Ambiguously Brown in Anime & Manga.
- In Alice in Borderland, several characters such as Takeru Danma/Boshiya, Aguni Morizono, Ginji Kyuma and Hikari Kuina look like people from Caribbean islands or southern parts of Africa rather than a Japanese-Japanese person.
- In the original Japanese version of Bakugan Battle Brawlers, the character Julie Hayward is Australian with implications that she's Aboriginal. The dub changes her name to Julie Makimoto, implying Japanese descent while removing the specific notion that she's from Australia.
- Berserk:
- Casca has medium-brown skin, straight black hair, and a face type that's pretty unclear about her origins. For years fans have been arguing with each other over whether she's supposed to be black, Arab, East Indian, Southern European, mixed, or just about any other real-life brown race you can think of. Berserk does have races in the story who resemble black Africans and South Asians, but Casca looks ambiguous enough that she can't be indisputably categorized with either. It's entirely possible that Kentaro Miura just wanted to give her a unique appearance without having a particular intention about her race, since he hasn't commented on the issue. Making matters even more muddled, the Golden Age film trilogy and Berserk (2016) depict Casca's skin as a much lighter shade of tan than in the manga, while making her hair dark brown or reddish-brown instead of black.
- Pippin is ambiguously brown skinned like Casca but unlike her, Pippin has prominent lips suggesting he is of a different ethnicity and none of the adaptations change his skin tone. Corkus has notable darker skin in the 97 anime, but like Casca is whitened up in the movies.
- Edrear from Bizenghast is depicted as having notably darker skin than his siblings in the manga, but it's not stated what their heritage is. They're all give the same light skintone in official art.
- Bleach is set in Japan and individual ethnicities are mostly not discussed in the story.note The following characters stand out as being of ambiguous heritage:
- Yoruichi Shihōin (as seen on the main trope page), and to a lesser extent her brother Yushiro, is a quintessential example, if the historical flame wars that came over what their ethnicity is are anything to go by.note One of the anime outros implies that they're black and Yoruichi's ability to transform into a black cat raises an additional question. At least as can be surmised from their names, they are Japanese.
- In the anime, Mila-Rose is made very dark-skinned, as is her superior, Tier Harribel. In the manga, Mila-Rose is paler and Tier Harribel seems to be a ganguro. Of course, given that arrancars are humanoid amalgamations of souls, it may be debatable if they even technically have a race.
- Jackie Tristan is dark-skinned with an Odd Name Out in a series filled with Japanese characters. Ethnicity isn't very important for most characters in the story, so hers is never discussed.
- Marie Itami from BNA: Brand New Animal has darker skin than most of the other characters and dreadlock-esque hair, but a Japanese surname.
- Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight!: In a variation, minor character Veronica Lin, an American, is depicted with black hair and distinctly almond-shaped eyes rather than brown skin, suggesting she might be Chinese-American—or at least that the English translator is interpreting her as such: her surname could also be transliterated as the English "Lynn". (Most actual brown-skinned characters in the manga do have defined ethnicities and are not examples.)
- Kojiro Hyuga/Mark Lenders from Captain Tsubasa. Spanish fans use to joke saying that Lenders was the first/only Japanese Gypsy.
- Code Geass:
- Villetta Nu is from the Britannian Empire, but since it geographically covers not only the USA but all of Central and South America as well, it could account for the wide variety of skin tones among its members.
- Dorothea Ernst, the Knight of Four, is slightly darker than Villetta and has green eyes. She is also killed off by Suzaku after only a few meer seconds of screen time.
- Dalque in Nightmare of Nunnally is from one of the numbered areas, but it's never revealed which one.
- In Death Parade, Castra has dark brown skin and Ginti is noticeably darker than the rest of the cast as well. Neither are human like the others (they deal with the afterlife) and so like them they don't seem to have a particular race.
- Delicious in Dungeon has Kabru, Kiki and Kaka. All the people in Kabru's village had the same dark skintone, but we're never actually told where the village was. The series hasn't revealed anything about Kiki and Kaka's past before they were adopted.
- Deltora Quest:
- Jasmine is described in the having sunbrown skin in the books and the anime surprisingly matches it (especially compared
to the other characters). The exact reason why Jasmine's skin is like this is debatable, most likely is because she has lived outdoors for most of life or possibly she inherited her pigment from her father as well as her green hair which was not in the books. - Doom the Rebel Leader is described as tan skinned in the books and he's even darker in the anime, easily more brown than every other character. Doom also has green hair like Jasmine two of the three obvious visual clues that Doom and Jasmine are actually related.
