Skin Colour in Genshin and Sumeru 

Darker skin exists in every country. That’s also why I get kinda sad when I realise how little darker skin is shown in media.

I agree that it’s probably not about Hoyo “hating” darker-skinned people per se. However, consider how easy it would be to simply slap some NPC models with darker skin tones. It’s the absolute bare minimum, and everyone knows they have the resources to do something like that. However, absolutely zero NPC models have a skin tone darker than white. It’s really frustrating, especially for the Sumeru NPCs but in general as well. I know colorism is a problem in a lot of anime, but it shouldn’t be this difficult to find any shred of representation for darker-skinned people beyond the two characters from early game, especially with how much research the devs did for all the cultural minutae of the regions (not to mention architecture, natural landscapes, storytelling details, the list goes on). Genshin has worldwide appeal, and I think it’s on Hoyoverse to show better representation that reflects the more inclusive times we live in. It both frustrates and saddens me that millions of people play this game around the world and yet white skin is still the de facto color for just about every character. Hoyoverse can do better and they should.

it’s sad to see this being such a debated topic :/ xinyan and kaeya have two of the best models/designs in the game imo and i hope there more characters will have similar skin tones in the future regions. i rlly don’t understand how people can say they don’t want darker skin tones but accept the fact that gorou is half dog?? and sucrose has cat ears?? it’s a fantasy world so why is skin color where some ppl draw the line 🤦‍♀️

weird for people to claim xinyan is naturally pale and just “has a tan” as if chinese people don’t just look like that sometimes. i mean yeah she’s an anomaly in the world of genshin because almost no one else has brown skin but it feels a bit willfully ignorant for fans to act as if there needs to be some convoluted explanation for her skin color when liyue is meant to represent china and plenty of people in china naturally have medium skin tones. if anything, more people in liyue should be her color

It's actually really brave of you to speak up about this, considering a **certain** side of the fandom on RU-vid tends to brush off the issue of colorism as "drama"

as a middle eastern person, im honestly dissapointed in sumeru as a whole. the whole place is so orientalist :/ first, the mixing and mashing of middle eastern cultures (which is already very diverse) with south asia- we are viewed as one entity and thats not accurate. arabic names, but purana in the sumeru chapter title??? using names like al haitham who are real people but cant even rep his skin color at the very least? i saw the argument "pale middle eastern people exist" and yes, they do, but they are the minority. what disappoints me the most is kusanali. not because shes pale or a child, but because of her clothes. You would NEVER EVER be able to tell shes meant to be inspired from MENA. she looks like a generic european elf.

Xinyan being a darkskin tomboy is one of the reasons I like her lmao. The ora ora types are some of the best in anime and games.

i think is nice that you made this video, the discourse is so poisoned about this topic, so many players are racist and get really jumpy when you demand more diversity, like Asians themself tend to be more tan than the characters in the game and in general have a large shade of tones. xinyan's ultimate has better animations than most 5 stars let that sink in, in my opinion, the artist might be more progressive and actually want more diversity but the producers probably think is better to keep the darker skin tones at a minimum

I swear if Natlan is mostly pale that would be a tragedy

Part of the reason why I love genshin is their attention to cultural and regional details, and the amount of research they put into the countries the regions are based off of. We've seen how the topography of Liyue is inspired by actual places in China, and representations of mythological creatures as characters like qilin and kitsune. They even made a whole documentary on the research involved in creating Yunjin. What's frustrating is that this level of cultural appreciation seems to be only reserved for the east Asian countries. With Mihoyo's emphasis on sharing different cultures through Genshin, it was already bad enough that they crammed north Africa, east Asia, and South Asia into one region. The fact that they're taking stereotypes and slapping them onto a lightskinned character for the "aesthetic" is just disappointing. And it's sad because looking at the leaks of the sumeru characters playstyles and idles they look really cute and appealing, but none of that would have changed if they had given some of the characters darker skin. In fact, Tighnari's colour pallet would actually really suit dark skin. The fact that Mihoyo's character designers either don't know how to or refuse to design characters with darker skin is really disheartening and in general it just feels like there's no variety anymore. I really hope Hoyoverse will listen to the backlash and make changes before releasing the new characters, or at least make more dark-skinned characters in the future.

ive just been getting really sad recently thinking that the dendro archon will be light skinned and i can only hope that the new sumeru characters dont fit the npc trend

What I find most annoying is the wasted potential, many times Genshin is a game about cultures and exploring them, they take brillliant inspiration from folklore and the way people in these regions live and yet we get little to no diversity in character models. It's not that Sumeru is supposed to be full of darker skin people because it is inspired by "brown people countries" it's that we have NOTHING in terms of different skin colors. There's two playable characters, TWO out of a roster of 50. And they're one of the coolest looking characters in the game. Come on folks, it's a land lore tells us for having hot to tropical climate into a large expanse of desert bathed by the sun, you'd expect at least that people would get a tan, even a white person would not be paper white under these conditions. Furthermore it IS inspired by cultures where white skin color is not a majority. These last two arguments may seem pendantic but Genshin is a game where lore tends to explain almost everything. So why is that same logic not applied here? Still, not angry just disappointed. I know it's an anime game and all, supposedly marketed towards a public that really seems to prefer paper white characters (which by the way, stupid excuse. Just because a thing is the default doesn't mean it's right) but this works even against Mihoyo itself, limiting their own creativity.

