Honestly, I don't want to import Western issues to the East. Asians developed EVERYTHING themselves and I think that if black people want to do anime then they should be industrious and create their own companies to do it. Western racism is worth fighting because they exploited Africans and indigenous people for their own gain and still refuse to give them reparations for all the free labour.
@@teslercoil5174 i think he may have misspoke at least thats what it seems like, and if not I've noticed this kind of mindset extends beyond anime alot of adults seem to deem animation as a "lesser" art form meant for children
Super Alloy isn't black now in the manga, they realized the stereotyping & changed it. His skin color wasn't black but got this way due to oiling and tanning that body builders do. Check his hero origin story.
As a black person I remember seeing Cowboy Bebop and that was the first time I saw black people in a anime that just looked like people but shows like that where few and far between
White dude here. Never been too into anime but there are a few shows like Bebop, Champloo and Trigun that I absolutely loved. What I've always found odd is how in these Japanese animated shows, many deeply rooted in Japanese culture, the characters don't tend to look very Japanese or even East Asian at all. I find most anime characters look white and there are even a lot of characters with phenotypical traits typical of light skinned black people. What I find interesting about these black looking characters is that past their appearance they don't usually seem to be treated differently from any other character, like they're not racialized. Like I said my experience with anime and manga is limited but I've always found that interesting.
12:00 Anime fans when a character has blue hair and red eyes: "They're clearly Japanese" Anime fans when a character has black skin: "Well actually they're not black because they have purple hair and that's not a real hair color so it can't be a black person"
"Characters with red or blond hair must be white" even though they have super Japanese names like Ichigo Kurosaki, and they're oblivious to the fact that traditionally having your hair dyed red or blond hair among Japanese youth is a sign of rebellion or the stereotypical shorthand of a troublemaking punk or gangster type who likes to cut school and get into lots of fights (which would be describing Ichigo's character initially in the anime show Bleach).
I've seen people try to argue that Killer Bee is not black. The guy is a walking stereotype who has cornrows, raps, and a name that seems like an obvious reference to the Wu Tang Clan.
@@dwightlewis3519 true but then also I've seen post about how he's a reference to gongoro culture in Japan which is nothing but Japanese black face so it's weird cuz he could be black but then he also could just be a reference to Japanese people acting black but then they also do have black people in Naruto and this is why anime is weird and oddly race
As someone with an anime pfp, I got hate from them. They told me that Kenshiro was supposed to be this ultra masculine dude that just killed bad guys with no reason. Yes, without a hint of self awareness or irony in that statement as if Kenshiro didn't fight the most ruthless dictators ever.
@@BleedForTheWorld How does anyone come to that conclusion? He explicitly faced criminals, psychopaths, tyrant rulers, and early on literally the very people who burned the world down. It's not subtext, it's text.
@@BleedForTheWorld Ultra masculine apparently means unfeeling flesh robot. Basically Terminator without the human growth. That is no way to write a story its why games like Skyrim and Pokemon feel flat. Emotionless drones only work in games that have no real story to them like Super Mario bros for the NES.
Yes when I was in the military I was stationed over in Japan and it pisses me off whenever these weebs. Try to describe it as some type of utopia. I'm here to tell you BS. Japan is like any other place on this planet, you'll find the good and you'll most definitely find the bad.
Yeah. I was in that weeb state when I was 15 but when I found out about how racist Japan can be reading news articles about discrimination at Bathhouses to foreigners It put me off anime and manga for a few years. It hard to take at first but I'm glad I did get that dose of reality that Japan isn't this utopia.
At the risk of being ironically cringe due to my pfp, they're like children who romanticized the samurai and never grew up from that. It's pretty wild but then again, I'd have to run a poll on how young these people really are. Some of them are definitely edgy ass children, after all.
if there is one thing i actually do like in japan..its the restrooms..im pee shy (paruresis : I do not wish paruresis for anyone) , and their bathrooms are absolute godsends..I know its weird thing ti compliment, but seriously can the United States get those restrooms..That being said, my brother went there once and he said "great place to visit, pretty safe neighborhoods but not really a place he would live in ..knowing how toxic work culture is in Japan"..
@@BleedForTheWorld I rarely run into the Samurai lovers. But I wouldn't be suprised the Samurai code was pretty much like Chilivary in a sense that it was glorified children stories and legends but most likely was rarely followed by Samurai.
I know a friend of mine he's black and his wife is Japanese and they both cosplay and they have gotten all types of hate at times. He gets hate because he's black. And she gets hate because she's with a black man and she's not with a white guy.
I heard the Tennis player's Japanese grand mother cut her off for years because she was the daughter of a black man but they recently had started talking again.
As a black weeb. The racism in the anime community is ridiculous. I remember only using anime profile pics on social media because I didn't want to deal with the racism. You said anything about? "Oh look race card, it's not racism, you're just looking for something to be mad about".... We were gas light about the Mr. Popo thing for yearssssss. " we don't want politics in our anime". I never experienced much racism in person. But my online life anything 3 ish years back. Terrible. Before Facebook starting censoring? Insane. True colors come off online. Overall I love anime. Anime is main hobby. The racism of Japan or white people online. Never changed my love for anime. Never will. The fans tho? Besides some heavily moderated reddit group and my close friends, TH-cam videos. My interactions with fans are very limited? I mostly enjoy it alone. The community is filled with a bunch of nazis, pedos, and racist. I'm good.
I did talk with my friend about this as well as she has also pulled back from the anime community and likely knew more on the subject than I did at the time when I interacted with that forum in the past few years
Dude people online will pick at anything you give them. As a lot of otaku are kids, add in online anonymity, of course they are going to be racist and disgusting. We live in a racist and disgusting society, why would anime fans be any different?
Yeah the racism is a big problem in the community. You can tell whenever you bring up black people in general. All of a sudden the fandom gets very defensive or says things like "Well if you do that you'll upset the playerbase" its really disgusting to be honest.
@@kappadarwin9476 true. But I'd argue that comes with any fandom as we see increasingly every day anytime you include diversity the butt hurts conservatives come out and the closeted racist. It doesn't matter what it is video games comic books movie cartoon if you have more than two minority characters White America is going to bitch
I'm an English teacher in Japan and let me tell you Japan is not as homogeneous as they will have you believe. I have any mix race students and I live in a very inaka part of the country. There are black Japanese and they get over looked or get written off as foreigners even though they ARE Japanese. It's disgusting
I've been following a lot of J-Vloggers the past few years, particularly the Tokyo Creative/Trash Taste/Chris Broad circle of expats and just from watching their videos I come to understand that Japan isn't the haven for fascism a lot of alt-right weaboos like to make it out to be. Don't get me wrong I know they have problems still with xenophobic attitudes but only marginally more than most places. Glad people like you are opening our eyes to the reality of Japan.
That is heartbreaking. I'm happy to know Japan isn't was homogenous as a lot of White nationalist want to believe. But its still a hard pill to swallow because I do like anime and manga, and the writing system. But I know that as much as I like it I will get "other" more than any other racial group.
I'm based in Japan as well and, having lived in the countryside as well as in Tokyo, I have the same experience as you. Many mixed-race people and people with both parents from elsewhere pretty much anywhere you go. The problem is, in my opinion, that way too many people inside and outside of Japan believe the myth of Japan's uniqueness with all the racist repercussions. Diversity in Japan exists, but most people think of the world as either Japanese (who know the language, can use chopsticks, are the only ones to be taken seriously), other Asian (seen by many as inferior), western (English-speaking and white) and non-white (presumed poor and deemed the least trustworthy). As a non-native speaker of English with African roots, a lot of my communication with people is just a series of misunderstandings and insults ranging from mild to mind-boggling. Trying to address it mostly gets met with some BS answer like "we don't know any better", like that's something that can't change.
@@BitchChill people of mixed race in Japan are counted as Japanese in that 98% so that's part of it. There's also minorities like the Zainishi (who are enthnically korean) and who get pushed into slums and away from the general public so that they are forgotten about. It's hard to see this diversity outside of Japan bit when you're here you notice it, especially being foreign yourself
As a kid I thought Ash was Japanese, Misty white, and Brock black. I was shocked as I met other Pokemon fans who assumed that the whole team was white, because to me all three are visually very different. But I am a biracial black woman so even as a child I was looking for racial markers on others based on how others defined me. Which is why it surprised me that the rules white people apply to other humans in person go out the window when it comes to characters in their favorite media.
this is also a good point. Because of how the series was localized with the name changes it was easier to assume they were just white and Brock was black
Now, figuring out whether an anime character is white or Japanese by looking at them can definitely be unreliable because, y'know, anime facial features are different from realistic ones, but *Brock*? White? That's even more confusing than how the guy sees what's in front of him.
@@raynegallaher7661 as an adult the whole team reads as Japanese, especially Brock lol. But also there weren't a lot of examples of darker skin Japanese people portrayed in Western media. The whole fair skin, straight black hair, and monolids stereotype of Japanese appearance was very prevalent at that time.
Yeah, anime community can be wonderful, but most of a time is toxic cesspool. To be fair I'm a bit glad that cosplay by black fans is more common and is more appreciated year after year because in the early days weebs would cry every time someone made a cosplay of Japanese character while being black, totally missing the fact if they are so fixated on skin colour then white cosplayers also connot doing the cosplay. In anime also things are changing and POC are portraited more respectfully, but still sometimes you can be jumpscared by the full on racist caricature
Except, if I may interject for a bit, that's exactly how whiteness works. The characters might not be "white-white" but they're not black. Do you understand? It's because whiteness exists to encourage racism. That's why even a latino/latina can pass off to these racists as being more acceptable of the cosplay but they can't when it's a black person doing it.
It's kind of hard to say exactly because japan doesn't distinguish between ethnic japanese and japanese nationals in their census, at approximately 97.8%, but I don't think most people in japan are going to inform themselves about non-japanese cultures through rugby alone. The personal account from 14:30 reflects it pretty well when they were treated poorly because of racist stereotypes. Or from Naomi Osaka's experience as a public half japanese person. There are still quite a lot of establishments that bar foreigners from even entering as well. The fact the japanese govt doesn't recognize other ethnicities is also a problem if you think about it, because it's essentially ethnic erasure, or homogeneity through assimilation. Which is imo a byproduct of internalized racism and a holdover of imperialism. They also have problems with their indigenous groups as well. Assuming things about japan through their rugby team is practically no different than weebs who watch anime and think it's no different than real life. And yes, conservative anime fans fall under this as well.
There's a joke that if you're a western anime fan, you're either a far right winger or a trans cat girl, and there is nothing in between. It's not exactly true, but there is a seed. A lot of those who are trans or close with trans people and into anime seem to be honest about the nature of Japan. That while there is a very conservative and nationalist and racist bent in their government, the country isn't quite the monolith that right wingers want to believe, and hasn't been for a long long time, at least a millenia, probably a couple. I don't want to let right wing people to control the future of that fandom.
As a black anime fan, I've never encountered racist anime fans, however this isn't to say that other black people should stop complaining about racism within the fandom just because I as an individual never had a racist encounter. The reason why I never experienced racism from other anime fans is because I hung out with, what I like to call, civilized anime fans. Real talk though, I believe it was a mistake bringing anime here to the states because a lot of racist people had created environment that excludes black people and making it hard for us to celebrate the medium of anime in our own way. I also find it odd that these white fans of anime attack black people for cosplaying as non black anime characters yet they cosplay as not only Asian anime characters but also they cosplay as Black, and Latino characters. I called that being entitled. White people fond over the Japanese culture, claiming it's about unity and harmony, however, it's the racist and entitled behavior that disrupts that harmony and gives the anime fandom a bad reputation. Also, white people did not create anime so these racist entitled people should have no say in how other people should celebrate their favorite anime and/or manga.
I can forgive some of the racism I see in anime just given how multicultural Japan tends not to be, but I can't look past the very racist behavior you called out among Western anime fans. The Alt Right has this sick fetishism of Japanese culture in particular but in Asian cultures in general, while projecting their own fetid ideology upon them. I thought that at this point in most fandoms, race and gender swapping cosplays were accepted? At least the only areas of fandom worth spending time in are fine with it.
