Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20181208003742/@comment-4136655-20181213031731

BlizzardDragon wrote: ChishioKunrin wrote: I'm still of the belief that Nora isn't Mistralian after those kids commented on her looking like a foreigner. She's probably either Atlesian or Valean and just happened to be visiting Anima when she was orphaned.

As for Jaune, one point against him and the Arc's being Mistralian is his armor and weapon. With the exception of Pyrrha who was designed after Achilles, a lot of the Mistralian characters have an eastern design to them:

Yet Jaune has the Knight in Shining Armor design aesthetic, giving him a European esque feel to him. Why would there be a European esque family there in the middle of Fantasy Asia?
 * Ren obviously being a reference to Mulan and even wearing Chinese esque clothes.
 * SSSN are all based/designed after K-Pop Bands, and even the Vacuoan Sun is based on Son Wukong from the Journey to the West.
 * Arslan and Bolin of ABRN have monk aesthetics to them.

You're kinda pegging Asia as only being the Far East/Southeast Asia. You're forgetting countries like Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Cyprus, and Kazakhstan despite being in or mostly in Asia do have some cultural ties to Europe due to their close proximity to the continent.