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Paper short abstract

The project argues that mukokuseki anime aesthetics, often described as “race-neutral” or “stateless,” do not escape race but reorganize it in marketable form, functioning as a subtle technology of racial governance in the global cultural economy.

Paper long abstract

Thesis Statement

The project argues that mukokuseki anime aesthetics, often described as “race-neutral” or “stateless,” do not escape race but reorganize it in marketable form, functioning as a subtle technology of racial governance in the global cultural economy. By erasing explicit ethnic markers while privileging phenotypes and affective scripts that align with Eurocentric neutrality and Japanese soft nationalism, contemporary anime franchises produce “stateless” bodies that travel easily across borders yet stabilize racial hierarchies and geopolitical imaginaries. The chapter contends that this “non-racial universality” is not an absence of race but a coded mode of managing which bodies, worlds, and futures can be recognized, merchandised, and loved at scale.

Theoretical Lens

The analysis combines East Asian media studies on mukokuseki and cultural odor (e.g., Koichi Iwabuchi), critical race theory, and scholarship on soft power and platform capitalism. Mukokuseki is reframed not simply as stylistic abstraction but as an infrastructural logic that makes Japanese popular culture legible as globally “neutral” while quietly centering Whiteness as default and Japanese-ness as soft national brand. Sarah Anne-Gresham’s intervention on how “neutral-looking” anime characters reanimate historical paradigms of Whiteness as innocent and apolitical becomes a key anchor to read anime faces, bodies, and worlds as racial scripts rather than empty surfaces. The project also draws on theories of racial capitalism and media franchising to understand how export-friendly character design, genre, and world-building converge with licensing contracts, streaming platforms, and merchandising regimes to produce racial governance as an economic and aesthetic practice.

Methodological Context

Methodologically, the chapter adopts a multi-sited media industry and textual analysis. It triangulates:

1. Close readings of character design, narrative framing, and world-building in selected anime series and films.

2. Paratextual materials such as trailers, posters, toy packaging, fashion collaborations, and global streaming thumbnails.

3. Industrial documents and public discourse, including marketing copy, interviews with creators and producers, and trade press around overseas licensing.