Thank you for talking about this! I'm from the Middle East, and the leaks have been very disappointing so far. Seeing them not represent us while taking inspiration from our cultures isn't very fun to watch. Edit: spelling

Even with racism and colorism issues aside, I think genshin would benefit from having a variety of skintones. People went crazy when itto was rumoured to have a new, buff model, so even when we're not thinking about the representation, getting more skin variety would be exciting simply because it opens up new possibilities in character designs I think that Kusanali's leaked design would geniuenly look better with a darker skintone. She has SO MUCH white in her design - skin, dress, hair... making her skin darker would be an easy way to improve her color palette, and it would tie her with Sumeru better, since her clothes don't seem to have any cultural inspiration behind them

This portrayal of darker/POC features being exotic and 'bad' is so common in media that people who are denying it is trying to mess with you. Look at the Chinese drama Princess Li weiyoung, the antagonist, Prince Nanan had cornrows or braids. It's weird because its based on ancient china and no other character had that hairstyle. The type of people who braided their hair in these times as far as I know were Tibetan and Han people who these dramas portray as being barbaric. Maybe I'm reaching but I hope mihoyo does not do something along those lines. If the regions are based on real world, then they know what to do. Let's see if they do. Also, I need a male catalyst user like wtf mihoyo. Men can be mages too

There are actually darker skinned NPCS on Beidou 's boat, but they're not as dark as Kaeya and Xinyan. If the characters are tan, they're likely to look like them, so it's obvious that Kaeya and Xinyan have natural skin colors.

Kaeya had a line about tanning during the Golden Apple Archipelago (roasting Diluc for not tanning so presumably that means Kaeya does have a tan) and that’s why people are saying this. I can see why people believe this too, because like, with only two characters that aren’t super pale and no mention of their different skin colour by anyone anywhere, it’s logical to think that they’re just tan. But yeah, more men and more skin colours for aesthetic reasons, I agree I also think it’s weird that there are only two darker skinned characters when it’s not uncommon for Chinese and Japanese people to have much darker skin than the Genshin characters (since Inazuma and Liyue are based on these). You’d think they’d want to, idk, like represent people from their own country the way they are. They put so much care into weaving Chinese culture into Liyue and then made all the characters fit into the very specific beauty standard of « pale skin ». They took inspiration from everything about their country’s culture, except for how the people look? Idk but it seems to me like it really deliberate to not have that many darker skinned characters

Dude you took the words right out of my mouth and broke down all the (rather racist) arguments for not having more darker characters in Genshin. The way people are so disingenuous with my and many other cultures and debating our fucking skin tones is honestly so irritating. I really appreciate you for doing a video like this.

what we need is a 5 star with darker skin, 5 stars get more attention and could really help genshin get more diverse because of this

You asked if it's sexist to want to have male representation in a game and that depends on why you want it. But it's most likely not sexist, especially because this game's major target audience is hetero male and it's more likely to appeal to them by creating sexy female characters. So having male characters is indeed different to other gacha games and makes it at least a "husbando" game too, instead of just a "waifu" collection. Adding to that point, the game itself mirrors a quite "realistic" world and it would be really weird to have no playable male characters and only male NPCs. Thanks for discussing the diversity problem in Genshin.

Seems like there will be at least one darker skinned character in Sumeru according to leaks. Take all leaks with a large grain of salt. UPDATE: Now that images of chars have leaked and things are blowing up I should probably clarify my views. None of the skin tones of chars revealed so far should come as a surprise if you've been following the leaks. The only confirmed char with darker skin is tall hydro lady who I mentioned above. Tall pyro lady is tan leaning but in Genshin terms this probably means similar to Bennett or Cyno rather than Xinyan. Like I said in the vid, Xinyan and Kaeya are not how anime genre usually depicts "tanned" people. Cyno is more tanned in the manga than the average char but not enough for me to consider him that different. In game model imo will probably be closer to Bennett. Be cautious with leaks and base your opinion on what is readily available rather than preconceived notions. Cyno - slightly tanned (manga) Dehya - tan-leaning Tall hydro female - more similar to Xinyan Collei - light skin (manga) Tighnari - light skin Dori - light skin Kusanali - light skin Al-Haytham - light skin Nilou - light skin Inazuma got 14 characters, and assuming Sumeru will be the same, a third of the chars have not been revealed yet.

I'm not a POC at all but i think diversity would be nice

I think the only characters with dark skin will be natlan because thats how they look in the manga

I'm not surprised but still sad about it. China is not know for how fond they are of darker skin tones. Being fair skinned is currently and historically a criteria for beauty there. Even Keaya and Xinyan are pretty fair skinned by worldwide standards so I'm not hopeful.