- Jasmine is described in the having sunbrown skin in the books and the anime surprisingly matches it (especially compared
- Tom Tanaka from Durarara!! not only has noticeably darker skin than most characters but also has dreadlocks, and this combined with his first name raise the possibility that he has some non-Japanese ancestry. That, or he's just really tanned and has odd style habits.
- In Eureka Seven, we have Matthieu, Hilda and Gidget. Their skin colors are actually slightly different shades.
- Eureka Seven AO gives us Elena Peoples. All There in the Manual says she's from America but there are hints that this isn't the case.
- F-Zero: GP Legend: Anime (and anime-based game) only Lucy Liberty is this. She shares roughly the same skin color that Kate Alen has (who is black in the core games) in the series, but her hair color is a fairly pinkish shade of red.
- Raoh and Kaioh in the Toei adaptations of Fist of the North Star become this, in a case of Adaptation Dye-Job gone Up to Eleven (in the original manga and all non-Toei adaptations, both of them are white with silver hair).
- Rose and most people in her town are this way in the Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) anime. In the manga and Brotherhood, the town is a mountain town full of light-skinned people; however, in the 2003 anime, it's a desert town. They're darker than most other characters, but this is never commented upon by anyone. The skirmish involving them is comparable to the Ishvalan Massacre. In Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, Rose's counterpart Noah is Roma, as are Lust and Scar's counterparts. It's implied that the people of Rose's town are related to or possibly descended from Ishvalans.
- A few characters in Haibane Renmei are Ambiguously White. Kuu and Hikari are blue-eyed blondes in a cast predominantly made up of dark-eyed brunettes. However, their names are still Japanese and nothing is noted in-series about their designs. The characters all name themselves, which explains their names, and they all have Laser-Guided Amnesia about their pasts. It's implied that the characters live in purgatory, which makes everything more ambiguous. Kuramori and Hyouko have dark hair and blue eyes as well, which might imply the characters are just Mukokuseki or might imply otherwise.
- Almost all the characters in Haré+Guu have dark skin. In fact lighter skin characters are a little rare in the series. Justified as it takes in a jungle, likely somewhere in South Asia. Oddly enough Weda came from "the city", where Hareacute goes later and more or less everybody is white-ish. She still has the exact same appearance of the other inhabitants of the jungle. So... that was some lucky choice for a place to be banished.
- Hello! Sandybell: Alec◊. His skin is a darker shade than the other characters, but we're never given any tells if he's from a different race. To be fair, his job does involve him working in the sun.
- Psy from Heroman seems to fit the Black and Nerdy trope, has puffy hair, and lives in America but it's hard to tell. He might be Mexican, mixed, or African-American.
- Iga No Kabamaru: The titular character has dark skin, contrast to his manga counterpart that had paler skin. Not much is known about his past since he's an orphan.
- Kenta Nakamura from Initial D is fairly dark-skinned in the manga, anime, and video games. Nobody finds anything unusual about this, and his ethnicity isn't addressed even once. It's later revealed during Fourth Stage that he just likes to tan his skin regularly.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Battle Tendency: The Pillar Men are apparently Mesoamerican in origin, though their race appears to predate history and has traveled all over the globe during their quest for the Red Stone.
- Stone Ocean: Enrico Pucci looks black, but it's actually an important plot point that he's not (which could be debated due to the confusing depiction of the KKK). His parents are both white as snow (although his father is dark in the anime), as are his younger sister Perla and twin brother Domenico/Weather Report. Given that he's of Italian descent, he may be Sicilian.
- Kill la Kill gives us Ira Gamagori and Rei Hououmaru. The former is a dark-skinned blond who was confirmed by Word of God to be Half-American as his father was an American soldier. For the latter, the OVA reveals that Rei originated from an African country that was torn apart by war.
- Aomine Daiki of Kuroko's Basketball. He's dark enough it can't just be explained away with him exercising outside a lot. Especially when he combines it with blue hair. Momoi even calls him a ganguro once.
- In Laughing Under the Clouds, the Iga ninja have inexplicably darker skin that everyone else, even though it's set during the Meiji Restoration.
- Kaolla Su from Love Hina. Her origins aren't revealed until towards the final chapters (she's from a fictional country on the International Date Line), but her appearance was actually relevant to a subplot involving Keitaro assuming she was from India (which she denied).
- Goemon Ishikawa and Inspector Zenigata of Lupin III went back and forth on this one in the early years.
