Highlights
- Japan is not as culturally homogenous as many people believe, with various ethnic and cultural differences present within the country.
- Anime has explored different cultures and perspectives, showcasing diversity in settings like Hokkaido, China, Victorian England, and more.
- Many anime series blend different cultures together, such as Samurai Champloo’s mix of Edo Period Japan and modern elements, or Black Lagoon’s portrayal of various cultures clashing in South-East Asia.
People can get quite precious about their media, especially when it starts broadening its horizons. If it’s not about society’s majorities, it’s suddenly pandering worthy of a TV special to decry, or it’s politics interrupting their fun. The latter is an especially fun excuse to see in work that’s otherwise nothing but politics, like Bioshock or Metal Gear.
Related: Best Political Video Games
The same goes for anime, where fans were led to believe that Japan still isolates itself from foreign cultures. While the country can be quite insular, it has produced artists, writers, and other creators who have wanted to explore other perspectives. Whether it’s different countries, different societies, or indigenous people, these anime have all dabbled in cultural diversity.
9 Golden Kamuy
Ainu
- Produced by Geno Studio (Season 1-3) and Brain’s Base (Season 4)
- 49 Episodes across 4 Seasons, plus 4 OVAs.
- Available on Crunchyroll.
One common myth spread around is that Japan is ethnically and culturally homogenous. That everyone in the country is of the same blood and background. However, even if people put aside its Chinese, Korean, Filipino, African, etc., immigrants, the Japanese islands have cultural differences beyond slang, food, and mascots. For example, Golden Kamuy set its story in Hokkaido, home of its native Ainu people.
During the anime’s early 20th-century setting, the mainland Japanese were pushing the Ainu further inland towards the mountains before forcibly assimilating them into their culture. It did a lot of damage to them and their traditions, but the Ainu have since received official recognition as a distinct race from mainland Japan. Golden Kamuy makes for a good primer to Ainu culture, as Saichi learns about their language and their beliefs in kamuy/kamui (spirits).
8 Flavors of Youth
China
- Produced by CoMix Wave Films and Haoliners Animation League.
- Single movie available on Netflix.
The political relationship between Japan and China, let alone mainland Asia as a whole, is complicated at best, with the past century alone stretching its limits. But that doesn’t mean the nations have been unable to ever work together. For example, Flavors of Youth is a co-production between Japan’s CoMix Wave Films and China’s Haoliners Animation League.
It consists of three storylines that cover yī shí zhù xíng (衣食住行), an idiom referring to China’s four necessities for life: clothing, food, housing, and transportation. These necessities can complicate things, like Xiao Yu’s looming transfer to the US, but also bring people together, like how Xiao Ming bonded with his grandmother over San Xian noodles. Set in different parts of China, it makes for a sweet anthology.
7 Emma: A Victorian Romance
19th-Century Britain
- Produced by Studio Pierrot.
- 24 Episodes across 2 Seasons.
- Available on Crunchyroll (First Season) and Funimation (both seasons).
Okay, this isn’t a particularly radical change of pace for anyone from the West. There are a wide variety of sources to delve into for Victorian stories and cultures, from early Sherlock Holmes stories to TV shows like Peaky Blinders, but Emma: A Victorian Romance stands out. Its creator, Kaoru Mori, really went in-depth to recreate 1895 London, from the social drama over a middle-class gentleman falling for a mere maid, to the city’s iconic architecture.
Related: Best Anime Set in the United Kingdom
It also helps that it’s one of, if not the only, grounded approach to a London setting in anime/manga. Compared to the fantasy tech in Steamboy, or the magic and monsters in The Ancient Magus’ Bride, Emma can be a breath of fresh air. Mori also gave Central Asia’s different tribal cultures the same due diligence in her follow-up, A Bride’s Story, but it sadly hasn’t been animated. Not yet, anyway.
6 Samurai Champloo
LGBTQ, Dutch
- Produced by Manglobe Inc.
- 26 Episodes across 1 Season.
- Available on Crunchyroll.
Shinichirō Watanabe likes to blend different cultures in his works, from Edward being ambiguous in race and gender in Cowboy Bebop, to the interracial class drama in Carole and Tuesday. Samurai Champloo is no different. For a series set in the late Edo Period, it turns the past upside down by introducing more modern elements, like lumberjacks who like to rap.
The episode “Stranger Searching” threw in a more direct East/West clash with Izsaac ‘Joji’ Titsingh. He’s a Dutchman who, feeling excluded in his home nation for being gay, prefers to stay disguised in Japan because he thinks the country accepts his sexuality better. But its exclusionist policy means any Westerner caught on the mainland will be killed, so Mugen, Jin, and Fuu have to help him tour the area while avoiding the Shogunate’s agents.
