SF I, but became a native-born American in SF II).
- Most dubs and American-produced versions of the franchise just have done with it and make Ken American, even Californian.
- And his student, Sean from Street Fighter III, is half-Japanese, half-Brazilian.
- Ken's name is also a case, being a legitimate name in both English and Japanese.
Kudryavka from Little Busters! is three-quarters Russian, one-quarter Japanese.
Yuri Volte Hyuga, the hero of the first two Shadow Hearts games, is the son of a Japanese army officer and a Russian émigré (Okay, actually German, but that's a long story). In the English translation, he even has a genuine multiracial name - "Yuri" being a valid name in both Russian and Japanese (in the original, he's "Urmnaf Bort Hyuga," which is just Foreign Sounding Gibberish).
Shu Shirakawa in Super Robot Wars is half Japanese, half La Gias... okay, the latter may not be so much a nation but another world, but most of them are so identical with humans it's like 'just another nation'.
Masami von Weisegger, main protagonist of Ring Of Red was a... you guessed it, half-Japanese, half-German ace AFW pilot.
Hitomi of the Dead or Alive fighting game series fits this trope well, complete with Japanese and German parentage.
Trauma Center is a twisty little thing, but here we go: in the Japanese version, the main (Derek) storyline is set in Japan. Blue-eyed blonde Angie, from that cast, is part German, though this was just for colour/this trope until Trauma Center 2 made a retcon, specifically that the "sinners" (people who are attuned enough to GUILT to help breed it, which includes Angie) were descendants of Adam, the main villain, and the main branch of Adam's family lives in Germany. Nevermind the fact that another sinner in that very game is from Central or South America.
- That (them being from South America) actually makes sense, mind you.
Sylvia Christel from No More Heroes is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed half-Japanese, half-Ukrainian bombshell raised in France but United States resident. This is evidenced solely by her French accent and a single random card that can only found in a New Game+.
- To add a bit of Frenchness, her name, quite fittingly for such a sexy and seductive character, is also a shout out to the French classic "Emmanuelle" whose part was played by actress...Sylvia Kristel.
Originally, Solid Snake from Metal Gear was an American of mixed Japanese-British heritage and later revised to just plain Japanese-American in Metal Gear Solid (despite his revised origin as a Big Boss clone in the game). In Metal Gear Solid 4, it is explained that although EVA/Big Mama was Solid Snake's surrogate/birth mother, the egg came from a Japanese woman.
Final Fantasy X gives us Yuna, a Fantasy example of this trope. Her father's a Spiran, but her mother's an Al Bhed.
Sci Fi example. Colonel Hakha from Killzone is half-Vektan, half-Helghast.
Ashley Mizuki Robbins of Trace Memory.
Sakura Taisen's example from the anime section also applies here.
Alyx Vance; half black, half indeterminate Asian. Her race has no bearing on the plot, except maybe as a stealthy way to draw in weeaboos.
Lilly and her big sister Akira from Katawa Shoujo are half-something other than Japanese.

Close Video Games

Eleanor "Erina" Mercer from Kensoh Ogawa's H-manga Honey Blonde was born to English parents, and fits the "Gaijin Girl" stereotype (large chest, tall, blonde as per the series title) as far as appearance is concerned. However, early in the first chapter, it's established that she is "completely Japanese on the inside," albeit with particularly bad performance in English class. Mostly, this is due to her having sex instead of studying, though her usual partner doesn't have any trouble at all.
Two of the three titular characters in Adolf are half Japanese half German.

Close Manga

Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash gives his racial heritage as Japanese by way of Korea and African by way of Texas. His ethnicity, however, is stated to be "Army."
H. Beam Piper did this a lot in his Future History. Uller Uprising has a character named Hideyoshi O'Leary. In Four-Day Planet, the narrator remarks that:
The amount of intermarriage that's gone on since the First Century [Atomic Era], any resemblance between people's names and their appearances is purely coincidental. Oscar Fujisawa, who looks as though his name ought to be Lief Ericsson, for example.
Takeshi Kovacs, a cyberpunk anti-hero is one of these, and indeed, as is suggested by Hiro above, this trope is quite common in cyberpunk, especially with partially Japanese ancestry.
The Stars My Destination has the Secret Police agent and Master Of Disguise Peter Yang-Yeovil, who can trace his ancestry back to an ancient dynasty, but looks Caucasian enough to disguise himself as an Italian at one point.