- Goemon was portrayed with tan skin early on for the original manga series and the pilot, had pale skin for the first TV series, and then went tan again for the first Lupin movie, The Mystery of Mamo, which was based on the original manga art. The second TV series returned to the pale tone, and he has kept it ever since. The argument would be because Goemon's nationality (Japanese) is the only one known of the gang and so it makes him stand out more ethnically. Except...
- Zenigata is also Japanese and was pale for the pilot, but got noticeably tan in the first TV series, the opposite of Goemon. He also has a slightly ruddy complexion in The Castle of Cagliostro, but since then, has also evened out to paler tones.
- Endemic in Michiko & Hatchin, which is to be expected, considering the series takes place in a fictional version of South America. Atsuko Jackson is explicitly half-black and half-Japanese but we never know for sure what Michiko's racial makeup is. Both women appear to be Afro-Latina (for those to whom this isn't immediately obvious, there is an episode in which Michiko wears her hair natural), Michiko being more likely to be considered "Zambo"—as opposed to Atsuko's "Jambo"—and the racial demographics of the show are surprisingly accurately represented. Characters in the series tend to have a mish-mash of Portuguese (sometimes Spanish) and Japanese names, which is most likely a nod to the fact that Brazil has the largest Japanese population in the world barring Japan.
- Gundam:
- In Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Titans' second-in-command Bask Om is a light tan that seems to get darker depending upon the lighting.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, Rakan Dahkaran is darker skinned then the rest of the cast, and depending on the episode and the lighting ranges from tanned to almost black in skin colouration. When combined with his facial features he looks almost, but not quite Arabic.
- Johann Trinity in Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Further complicated by the fact he's brown with dark hair, his brother Michael is white with blue hair, and his sister Nena is white and freckly with red hair. Probably explained by the fact that they're artificial humans.
- Mirko from My Hero Academia is native to Japan but has noticeably dark skin. Her attack names tend to involve Gratuitous Spanish, implying she's at least partially of Latin American descent.
- Used deliberately in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water to underscore Nadia's mysterious origins. Nadia's brown skin, straight hair, green eyes, and "stateless" anime heroine looks all stand in marked contrast to the rest of the Nautilus' multinational crew, who all have recognizably European, African, Indian or Asian features. The fact that Nadia herself has no idea of her true heritage is a major plot point. (She's actually Atlantean.)
- Naruto: Kidomaru. On the cover for Volume 24, his skin is even darker than it is in the anime (despite it being almost completely white in the regular pages, but that's a frequent occurrence in manga). Later, several characters from the Cloud Village are shown to be unambiguously black.
- One Piece has a few characters like this, though if you look at the original designs the "darkness" of some of the characters seem to come from the designers of the anime taking liberties.
- In the main cast, there's Usopp, who also has creamy brown skin, kinky black hair and drawn lips (which most characters lack), and Eiichiro Oda said that if the Straw Hats were from the real world he would be from Africa, so he is most likely intended to. The Spanish dub of One Piece had Usopp talking in a heavy Arabic accent, plus he was renamed as Usuf. However, Usopp's mother Banchina was very pale, and had an Italian name, whereas his father has similar features including drawn lips. Also, while he now has blond dreadlocks, he was shown when Shanks first recruited him to have curly black hair, so it's likely he dyed/bleached it. This might point to Usopp being biracial.
- There's also Robin, whose skin looks slightly darker than most of the other Straw Hats but looks slightly tanned at most. However, Oda stated in the SBS that if the Straw Hats lived in the real world, Robin would be from Russia. As of the Time Skip, there isn't any Ambiguously Brown anymore. Her tanned skin is gone.
- Zoro has noticeable tanned skin in the anime and keeps this skin tone right up til the timeskip. Since Zoro's nationality would be Japanese in real life, it's likely just a heavy tan like Robin.
- Before his death, Brook fit this trope, and even as a skeleton he still has an awesome afro.
- Kuzan aka Aokiji is also distinctly brown and has pronounced lips like Usopp and in Funimation dub has a low voice like a Jazz singer. But since Kuzan is based off a famous Japanese actor, it's likely just an animator's decision.
- Ria Hagry in Oreimo has noticeably darker skin than most of the Japanese cast and is referred to only as "American", leaving her exact ethnicity uncertain.
- Panzer World Galient: Redd Winduu was brown-skinned, but it is hard to tell what his race is supposed to be.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- In the original anime series Brock varies in color from light brown to dark brown. There's been a gag a few times where he dances in a sombrero and maracas, but most fans consider him Asian.
