>>52309601Pale skin and bleached-blonde hair are not rare in native Japanese people - especially pale skin. In the 90s and 2000s, there was a much lower % of foreigners in Japan. Plus, at least in Gen 1, the one American (Lt. Surge) is highlighted as American/from a foreign country, as it's a novelty. He wouldn't be highlighted as American if it was something common. The anime even went a step further by exaggerating this and making him gigantic, as there used to be this stereotype in Japan that American's were all tall and burly, at least around people who lived near the military basis.
England is well known for being very "multicultural" with a large proportion of dark-skinned South Asians and middle eastern people, as well as a large black population. Likewise, Spain has a lot of darker-skinned people, often immigrated from former Spanish colonies (South America, Philippines, etc). The second largest % of people in Spain is from Morocco, too.
It's also worth pointing out that in Gen 1 through 4, there aren't any characters with dark skin except Brock (and some say he's meant to be Okinawan, not "black"), but as soon as Gen 5 hits there's a multitude of dark-skinned characters, which reflects how there's just... a lot more black people in American compared to Japan, even just in terms of percentage and not strict numbers, so GameFreak are probably intentionally trying to represent (roughly) the demography of the area regions are based off of.
Country of origin doesn't equal skin colour, but Japan is well known for (especially in the past) being mostly native/ethnic Japanese, whereas other countries have a much larger % of different ethnicity. So no, Leon isn't white because he's English, but he is probably dark skinned because England has a lot of dark skinned people.