The lack of diversity is one of the most frustrating things about this game. We have this big fantasy world with seven different regions and cultures based on diverse IRL regions and cultures, yet somehow there are only TWO brown characters in the whole fucking world so far? (Not counting the Hilichurls, which are a another issue.) Like come on. The bias is real, and it's inexcusable. Xinyan and Kaeya are proof that they CAN use other tones, but they're choosing not to. Stop defaulting to the same narrow range of light skin tones for every character and add some variety. Sadly, I'm not expecting anything to change in Sumeru or beyond. I'd love to be wrong, but considering that all of the Sumeru NPCs have the same skin tones as everyone else...yeah, it's not gonna happen.

It's sad, really. Kaeya is not my favorite character because he's dark-skinned like me, he's my favorite character because of his design and story line. Genshin is fantastic and doesn't push on anything from the real world, however the lack of variation will bring more attention to the fact that there is none. Simply put, even having 3 or 4 variations would have been better at the least. Basically have the options you may have in something like Pokémon. Then just putting that on different npcs, they already copy and paste adding 2 or 3 more colours on an already made model shouldn't be anything big like many people make it. More diversity and contrast is literally in my opinion all this game needs then it would be one of the best in my opinion for many its the same. My favorite game is Lord of heros because you not only make your own mc but the characters range from dark to light, heck some characters have completely different colour schemes and have varying skintones.

I’m am deadly scared for Natlan now

i also want to add, that in general your opinion and the way you express yourself really give me good vibes, you seem a nice person, with a deep mind and a wide heart

If (heavy emphasis on IF) we give hoyoverse the benefit of the doubt that they're not putting much diversity in the characters bc they hate poc or people who just aren't fair skinned, it's possible the reason why they're not adding much is bc they saw how much controversy Kaeya and Xinyan recieved from fans in regards to skin tone and was afraid the same things were gonna happen to future characters. Im slightly inclined to believe it's due to hesitance for drama bc Kaeya and Xinyan are early game characters, and Kaeya is even one of the first ever characters in the game-- if they thought non peachy white skinned characters wouldn't be able to attract players to their brand new game bc they "don't look white", they wouldn't have added them that early in the game (Kaeya's proof of this imo, I've already seen a fair amount of people say that Kaeya was either the reason they started playing bc husbando, or Kaeya caught their eye first and bc they thought he was cool they started looking into the game, so clearly hoyoverse didn't let the skin color hinder character design). I'm not saying this is better than disliking/discriminating pocs tho, it would just make them cowards if this is their reason

the universe blessed me with a c6 Xinyan and I am not going to be disrespectful so slotted her into my spiral abyss second squad and she is actually a beast lmao. very underrated by the fandom. but then again at c0 she isn't very impressive. But at C6 she literally sets everything on fire lmao. iI was playing co op with a friend and they said they were just following the flames to locate me.

I'm so glad someone on RU-vid finally said something about the lack of representation in this game. every other video on this site made by content creators like Hero Hei just dismisses this problem as "twitter users stirring drama". it's really sad to see

9:06 They're actually dark skinned according to descriptions in scriptures but portrayed blue as it's a way to not show their real skin tones, as folks from India too r too fond of wanting fair skin, thanks to the brits 😕

And now that the leaks have come out only Cyno and one other character are confirmed to be tanned/dark skinned.... Two out of 6 characters leaks so far. Not surprising, but let's just see where they're going with this. Also I'm glad someone's making a video about this considering a huge chunk of the fandom is okay with blatant colorism and passing valid criticism as just "twitter meltdown"

There was a youtuber who tried to say that we shouldn't expect that from sumeru, because it may be based on another country, but it's not that country, it's fantasy. Ok. But if that's the case, why aren't there darker characters from the places so far? If it's fantasy and all...

I'm glad that this is being discussed by at least some part of the fanbase. It's nonsensical to have a world with 7 distinct nations where the only difference between any given group of people is their clothes and names. We've 2 out of 7 nations inspired by countries with darker skinned peoples and we've yet to see a single dark skinned npc from those nations? No dark skinned npcs in Mondstat, Liyue, or Inazuma? Mihoyo's comfortable with the invisibility of darker skinned people with Genshin so far. Kaeya and Xinyan being the only two darker skinned people in the game further invalidates the invisibility of darker skinned people; Where are the others who look like them?

I really don’t like the rumours that Kusanali will look like Theresa from Honkai. It’s not Theresa herself that’s the problem, but rather the idea that Kusanali will have white hair and light skin. It would make a lot more sense if she had green hair and green eyes as the Dendro Archon, and dark skin as the god of a place inspired by Egypt and the Middle East. There are a lot of beautiful concepts that I’ve seen like this too. It’s realistic and it makes sense (after all Genshin is a fantasy game with a sense of realism; inspired by the real world and real places). Kusanali can still look like Theresa while fitting this concept. Heck, I think Mobius is a much better fit for the Dendro Archon. Venti, Zhongli and Ei each have amazing designs that represent their element and the nation they are the gods of, so I have hope that Hoyoverse will do Kusanali’s design really well and it won’t be what everyone else is saying it will be. Thank you for making this video, this needed to be said and I’m glad so many people can agree on all of this.