- Skyla is given a darker skin tone in the anime, however it's ambiguous if it's a tan or not.
- As in the games, there is Iris. Fans usually consider her either black or Native American, but there isn't much to go on besides her being darker than Ash.
- Word of God is that Tracey was designed to replace the more Asian-looking Brock. Despite this, Tracey has a Japanese name in the Japanese version and nothing in-series suggests he's a different ethnicity from any other Kanto character (who are most likely all Japanese bar Lt. Surge).
- Fakir in Princess Tutu has tan skin and dark green (almost black!) hair, in a town that appears to be set in Germany. Fanon states he has some Middle-Eastern blood in him (because of his name and appearances), but the creator tends to dodge the subject when a question is asked about it.
- Since The Promised Neverland has quite the Cast of Snowflakes, the characters' skins can range from white to various shades of brown. While characters like Phil or Zack fall squarely into this trope, others like Sister Krone or Pepe are more unambiguously African black; the authors have admitted that it was intentional in the former's case, to make her look more distinct.
- Claire Forrest from Red Garden is definitely one. Her race is really unclear, mostly because both she and her brother have darker skin tones, while her father doesn't. Also, her brother incidentally has blonde cornrows. Most fans assume that she is potentially bi-racial, as she's had that color since she was a child. To add to the debate, in a later episode Claire seems to get noticeably more upset and hesitant when she sees a picture of the white man they have to kill standing next to his black wife although the reason could have more to do with her parents' past relationship than their races.
- Akio and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Some believe that they're from India due to the forehead marking, though the fact that they may be ancient gods or something very similar makes things moot.
- Ryu the Cave Boy is set in an unspecified area where everyone is dark-skinned. Dark skin is such a norm in the society that pale skin is seen as a curse and a bad omen, and baby Ryu is ordered to be killed because he was born with it.
- Sailor Moon:
- Sailor Pluto has significantly darker skin than her comrades, (it's lightened somewhat in The '90s anime). Though her ethnicity remains vague, Naoko Takeuchi quite obviously took inspiration for one of Pluto's artbook portraits from British-born Afro-Caribbean model Naomi Campbell modeling Chanel couture.
- Kunzite in the original anime has darker skin than the other generals and noticably darker skin than his manga counterpart.
- Haruka's friend Elza Gray from the first anime. Her name would suggest her being of African American descent.
- Sailor Lead Crow is fairly dark and obviously darker than the other Animamates. However, she is an alien so she wouldn't have an Earth race any way.
- Sailor Juno and Sailor Vesta are both darker than Sailor Ceres and Sailor Pallas in both animes. The girls are at least implied to be from the Amazon so it's actually the very pale Ceres and Pallas that seem like an inversion.
- Sailor Pluto has significantly darker skin than her comrades, (it's lightened somewhat in The '90s anime). Though her ethnicity remains vague, Naoko Takeuchi quite obviously took inspiration for one of Pluto's artbook portraits from British-born Afro-Caribbean model Naomi Campbell modeling Chanel couture
- Saint Seiya has a cast of characters hail of very different countries and ethnicities. Good luck trying to ascertain the race of some of them, though. A good example is Chrysaor Krishna: he is from Sri Lanka, he is brown-skinned and white-haired.
- In Samurai Champloo- technically, everyone is Japanese except for those explicitly designated as foreigners, but as part of the hip-hop style, there's a lot of darker skinned characters (often mooks) who often look black or Hispanic. In contrast, higher class characters have paler skin. Mugen looks Ambiguously Brown compared to the other main characters, which might be Truth in Television, since he's from the Ryuku Islands, and it's traditional to draw Okinawans darker, and there has for decades been contention about whether they are to be recognized as a racial minority or not, and in the time the show is set, the king of Ryukyu was still paying tribute to the emperors of Japan and China as a subject state.
- Master samurai Kambei and Gorobei from Samurai 7. Word of God says that Kambei was originally intended to be deliberately distinctly African-looking in appearance but ended up being Southeast/Southwest Asian/Latin American. His original design was then used for Gorobei.
- Maria from Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. She's an illegal immigrant, but her country of origin was never specified. It's possibly intentional, since the series has another character who's also a generic foreigner (of a different variety). Considering her brown skin color, Hispanicized real first name, illegal immigrant status, war-torn past, lack of formal education, and stereotypically genki personality, along with the fact that she's still supposed to be from "Asia", it is most likely that she is actually Filipina, which would make sense considering the historical relationship and geographical proximity between the Philippines and Japan.
