I don't understand the racism stuff ?? How is this story racist?? like it's nice for a cha...

Too sum up the 2 major points:
-Having dark skinned people being viewed as beastly, aggressive and almost non-human (very common troupe in stories like these)
-Orientalism of middle eastern cultures, clothes and perception

If you try to sift through the comments, some people explain it way better than I can

Yes the orientalism may be misrepresented - but so is most of the European culture in all those Princess-Duke-regression stories.

Also, most black characters here seem
much nicer than the light skinned ones...It is a fantasy story after all...it just aint that deep.

I agree with you.
+ the thing with stories is, that it oftentimes uses real life cultures and social concepts as a basis. It's nothing new for whites to mistreat people who are even slightly different from them and comparing them to beasts/animals. The same happened irl too, where they compared African people with monkeys during colonization. It is indeed racist, but as a world-concept it's nothing unrealistic.
The point is tho - the people who are mistreating others, using them as slaves and are racist are the antagonists here, while the ones, who are being mistreated are the protagonists and allies.

Isn't this more like "against" racism then?

I don't completely agree with you but...

Unfortunately we are not in a perfect world where misrepresenting European culture has the same weight as misrepresenting east Asian cultures. And it's simply because of centuries of how racism and misrepresentation has affected them on a societal level. Simply putting on a pretty dress and calling myself a princess isn't the same as putting on a random head piece and calling myself any kinda Asian, because the latter affects how those people are perceived and treated

And to you're second point. Yes these characters are nice. And honestly in these troupes, the darker skinned people are never the bad guys even if they are aggressive.

The problem isn't necessarily the racism in the story, it's not wrong to write about racism. But that's coming from looking at it from *INSIDE* the story. The racism I mean is from *outside* the story, as in, what the creator themselves chose to put into this, the elements of it.
They *chose* to use a very racist trope of a beastly, dark skinned race, which stems from a stereotype of black/darker skinned people being perceived as more aggressive. That troupe in itself is racist, along with giving them an orientalist culture (i.e. the first point)

Meant to say I don't completely disagree

Exactly, from what I’ve seen and read this manhwa is literally AGAINST racism. People just equate a story that has realistic themes = bad/racist. Like come on

You lack media literacy

Uh, did you actually read any of my other comments before saying this

Yes I did. You guys aren’t able to recognize the INTENTION and EXECUTION of those elements in it. The story doesn’t use the trope blindly, it actively DECONSTRUCTS it. The urkans and their culture are literally shown to be empathetic, strong, loyal etc. and the Estian Kingdom- spreads stereotype portrayed as corrupt and oppressive.

All these are things you see in REAL LIFE, which the story is trying to represent. It uses the trope intentionally to HIGHLIGHT how false and dangerous it is. Ishakan isn’t a savage, he’s literally one of the most emotionally mature characters in the manhwa. Whilst these tropes DO have historically harmful origins, this story specifically reclaims and SUBVERT them.

To reiterate, you guys need to stop viewing it surface level.

I don't think you did. Because I do agree the story itself is anti racism. It's not the writing I'm talking about and I even enjoy it.

What I'm calling out is the trope of the MC and their people itself. The dark skinned beastly character in itself is a troupe routed in stereotypes. Cause even if they are good people and good characters they still do inhabit the aggressive and "beastly" attributes, And their clothing style comes from orientalism. This whole pairing of dark beast x white dainty flower is a very common and obviousl fetish troupe.

The story is good and I'm not critiquing that.

I get what you mean. There are a lot of stereotypical tropes like that. It's the similar to A LOT of characters in anime who are Russian having white hair and blue eyes. Like they don't have any other ideas. Or tsundere characters having twin tails or like the russians being the villains in many movies. We all know this one russian enemy with a thick accent in movies. The same with almost every fantasy setting playing in medieval Europe lol

ate