For nations like Mondstat, Inazuma, Liye , Fontaine , Sneznaya I can understand why most characters are white skinned especially because the nations that these cultures are based off never had black or brown people during that time period or they’re a very small minority. But nations like Semeru and Natlan I don’t see why Hoyoverse can’t add more black and brown people especially because of the cultures it’s based off. I also hate when you ask for just a bit of representation some people call you “woke” or “political” when you just want to ensure that black and brown skin tones are represented and included in the right way. I understand that representation doesn’t always make any difference and that’s it’s not always needed, however there are times where I don’t understand the problem of having a bit of diversity especially if your using black and brown cultures and aesthetics in your game or series.

I get the argument that middle easteners can be kinda pale, but is sure as hell isnt like pasty white, like some of the sumeru npc skin is fkn glowing, paler than milk and it really doesnt help that Sumeru will probably draw a lot more inspirations than just Persia and north africa

i just want a tanned-dark skin character

why do dark skinned people have to disappear in a fantasy world? is it because Hoyos picture of fantasy is a majority white and Asian cast? sounds like racism to me.

I'm from North Africa and seeing these character leaks was pretty depressing for that exact reason bro. I just want a brown character that looks like me from a region that's meant to reflect North Africa / middle eastern arab ppls culture is that too much to ask 💀 😭

Yeah, I want to see more different skin shades, some pallets actually look better if it's darker but most importantly, they should keep in mind their region. One of my guesses why it is so heavily light skin is cus of the idol theme aspect (which often goes by the beauty standard :/) but that doesn't mean it should hold them back. Twitter users will always get mad about something 🙄, but I don't see how that will be a problem for them, they don't listen to us when it comes to a new resin system so that argument is out the window (saw some folk mention this). We can only hope we'll see more characters like Xinyan and Kaeya, Hoyoverse only listens to CN audiences, idk how much they want more diversity 🤷‍♂️

As someone from the middle east who was born there and grew in my entire life in there with darker skin We are very very very diverse 😭there is no certain skin color at all. I see people of all shades everyday Middle east is HUGE and filled with all kinds of people and skin colores. I genuinely dont understand why people are so angry its really not that deep at all or atleast to me

I'm so here for this topic and I appreciate you making a video about it. I really hope they change it up a bit. BiPOC representation is so important and has such a massive impact, especially in a game as popular as Genshin.

bro tysm for talking about this, im from india and idk what i was expecting but i got kind of a little disappointed at the sumeru leaks, i felt like i was overreacting but now i see that other people have the same feeling as me and feel a bit better about it! i hope in the future there will be more characters released that are more diverse

I would love more skin tone variety, it makes for much more interesting character design. Kaeya is not irrelevant at all actually but he really shouldn’t be the only “relevant” dark skinned character. I agree with everything you said in this video hope to see more from Mihoyo in the future :(

I am from the middle east myself and seeing the most recent leaks with the names etc it really looks like hoyoverse will tab into the common, mostly annoying orientalism style our people are always subjected to in anime. they seem to take inspiration from islamic lifestyles as well (one of ventis deleted voice lines mentioning that they don't drink alcohol in sumeru) so I am worried and actually just wish they will put just as much work into the culture and execution like they did with the other regions since the middle east has such rich and diverse culture it's tiring to see anime reduce it to the same orientalist mess every single time

I salute you bro for being honest not being bias. Unlike that goofy hero hei sucka. Diversity is needed in genshin. Thumbs up from me.

We need more darker skin tone characters!

I'm not even an SJW Twitter type person but I don't understand why it's so hard for Mihoyo to make anything that's not a white character. I'm not even talking about just brown skin tones. I want characters that are drastically different from each other. Characters with purple, blue, red, orange and yes brown skin. Don't even come and tell me it's because of Japan because anime is super diverse yet Mihoyo can't even do the same with several billion dollars like what the hell dude

I'm Chinese Asian and I don't even feel represented by any playable character in the game. I don't have flawless skin, or big beady eyes, or a super slender body. So I can imagine how other PoC would feel about the situation. If anything, I feel more represented by the bigger NPCs like Wagner and Yanxiao because I'm on the bigger side and they have realistic but pretty features. Sure they have wrinkles, but it's something I can relate to.

In my humble opinion, I have my hopes for natlan but I fear worse for Natlan because it may happen again like Sumeru. Character wise, I believe there will be more brown and black people added since natlan is based on Latin america/West Africa, however, I'm getting a feeling that if hoyo would add more black characters, they will put in the typical black stereotype of angry, aggressive, promiscuous, loud and having a builder body type.

honestly im kinda upset abt this whole situation bcs were nearly 2 years into the game and theres only 2 "darker skinned" characters so far... as a latino, i feel like ill be so upset and disappointed whenever natlan drops. if were gonna get paper-white characters dressed up on natives' cultural clothes, then i dont want it. in a way i kind of feel like this just keeps on adding to the misrepresentation & lack of detail and research of non-white/non-"central" cultures in media... i hope that at least the lore isnt disappointing, because its gonna be HAAAARRRDDD to pull off writing and weaving so many cultures together for sumeru. so far they havent disappointed w the lore, so i hope they release more "darker skinned" characters in the long run...