- Kenji Harima from School Rumble has significantly darker skin than most of his classmates. Lara, from Class 2-D gets away with it due to being explicitly stated to be Mexican, though somehow she has a Russian accent in the English dub.
- The Secret Garden: Martha and Dickon Sowerby were white in the original Frances Hodgson Burnett novel but the anime gives them a heavy tan. However this is likely because their jobs involve them toiling in the sunlight - Camila, who is explicitly confirmed to be a person of colour (and is much paler than them) is frequently treated badly and subject to racist abuse by the villagers, who claim she is a Magical Romani that brings curses on to the village, while the Sowerbys aren't.
- In Summer Wars, Kazuma is quite dark-skinned compared to the rest of the cast, including his own pale-skinned parents. He's also something of a Hikikomori, so his skin likely isn't just tan, which adds to the confusion.
- The people that Talking Bird Dela works for in Tamako Market. They live on what looks like a tropical island and is a monarchy, but the food Choi prepares in episode nine looks suspiciously Vietnamese.
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Lordgenome is noticeably more olive-toned than other human characters. His facial features and clothes suggest he's Middle Eastern, although this may just be the result of his Nonstandard Character Design, and when he was a child he looked exactly like his daughter Nia. There's also one recurring background member of Team Dai-Gurren (the wiki calls him "Old Coco") who is like this, although his skin tone is closer to a black person's than Lordgenome's is.
- Giha's Village Chief (and also Kamina, to a lesser degree) may also qualify as this, seeing as how he presumably grew up underground without sunlight, yet is suspiciously more tan-complexioned than the rest of the villagers.
- Tooru Mutsuki from Tokyo Ghoul :Re is brown-skinned, with a Japanese name and anime-typical features. An orphan, there is absolutely no information concerning his possible racial background leading to much theorizing.
- Pick a guy, any guy, from Tokyo Mew Mew (except Keiichirou, any of the aliens, and the Blue Knight/Deep Blue). They're all incredibly tanned. What's more, Ryou's mother was white.
- A significant number of people in the Trigun manga, which (brownness and its ambiguity) makes sense given the setting, though Nightow switches to greyscale skintones for dramatic effect so often it's hard to tell what's significant.
- ∀ Gundam is chock full of characters like this:
- The lead Loran has dark skin and curious platinum hair that's sometimes drawn fairly straight, sometimes looking more like dreads. He doesn't really look like anything, but expect lots of jokes about "Black History Month" every February on /m/, anyway (it helps that he spends most of the first episode dressed up as Hoke).
- Guin Rhineford is fairly dark-skinned, too, but judging by his facial features and hair, he's probably just a white guy with a really deep tan.
- Meshy/Meshie/Miashe/Mia-Shay Kune/Kyuun Is yet another dark-skinned blond, but her facial features are pretty "black"-looking (very prominent lips for an anime character, for one). Her hair and complexion, along with the fact that her very white, hick-ish father is a minor character suggests she's supposed to be a mulatto, though we never see her mom.
- The Moonrace is considerably whiter (a few Asians, too), but Evil Chancellor Agrippa looks like he's supposed to be Black. Justified for the Earth-based characters in that they're a result of millennia's worth of multiracial intermingling following the Moonlight Butterfly apocalypse.
- Grand Master of Witches, Credelle, Miletis, Barunn, Tohma, Grande, and Sigma in Tweeny Witches have noticeably darker skin than most characters. This is never commented on or explained.
- Variable Geo: It's never said whether Jun's complexion is her natural skin color, or a really deep tan. None of the others seem to find anything unusual about her appearance, even though she looks like a foreigner; including having green eyes.
- Victory Gundam has Shakti Kareen. This particular Gundam actually features a good number of dark-skinned characters, but Shakti is a bit odd considering her mother is extremely white, living in a society (Zanscare) of predominantly white-skinned people. No explanation for this is ever given (her father is never shown).
- In ...Virgin Love, Daigo's mother is Japanese and his father is American. Though his father's ethnicity is never specified, both he and Daigo are ambiguously brown.
- Words Worth: Rita is the only dark skinned character shown to be in the Light Tribe besides her mother, Sabrina, and doubles as a dark-skinned blond.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Yusei Fudo of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds is noticeably darker-skinned than everyone else, but not by much.
- Moonbay from Zoids: Chaotic Century is the only primary character with a much darker skin tone than everyone else.