I remember this video by yuta where he pointed out in the end that some people respond to this black cosplay is racist th-cam.com/video/NY0EacflUn0/w-d-xo.html
Also their Japanese TH-camr Shogo he made video on stuff on Japan but he also made video of problem Japan facing like conformity culture th-cam.com/video/893L3Vd86Pg/w-d-xo.html
I find it hard to believe you never met racist anime fans. I don’t engage w/ anime at all and I constantly see racist as weeaboos or w/e they call themselves online
I like how Attack On Titan lampshades this a bit with Sasha's rather blunt question to Onyankopon about his skin color but his rather funny response was couched in his own self confidence and pride in his people after realizing that her question was born out of curiosity and not necessarily hate. Sasha's friends were all horrified that she even asked, of course.
@@ExtremeMadnessX You do have those kinds of people. My mom encountered a woman who brushed the back of her hand with her own to see if the pigmentation would rub off because she had never been this close to a black person before. African Americans only make up 13 percent of the general population and we are the largest black diaspora outside of Africa so Black people aren't very common.
In context it makes a lot of sense. Behind the walls, there were hardly any black people. At one point in the series someone also mentions that Mikasa is one of the few Asian people they've ever seen inside the walls. Like you said, it was a question of ignorance rather than hate. I really liked Onyankopon's answer, too. The series is a rejection of fascism and that interaction really illustrates that imo
As a black anime fan, I don't take too much issue with lack of representation, but rather the lack of ACCURATE representation. Promised Neverland really hurt personally, when they decided not only to have the Sambo-ish design to Sister Krone, but name the only little black girl Jemima... Not to mention the inspiration taken from our culture, yet whenever we're shown it's disrespectful. It's not every anime depicting us, but the fact that I can only name 3 or 4 off the top of my head that aren't super racist is ridiculous. What makes it so annoying, is that anime kinda helped me fall in love with my culture again. Samurai Champloo and Soul Eater reignited my love for hip hop, and pride in what happens when styles mix from around the world. I still love that, and the fact that we're still stuck in prejudice is frustrating as hell. Edit: You know there's nothing quite as frustrating, as taking the time to write a comment, only for someone to not read it and reply it anyway. It really makes me wonder if I even typed a real language, or just slammed my face on the keyboard while the internet tries to interpret the result. So here's a pro tip: don't assume literally anything about what I watch, what I think or even my music tastes outside of what I've written, because you will guess wrong AND look dumb. And then no one's happy.
Wait… The music in Soul Eater was good? I mean average content aside personally (SC being leagues better), I honestly can’t remember the music highlights from Soul Eater…
@@narudayo5053 Shonen is the most popular genre and that's still bad?? Like it shouldn't be looking in a dumpster for decent darker skin characters. I'm desperately trying not to be rude but this comment doesn't help.
@@maybemablemaples2144 well maybe stop watching mainstream media? Heck there is a litteral youtube channel (Nemude Raa Raa-chan) dedicated to showcase every dark skin anime characters, and there is a lot of them.
Oh yeah... We've been fighting for years. Between black cosplayers always getting shit for cosplaying anime characters but never white cosplayers (most anime characters are Asian, but almost no one cries about white cosplayers), between the racist depictions (Clown lips, literally pitch black skin, gang stereotypes, etc), between people defending said depictions (they'll usually say Japan is ignorant as if Japan doesn't have Google as well as there are even black people in Japan to take some inspiration from), and some anime fans just expose themselves as just being super racist (literally every person with an loli icon I've ever met is just completely racist lmao). I love anime but the little sprinkles of racism (as well as sexism and over sexualization) makes it really hard to enjoy at times and I just stay clear of most anime communities tbh. The situation is very reminiscient of how the K-Pop community is tbh.
I got into it with someone when I said Black shine was blackface. They literally tried to pull the body builder tanning defense. It makes me wonder if they are even reading what they are posting. I even got into an argument about Ganguro and explaining that its blackface too and then watch as they twist themselves into knots to try to defend it.
@@kappadarwin9476 Huh. I always got more of a "spraytan valley girl" type of vibe from Ganguro in general. Never made the connection to how it could be seen as blackface.
@@Draqer Ganguro can mean black skin. Or darken skin. It ranges from a light spray tan to dark brown. It goes a step further in some magazine which refers to them as black girls. Racism doesn't have to be a negative it can also include fetishizing. I'm not saying you shouldn't like it. I do like the genre to be honest but I'm not going to pretend it isn't black face especially on the far end of the scale.
@@kappadarwin9476 Whelp after a few hours of googling and finding girls just wearing straight up blackface i am honestly a bit wierded out. Like i would do some mild defending of the subculture if it had been just the lighter ones since most of the time they just look tanned. But nope. There are japanese girls out there in straight up blackface.
If you end up revisiting this topic at a later date, something you might find interesting to look into is The Association to Stop Racism Against Blacks (黒人差別をなくす会), a Japanese group that started campaigning against anti-black racism in Japan back in 1988 that ended up getting Tezuka and Toriyama to change some stereotypical depictions of black characters in their works.
That was a *reactionary* response to black outcry. It’s the same as trying to thank the very people who enslaved Americans for Abraham Lincoln being forced to do the right thing after WW2.
Exactly. I'm sick of the argument, "Well, Japan is very homogenous, so they don't have any references to non-Japanese people aside from what they see in media." We're not living in the 1700s anymore. We have the internet and we can do research about other cultures as well. Besides, anime rarely seems to have a problem with depicting European/white characters, especially in lead roles...
@@absurdturkjust look at the AC Shadows controversy, yeah people are still just peeved when a black person is the protagonist and not the stereotypical racist designed side character that is treated like a joke or unimportant
@@YEY0806 The controversy around AC Shadows stems from whether Yasuke was a samurai or not, while the creators are marketing the game as "historically accurate."
My favorite character in DBZ was always Piccolo and I loved how him and the Namekians were an allegory for slavery and colonialism without using the "noble savage" trope. I feel like a lot of black people kinda picked up on that and kind of agreed that Piccolo was closest thing we had to a black character in the show.
@@murrayisarobot Frieza and his men are clearly colonizers, they commit genocide, and literally put the Namekians in chains in one of the movies. He's also straight up racist and calls the Saiyans monkeys.
@@natesteward1443 there are of course a lot of parallels to be made but knowing Toriyama as a very "as he goes along" writer, as well as looking at the broader details and other representations of black people within DBZ as a whole, suggesting that there's any sort of allegory doesn't hold up. It's doubtful he had the African slave trade in mind. Picollo was originally just a demon king in DB, which was later retconned as a namekian. Frieza calls the saiyans monkeys but the saiyans literally are monkeys. Goku was originally conceived as a "monkey boy" based on Sun Wukong. They literally have monkey tails and turn into giant apes. Frieza's force is also hugely racially diverse made up of all manner of alien races, he just wanted to destroy the saiyans because he believed they had the power to destroy him. And Mr Popo aside, there are occasional one off black human background characters that show up in DBZ and they are drawn as pretty horrendous stereotypes. As fans we can read what we like into it but Toriyama's writing, whilst very imaginative, it just isn't that deep.
@@murrayisarobot Oh, I don't think Toriyama specifically had African colonization in mind when writing the story. It definitely has influences from real world colonizers, but it could be countless instances and not Africa in particular. I was just saying that a lot of black fans have seen these influences and kind of projected blackness onto the Namekians in general and Piccolo specifically.
Isaac form Netflix's Castlevania is probably the best example of good black representation in anime that I have ever seen. He started off as a henchman for the big bad, but throughout the four seasons of the show he developed into my favorite character of the entire series.
Yeah, unlike for instance Puchi or Dedue, he developed a life outside and beyond thier master. This shows that Black characters don't have to be servants of White characters in order to be plot-relevant.
@@kenshix7902 you're right. But I'd still argue that Castlevania is anime and that Isaac therefore counts as black representation in anime. Anime has become such a worldwide cultural phenomenon that claiming anime could only made in Japan or only by japanese people would be like saying Pizza can only be made in Italy or by a italian person (I'm not saying that you're claim this, I'm just saying this claim would be wrong).
As someone that is mixed with Black and Mexican, I really appreciate this video. I am an anime content creator on TH-cam. So one thing I will say is that I am a bit older than the average anime watcher these days as well as people who make anime content. I’m 40. Being into anime as long as I have been, I think back to all the Popos I have seen in anime over the years…and I am reminded of that pit in my stomach I felt when I see the super dark skin characters with big lips and beady eyes. I am also someone that has attended many conventions. So feel as if I am deeply entrenched into this culture. I also have been to Japan once. I have never experienced any racism as an adult. But I do remember as a high school student in the 90s being reminded that the anime girls I liked as a kid (an anime thing) they would never like me because I was too dark. Such a weird thing to state when we are talking about imaginary characters. I don’t think any of this talk effected my dating life…but it did keep me from cosplaying. I just felt like there was no one I looked like. But whenever I see people half my age walking around with a blonde or blue haired wig, I cheer them on. I go out of my way to let them know their cosplay is good and they belong here just as much as anyone else. 💪🏾✌🏾
Thanks for sharing your story. I hate it when people try to defend Popo or Jynx. Anyone who took the time to look back at old Disney and Hanabara cartoons will see where the Japanese got the idea of black face from. Racism is like that sadly. Black people even entertain the idea of liking anime characters with a lighter complexion is seen as unthinkable because "how dare a black person like the same things I do" logic. Glad to see things are changing tho, and seeing you being so supportive of the younger generation makes me feel happy that the anime community. Its definitely much better than it was a decade ago.
@@OtakuGunsoNY the first convention I ever went to I remember seeing 50 year olds and 60 year olds. This actually made me feel relieved because there were people much older than me that still thought anime, comics, and video games were still cool. 😎
@@kappadarwin9476 it has gotten better. 🙂 Of course some things still need work. I'm sure black cosplayers have had to deal with a lot over the years...I am so glad people are finally sticking up for them. We all just want to celebrate our love of anime.
I've been a anime fan since my grandmother introduced it to me as a kid. I always hated how they animated and portrait black characters in early the 80's, 90's and 2000's. Some creators do try to represent us in a more positive with shows like Cowboy Bebop. I think American anime fanbase can be extremely toxic, especially when issues of race come up. They either ignore it, or try to silence, put down, and quickly cancel those voices.
My experiences with the anime community has been nothing but toxic. The anime fans at my school acted like they knew everything there was to know about Japan (even though it was very obvious they didn't). Whenever someone would say that their not into anime those fans would go crazy and start calling them racist and that they hated all Asian people. There are good anime fans but I feel like the toxicity eclipses the good a lot.
Yeah lol, they also have tons of undocumented crime and the society thrives on overworking their people. Like its bad in america but its even worse in japan. Im not saying japan is horrible, but its sad
I don't think you have to make a huge jump in logic, considering history, to acknowledge Japanese culture has massive racism issues. Imagine the PM of Germany yearly visiting a memorial to the dead Nazis of WW2 and you'd get just a taste of the unchecked nationalism that is rampant amongst Japanese society.
Yes the Japanese I've always had this love affair with white supremacy. I had a great uncle that served in Japan during the occupation after World War II. And he told me all about it and he told me how white American soldiers, especially would get angry if they so Japanese women dating black soldiers so they would spread a lot of lies about black soldiers.
@@grapeshot they have a love affair with JAPANESE supremacy. Kinda like the germans thought they are the Germanic Aryan Race. If Japanese people would be tending to white supremacy, they wouldn't have a problem with all the white people visiting or trying to work in Japan.
Its partly due to the exact same reasons racism and intense nationalism in England or America exists, a poor education system that doesn't teach atrocities which leads people to think they're okay and then later be happy for them
Imma be honest it was really rough as an anime fan in the late 2000s early 2010s, not only did I have to deal with a general anti blackness from non black anime fans, but even the black fans (mostly men) were aggressively anti black, tolerated the racism black anime fans received without pushback and relentlessly fetishized Asian women. It was a wild time
I'm black, and honestly online I've experienced more of the creepy side of the fandom, especially when it comes to fetishizing darker skin. But a lot of anime fans have an extremely poor understanding of racism if they aren't flat out racist, making damn near impossible to discuss certain parts of anime with them. After all, this is the same community that literally struggles to understand why lolicon and shotacon are so fucking disgusting. Also, my mom had claimed Brock as black, lol. Which is awkward with his family situation, but that's how bad anime was on that front.