im hoping natlan will have more dark skinned characters if sumeru doesnt, as we know at least ONE character from there will have dark skin from that old genshin trailer/video about the future regions (the little short character with white hair and a skull mask, im forgetting their name). we know that cyno will have dark skin too so that's only one character from sumeru w dark skin... even then its just like,, is it rly that hard for them to make at least a few more ranges?? like just a few. im asian myself so i understand that colorism runs rampant through majority of asian societies but it truly is disheartening to see that they might not even TRY to make some characters look more accurate to the region theyre from. its literally the bare minimum but hoyoverse seems to think that doing the littlest things is too hard or unthinkable??? its so frustrating, and it doesnt help that so many genshin players flip their lids at the thought of making a couple more dark skinned characters when they themselves dont have dark skin let alone arent asian...

most infuriating is the way some people want to argue that the conversation around this is stupid. it isn’t. the conversation is extremely valid , especially when these same stereotypes are deep rooted in orientalism , the same orientalism that negatively impacts swana people. one of the characters literally got the belly dancer and genie treatment. also , tighnari and al haithum are based on real arab historical figures. they’re rolling in their graves at the fact that they’re being white washed in a game centuries later. tighnari’s name also doesn’t make sense , but im not even going to get in that. sumeru is just a melting pot of what people think of the swana and south asia looks like. the cultures , religions and values are different , but to the west we’ll forever be the same. it’s like aladdin all over again.

if mihoyo is basing these off real places , its best to represent them including skin tone cause thats just one little detail its not that hard to just add it in right

THANK YOU oh my god. I made a post showing recolours of Dehya and Collei on a Genshin related subreddit to demonstrate that medium skin tones can work in the game too, while also expressing that I would like for there to be more diversity in the game and gave explanations as to why, and got eviscerated for it. Somebody even said that "Collei wouldn't even be that tanned since she lives in a pretty forested area," as if sunlight is the only factor for the colour of a person's skin. I got so mad and disappointed by the way people were talking in the comments that that I just had to seek out other people who actually recognize and care about the colourism in Genshin, or else I would've gone crazy from all the ignorance and dogmatism. Which is how I stumbled across your video lol Thank you again so much for making this video. It's an important issue, and people who don't see it as that big of a deal are lucky to feel that way, because those people most likely have the privilege of not knowing what it's like to not be seen. Also if you'll allow it, I'd like to share the link to the Reddit post I made because I think that I did a solid job on the recolours, and I feel like they would help people to be less adverse to seeing characters having darker skin.

i know this isn't the point you were making but representation seriously matters for a lot of people. if i was an indian person who liked genshin it would be super cool to have characters that look (more) like people they know

The moment japanese anime have dark-skinned main characters on an average basis, the moment I see China also following in their anime media. Tbh, I think the best way to add skin tone colors or diversity into any anime media these days is to do it yourself. Although Webtoons was made in South Korea, a lot of the North American-made anime-like comics are LGBTQ-friendly and includes a diverse cast of racial backgrounds. It is, however, not as popular in China or Japan.

Sucks how the fandom makes this into "stupid drama" no it isnt, colorism, orientalism, racism isnt something you should grab your popcorn to and watch.

Thank you for this video, it's really thoughtful and reasonable. I liked your use of images of the "average person", that really brings the point home. Honestly in my personal opinion, it's really weird to make a game where one of the strongest selling points is exploring different countries and cultures and not add diversity of skin tones *at least*. It just seems extremely basic to me. So I think people are right to criticise Genshin for not including darker-skinned characters, especially when it comes to regions like Sumeru. Any kind of arguing that "not all middle easterners are dark-skinned" is really suspicious to me, because they're obviously not all light-skinned either, yet those types of anime fans never seem to mind... It also feels a bit like whitewashing those cultures. And no one said all Sumeru people have to have the exact same skin tone, in fact that would be a bit weird too. It's really not that hard to make a bunch of different ones, and I'm sure Hoyoverse knows all of this and is making conscious decisions not to because they think it won't sell as much... which is really so annoying. I really hope we'll see more diversity in the future, but the Sumeru NPCs we've seen so far are not inspiring much hope. Still, keeping my fingers crossed. Looking forward to seeing more from your channel, sorry for the mini-rant!! 🍀

I have always wondered why they didn't do colors in general. Like magic fantasy world? Like I'll accept stereotypes of elves with green skin and stuff like that. I would easily still play a character if they were for say bright red. Cause it's cool when they have a larger variety of asthetics

When Natlan releases this conversation is going to expand and be more important as it should be

THIS IS THE BEST VIDEO ON THIS TOPIC! You are a gem in the Genshin Impact community dude

"It's just fantasy, it's not supposed to be based on real life" I hate the comments bc it's like, have we been playing the same game? Have you seen Liyue and Inazuma? Yunjin? The Vision Hunt decree being based off of a real life Japanese decree? Hoyoverse is being lazy with sumeru. How would it feel if someone just smashed Liyue and Inazuma together and called it all one country? Actually don't, people already do that irl anyways. I'm still high on copium that sumeru will be good but it definitely deserves all the criticism for being orientalist and stereotypical.