5 Yugo: The Negotiator
Pakistan, Siberia
- Produced by Artland.
- 13 Episodes across 1 Season.
- Available on DVD.
Black Lagoon loves its weapons, especially Revy with her handguns, but Yugo: The Negotiator approaches the criminal underworld differently, as the titular Yugo uses his keen insight and way with words to defuse tricky situations. He learns about his subjects’ backgrounds and quirks to help arrive at peaceful conclusions. No violence, no threats. Just a steely determination, and a steely body to handle any punishment.
The original manga received a 13-episode anime in 2004 covering two of Yugo’s biggest jobs. In Pakistan, he helps a woman free her father from captivity by negotiating with a rebel group, building up his knowledge of the area to give him an edge. Later, his journey to Siberia sees him caught in a conspiracy between the KGB, a young girl called Nadenka, and a mysterious set of rings.
4 The Mysterious Cities of Gold
Central and South America
- Produced by DiC Audiovisuel and Studio Pierrot.
- 39 Episodes across 1 Season.
- Available on DVD and digital purchase via Amazon and Google Play.
Made by France’s DiC Audiovisuel and Japan’s Studio Pierrot, The Mysterious Cities of Gold is both an anime and an animé (French cartoon) as it were. If that wasn’t enough, it’s about a 15th-century Spanish boy named Esteban who goes abroad to the New World in search of his long-lost father and the Seven Cities of Gold, including the fabled El Dorado. It’s a broad range of backgrounds, though not the most grounded take on them.
Related: Children’s Shows Intros That Go Way Too Hard
The original series would throw in historical facts about the different, real cultures Esteban and his crew would come across, like the Incas, Olmecs, and Mayans, but the series is more dedicated to being a fun, Ghibli-esque ride where history, mythology, fantasy, and sci-fi collide together in a wild adventure. That said, the series is a little hard to find outside Europe and is usually only available via DVD or digital purchases.
3 Afro Samurai
Afro-American
- Produced by Gonzo K.K.
- 5 Episodes across 1 Season, plus one movie.
- Available on Hulu, Tubi, Crunchyroll, and Funimation.
It’s interesting how different cultures influence each other. Old Western movies inspired samurai movies, which in turn inspired spaghetti westerns, American martial arts movies, and blaxploitation flicks. Takashi Okazaki brought it full circle when he took those latter two elements and combined them with his love of hip-hop music and the real-life black samurai Yasuke to produce Afro Samurai.
His original, self-funded dōjinshi from 1998 became a cult hit but would take off further when it was adapted into a 5-episode anime series in 2007. Afro’s hunt for Justice, the gunslinger who killed his father and took his #1 headband, was a simple tale with a lot of charm. It blended chanbara movies with Grindhouse cinema into a slick style all its own.
2 Michiko & Hatchin
Brazil and South America
- Produced by Manglobe Inc.
- 22 Episodes across 1 Season.
- Available on Crunchyroll and Funimation.
Between cutting her teeth on Samurai Champloo and reimagining one of anime’s classic femme fatales in Lupin The Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Sayo Yamamoto also directed a Thelma And Louise-esque series with Michiko & Hatchin. It saw Michiko, an impulsive South American criminal, break free from prison and take the cooler-headed Hannah ‘Hatchin’ in tow in search of her biological father Hiroshi.
The series’ setting of Diamandra is technically fictional, but it’s based heavily on Brazil, from its Rio de Janeiro-looking major city to the dialogue’s Brazilian Portuguese slang. The characters are a mix of different South American ethnicities (e.g. Michiko is a ‘Pardo’- mixed-race Brazilian), and the episode titles are translated into Portuguese as well as English. It’s perhaps anime’s deepest dive into the Brazil and South America as a whole.
1 Black Lagoon
South-East Asia, America, Russia, Chinese, etc
- Produced by Madhouse.
- 24 Episodes across 2 Season, plus a 5-episode OVA.
- Available on Hulu (First Season), Crunchyroll (both seasons), and Funimation (both seasons).
Much like Michiko & Hatchin, Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon is a bouillabaisse of different cultures all clashing together across the coasts of Thailand, Cambodia, and South-East Asia. The Japanese salaryman Rokuro ‘Rock’ Okajima ends up press-ganged by the Lagoon Company mercs, consisting of the Chinese-American Revy, their Afro-American leader Dutch, and Jewish mechanic Benny.
It’s perhaps one of the most multicultural series out there. Rokuro’s multilingualism gets tested as he has to use it to handle Russians, Chinese, Colombians, Italians, Vietnamese, and more. However, the series is more of a deep dive into piracy than individual cultures, with Hiroe using its multicultural cast to get international audiences thinking more about piracy, poverty, conflict, and other subjects.
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