Dunno if you got into YuGiOh but they could have claimed Marik, Ishizu, and the attendant dude because they were at least Egyptian and that was depicted very well in the anime especially once they got to the last season with the pharaoh trying to find his memories and stuff
@@majorlazor5058 I think I had stepped away from anime fans by the time "wokeness" was the buzzword of the day. Regardless of the term used, yea, that's definitely a major problem.
Ive also noticed that if a new anime or manga character is introduced and they are a woman with dark skin or a different ethnicity the more toxic fans will go out of thier way to draw her with white skin and when criticized for this they often say that her whiter skin looks "better" or lighter skin is how she ought to look anyway
I saw fanart of a character I thought was black with white skin. Apparently she’s just tanned, but even if the character is just tanned, people should probably still colour them with their skin tone.
Most of it happened in the early days of anime because they got the racist cartoons late compared to when America got them so many creators in japan saw that as the acceptable way to draw a black character that's didn't start to shift till the 2000s
Since forced Westernization and the post war American occupation, Japan has had a lot of exposure to cartoons and comics made by the west, and because of that were also exposed to a lot of racist tropes. Its also not helped that they had a hand (and still do) in the production of Western cartoons as well, since labor was cheaper to Western animation studios. Japan inherited a lot of racism from the West, but conversely Japan also wouldn't have been able to develop a thriving domestic animation industry if they weren't forced into trading with the West and America.
Yeah, Darkshine in early One Punch Man was just ridiculous, but in the most recent arc his design was completely overhauled and he looks amazing, pretty much every single one of his panels is glorious and it's almost as if Murata wanted to make up for his past mistakes. Also just a side note and a very slight spoiler, he's technically not black, he's asian like pretty much the entire cast and his skin just happened to turn darker and shinier due to the constant use of tanning oil, which is something that can happen to real life body builders as well.
Thank you for doing this because a lot of black people can't comment on this stuff without HUGE backlash accusing us for being " SJWs snowflake" while calling us the N word.... I Don't watch a lot of anime besides Dragon Ball but Killa was that one character that makes it hard to watch I'm tired of black male characters always having beady eyes and lips that are the exact shade. Another thing that annoys me is how black female characters always seem to get lighter in skin tone in video games. Christie from Tekken, Vanessa from Virtual Fighter for example. Those are videogames I know,but a lot of that creeps into games as well.
Honestly I stopped caring some of you guys let’s these words have so much power over you. They dictate your whole lives even though honestly I feel more pity for the racist than anything. Also, there are a lot of black snow flakes think Tariq nashid or even Jussie Smoolet. They use racism as a bait. My point is I stopped caring about the small stuff and just enjoyed the anime for what is was in that time period trying to delete only allows for it keep repeating.
@ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ i am not defending it but from what i could find Author had no idea what is blackface and the character didnt paint herself black All the character did was getting overtanned Thats like saying spongbob did blackface because of that one time where he was tanned to the point he was a darker color Its uncomftrble to watch But it isnt related to black people
@ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ oh i see I didnt know what soul sister is So while the story said she overtanned the anime just gave her black stereotypes? Am i getting this correctly?
@@SiriusWulf It's funny that Black Americans are the only ones who are told to brush off racial slurs, no other group will tolerate such abuse. Other groups will set up hate crime laws even if you just criticize them. Complaints rather you like it or not has has sometimes bring progress. If you want my opinion, Black Americans can create their own cartoons and animations.
@ms honey anime their adult and mature theme so the person who age should be brought up is yours because you couldn't comprehend it rather than being a cartoon
As a black anime fan I haven't been harassed in any significant way but that's only because I don't interact all that much online. At most I've been given the silent treatment and down voted on social media for asking if there were any manga with a black male love interest. I have however seen many screen caps of racist twitter comments involving black cosplayers and fanart reinterpreting characters as black. Some really don't what black people in "their anime". Going so far as to say it's an escape from reality and having black people in it ruins their fantasy. It's easy enough for them to self-interest as characters when they're light-skinned and have hair ranging from blonde to green. Not to mention all the midevil fantasy anime or the ones with actual white characters. Could factor into why some are fast to deny the thought of any ambiguously dark-skinned character being black. I could go on a lot longer I feel like I'd just get more rambly. There's a lot when it comes to blackness and the anime community.
I know the feeling, Black male love interest are so rare its a joke. You are better off getting water from a rock. Dark skinned female characters can be found more often. Isekai is often the worst offender if they aren't a dark elf or a demon and female they aren't anything other than a bandit or support at best never a main character. it is really disgusting to be honest and it only reinforces the whole white ethno space myth that was Europe.
Black anime fan here. A lot of the older animators in Japan were influenced by Disney and old American animations (hence why astroboy looks the way it does). I believe that's also where the racist art of black people stem from since old American cartoons were racist as fuck. Nowadays Japanese animators have gotten way better in the art of black characters. Sometimes we're doing stereotypical things like rapping a a character trait (killer B) but I don't believe it's coming from a hateful place. Special shout out to Schinichiro Watanabe whose shows have some of the best drawn black characters, especially Carole and Tuesday.
The influence Disney had on Japanese Animators is greatly exaggerated and most of the Influence came from Disney's Animal characters not their human characters.
Afro Samurai. I see a handful of comments mentioning it. It’s mentioned because Takashi Okazaki, its creator, got it right…BOTH times. It had so much that would appeal to not only Black people who enjoy anime but fans of Japanese animated productions, full stop. All of the research put into this video, and Kavernacle failed to bring up a prime example of a show so close to doing it correctly and respectfully. The music score and soundtrack are produced by The RZA. Samuel L. Jackson leads Ron Perlman and a star-studded voice cast for the English audio track. Their performances are so solid and fitting to the designs of the characters, it’s the only anime that I prefer to watch over its Japanese voice talents. The story is simple yet the writing is sharp and well paced. The animation by Gonzo is top quality and consistent. It’s mentioned in the comments, but not referenced at all in this video. Afro’s race isn’t even brought up in the show or movie. Yet, the anime FEELS unapologetically Black. Afro’s father, the Number One warrior in the world, was slain in front of him at the hands of Justice, a White man with a pistol. Then, the White man claims his headband and the title of Number One for himself. Fast forward to the present, Afro is number two, after beating all odds stacked against him, to challenge Justice for the Number One headband. See, only the Number Two can challenge the Number One, but anybody and everybody can step up to the Number Two. So, there’s no chill for Afro. Every step forward in his path of revenge is a fight. To reclaim what was stolen calls for conflict, time after time. That’s the Black struggle. Still, the story is told as if it was a Kurosawa, samurai revenge tale. Even its color palette is slightly muted to mimic film in this black and white. It’s an old spaghetti Western, with a splash of Blaxploitation, coated with a slick action anime shell. It has the feeling of watching old-school Kung-Fu flicks of Hong Kong cinema on TV back in the 80s and 90s. Are you aware of how common that was in Black households? Kavernacle, you instruct Black viewers among your audience to give our insight in your comments section of a video essay delivering your observation and opinion on the matter anyway. Did you ask anyone Black first? Did you conduct a survey? That’s my frustration with White “allies”. You all always want to speak for us while hardly ever involving us in the conversations. You talk before you listen rather than listening before submitting your input. That’s why the effort in this video seems underwhelming to me. It’s merely performance theater. You all bring light to the problems, but ignore opportunities to celebrate and promote endeavors towards solutions. You really want to know why we sorely lack diversity and inclusion in anime, manga, video games, comics, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy in general? You folks don’t buy them. You don’t watch them, play them, or read them. When you do, you don’t celebrate them. You don’t recommend them to your friends or reference them-especially when they’re Black. You brought up Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Beyblade, Digimon, DBZ, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Blade Runner, and Star Wars. All of these are mainstream IPs and franchises, which you are the target of. YOU are the mainstream. These genres aren’t completely void of Black leads. You all simply allow them to be overshadowed. They aren’t designed, produced, and/or marketed because y’all honestly don’t care for them. So, we can’t cosplay as we’d like to because we aren’t normalized. Venture out of your comfort zone and what you already know is marketed as being popular. Discover niche presentations and formulas of the entertainment you like and elevate them towards popularity. If there’s no demand, there will be no supply. Merely expressing a wonder of why there isn't enough of something doesn’t initiate action to balance, change, or improve. Quit talking and put your money where your mouth is. Consume, demand more, and consume, again. Celebrate when it’s not only done, but done right and done well. If it’s the Number One headband you seek, do whatever it takes to be the Number Two, and duel the Number One once and for all.
I am a black man. And a massive weeb Anime is bad for black representation. But Anime is no worse than any other media. We are more critical of Anime because it's cultural differences make stereotypes stand out even harder. But let me make this clear: I am a video game developer. I've played video games in the west for over 30 years. And the grand total of times I have had the chances to play a a regular black man is.... Once 30 years of westerns video games. It's 2022 And I can think on 1 Black Male Normal protagonist. Do it yourself. Think of all the times a piece of media has asked you to empathize as a black man. And not given you the option to empathize with someone else. No Gangsters. No druggies. No roadmen. Think of all the: I am a man with a job, I go to work, I have friends and my emotions are relatable. Lee Everet: Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1. Is all I can think of. Now surely in 3 decades, we should all be able to come up with at least double digits. But we can't. And that should tell you something
There have been some pretty good black male leads but like you say a lot are gangsters. CJ and Luis from GTA were cool, and Lincoln Clay from Mafia III is a good one. Bayek and Adewale from Assassins Creed are great black/darker skinned characters imo but yes like you say they aren’t that many
@@TheKavernacle CJ was great. The lead designer and I worked on a project that never got released Bayek was phenomenal. I was honestly surprised at the commitment to the concept. But the voice actor is a black and and has had to set up his own Studio just to create roles that are relatable. Silver Rain. Keep an eye on them, they'll be announcing something soon enough that is pretty exciting. Bayek was innitially meant to be female. And Was recast as male by Ubisoft because no-one would want to be a black woman... Shit is fucked for black people. And I don't think white people can actually see how bad it is.
@@Kazekou I've always thought, if black people ran the country it would be better for white people. We can't govern shit, we only know domination and retribution.
@@TheKavernacle lol if u think anime has bad female characters then u don't know that most anime are from manga and most manga are made by women . There's literally anime made by and for women like u think generalize an whole medium not genre u dummy the fact u use other people options and don't the basic understanding of anime ...u shouldnt be making anime videos because it will make u look more dumb then already are
The funny thing ,as a Black child I loved both Jynx and Mr Popo. It’s only as I got older that I realised they were racist caricatures. My parents never mentioned anything, I guess they didn’t notice? Strangely, I still have a soft spot for them, but that’s more so childhood nostalgia than anything.
A lot of the explicit racist cartoons in the states was faded out during the sixties and 70s. Tom and Jerry stopped using racist depictions of the Black mama in the late 60s though you could catch old reruns of her in the late 2000s and early 2010s on Boomerang but I think those were faded out recently.
Jynx is actually based on japanese Ganguro subculture, which developed as a way for girls to fight back against japanese light skinned beauty standards. It has entirely different historic meaning. Ganguro evolved to fight colorism, but because of america's history with racism all americans see is blackface. I know Japan is xenophobic, but americans applying their own views to all other cultures is wrong. People get tunnel vision and nobody even mentions what Jynx is actually based on or its history, to americans it's only blackface. And if you try to point out actual history americans pretend you're defending blackface and racism. It's impossible to talk about it.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 Its black face. Black face is Black face no matter how people try to sugar coat it. The Jazz Singer despite being very progressive for its time was still a classic example of the Black Minstrel shows that made Black people the joke.