Personally, im guessing that part of the reason why the devs arent giving darker skin tones on character is 'possibly' could be bc of Chinese's general conception of having fair skin, in this case, white, light spotless skin as their beauty standard and this is not limited to China only but other East Asian countries. And sadly this idea is soo deep rooted into soo many people due to lack of representation of other skin tones in most asian media that it 'could have possibly' led to this issue of genshin characters, especially Sumeru. What's worse is that, Genshin is getting worldwide attention and it's not gonna be great if they're gonna keep the asian beauty standard within the game forever.

5:13 He is probably a Jin, the Arab supernatural entity

A interesting video with good points. I should mention that the future region of Natland is planed to have South American and West African influences, so if Mihoyo doesn't drop the ball with it, eventually we should see a wider range of ethnicity in the main cast and npc's. And while I'm looking forward to the release and chance to explore Sumeru, I do think it looks like Mihoyo missed a opportunity there.

I honestly find the biggest harm with sumeru characters being white is that it makes the character look fake considering the inspiration of genshin’s material is of a colored race. The characters look kind of fake, which isn’t really a good look for a game which represents different countries

Thank you for speaking on this. The lack of creativity is showing in this regard for Genshin Impact #genshinimpact please take note and be amazing!

I do hope that more characters from Sumeru will have darker skin tone in the future. Cus skin tone just like the hair color, or outfit of the character like you said is what help make them unique and distant, and it would be a great idea for hoyoverse to use and take advantage of skin tone as a design detail to add more favor to there character roster, especially since I'm starting to notice that alot of the new characters are starting to look very similar to the old characters 🤔. Also im not gonna lie while making my team for abssy it took me a long second to find my ayaka 🤣, not saying hoyo should go and make ayaka darker, just that like any details in a character, skin tone is a great way to make them more unique.

But many middle easterns have light skin tones , I do too . Most of us have light skin tones , it would be good to have more dark skinned characters , but it would not be an issue . It's mostly an assumption. Most of the npcs have persian names , wich is iran and people in iran are mostly light skinned . The darker skin tones in middle east are Pakistan and India and those are also situational Nilou as the archon also has a persian name , so based of that lighter skin is also fine But, thank you for making this video , it makes me happy that people want more diversity

Just recently, the sumeru characters got leaked and I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed in it. The designs were pretty nice but all the characters had fair/pale skin except for one. Since sumeru is based off South Asia, there are tan south asians. I don’t mind having several fair/pale skin characters as there are also pale south Asians but it would be nice for them to add more diversity in the skin tones. I’ll probably get attacked for this but this is my honest opinion. Sorry if my English is bad

4:11 Yes, coz Kaeya's skin tone signifies he's not from Mondstadt and hence his skin tone is actually important to the plot of genshin (As there is a theory Kaeya is a prince from KhaeInriah)

like imagine that now we have with the leaks of dehya a grand total of 3/55 poc seriously hoyo seriously and now people will come and say that all of inazuma and liyue are asian poc but when you look at the inazuma and liyue charas and compare them to mondstat they are the same models and the only difference is their clothes and names, nothing else. also can hoyo stop with the orientalism, like what the hell is Dori and why is she a scammer? why is Nilou a water celestial dancer nimph and white? why is al haitham and tighnari based on 2 arab known scholars also white? why is kusanali which is the name of an indian fairy and the archon of the region that is based on middle east, India, egypt and amazon rain forest also white? what does that perpetuate? what do they mean Kandake is also written as Candace, and why is the other rumored POC a sexualized Egyptian based on cleopatra and with an Ankh, why is she scantly clad with barely anything? 4:55 also I cant wait for this person to be someone we fight in sumeru with our gang of all white sumerians, colourism 101 Genshin fucked up hard with sumeru, and NO rain forest natives are dark skinned, just because people live surrounded by trees, that doesn't mean the sun light doesn't touch their skin

I just feel like they could’ve done a better job with the whole “skin color thing” especially with sumeru, as I’ve noticed a lot of the civilians in sumeru and most of the sumeru playable characters are light skins while most of the treasure hoarder type characters are dark skins

If they don’t diversify the skin tones in Sumeru, I do believe they’ll at least do something with Natlan. Natlan really doesn’t have a clear inspiration right now, but considering the character that appears for Natlan in the teaser introducing all the nations is darker skinned, I would assume a lot of the characters there are darker skinned. Still, I really hope they do do something with Sumeru, but honestly who knows at this point. Edit: May be too soon to call but after seeing the leaks, they did not diversity the skin tones in Sumeru 😔

Tbh, given that Genshin came from China, I don’t rlly have expectations about this. I’ll be happy if they do, but China’s beauty standard favors lighter skinned people (even when their population is majority rlly tan) That and I haven’t met a tan sumeru person in game yet so idk if that’s happening haha

It makes me super upset as a middle eastern person that the leaked sumeru characters are like all white. It’s really weird and is super exclusive

Another thing is body types. Why are NPCs more muscular and have more variety than playable characters? Why is everybody built like a stick? Can't we get some definition that isn't based around particularly the women's skirts and boob area?

As much cultural diversity and attention to detail that they have put into the game so far, you'd think it would be fairly easy for them to include characters and NPC's with darker skin tones. (The dogs and cats literally have more diversity than the NPC's.) Especially now that they've added a region based on a real world location that is very close to the equator. It doesn't make much sense, to me at least, for the majority of characters in Sumeru to have light skin while residing in a region where melanin is most needed to help protect the cells from sun damage. I feel like this would have been a great opportunity for Hoyoverse to add more inclusivity into Genshin and to better represent members of the community.