Close Literature

Tech Infantry has Xinjao O'Reilly, the half-Irish, half-Chinese starship engineer with red hair and yellow skin.
Banquo of Goodbye Chains. His character profile proudly describes him as "half-Mexican and half-Swedish, and also a colossal dick." He was the result of a one-night stand between an actress and a Mexican man, and faces quite a bit of racism because of his background. His Distaff Counterpart and part time lover, Cordelia, is half-Ute, but there are certainly no parallels between them and how they treat their companions, no siree.

Close Web Original

Tish Williams from Deborah Goldsmith's Ranma 1/2 fanfic Notes from Julliard is a tall African-American girl who spent her formative years in Japan and as a result doesn't fit in anywhere. She calls herself a "Tuna Roll" — i.e. Black on the outside, Japanese on the inside. It doesn't help that both forms of her name ("Tish" is short for "Leticia") are barely pronouncable tongue twisters for her Japanese friends.

Close Fan Fiction

Even western cartoon characters are not immune. Jake Long (white dad, Chinese mom) and Abigail and Cree Lincoln (mum is apparently of French ancestry) comes to mind.
Isabella Garcia-Shapiro from Phineas And Ferb.
Bare in mind that this trope is formerly called Charlie Dog. He is 50% Collie, 50% Irish Setter, 50% Boxer, 50% Doberman Pincher. But, mostly, he's all Labrador Retriever!
The Batman version of Mercy Graves is reportedly this. Perhaps it's because of the casting of a Singaporean Chinese.

Close Western Animation

Punk band Gogol Bordello frontman Eugen Hutz is a self-professed Ukrainian Gypsy, but he has also Russian and whatever other blood, as mixed marriages were actually encouraged in former Soviet Union. His band also features people with such backgrounds as Scottish-Chinese, Thai-American and Japanese-Romanian, in addition to usual Russians and Jews.
Subverted by the band Half Japanese, who are actually 100% Gaijin.
The Japanese music industry loves part-foreign singers who are exotic But Not Too Foreign. For example:
- Half-American, half-Japanese singers Angela Aki and Olivia Lufkin, and no doubt others.
- Japanese-Russian-American singer and actress Anna Tsuchiya.
- African-American-zainichi Korean singer Crystal Kay.
  - And from the other side of the Atlantic, Amerie Rogers.
- African-American but quarter-Japanese enka singer Jero.
- Half-Japanese, half-British singer Kaela Kimura.
- Eiji Wentz, whose dad is German-American. Apparently, his English isn't so good.
Half-Japanese, half-American actress and writer Ayako Fujitani who, improbably enough, is Steven Seagal's daughter.
Just about everyone in America is a mix of multiple ethnicities, when you get right down to it, even if it's just a mix of various European tribes. (This troper can count at least seven ethnicities in his own extended family, for instance, including "unknown".) These days even our most pureblooded Native Americans tend to be mixtures of various tribes. It still doesn't stop us from hating on each other, though. Sigh.
- We've just streamlined ours process for determining who to hate.
- For that matter aren't people a mix of multiple ethnicities in Most countries? The only real difference is that in America, the mixing occured far more recently then say Britain or China. Because it happened centuries earlier, no one really mentions it.
- Some Malaysians and Singaporeans have mixed ethnicities, due to the overwhelming number of races in both countries. A common joke is that when you ask someone who is "mat salleh celup" what race he or she is, the common reply is "Malaysian" or "Singaporean", respectively.
  - It's very common to find a radio DJ/model/television host/actor/singer/etc who is half or quarter or one-tenth or cocktail of races, that at includes at least one Asian ancestor.
Most But Not Too Black examples are half-black, half-white.
- Sometimes half-Asian too.
These celebrities:
- Actress Maggie Q.
- Pussycat Dolls member Nicole Scherzinger.
- High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens.
- Singer Cassie Ventura.
- American Idol finalist Jasmine Trias.
  - Hawaii has a lot of mixed-bloods, you know.
- Sean Paul.
- Mariah Carey.
- Keanu Reeves.
- Vin Diesel.
- Wenworth Miller.
- Rosa Parks.
- Tiger Woods (1/4 Chinese 1/4 Thai 1/4 Black and 1/4 White). He calls himself Cablasian.
- Dwayne Johnson.
- Rosario Dawson.
- Model Adriana Lima.
- Devon Aoki.
- Leona Lewis.
- Paula Abdul.
- Norah Jones. Her dad's Ravi Shankar for crying out loud!
- Johnny Yong Bosch.
- And many, many more...

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