@@kappadarwin9476 The Jazz Singer is blackface and I won't watch it because it's racist. I don't know what you tried to say by that but it didn't work. I am trying to say that you have tunnel vision and as hard as this might seem to you, I understand americans believe you are the center of the world, but other counties have a different history that you. Please do at least 2 minutes of research on what ganguro is before applying american logic to it. I'm not sugarcoating anything, I am just pointing out actual history. (please I hope you're not one of those americans who make up their own version of history)
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 I don't think you understand what I am saying. Black face is black face it doesn't matter the intentions behind it. The Jazz Singer is about a white guy whom trying to understand Black music became black. The Jazz Singer tried to address the issues of racism at the time but it was undercut by Blackface. Meaning despite being well intention it was undone by Blackface. Jynx falls into the category. No matter how well intention the character is it is under cut by Black face. (Jynx appeared in a Christmas episode serving in the role as a helper to Santa which is what Black Pete does in the Netherlands and Black Pete was based on a racist caricature of a Moor during his creation so this further narrow's home the point) I don't have tunnel vision. Jynx is black face, and the fact that you are getting so defensive about it is concerning. You have to learn to take criticism. It is a common thing to see people get defensive when Americans call out another country's social problems especially when it comes to the history of said country's racism.
interestingly enough my homophobic brother watched episodes of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and apparently that style of art is meant to appeal to gay men which is why alot of woman like the series. Don't know if that's true or not but transphobia sure hits with Kochikame unfortunately with the character Maria and how she came to exist ...
@@theresaurus9820 he calls her a man ... xD Once he found out that she used to be the boxer who trained under a dude who looked like Ryotsu which is why she's in love with him he turned ice cold. I actually have that episode on DVD hilariously enough detailing how they got together, how Buchou told him he should settle down and all that jazz and he was literally gonna marry Maria until he found out she was trans. Then after that it became a bit of a punch line. I still like kochikame and will probably always have love for the series but even I have to be fair and call it what it is
@@theresaurus9820 oh totally, it's very low key and tame but I once had a trans friend who didn't like it because of that fact XD Good to see other folks outside Japan liking Kochikame :D
@@OtakuGunsoNY Tf are you taking bout? The artstyle isn't for "gay men" I don't know who told you that but you shouldn't trust them 🤣 cause they fucking weird its just a unique artstyle
I'm not into cosplay myself but I've always found the whole "you can't be this character because you're black" logic to be stupid since it's usually coming from a white person posing as a Japanese character. Anyway as an anime since about the late 90s even as a child it the lack of and quality of black characters was obvious. Now I still enjoyed and continue to enjoy anime, I was even inspired by it to start writing, but I'm glad to see that things are improving.
14:30 is surprising to me. I’m black & lived in Japan for 2 years & never really noticed any racism towards me personally. Also, American racist stereotypes don’t really follow you everywhere. I live in the Netherlands & I can’t say racism doesn’t exist here but it’s not like in the US where you’re super racially conscious because your race directly impacts your daily experiences
I saw a video were a guy was asking random Japanese people what they thought the ethnicity of aime characters and all of them said Japanese or some other Asian nationality. Anime is made for Japan by Japan, the fact that the West likes it is almost an inconvenience for them to some extent. I'm not justifying some of the really bad designs for actual black characters in anime and I'm glad that some artist have begun to notice and want to do better but why are people surprised? Most Asian cultures have a negative perceptions about black people in general, that's why Asians are considered to be one of the biggest allies of white supremacists because many are anti black.
As a black and Japanese person who spent a lot of time in Japan growing up, throughout my teenage years and adulthood there's a few things I've come to understand about how the Japanese treat black people and alot of it has to do with American capitalism. Straight up, Japanese people do not see black people outside of tourist,visitors and soilders. You might see some tan folks in Okinawa but you will never see a Japanese person who is born with black, brown or darker skin. Japanese racism is very largely rooted in ignorance and how their lack of knowledge is perpetuated by American media of black folks, caricatures, minstrel shows etc exported to the rest of the world. Japanese people's perceptions of black stereotypes and people are exclusively tied to the media America sold not just Japan but the rest of the world. Racism in the states is rooted in systemic roots of slavery, supremacy,capitalism etc. While Japanese racism is very largely rooted in ignorance and a general lack of knowledge and or authentic interactions with black folks of any culture. Frankly any racism you experience in America is FAR more threatening and or dangerous to your life while racism in Japan is just kinda hurtful. Not only that, Japanese people do not learn in school the roots of American racism until they choose to pursue a college with those types of studies so they generally lack the context of certain stereotypes, caricatures, portrayals etc. I say all that to say that a large reason why Japanese people perceive black folks in a twisted light is strictly because of American media companies pushing racist/harmful/ problematic content and rhetoric warping their perceptions for a pretty dollar. This is NOT however an excuse for any racism or justification but just an added context from my observations and things I've learned dealing with ignorant and or racist folks in my time in school in Japan, in family outings in japan, and or in the city when people look at me and my clearly Japanese mother funny as if we're not related. Shit absolutely hurts but I say all this to say that to all the black anime fans who love Japan, please visit, it's an incredible place for anime and fashion and typically if you go into the city people are more tolerant than some of the more rural parts of Japan. It's a culturally rich country that is absolutely not perfect but has alot to offer and is a life altering experience. Ps. Yasuke fucking sucks, representation is cool but shit was grossly cliche, and kinda tasteless especially from 2 artist I fuck with heavy and know fuck with anime heavy P.s.s white capitalism is absolutely the problem
I liked Yasuke to a degree. I liked the character arc he went through. Back in the day, I constantly searched for characters that looked like me. Yoruichi from Bleach, as an example. It felt nice to have one, but you recognize that's kinda scraps considering the sea of characters with eurocentric features. The fandoms? Had to stay away lol. I feel like most of us had to make our own fanworks bc there was nothing. It's a little better now but even in fandoms like Genshin Impact, there's a passive scrutiny of "Why do you HAVE to have a brown character?" And that sucks a bit lol.
@@Miraihi I've already braced myself for just pale characters. Almost sure we won't get characters any darker than Xinyan or Kaeya. Which is...ever the disappointment. We have no brown characters for Inuzuma. :/
@@emberthrace4766 I was just reading an article about how they're gonna add in more countries and the fact that they have a South Asian/Middle Eastern one coming up but have yet to include anyone or announce a character darker than off-white is wild. You got all that money to be hella accurate but still too lazy to draw POC darker than a dry paper bag?? That's sus.
bro ain't that shit made by china? china is just asian america lmao they fucking HAAATE us over there, we ain't gettin shit and if we do it'll be some racist bullshit. i'll eat my words and actually download genshin impact even though i hate gacha shit if this happens. (un)fortunately i'm pretty sure it won't lol
I recommend reading "World Apartment Horror" by Katsuhiro Ōtomo (the creator of "Akira"), possibly the only manga I have read addressing immigration and racism in modern Japan, with particular attention to Japan's history of racial persecution in WW2. The story is a horror comedy and Ōtomo's art style couldn't be furthest from the hyper-cute style of many authors but I was amazed at how low it ranked in the readers' survey of the Italian magazine it was published in - I guess anything straying from bright eyed princesses and martial artists was not tolerated.
There are a few that get at the racism in japan, devilman has a half white character with green eyes, who talks about how she is bullied for not being fully japanese. Its not like a main part of the show but its still there. I can't think of many other that directly comment on racism in japan though. Attack in titan with the onyankapon moment, if you know you know, it parrallels to how a japanese person ignorant of races beyond japanese people would react to seeing a black person.
@@jambott5520 What I find interesting is that many Anime/manga seem to condamn racism almost only when it involves Hāfu people that are part caucasian (I am thinkinng of Sakigake! Otoko Juku, Sword of the Stranger etc.) - as there seems to be a certain fascination for white westerners. I can't think of a time when black people (or even other Asian ethnicities) in Japanese animation are depicted as something different than a trite stereotype (at least in my limited perspective).
Gotta love Shinichiro Watanabe, the way he portrays black characters was soo refreshing in Cowboy Bebop. I guess his love from jazz, hip hop is also a factor on why he depicted black characters less stereotypical especially with Carol and Tuesday.
I live in Japan (for about ten years) and a friend of mine is black. When he lived here, he was definitely treated differently by the Japanese and even got hassled by J-cops on more than one occasion, sadly. It was so obvious that it was because of his skin color that the Japanese police kept hounding him for his passport visa and such. Luckily, I think the J-cops have cooled down with that BS in recent years.
I'm white and my local train station officer hounded me for my Visa every day he was there to the point I would get it ready when approaching the station. He knew I was a legal resident, but he was often very rude and did what he could just to slow me down. This was in 2014, but nonetheless, it's still around. I've lived in Japan here and there since my childhood, having gone to school there a few times. While there's plenty of great people, you'd have to be blind not to see blatant racism everywhere, especially when you speak fluent Japanese and they think you're a "Half" instead of a visitor. Despite being white and "privileged" in the US, I've been super conscious about subtle and blatant racism toward non-whites because I've been there in my own way. But yes. I once managed trainees for an eikaiwa and the black teachers ALWAYS experienced racism 10x worse than the white teachers.
@@kappadarwin9476 actually booth police and beat cops don't carry guns. Only detectives I believe or higher ups. There are much better gun laws than we have over in America. Not to say that the police aren't still scum. They just can't outright pop you on sight.
@@kappadarwin9476 Trust me. American police aren't even in the Top 100 in terms of corruption globally. The only thing that keeps Japan's police in check is that they can't arrest you unless there's enough evidence to guarantee a guilty verdict. Same applies to lawsuits. No lawyer would take that case cause they have no way to prove it was absolutely about race.
Black person here. I dont really fuck with anime (the stuff in this video is part of the reason why and i think most of it is poorly written) but bleach still has probably some of the better depictions of black people in anime.
It takes a lot of courage to be black in the anime community everything is all hunky dory until you mention black people and anime especially black guys and then watch the whole chat just melt down.
@@kappadarwin9476 That's literally never happened to me, and I been into anime since like 2010. But I really only talk about anime either irl with my homies, on TH-cam or Discord. I'm just gonna take a guess and assume most of the toxicity comes from Twitter
@@kappadarwin9476 No, not really. Why do you guys think being black is this constantly uphill battle, that you have to worry about racism everywhere and everything!
Mr Popo never bothered me because i literally thought he was a weird magic alien creature. Somehow naive little me never made the connection to a racist caricature despite him looking like he walked out of a minstrel poster from 1850.
Hate to break it to you, but Mr. Popo is based on a Hindu god, Mahakala. Which whrn you think about it, makes a lot of sense since he is also a deity in Buddhism as well; and is even a deity in Japanese Buddhism known as Daikokuten. Just because it may look offensive to some people in the West, doesn’t mean it is, because leftist people are especially guilty of being incredibly chauvinistic towards other cultures that don’t adhere to their values and beliefs. Not everyone is about you nor is everything for you. Other cultures exist. The whole Mr. Popo thing reminds me when a bunch of students at UCLA got a professor suspended because he said a Chinese word that sounded close to the N-word.