I dont get why Hoyoverse cant just make darkskinned characters? They are 100% able to and the "Beauty standard" arguement isnt really valid when it comes to this situation because Sumeru is based (mostly) on the middle east? Not china. There are other games that have been made in China where there are tons of black/brown skinned characters. Its ridiculous honestly. And now there are more leaks of Sumeru characters and out of all of them only 1 has a darker complexion. The dendro archon doesnt even look middle eastern at ALL.

I spoil Xinyan and Kaeya a whole lot because maxing them out is the main reason I play this game. I do have some non-dark skinned favorites (like Itto and Shinobu) but for the most part, if they're likable, I will go out of my way for every dark-skinned Genshin character. I am still waiting for the 5-star melanin wifey to go full whale mode for from Genshin as well. Until then, @ every female character: I sleep. Great video!

Well, do you know any white people that are THAT pale? Like dang they be like walking vampires.

In most Asian countries, lighter skin is seen as a higher entity. Darker skin is usually due to constantly working in fields. You can see darker skin enemies in Sumeru now (from leaks), but they're all fodder enemies or npc (so far). The two playable darker skinnned characters we have now are free/4*. What MHY needs to do is release a dark skin 5* and see how people will react with their wallets.

one excuse i keep hearing is that hoyoverse is a chinese company and that they dont understand racism and bs like that yet you have another chinese company who has dyslite and has way more diversity and does way more research than them on their character designs.

totally agree, I hate when in games something is overrepresented, it breaks immersion for me and is boring. A game with only female characters is just boring to me because it´s so unreal and boring, also I hate how little variations of character models exist, give me not only slim people and why are the kids only female? Where are muscular people, fat people and so on. Ofc different skin color is also amazing why have only 2 of them? That´s why in games with dating sim functions I also want different sexualities, not because I can´t play all the time straight characters and pairing straight realationships, but because it breaks immersion since in real life there is so much more and it´s quite boring to have limited options. I can´t understand how in videogames that have much more playroom for options then reality if they would like it, somehow we have more limits on every little thing. It´s really boring. I can´t change my skin color nor sexuality in real life but let me enjoy everything in my games. I feel like many games are missing out because they fear backlash

so happy to see a video from you man 🙏🙏

Correction: Barnabas refers to a character who works under one of the harbingers command, pretty sure the same character you talked about in the video.

I mostly agree with you, but Mondstadt is actually based specifically off of Germany. Ik ppl are also kind of upset about how basically the only ones of the 7 regions who aren’t based off of a specific country are the ones where we’d expect to get darker skinned characters. Like Mondstadt is Germany, Liyue is China, Inazuma is Japan, Fontaine is France, and Snezhnaya is Russia. However we don’t really know where Natlan is based on, whether it be the Native Americas, Indigenous central America, possibly the Pacific Islands, we’re not sure. And then Sumeru is based off of the South East Asian Northern Africa region. This leaves a bad taste in a lot of ppl’s mouths bc while all these other light skinned cultures get more specific and fleshed out regions based on one culture, the “brown” cultures are all hodgepodged together as if they developers view them as all the same. That’s just what I’ve seen tho,

