Amidst the excitement of the new season, new characters, and new cards, we gotta talk about something that is sadly still an issue, even after Solmare talked about inclusion.
Adding Mephistopheles and Raphael to the cast has increased the number of PoC characters from three to five - which is a great thing!
What isn't great, is that the two new characters have joined Mammon, Diavolo, and Simeon in being lightened and whitewashed in the in-game card art, and their skin tones made grey when in shadow, and WHITE when in light.
All the pictures on the right above are not how darker skin looks.
Mammon and Raphael are given white skin. Mephistopheles is given grey undertones. Simeon is lightened, and greyed. Diavolo is portrayed as white more often than he is with his actual skin colour.
Dark skin tones do not look like that in direct light or in shade.
And given that some of the card and game graphic artists can clearly manage this task very well, why are Solmare not making sure other artists adhere to the correct colour palettes?
Colour picking from the sprites does not work for these characters - it does not work for ANY characters - as those are extremely small file sizes, small resolution, and small detail.
But it is not difficult to find real world references for any skin tone.
Plus many artists, including Devi/dsm7, have written guides for how to colour darker skin tones. There are so many resources out there, for free!
No country is immune to colourism.
[Please do not infantalise artists in cultures that have institutionalised colourism and/or racism. If you would not excuse it happening in an English speaking country, it is not excusable anywhere - especially in a game that was originally released for an international English speaking audience!]
And note, I am not directly blaming the artists.
I have absolutely no idea what privileges or marginalisation apply to any one individual, and that is a very important thing to remember.
But as a company, Solmare does bear the responsibility to ensure that all the game art matches, both for aesthetic design purposes and, in this case, to avoid characters being white washed.
I have written before about the racist coding of Diavolo, that he has lighter skin in his human form, and darker skin in his demon form. With human vs demon recognised as good vs evil by all common story tropes, this means that dark skin is being likened to evil (demonic) and light skin is being likened to good (human).
This does not need to be intentional!
Racist and colourist coding can occur in any society that has institutionalised racism or colourism.
The fault of the above lies with Solmare.
The fault of fanart though? Yeah, that's on fanartists and those who support fanartists who whitewash.
Because again, there is art in the game that shows the right skin tones, that matches the diversity Solmare seem to be striving for (that they aren't consistent with).
And there are no shortage of fans who support fanartists who know that whitewashing is wrong, and yet... Many fanartists who whitewash still get support from the fandom.
Every time you reblog or RT any art of an artist who whitewashed, you are endorsing and popularising whitewashing and racism in art.
Every time an artist blames their tools, their medium, their style, their lack of knowledge that other people(??) of different skin tones exist(???), they are endorsing and popularising whitewashing and racism in art.
You don't need to start or join in a dogpile but at the very minimum, you should not be supporting such people.
Otherwise, next time that artists opens commissions? How many people have you advertised a whitewashing artist to? How many people think whitewashing is okay because a popular artist does it, with support?
No, I highly doubt Solmare is doing this to be intentionally racist.
But yes, the effects of white washing media characters are still harmful regardless of intention.
And yes, it is easy to fix!
Some of the artists who work on the cards past and present seem to have no trouble managing different skin tones.
Solmare should ensure all art shows all characters as they are meant to look. Artistic interpretation does not extend to changing skin tone.
And they absolutely need to remove the canonical skin tone difference Diavolo has in his human and demon forms. If he has darker skin as a demon, he should have darker skin as a human. Easy!
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