Black female anime fan. TLDR: anime and gaming fans often excuse racism and belittle those who call it out because they assume that these things are inevitable or black fans are just whiney sjws Never specifically experienced racism from anime fans directly. But there is this “miasma” surrounding the anime community similar to the gamer community, that I can compare to the natural gas coming from your household stove, where there is racism but its inert and undetectable until something sets it off. For me, its the art. See the controversy about any dark-skinned character, i.e., Nessa. The fans seems to see a character’s darkness as something to be existed or as an accessory, not as a part of her being. This could arguably be seen in One Piece, for years Robin, Zoro and Luffy were brown. It was implied that they were naturally brown, not sure if they were non-white, the moment the manga author retconned them to be ‘sun-kissed white people’ there seemed to be an acceptance of this. Even though it made mono logical sense considering other characters living in the same environment (hell the same ship) were obviously pale-ass white people. Firstly, that feels like a betrayal from the author for denying that even tanned/non-white humans exist in their universe and furthermore a betrayal from fans who didn’t care that a part of their beloved character was erased to fit the the white norm. We can’t even have ‘’’’spicy’’’’ light brown people, everyone is white! Then there’s just the way black people look in anime. Black women, as far as 99.99999% of manga authors are aware, do not exist. The 0.000001% is the author of hunter x hunter. I’m NOT counting bleach or Naruto, the latter are tan Japanese people appropriating black culture for shits and giggles and the former is a palette swapped anime girl with very little indication of being an actual black/African human. She’s on the level of dark-elves in hentai, and you can be mad, idk. Black men are literally just thugs, criminal or murders. Even if they’re apart of the protag crew, ie..e the guy from Tenjou tenge or Simon from Durarara, they’re the most ridiculous overblown Mr Popo looking mofos, with huge pink sausage lips and or some crap (Simon) OR they’re and accessory to make the main character to cool and dangerous (Tenjou tenge guy/bleach girl). (seriously none of us have pink lips, and they dont create a ring where our mouths are?). it’s DIRE. God for vid you call is out, because anime fans black and white alike might come to the side of their beloved anime waifus Furthermore, cosplay. I wanna cosplay! But I’m afraid to because then I’d have to cosplay one of the 2 good black characters or blackify a ‘white’ (JAPANESE BUT SOME WHITE FANS DEFAULT TO WHITE) character, EITHER WAY, I’m getting bullied. Notably, a lot of well-loved cosplay is done by the same slender WHITE girl/guy wearing cheap badly put together costumes and nice make-up. Usually I see a lot of praise given to these cosplays and I kinda cringe considering I’d have to break my back and my bank account to get half their kudos. Or the casual sexism that just exists in anime and which is perpetuated by the medium, as seen with a video by a creator critiquing a beloved Isekai’s waifus (a wish-fulfilling male fantasy-esque genre). Similar to the N word incident with Pewdiepie, there is an implicit belief amongst the majority white gamer/weeb community that all content is made for them and that any deviation from that is for their amusement or just a form of wokeism. You’d be surprised how many people in the Nessa or the Pewdiepie situation simply brush off black people’s concerns as over-reactions and deny that either scenario is racist or not simply apart of the culture. Edit for clarity and continue my 50 year rant cuz wow i didn’t realise how traumatising being a black anime fan actually is
It’s simply tactics to be dismissive of the obvious, a very passive aggressive way to be racist without dealing with the consequences, or reactions.. act like the ppl you’re attacking is the problem, because they have a problem with being attacked. Use buzzwords like “woke-ism”, “SJW”, “oh here we go again, everything is racist.” while they’re literally being racist, and ignorant.. they’re just losers that need a group to fit in with, so they ruin it for others that enjoy the genre- because, they’re not happy with themselves, and very insecure- they need somebody to blame for their disappointing life.
@@MidTierVillain I appreciate you saying that. I honestly just went on a rant and it’s annoying because I wanted to keep it simple and short. The issue is that when you start thinking about these issues more deeply you realise how terrible things are. I also just feel like giving specific examples helps a lot of people understand why black fans have a bad time.
@@sailortwilightmoon I completely understand, I’m the same way, as well. Once I get to going in on certain topics, that passion spills out into a novel worth of a comment. Lol but, that’s good, it’s just so many have no patience, and won’t read past 2 sentence, sadly.
It didn’t really hit me until a few years ago when I said to a former friend I could cosplay as ryu from street fighter, only for him to say I couldn’t because the character isn’t black. I was stunned by that as I never thought of it in terms of being restricted by races. After all white people be cosplaying as Japanese characters all the freakin time and nobody bats an eye. I think part of that mentality is that white folks wouldn’t feel comfortable cosplaying as one of the few black characters in anime because they would probably want to put on shoe polish to “get the skin right” but they know that isn’t socially acceptable anymore so the thinking seems to be “just dress up as the character with the skin tone/look that’s closest to what you already have”. Which on the surface seems fair until you realize how restrictive that is for non white people. That was one of the rings that made me fall out of love with the cosplay scene. It emphasized how much it’s a scene dominated by white otaku. Not all anime fans are like that former friend but many are and don’t realize the racism in their attitudes. Which says a lot about how subtle that kinda racism in anime is. As kids watching it we just got used to that standardized stylized European look being applied to characters who are either specifically East Asian, European or unspecified ethnicity on a fantasy setting. It put darker skinned people into a very otherized bracket. Sometimes they had the same hair and features as their light skinned counterparts other times their look was derived from offensive stereotypes and occasionally they’d look like real black folks in a non offensive way - it’s surprising how rare that last one seems to occur. For me this was particularly problematic as I love the aesthetics of anime in general but not being white or East Asian knowing it had such a questionable representation of black people was always in the back of my mind. It has always been a bit of a dilemma with my own stories that I’ve been developing as creating characters that follow from that typical anime look is quite straightforward but creating characters that deviate from that look and reflect real groups of people without being offensive stereotypes is quite challenging as there’s not an easy standardized look to fall back on. And that doesn’t only apply to black characters. Ironically one story I’ve been working on features a main character that travels to a fictionalized version of feudal Japan and I really would want the people of that country to look like Japanese people and not the conventionally European way they’re drawn in anime. It’s not an easy balance as primarily there’s a desire to avoid offensive stereotypical depictions (from western media such as Mickey Rooney in breakfast at Tiffany’s or the looney tunes propaganda toons of the 40s) but also there’s a need to stylize and make the characters easier to draw so photorealism isn’t practical, the art of ukiyo-e prints is a valuable source of inspiration as that was art done by Japanese people representing themselves in a stylized way that nobody found offensive so finding a way to modernize that is the goal. There are references to draw upon but still it takes a lot of work and there’s still no guarantee that wokescolds on Twitter won’t take offense but that’s just how it is these days I guess
Thank you for posting the black experience when participating in Anime fandom/spaces. Without social media, companies can lie and say one thing. Yet, as other black anime fans have mentioned. Their experiences have been different.
@@ahanna76 yeah and my experiences have been quite mild compared to others. I feel for the black anime fans who had to deal with full on abuse over social media for daring to cosplay as a character that canonically isn’t black or drawing a fan favorite characters (except what if they were black). It just goes to show how white dominated the western Otaku scene is because it wasn’t _that_ long ago that western otaku were the ones being bullied by jocks and treated as outsiders. But that never made them immune to racial bias but I would have hoped they’d have managed to be a bit more inclusive and open minded on the whole.
As a African American ex-anime/manga reader, my experience with the anime community has been nothing, but toxic when discussing such things like character's skin color as well as other subjects similar to that.
The reason why a lot of anime characters look racially ambiguous is because character design in early anime was heavily derivative of old Disney cartoons, and as the genre evolved it kept those particular stylistic features. Western anime fans read it as "white" simply because we see whiteness as the default. In fact, I once came across a Japanese forum where the posters said that anime characters actually have what they consider to be distinctive _Japanese_ features ("set eyes," small mouth, small nose). There are definitely some bad examples, but I can think of quite a few accurate/decent representations of black people in anime over the past 20 years. There's Canary from Hunter x Hunter, Carole from Carole and Tuesday (same director as Cowboy Beebop), and Afro Samurai from the series of the same name, which was in part also inspired by the historical Yasuke and stars Samuel L Jackson as the titular character in the English dub.
I think there's also a well-spread lack of attention and care about the representations in manga and anime, and not only about the skin. (i.e Krone from Promised Neverland...in 2016!) We use to minimize the reactionary and conservative side of Japanese society because of their bright culture, yet it seems a lot of people are not sensitized to the racist/sexist representation issues : I wouldn't be surprise if most of the mangaka just shrug "not important"-like when you criticize their problematic representations. Not in a mean way, denying the issue or arguing about it, but rather not realizing at all the offense, the issue.
I remember reading about a survey made among Japanese Zelda fans about their perceived ethnicity of Link. A lot of them thought that he looks Japanese. The hair colors of Japanese anime/video game characters can throw people off, but they indeed are often considered to be Japanese despite being blondes, redheads and even more outlandish looking. It is also leftover from older age of manga, when publishers wanted flashy and striking covers for the comic books, and giving characters flashy hairstyles and bright hair colors was a popular method of doing it.
@@crabe804 Ignoring the rampant racism in Japanese society is like ignoring a dead rat in your wall. Its there you can smell it but overtime you find ways to cope with the smell until someone visits and then calls it out. but instead of dealing with the issue you get into an argument. It is really strange how people can look at Japan and then hold it up as a society that should be emulated.
I love one piece but the first time I saw that "black woman" that looked like a body building man I was pretty done. I do like the anime but really left a bad taste in my mouth that I can't get rid of. There are plenty of examples of racism in anime but it doesn't come up often. Thank you for being an ally ❤️🔥 we appreciate you, Kav!
I remember that episode it was a real low point. Showing that while Oda is a great writer he limits himself by not growing out of using stereotypes that were pretty common in the 80s and 90s in anime.
One of the hardest realizations was when Anime Toriyama creator of Dragon Ball constantly either drew or wrote stereotypical and racist images of Blacks. He also constantly portrays East Asians as poor.
As a black man in the anime community it's mostly been positive. Most anime fans are very left leaning. I live in Texas (San Antonio) of all places. Most of the major cities in TX are pretty liberal unlike the rest of the state.
I think the problem is that online the right wing anime fans around the world can group together in a mass. All the people I know in real life who watch anime are left leaning as well.
@@TricksterLawlet Because the right in an American sense is mainly run by billionaires, millionaires, gifters and bigots who want nothing more than to preserve their own power and get tax cuts. Think about it most politicians in America on the right hate taxes but the ones who benefit the most from tax cuts are the wealthy.
couple years ago a black-japanese woman became teen miss japan or something like that and man, the reactions on online communities like 2ch or girls channel... it was before naomi osaka too. in general the topic of "half japanese" people often getting othered, in early 2010s there was a rise in "half" celebrities appearing on variety shows but it felt like more of a trend than anything else. okinawan people still face discrimination, and for a long while celebrities like toshinobu kubota hid being half-black. in 2000s crystal kay or exile members chose to be open about being mixed race, and you have rola who is half-bangladeshi
I saw an mini documentary about her a few years ago. Very beautiful young woman. I often wonder how she won in a society that despises darker skin.. not that she was even darker brown.
I got turned off Anime during my High School years when I picked up on the racist portrayal of people of African Descent and how they portray Asian people as White. I always took it as a sign of an inferiority complex in how they denigrate themselves and aren't more appreciative of their Asian racial features. I remember so many years ago during my second year of college watching DeathNote and thinking there's no difference in how they draw a White person and an Asian person. The one character of African descent who made an appearance on DeathNote was an African American who was a vile and disgusting stereotype - a gangster with thick lips and whose speech was incomprehensible. DeathNote was also very bizarre because there's a hijacking scene in the earlier episodes where the criminal is of Asian descent and he looks it. I struggled to understand this dimension, but it suggested to me that the decisions were conscious from the side of the artists - it's not that they didn't know how to draw Asian people, they just preferred them to look white. I remember much of DeathNote because I thought eveything was good, with the exception of the subtle racism. I have a niece I love who loves watching cartoons. When I was in Scotland for a month ( a while ago) on a work trip just 2 months before Covid hit, I bought her some cartoon DVDs. I regularly try to do this. I would never expose her to the racist poison in Anime. I've skipped the Anime genre generally and in its entirety after I saw the patterns of racism in show after show.
There is a lot of classist colorism in Asian cultures. It predates European influence, their beauty standards commonly consider pale skin most attractive because traditionally having a fair complexion in Asia has been a sign of nobility and privilege, since it means that the person does not have to do outdoors physical labor to live.
There are a few anime that don't have the asian characters look white, like full metal alchemist, monster, attack on titan, but in a whole load of anime its impossible to tell if the characters are supposed to be asian until you hear their names.
I think a lot of white people think that anime characters are white because in America the presumption is that every cartoon you see is white. Most asians don’t even think that anime characters are white, because they presume every person in a cartoon they see is asian. Artists just wanna draw characters with crazy hair colors and different eye types, without thinking about how the race would be perceived because they don’t even think about westeners seeing their art and perceiving them as white. I think it’s kinda weird to say that anime characters look like they do because of some secret self hatred from asians, because it seems like you’re denying asians their own individualism and as an asian myself I can say that anime has inspired me to be more proud of my asian features rather than want white ones.
Yeah I tried to stomach the racism in Japanese anime but it does become unbearable at times. Yu gi oh still has that black problem, so it does feel like an elephant in the room.
