Mukokuseki/Playing With

• Basic Trope: Characters in an Anime or Manga series are stated to be Japanese, but don't look like Japanese people at all.
• Played Straight: Sakura lives in Japan, but she has Hair of Gold 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.
• Inverted: Alice is stated to be European, but she has the Shiny Midnight Black hair and almond eyes of an East Asian person.
• Justified: Sakura is only half Japanese.
  • Sakura is a foreigner, but has been living in Japan for a long time.
• Subverted: Sakura is stated to be an American student studying abroad in Japan, going by a nickname.
  • Sakura has Shiny Midnight Black hair and almond eyes.
  • Sakura is stated to have dyed her hair blonde and be wearing blue contact lenses, to look like the models in a foreign magazine she's been reading, or perhaps as an inverse parody of the infamous "weeaboo".
• 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.
• Deconstructed:
• Reconstructed:
• Parodied: Sakura is obviously one of the Starfish Aliens, and is still stated to be Japanese.
• Lampshaded: "You don't look Japanese at all!"
• 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."
• 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.
• 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.