Basic Trope: Characters in an Anime or Manga series are stated to be Japanese, but don't look like Japanese people at all.
- Straight: Sakura lives in Japan, but she has blonde hair and blue eyes.
- Exaggerated:
- Sakura (and all her friends and neighbors) are part of an Amazing Technicolor Population, with hair, eye, and skin colors not found in nature at all.
- Sakura is a Stick Figure, along with all the other characters.
- It's World of Technicolor Hair and everyone is just Palette Swaps of each other, regardless of their heritage.
- Downplayed: Sakura lives in Japan but has red hair which is rare but possible without any other heritage.
- Justified:
- Sakura is only half Japanese.
- Sakura is a Japanese Delinquent, or was used to be one.
- Sakura is a foreigner, but has been living in Japan for a long time.
- Sakura was born and raised in Japan, but her parents are foreign.
- Sakura is an albino.
- Sakura is of the Ainu.
- Sakura was born with a full head of luxurious blonde locks from a magical flower that her mother consumed during pregnancy.
- Sakura’s hair is dyed and she’s wearing contact lenses.
- Inverted: Alice is stated to be European, but she has the black hair and almond eyes of an East Asian person.
- Subverted:
- Sakura is stated to be an American student studying abroad in Japan, going by a nickname.
- Sakura is Japanese, but has dyed her hair.
- Alternately, the racial differences are shown by stylistic differences. East Asians (like Sakura Shimada) are drawn in the Anime look (bonus point for looking chibi). Sarah Sanders, and the Americans and the Canadians in-universe are drawn in a more realistic Superhero comic style. Sandrine Strasbouger and the other European characters, on the other hand, look like the classic Princess-and-Prince-Charming Disney characters.
- Double Subverted:
- But she hangs around with other characters who follow a similar Phenotype Stereotype, and none of them are stated to be foreigners; the fact that she is tends to be forgotten, even by the writers.
- But her eyes are blue or green, not something typically found in that population.
- Triple Subversion: She's actually wearing contacts.
- Then we get Flash Young, who was originally Senko Wakamono, native to Dotonbori, Osaka, but he grew up in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. He pretty much throws a monkey wrench at these rules; He oscillates between the Superhero comic style and the Anime style, and not the soft kind of anime style you'd see in a shoujo work; The kind that's much rougher, borderline-shounen, but overall reflects a more delinquent vibe you'd get from watching Crows or Great Teacher Onizuka.
- Parodied:
- Sakura is obviously one of the Starfish Aliens, and is still stated to be Japanese.
- All the other characters drawn in this style can do Face Faults and other anime ways of emoting, but a character explicitly stated to be a white American and drawn in a Western style, try as he might, cannot.
- Zig Zagged: Sakura has blue eyes and blonde hair, but is stated to be Japanese. However, later you find out that her real father was foreign, but his father was Japanese. Eventually, after going through a long, convoluted family tree, the viewer finds out that she is actually African. South African.
- Averted: Sakura (and all other Japanese characters in the series) are drawn in a much more realistic style.
- Enforced:
- "We need to make a character who stands out more."
- "We need a character who everyone can associate with, let's make her look less like any specific race!"
- Alternatively, the Executive Meddling wants to export their anime to the west, so they need to make characters look less Japanese to avoid alienating western audiences.
- Lampshaded: "You don't look Japanese at all!"
- Invoked:
- Sakura wants to look like all the American women she's seeing in the magazines she reads, and contemplates changing her hair and eye color.
- With Designer Babies and fashion-ability of exotic looks, parents choose to add more variety to the appearance of their children.
- An ancient sorcerer casts a spell somewhere in Japan that causes their hair and eye colors to become vibrantly unnatural.
- Exploited: Sakura is an American and uses this trope to disguise herself.
- Defied: Sakura then decides that look just isn't her, and decides against dyeing her hair and wearing blue contacts.
- Discussed: "I don't think Sakura's from around here. I mean, she's blonde!"
- Conversed: "Lots of Japanese Anime characters don't look Japanese."
- Played For Laughs: Sakura is an obsessive Americanophile, parodying the Occidental Otaku stereotype.
- Played For Drama: Racial tensions are explored in this particular series, such as Japanese ultranationalists abusing their own who look like gaijin or Neo-Nazis giving grief to Japanese Americans who are discovered to have been white-passing.
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