Back in the day, Cowboy Bebop was the first time I saw depictions of black characters that looked like black people. And the episode was awesome. They didn't lighten anyone based on how pretty they were supposed to be. The first episode was in Mexico and I was happy that they weren't light skinned either. But Bebop was and is a superior show. I never saw Popo or Jynx as black. (There was already a yikes black minor character in DBZ, I didn't need Popo for that).
I’m a black woman who doesn’t really involve myself with anime community due to a few negative experiences. I get the impression that a lot of men who watch anime have a fetish for weird Japanese porn. When I was studying Japanese because I occasionally learn a bit of a language for fun, I was told that I was the one with a strange obsession and that I should go to Africa or learn an African language. Whenever I study European languages Or watch European media, I never get negative feedback
Growing up in the 80s in Ohio as a painfully nerdy black girl who liked programming computers math and bugs (and not much else) I wanted to be an anime fan so badly! When I'd go to a science fair, or robotics meet up it's what all the other kids seemed to know about and like. But this is Ohio in the 80s ... I was able to get some manga from the public library, but it wasn't always translated (by someone leaving tissue paper between the pages with the english) so I didn't get much out of that. I obtained a set of Sailor Moon VHS tapes somehow, and liked some of it, but still wanted to know more. So, I was pretty excited to go to a friend's house to watch anime one Saturday. It was a lovely spring day. And those cartoons were the most racist thing I'd ever seen. The kid hosting the party was from Japan originally, his family moved over a few years back. I was pretty nice to him because I knew the kids at our school could be kinda insular and racist. I was so confused that he'd enjoy anything like that much less put it on for me and a bunch of white kids. I didn't want to be difficult so I just ended up leaving early with some excuse and I never really was nice to that kid again. Lost all interest in anime.
Yeah I was at the point when I found out about the racist discrimination of bathhouses. It took a lot of courage to continue being in the anime fandom despite knowing its racist history and where it comes him. But I think the friends I made in the community helped me stay in it.
@Susan D. Thank you for sharing your experience. I imagine it was disappointing how there was so little care given towards black characters yet there was & still so many examples available to prevent such ignorance.
Where my Michiko to Hatchin fans at? It was really refreshing seeing anime actually immersed in an Afro-Latin setting. Also, footage from Twin Snakes is objectively more heinous than anything you covered in this vid.
Wow, as a Black Girl Anime fan, thank you so much for taking an extensive amount of time to discuss a very controversial topic for non-Black Anime fans. Most actual Anime fans steer away from this subject, but You are not even a fan of Anime, but you did your homework and listened to our voices. Thank you for using your platform to amplify the validity of our complaints within the Anime community and the presentation of Blackness within Anime. I have been a fan of Anime for almost 30yrs and I knew exactly what I was looking at when I first saw Mr. Popo and Jinx on TV. I was in my early teens, but I knew this was a disrespectful depiction of black-skinned characters, which made me wonder what Japanese really thought of Black people in general. Did they really want to hurt us? Would they rather we not exist at all? Oh man, that Shaman King character Chocolove was one of the worst! I remember refusing to watch Shaman King ever again after they introduced him. I was so angry and Hurt! I watched every character (bad guys AND good guys) beat the hell out of him on that first episode. I had to let that show go. Over the following years I searched for better images of Black characters in Anime, and was happy to find Nadia (my profile picture^_^), because she is actually the main character of her own Anime when Black characters were still hard to find at all. Times have definitely improved thankfully, and it's about time! We just want to be given a fair representation like anyone else the in the Anime medium. If you are going to have diverse characters, allow us to be cool and heroic characters too. We deserve to be more than punching bags, and idiot jokes for other characters to abuse. As for the Cosplay community, I remember attending my first major anime convention Youmacon in Michigan and saw a lot of Black people playing as Bleach characters since they had the best looking Black characters at the time. I never cosplayed, because I didn't think I could pull off any of the Anime looks, including the Black characters, but that was just my choice. I contemplated cosplay and always wanted to choose a Black character to give more representation to them. But I see where this has changed as well, with more Black TH-cam Anime fans embracing cosplay like RDCWorld and KingVader. I think it was just a matter of time before Anime and Anime fans recognized that our world is made up of many different people who mold the world live in, and it's just time for Anime to catch up. Thank you again for support.
2:22 "There is more black representation in this genre." Well, you've angered the anime fans, Kavernacle! Prepare yourself for some nasty words in the comments.
The picture of Ruby Bridges, as a little girl, walking up to a school entrance surrounded by ADULTS screaming at her, comes to mind often. Then I think about how she isn’t even that old…recent history.
I really wish Yasuke was better. Like, I get what they were going for, and wanting this over-the-top final battle with robots and stuff, but it just turned out to be another black character used to protect a more powerful light skinned girl with greater powers. I would've loved a story focusing on him in his prime, like in the flashbacks. I think it would be far more compelling, grounded and more about him and his life as a samurai.
Same! I felt pretty underwhelmed by Yasuke. It would have been so much better if it focused on him. It was a shame his background was just a few flash backs I think. I'm not sure if I cared for the robots and Sci elements either tbh
I'm a black woman who proudly (cringely?) called myself an otaku when I was a kid. Now I work with nerdy properties (mostly games) in Japan, where I've been for about eight years now. A lot of the racism that pops up in Japanese media is definitely imported. "Little Black Sambo" used to be a common children's book here. Many people have watched a Hollywood film with the black gangsta archetype. Recently, Japan's coverage of BLM wasn't the greatest either. However, in my everyday life I don't experience much over racism. On the other hand, I hate dealing with Western fans on SNSes. There's so much racism (pedophila, and as of late, transphobia too). It's annoying since they always try to talk over Japanese people, academics, and immigrants like me about what "should" be in Japanese media. The TH-camr Sarah Z did a video about geek culture, and how much gatekeeping has grown in some spaces. I think that Western anime fans are like that too, but it extends to their fairy tale verson of Japan, which often has their reactionary twist. Also, I'm glad you talked about Naomi Osaka. Usually Japan is super-happy to "claim" worldwide notable people with Japanese ethnicity, even if they've personally never been in Japan. However there was a lot of controversy about her lighting the Olympic torch, as she's "not Japanese enough". Anyhow, she does have a ton of popularity here and is definitely a symbol of how the country is changing (slowly, but still).
it's funny because most of these ppl who cosplay are white and the characters they portray in the anime are ASIAN SO the hate doesn't make sense at all
The depictions are getting better with yasuke, charicters like onyankapon who was probably one of the best aot charicters and poc in stone ocean. And there are creators that are getting better and useing actual black people as inspiration not outdated and offensive stereotypes. There are still some not great ones but and quite a few fans are really racist. I think these changes will help bring more anti racist and progressives into the community and it will drown them out hopefully
Never actually saw the Yasuke anime, but I did see a few cliff notes and there seems to be a lot more attention to actual Japanese history than you might expect. This series appears to be one of the few, for instance, that doesn't have Oda Nobunaga portrayed as this demonic usurper king and portrays him quite positively. Also Hojo Masako seems to be the final boss of the anime series for some reason. Seems like kind of a random choice since I don't recall any weird myths surrounding her. She was just the major powerhouse behind much of the Kamakura shogunate for most of its reign.
My girlfriend is 1/4th Puerto Rican and she looks tanned white, but she has really curly hair because of her PR ancestry (which includes African ancestry). It's so hard to find representative hair in Japanese games for her. Just last week we struggled with making her avatar in Switch Sports.
Yasuke was terrible, should of went full historical. Also a correction, Nobunaga never unified Japan, he was assassinated before he could and Yasuke was (likely) kicked out of Japan by Hideyoshi Toyatomi soon after the Bateren-tsuiho-rei (the Purge Directive Order to the Catholics) edicts were declared (politics).....Though in reality no one knows what happened to him after Honnō-ji Incident , he was killed with the rest of Nobunaga's loyalists and he was expelled from the country with the Jesuits and other Catholics are the main lines of thought.
NIOH had an ACTUAL HISTORICAL (based) black Samurai. And Nioh actually is set in 1600s Japan. Yasuke was a personal retainer to Oda Nobunaga. Those rabid complainers are idiots. But then you knew that.
Mugen is one of my fav anime characters, BECAUSE they actually empathise with his trauma as a poc in japan and whilst highlighting that the issue is systematic and not a few naughty racists being mean.
Aren't Japanese people, "People of color" the term just means not white. Even if you're pale as hell, if you're not race isn't white, you're not considered white
Avatar the Last Airbender may not, technically, be anime but Katara and Sokka's melanin was so great for Brown skinned kids like me. And I'm continuously seeing new adaptations that are totally undermining their skin color.
One of my favorite animes growing up was Cyborg 009 in the show there was a character called pyunma who was african he had the black face design until they redesign his character in one of the films. If you haven't seen the anime or read the manga i highly recommend it kav. I dont want to leave the synopsis cause this comment is way too long.
Anime communities can be pretty racist especially online. I think sometimes for me as an anime fan there is this cognitive dissonance when you see certain things. I loved DBZ growing up but the way they depicted Mr. Popo was atrocious. It always felt like the people making these animes had a racist view inspired by the west. It's like everything else in a world shaped by colonialism you just learn to live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance ie using currency with pictures of slaveowners or Black kids having to go to schools named after confederate generals. I still enjoy anime as an art form but i do have a lot of cognitive dissonance with it
While Sword Art Online has weird sexualization of teenage girls,It was noteworthy for me for having a black man who wasn't drawn as caricature and acts like a regular person
It’s weird that some anime can get one aspect of representation right but get everything else bad. There was one with an apparently very good representation of a trans girl, but the rest of the anime was sexist and racist.
I was so used to never seeing black people in media apart from shows like martin during the height of black sitcoms that i never thought about it, i identified with piccalo
I'm half black and half filipino nearly 40 years old. I became an anime fan in the mid 90s. Growing up in the 90s I just learned to ignore how black people were treated in anime. I became ignorant to the racism for a long time. When I was college aged, conventions started to become more of a thing, at least that's when I became more aware of them. I noticed the harsh reactions black cosplayers were receiving at the time. While so man other white cosplayers were getting praised for their interpretations of anime characters, black cosplayers were getting berated. I had initially wanted to start showing up at the few conventions I knew of at the time in costume. But seeing reactions majorly discouraged me from ever wanting to do that. I had wanted to do a Vampire Hunter D costume and a Street Fighter Ryu. I never perused cosplaying any characters because of that. I never even went to any major conventions because of how much it discouraged me. When the anime Afro Samurai came out I was super excited because there was finally a character with a similar skin tone that I would want to cosplay. I never did, because I had grown fatter by that point and had already gone through several years of feeling that I couldn't cosplay anything. I even stopped watching anime for about a 5 to 10 year period. When I finally got back into anime about 10 years ago I was more aware of racial issues. My entire life the heroes in anime and other types of fandom had never really looked like me. They still don't look like me. I enjoyed Cannon Busters just because they really tried with that. I hope things continue to progress... so that my children won't have similar problems that I had while growing up.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 ah yes beautiful white features, you ever saw the people in 1700s and 1800s? Think you'd change your view if you saw all the incest going on in europe
I think black characters having larger lips isn't problematic on its own... But you don't need to make them look like minstrel shows... - Black facial features can be done tastefully...
I think what annoys me the most about anime fans is how much they *deny* any racism on anime's part. Especially towards dark skinned people. It's no secret anyways that dark skin has historically been frowned upon in Japan, and that whitening cream is common there. Almost all anime/manga I've looked up that has a setting where there *should* be dark skinned people, nearly all the characters are portrayed as light skinned, as though these stories are purposely trying to avoid portraying dark skinned people in predominant roles. For example: Red River, Magi, and especially Blood Blockade Battlefront; all take place in settings that have historically or currently feature dark skinned people alongside light skinned people, YET nearly all, or all of, the characters appear to be light skinned.
I've watched a lot of anime / played a lot of Japanese games and one thing I noticed comes up a lot is characters from Okinawa, a southern island in Japan where people tend to have darker complexion. They are often drawn like these minstrel show characters and are treated as exotic people. Even in fantasy stories there are often characters from a distant island who are darker and treated differently. Luckily, it seems more modern takes at least use this to address racism
I never understood the inclusion thing. Why should anything HAVE TO BE represented. And then examples from the articles are just bizzar . Mr Popo is not black, he is an Guardian jin . They entered Japans culture in XIXth century when the empire of Japan established contacts with the Persian empire(roughly todays Iran+) , Lynx is not a black female, she is based on a mother protective spirit fetish(as in physical repesentation of a cult source) from northern Japan. Generaly this feels like a gigantic stretch , combined with lack of knowladge about the medium and culture.