I'm very glad you brought this up cause genshin twitter goes ham and cheese about skin tone representation. First and foremost they are all fictional characters in a fictional world. I can understand why people would feel bothered about NPC skin colour in sumeru being mostly pale because its inspiration came from a place where majority of people are presume to be more darker tone which is actually whack cause there's different shades of tones in the middle east, india and north east Africa. It's a fantasy world, Avatar the last airbender water tribe are inspired by eskimos but eskimos in real life are rather pale skin in colour but do we go up in arms about water tribe folks having darker tone? It really isn't an issue and even if it is, it's not a big one. If Liyue has mostly darker tone npc, I wouldn't mind it either cause by the end of the day it's fantasy and people can project anything they want to it (so long as it's not deliberately offensive). In other words, if you can't distinguish fantasy from reality then do not consume the media you are consuming, you'll just be triggered all the time. Secondly, there are plenty of darker tone asian folks. I'm ethnic and racially chinese, I'm pale in skin colour and I have cousins who share the same family lineage. My cousins have darker skin tone exactly like Xinyan and Kaeya, you are right to say that it's whack to think Mihoyo hates brown people, we have plenty of brown asian folks and I wouldn't be surprised if there are relatives within mihoyo employees who are also brown in skin tone. The darker skin tone characters has some of the best character design, they are people who happens to have darker skin tone and that's really about it when it comes to dark skin colour characters in the genshin world. You don't see people commenting about their skin tone in the world, they're just people. So the point is, Mihoyo doesn't hate brown people and when they do include characters with darker skin tone, their skin tone is the least most important traits about them. Thirdly, if we do want to take real life inspiration into account, Sumeru is inspired by the middle east to which Turkish and Arab folks in the north are mostly pale skin in colour. So seeing a community of Sumeru people being pale skin isn't that uncommon at all. Sumeru has the potential to have a lot of diversity but having mostly pale skin colour NPC doesn't mean they are all the same ethnic group (if we're taking real life inspiration into account). With that said, I would love to see more diverse skin tone in Genshin Impact. if it were up to me, I like to bring more darker skin tone as to more represent these people. It's more like acknowledging that there are different and diverse array of ethnic group in the world and that makes things more realistic and more interesting. It is realistic to have diversity in the world. So why Mihoyo showed mostly pale skin Sumeru characters? honestly, best answer I can guess is preference by the creative directors. It is not an issue for a fantasy world to have self-indulgent preferences but it can be an issue if the folks who made the world deliberately be littles certain types of people to which I certainly do not see a lot of bad portrayals of darker skin tone characters like Xinyan and Kaeya. If anything I think Xinyan's english dub is a horrendous portrayal of rural americans XD. Why make Xinyan, the character who supposedly is "different" from others in her own way has a southerner accent, are we inciniating that having southern accent means you are "different"? It's more hilarious than anything. Another reason I hypothesise as to why Mihoyo don't show more brown characters in general could be the fear of portraying darker skin tone community to the chinese audience in China cause we know what China thinks about dark skin tone. This is more of a collective mindset kind of issue, it's not mihoyo per say being prejudice it's the chinese media being prejudice, we all know what happened to Finn and Black panther in their posters. So I think that kind of racist prejudice towards people with dark skin colour in chinese media may play a part to Mihoyo's creative decisions in skin colour portrayal. I am saddened when you point out about the manga character cause Barnabas's design is very stereotypical. I wouldn't be surprised if they take that character and make him go full evil mode cause his design just screams villainy, I will be surprised if they do treat this villain-looking (and it's not because of the turban) character like they do with other villains, they always gotta have some redeeming points and eventually redeem them in some way. It will be hilarious to me cause I will not be able to complain about the Fatui villains if they are all redeem, this would mean at the very least Mihoyo is consistent at redeeming their evil characters including the ones that looks the part. XD

I want to see more different skin tones but I’ve seen so, so much hate for light skinned designs that it’s worrying. People are literally saying they want to throw up because of it, or joking about going to sh**t up hoyoverse (I’ve seen this first hand). I wish instead of arguing about this crap and making fun of light skinned designs and threatening to hurt someone we could just fucking chill and work this shit out together as a community

Africa… Egypt is North Eastern Africa.

Genshin is gonna become creatively bankrupt fast if they don’t diversify their characters… i love this game so much but this sucks

Twitter has become a cesspool of people being really annoying about the Sumeru situation I myself want darker skin characters and I’m really baffled as to why a place with North African Indian and Arabian culture as the base has like 10% of the characters shown being dark skin it should atleast be 50% I’m not gonna come with that “ >:) fixed your characters mihoyo” energy but it is pretty annoying

i think they need to add pitch black character to satisfy certain group of people

(I'm sorry about the long comment, I usually don't write paragraphs but this is a situation which calls for careful explanation) I'm not sure about the other regions that Sumeru will be based on, but for India it kinda actually makes sense? (for dated reasons) The time when the caste system wasn't a bigoted way to discriminate people, it actually defined jobs for different sections of the society. Brahmins being the higher caste were usually the biggest class of people who could afford education. And more often than not, these people had lighter skin tones. Nowadays, light skinned people in India are not necessarily one caste or other because of relaxed marriage policies (to some extent). But, it could be a probable reason why the Sumeru academia's NPCs are all light skinned, since they give off the vibes of "puran' days. Although, this does not mean there were no dark skinned people who got education. There were cases when lower caste members used to be sponsored by higher caste members to pursue their studies. In conclusion what I want to say is that for an Indian, I would say it's not particularly out of place for me to see light skinned Sumeru NPCs. But dark skinned characters here and there would be very good for representation indeed, since majority of people in current India (and all the other SEA regions mentioned) are brown, if not dark skinned. If Hoyoverse wants to branch out overseas then they have to perform some kind of action through their game about their inclusion of diversity. Otherwise, it would be another case of companies not researching their target demographic before globalisation.

i was pleasantly surprised by this video - ive never come across this channel before and i thought it would be some white rant about cancel culture, but its not and i totally agree with you! im glad more people have this opinion because i hate being associated with some of the racist dudebros this community has. thank you for sharing this video! subbed!

imagine when we reach Natlan

Thank you for making a calm, non-drama seeking video on this topic, it's very concise and words all my thoughts on this subject I've had in my head perfectly. It'd be nice to see some darker skin tones in the game, and it's a shame that apparently asking for such thing is such a controversial and heated thing to do, but I'm glad to see a genshin video that tackles this without trying to stir problems. It's gonna suck a bit going into Sumeru and seeing whitewashed characters everywhere, and, let's be honest, probably some orientalism in some way while we're at it, but I hope that they do end up considering adding more diversity as the game continues, with both Sumeru and Natlan especially. At the very least, they could just add different skin tone options for their NPCs across the world in /general/, that wouldn't be a hard change, just some light retexturing and done. I hope it gets better. Thanks for making this video, it's very straight to the point and objective, and I appreciate that. I'm surprised it doesn't have more views! Hopefully it gets out there more!