Representation of minorities matters because it shows them to everyone. Alot of times, minority-status people fly under the radar and therefore become more susceptible to being stereotypified or portrayed in insensitive ways. And when you dont know many people of whatever minority group and only see them in media in certain negative ways, it can skew your perspective in a non-empathetic way. On the other hand, when minorities, whether they be racial, sexual, etc minorities, are shown in a nuanced and respectful manner you can break down that wall. It is well documented that when we read or watch from a character's perspective, we begin to empathize with them similar to how we become more empathetic to real people as you get to know them. This is why representation is important. For so long, whiteness has been seen as the default for stories in the West when in reality it really shouldnt matter what your skin tone is. Yet it does. So we must resist that pull
@@unovasfinest2623 but here is the thing you can't make a character just for inclusion or they just come off as one note or more stereotypical to be honest
@@unovasfinest2623there're billions of black people around the globe. Start creating your own stories, where you are the main focus, instead of trying to strong arm Japanese to represent you. They don't owe you anything, just like they don't owe white people anything, or anyone who's not Japanese.
I feel such a genuine hopefulness towards the future from anime. Positive feelings about where technology will take us, about how we can better understand each other, about good triumphing over evil. It truly seems like such a missed message for people to use these generally hopeful sentiments to turn around be be bigoted about it. I wonder if there's a significant body of leftist anime fans like me.
Theres got to be a lot of leftist anime fans. A whole load of anime are very anti authority and anti capitalist, so will attract leftists. Also because most anime are originally authored by a single person, you will often get their idiocyncracies in their works. Which will lead to a lot of bad messaging, with shit like fire force where it has a full blown anti sjw rant, but you will also find a few shows with very progressive messaging. There are a lot of stereotypes though. Its unfortunate that anime is written that way, that a lot of characters writing is based on one character trait, which is...fine for personality traits, but often people mistake being a minority for a personality trait. So you get people whos on character trait is being gay, or black, or lesbian, and all the stereotypes that come from that. That can put off more progressive people for obvious reasons.
There was, but I grew tired and lost my hopefulness. I hope yours doesn't fade. Between the racism, homophobia, and covert pedophilia, I can barely stomach the medium.
I never realised how much of a simp and a weeb Otacon is - at least he’s not like his dad Huey ☠️
Honestly, I don't want to import Western issues to the East. Asians developed EVERYTHING themselves and I think that if black people want to do anime then they should be industrious and create their own companies to do it. Western racism is worth fighting because they exploited Africans and indigenous people for their own gain and still refuse to give them reparations for all the free labour.
Please Watch G30s PKI
Bro there is anime for adults out there too
@@teslercoil5174 i think he may have misspoke at least thats what it seems like, and if not I've noticed this kind of mindset extends beyond anime alot of adults seem to deem animation as a "lesser" art form meant for children
Super Alloy isn't black now in the manga, they realized the stereotyping & changed it. His skin color wasn't black but got this way due to oiling and tanning that body builders do. Check his hero origin story.
Weebs and racist attacks against cosplayers of color. Name a more iconic duo
Ignoring that most anime characters are Asian but they don’t care that white people cosplay them.
@@HiBuddyyyyyy "They maybe be Asians but their skins are white." - weebs probably.
"muh bLacKwAShinG"
"Your forcing representation"
Translation: Your existence is not valuable enough to be acknowledged in public, gtfo nigga
@@HiBuddyyyyyydefinitely ain’t Asian lmao 😂
@@MrAjking808 I can sense you’re a troll. Or you have literally have zero media literacy. Like forget subtext, you need to just study up on the text.
As a black person I remember seeing Cowboy Bebop and that was the first time I saw black people in a anime that just looked like people but shows like that where few and far between
For me it was Black Lagoon.
Hajime no Ippo. Made the black guy opponent very relatable and u wanted to root for him
Afro samurai
Yep.. cowboy bee bop for me too.
White dude here. Never been too into anime but there are a few shows like Bebop, Champloo and Trigun that I absolutely loved. What I've always found odd is how in these Japanese animated shows, many deeply rooted in Japanese culture, the characters don't tend to look very Japanese or even East Asian at all. I find most anime characters look white and there are even a lot of characters with phenotypical traits typical of light skinned black people. What I find interesting about these black looking characters is that past their appearance they don't usually seem to be treated differently from any other character, like they're not racialized. Like I said my experience with anime and manga is limited but I've always found that interesting.
12:00
Anime fans when a character has blue hair and red eyes: "They're clearly Japanese"
Anime fans when a character has black skin: "Well actually they're not black because they have purple hair and that's not a real hair color so it can't be a black person"
"Characters with red or blond hair must be white" even though they have super Japanese names like Ichigo Kurosaki, and they're oblivious to the fact that traditionally having your hair dyed red or blond hair among Japanese youth is a sign of rebellion or the stereotypical shorthand of a troublemaking punk or gangster type who likes to cut school and get into lots of fights (which would be describing Ichigo's character initially in the anime show Bleach).
I've seen people try to argue that Killer Bee is not black. The guy is a walking stereotype who has cornrows, raps, and a name that seems like an obvious reference to the Wu Tang Clan.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 Daily reminder that no one cares about your opinion and you're not special in any way.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 fat feminist sjws are hot asf
Anime girls aren't real.
@@dwightlewis3519 true but then also I've seen post about how he's a reference to gongoro culture in Japan which is nothing but Japanese black face so it's weird cuz he could be black but then he also could just be a reference to Japanese people acting black but then they also do have black people in Naruto and this is why anime is weird and oddly race
Never forget the rule of thumb. If the other person has a K-on pfp you are about to be called a really ancient slur
Gamer word
As someone with an anime pfp, I got hate from them. They told me that Kenshiro was supposed to be this ultra masculine dude that just killed bad guys with no reason. Yes, without a hint of self awareness or irony in that statement as if Kenshiro didn't fight the most ruthless dictators ever.
@@BleedForTheWorld How does anyone come to that conclusion? He explicitly faced criminals, psychopaths, tyrant rulers, and early on literally the very people who burned the world down. It's not subtext, it's text.
@@BleedForTheWorld Ultra masculine apparently means unfeeling flesh robot. Basically Terminator without the human growth. That is no way to write a story its why games like Skyrim and Pokemon feel flat. Emotionless drones only work in games that have no real story to them like Super Mario bros for the NES.
Anime avatars can be safely ignored because they have nothing worth listening to.
Yes when I was in the military I was stationed over in Japan and it pisses me off whenever these weebs. Try to describe it as some type of utopia. I'm here to tell you BS. Japan is like any other place on this planet, you'll find the good and you'll most definitely find the bad.
Yeah. I was in that weeb state when I was 15 but when I found out about how racist Japan can be reading news articles about discrimination at Bathhouses to foreigners It put me off anime and manga for a few years. It hard to take at first but I'm glad I did get that dose of reality that Japan isn't this utopia.
At the risk of being ironically cringe due to my pfp, they're like children who romanticized the samurai and never grew up from that. It's pretty wild but then again, I'd have to run a poll on how young these people really are. Some of them are definitely edgy ass children, after all.
if there is one thing i actually do like in japan..its the restrooms..im pee shy (paruresis : I do not wish paruresis for anyone) , and their bathrooms are absolute godsends..I know its weird thing ti compliment, but seriously can the United States get those restrooms..That being said, my brother went there once and he said "great place to visit, pretty safe neighborhoods but not really a place he would live in ..knowing how toxic work culture is in Japan"..
@@BleedForTheWorld I rarely run into the Samurai lovers. But I wouldn't be suprised the Samurai code was pretty much like Chilivary in a sense that it was glorified children stories and legends but most likely was rarely followed by Samurai.
Japan is a horrendously awful country tbh though. No good there lol
I know a friend of mine he's black and his wife is Japanese and they both cosplay and they have gotten all types of hate at times. He gets hate because he's black. And she gets hate because she's with a black man and she's not with a white guy.
ppl be so fuckin weird
What's the context to this? Is this happening in America?
Now u caught my interest, would u plz share more info ?☺️😉
@@BRIAN09157 nothing more the share read the comment and you'll get the information😉
I heard the Tennis player's Japanese grand mother cut her off for years because she was the daughter of a black man but they recently had started talking again.
As a black weeb. The racism in the anime community is ridiculous. I remember only using anime profile pics on social media because I didn't want to deal with the racism. You said anything about? "Oh look race card, it's not racism, you're just looking for something to be mad about"....
We were gas light about the Mr. Popo thing for yearssssss. " we don't want politics in our anime".
I never experienced much racism in person. But my online life anything 3 ish years back. Terrible. Before Facebook starting censoring? Insane. True colors come off online.
Overall I love anime. Anime is main hobby. The racism of Japan or white people online. Never changed my love for anime. Never will. The fans tho? Besides some heavily moderated reddit group and my close friends, TH-cam videos. My interactions with fans are very limited? I mostly enjoy it alone. The community is filled with a bunch of nazis, pedos, and racist. I'm good.
I did talk with my friend about this as well as she has also pulled back from the anime community and likely knew more on the subject than I did at the time when I interacted with that forum in the past few years
Dude people online will pick at anything you give them. As a lot of otaku are kids, add in online anonymity, of course they are going to be racist and disgusting. We live in a racist and disgusting society, why would anime fans be any different?
Good for you, bud. Don’t let the assholes in a community keep you out. I’m happy you found your niche and really like it. Keep up the good work pal.
@Senior Manager at PragerU if you are the senior manager at PragerU I have many many complaints. Can I address them to you?
@@Rooster_Ric this is very true unfortunately
As a black person and an anime fan yes anime can be super f****** racist. And the communities defense of it is sometimes disgusting
Exactly
"But there were no black people in the 80s duuuuude!!!!11"
Yeah the racism is a big problem in the community. You can tell whenever you bring up black people in general. All of a sudden the fandom gets very defensive or says things like "Well if you do that you'll upset the playerbase" its really disgusting to be honest.
@@kappadarwin9476 true. But I'd argue that comes with any fandom as we see increasingly every day anytime you include diversity the butt hurts conservatives come out and the closeted racist. It doesn't matter what it is video games comic books movie cartoon if you have more than two minority characters White America is going to bitch
Same brother.
I'm an English teacher in Japan and let me tell you Japan is not as homogeneous as they will have you believe. I have any mix race students and I live in a very inaka part of the country. There are black Japanese and they get over looked or get written off as foreigners even though they ARE Japanese. It's disgusting
I've been following a lot of J-Vloggers the past few years, particularly the Tokyo Creative/Trash Taste/Chris Broad circle of expats and just from watching their videos I come to understand that Japan isn't the haven for fascism a lot of alt-right weaboos like to make it out to be. Don't get me wrong I know they have problems still with xenophobic attitudes but only marginally more than most places. Glad people like you are opening our eyes to the reality of Japan.
That is heartbreaking. I'm happy to know Japan isn't was homogenous as a lot of White nationalist want to believe. But its still a hard pill to swallow because I do like anime and manga, and the writing system. But I know that as much as I like it I will get "other" more than any other racial group.
I'm based in Japan as well and, having lived in the countryside as well as in Tokyo, I have the same experience as you. Many mixed-race people and people with both parents from elsewhere pretty much anywhere you go. The problem is, in my opinion, that way too many people inside and outside of Japan believe the myth of Japan's uniqueness with all the racist repercussions.
Diversity in Japan exists, but most people think of the world as either Japanese (who know the language, can use chopsticks, are the only ones to be taken seriously), other Asian (seen by many as inferior), western (English-speaking and white) and non-white (presumed poor and deemed the least trustworthy). As a non-native speaker of English with African roots, a lot of my communication with people is just a series of misunderstandings and insults ranging from mild to mind-boggling.
Trying to address it mostly gets met with some BS answer like "we don't know any better", like that's something that can't change.
If you look at the stats, it's 98.1% Japanese, so pretty yeah it is
@@BitchChill people of mixed race in Japan are counted as Japanese in that 98% so that's part of it. There's also minorities like the Zainishi (who are enthnically korean) and who get pushed into slums and away from the general public so that they are forgotten about. It's hard to see this diversity outside of Japan bit when you're here you notice it, especially being foreign yourself
As a kid I thought Ash was Japanese, Misty white, and Brock black. I was shocked as I met other Pokemon fans who assumed that the whole team was white, because to me all three are visually very different.
But I am a biracial black woman so even as a child I was looking for racial markers on others based on how others defined me. Which is why it surprised me that the rules white people apply to other humans in person go out the window when it comes to characters in their favorite media.
this is also a good point. Because of how the series was localized with the name changes it was easier to assume they were just white and Brock was black
Ash's real name is Satoshi lol
Now, figuring out whether an anime character is white or Japanese by looking at them can definitely be unreliable because, y'know, anime facial features are different from realistic ones, but *Brock*? White? That's even more confusing than how the guy sees what's in front of him.
@@raynegallaher7661 yea I think when I was that age I used to think he was blind xD
@@raynegallaher7661 as an adult the whole team reads as Japanese, especially Brock lol. But also there weren't a lot of examples of darker skin Japanese people portrayed in Western media. The whole fair skin, straight black hair, and monolids stereotype of Japanese appearance was very prevalent at that time.
Yeah, anime community can be wonderful, but most of a time is toxic cesspool. To be fair I'm a bit glad that cosplay by black fans is more common and is more appreciated year after year because in the early days weebs would cry every time someone made a cosplay of Japanese character while being black, totally missing the fact if they are so fixated on skin colour then white cosplayers also connot doing the cosplay. In anime also things are changing and POC are portraited more respectfully, but still sometimes you can be jumpscared by the full on racist caricature
Yes the anime community can be quite racist. And it's full of weirdos that mostly do nothing but fetishize East Asian women.
Yup
Except, if I may interject for a bit, that's exactly how whiteness works. The characters might not be "white-white" but they're not black. Do you understand? It's because whiteness exists to encourage racism. That's why even a latino/latina can pass off to these racists as being more acceptable of the cosplay but they can't when it's a black person doing it.
@@BleedForTheWorld yep, the concept of whiteness is inherently exclusionary, to promote the idea of a superior in group and an inferior out group.
@@Roman-bw2fo correct
Also, these anime fans who parrot their racist "Japan is homogenous" bollocks have never seen the Japanese rugby team.
It's kind of hard to say exactly because japan doesn't distinguish between ethnic japanese and japanese nationals in their census, at approximately 97.8%, but I don't think most people in japan are going to inform themselves about non-japanese cultures through rugby alone. The personal account from 14:30 reflects it pretty well when they were treated poorly because of racist stereotypes. Or from Naomi Osaka's experience as a public half japanese person. There are still quite a lot of establishments that bar foreigners from even entering as well.
The fact the japanese govt doesn't recognize other ethnicities is also a problem if you think about it, because it's essentially ethnic erasure, or homogeneity through assimilation. Which is imo a byproduct of internalized racism and a holdover of imperialism. They also have problems with their indigenous groups as well.
Assuming things about japan through their rugby team is practically no different than weebs who watch anime and think it's no different than real life. And yes, conservative anime fans fall under this as well.
@@wutthe8284 What’s funny too is the Japanese you see in media aren’t even actual native Japanese. The Ainu are.
Racism gets put to the side when money is involved.
@@draco_1876
...Ainu live(d) in Russia as well. So are they Russian?
@@majdjinn5042 Lived isn’t the same thing as indigenous.
There's a joke that if you're a western anime fan, you're either a far right winger or a trans cat girl, and there is nothing in between. It's not exactly true, but there is a seed. A lot of those who are trans or close with trans people and into anime seem to be honest about the nature of Japan. That while there is a very conservative and nationalist and racist bent in their government, the country isn't quite the monolith that right wingers want to believe, and hasn't been for a long long time, at least a millenia, probably a couple. I don't want to let right wing people to control the future of that fandom.
As a black anime fan, I've never encountered racist anime fans, however this isn't to say that other black people should stop complaining about racism within the fandom just because I as an individual never had a racist encounter. The reason why I never experienced racism from other anime fans is because I hung out with, what I like to call, civilized anime fans.
Real talk though, I believe it was a mistake bringing anime here to the states because a lot of racist people had created environment that excludes black people and making it hard for us to celebrate the medium of anime in our own way.
I also find it odd that these white fans of anime attack black people for cosplaying as non black anime characters yet they cosplay as not only Asian anime characters but also they cosplay as Black, and Latino characters. I called that being entitled.
White people fond over the Japanese culture, claiming it's about unity and harmony, however, it's the racist and entitled behavior that disrupts that harmony and gives the anime fandom a bad reputation.
Also, white people did not create anime so these racist entitled people should have no say in how other people should celebrate their favorite anime and/or manga.
I can forgive some of the racism I see in anime just given how multicultural Japan tends not to be, but I can't look past the very racist behavior you called out among Western anime fans. The Alt Right has this sick fetishism of Japanese culture in particular but in Asian cultures in general, while projecting their own fetid ideology upon them.
I thought that at this point in most fandoms, race and gender swapping cosplays were accepted? At least the only areas of fandom worth spending time in are fine with it.
I remember this video by yuta where he pointed out in the end that some people respond to this black cosplay is racist th-cam.com/video/NY0EacflUn0/w-d-xo.html
Also their Japanese TH-camr Shogo he made video on stuff on Japan but he also made video of problem Japan facing like conformity culture th-cam.com/video/893L3Vd86Pg/w-d-xo.html
I find it hard to believe you never met racist anime fans. I don’t engage w/ anime at all and I constantly see racist as weeaboos or w/e they call themselves online
@@a.g.m8790 I took his meaning to be he's never met them IRL. Yeah, they are everywhere online though, you're sadly correct :(
I like how Attack On Titan lampshades this a bit with Sasha's rather blunt question to Onyankopon about his skin color but his rather funny response was couched in his own self confidence and pride in his people after realizing that her question was born out of curiosity and not necessarily hate. Sasha's friends were all horrified that she even asked, of course.
My first reaction was shock, and even more stunned on how he took it, quite honestly idk how to feel about it
@@cryptic_daemon_ In context she never saw black person before her question was completely innocent and naive.
@@ExtremeMadnessX You do have those kinds of people. My mom encountered a woman who brushed the back of her hand with her own to see if the pigmentation would rub off because she had never been this close to a black person before. African Americans only make up 13 percent of the general population and we are the largest black diaspora outside of Africa so Black people aren't very common.
@@kappadarwin9476 Isn't Brazil the largest outside Africa? Btw come to the motherland man.
In context it makes a lot of sense. Behind the walls, there were hardly any black people. At one point in the series someone also mentions that Mikasa is one of the few Asian people they've ever seen inside the walls. Like you said, it was a question of ignorance rather than hate. I really liked Onyankopon's answer, too. The series is a rejection of fascism and that interaction really illustrates that imo
As a black anime fan, I don't take too much issue with lack of representation, but rather the lack of ACCURATE representation. Promised Neverland really hurt personally, when they decided not only to have the Sambo-ish design to Sister Krone, but name the only little black girl Jemima... Not to mention the inspiration taken from our culture, yet whenever we're shown it's disrespectful. It's not every anime depicting us, but the fact that I can only name 3 or 4 off the top of my head that aren't super racist is ridiculous. What makes it so annoying, is that anime kinda helped me fall in love with my culture again. Samurai Champloo and Soul Eater reignited my love for hip hop, and pride in what happens when styles mix from around the world. I still love that, and the fact that we're still stuck in prejudice is frustrating as hell.
Edit: You know there's nothing quite as frustrating, as taking the time to write a comment, only for someone to not read it and reply it anyway. It really makes me wonder if I even typed a real language, or just slammed my face on the keyboard while the internet tries to interpret the result. So here's a pro tip: don't assume literally anything about what I watch, what I think or even my music tastes outside of what I've written, because you will guess wrong AND look dumb. And then no one's happy.
Exactly.
this is because you only watch shonen.
One of the most recent anime is about a black girl elves as a main character
Wait… The music in Soul Eater was good?
I mean average content aside personally (SC being leagues better), I honestly can’t remember the music highlights from Soul Eater…
@@narudayo5053 Shonen is the most popular genre and that's still bad?? Like it shouldn't be looking in a dumpster for decent darker skin characters. I'm desperately trying not to be rude but this comment doesn't help.
@@maybemablemaples2144 well maybe stop watching mainstream media?
Heck there is a litteral youtube channel (Nemude Raa Raa-chan) dedicated to showcase every dark skin anime characters, and there is a lot of them.
Oh yeah... We've been fighting for years. Between black cosplayers always getting shit for cosplaying anime characters but never white cosplayers (most anime characters are Asian, but almost no one cries about white cosplayers), between the racist depictions (Clown lips, literally pitch black skin, gang stereotypes, etc), between people defending said depictions (they'll usually say Japan is ignorant as if Japan doesn't have Google as well as there are even black people in Japan to take some inspiration from), and some anime fans just expose themselves as just being super racist (literally every person with an loli icon I've ever met is just completely racist lmao). I love anime but the little sprinkles of racism (as well as sexism and over sexualization) makes it really hard to enjoy at times and I just stay clear of most anime communities tbh. The situation is very reminiscient of how the K-Pop community is tbh.
I got into it with someone when I said Black shine was blackface. They literally tried to pull the body builder tanning defense. It makes me wonder if they are even reading what they are posting. I even got into an argument about Ganguro and explaining that its blackface too and then watch as they twist themselves into knots to try to defend it.
@@kappadarwin9476 It's truly ridiculous how people act.
@@kappadarwin9476 Huh. I always got more of a "spraytan valley girl" type of vibe from Ganguro in general. Never made the connection to how it could be seen as blackface.
@@Draqer Ganguro can mean black skin. Or darken skin. It ranges from a light spray tan to dark brown. It goes a step further in some magazine which refers to them as black girls. Racism doesn't have to be a negative it can also include fetishizing. I'm not saying you shouldn't like it. I do like the genre to be honest but I'm not going to pretend it isn't black face especially on the far end of the scale.
@@kappadarwin9476 Whelp after a few hours of googling and finding girls just wearing straight up blackface i am honestly a bit wierded out.
Like i would do some mild defending of the subculture if it had been just the lighter ones since most of the time they just look tanned. But nope. There are japanese girls out there in straight up blackface.
If you end up revisiting this topic at a later date, something you might find interesting to look into is The Association to Stop Racism Against Blacks (黒人差別をなくす会), a Japanese group that started campaigning against anti-black racism in Japan back in 1988 that ended up getting Tezuka and Toriyama to change some stereotypical depictions of black characters in their works.
That was a *reactionary* response to black outcry. It’s the same as trying to thank the very people who enslaved Americans for Abraham Lincoln being forced to do the right thing after WW2.
Given how much research manga artists do, their bad depiction of black characters defenitely stems from either racism or racism adjacent laziness.
Exactly. I'm sick of the argument, "Well, Japan is very homogenous, so they don't have any references to non-Japanese people aside from what they see in media."
We're not living in the 1700s anymore. We have the internet and we can do research about other cultures as well.
Besides, anime rarely seems to have a problem with depicting European/white characters, especially in lead roles...
@@absurdturkjust look at the AC Shadows controversy, yeah people are still just peeved when a black person is the protagonist and not the stereotypical racist designed side character that is treated like a joke or unimportant
@@YEY0806 The controversy around AC Shadows stems from whether Yasuke was a samurai or not, while the creators are marketing the game as "historically accurate."
My favorite character in DBZ was always Piccolo and I loved how him and the Namekians were an allegory for slavery and colonialism without using the "noble savage" trope. I feel like a lot of black people kinda picked up on that and kind of agreed that Piccolo was closest thing we had to a black character in the show.
Doubt Toriyama thought that deeply about it when creating it
@@murrayisarobot Frieza and his men are clearly colonizers, they commit genocide, and literally put the Namekians in chains in one of the movies. He's also straight up racist and calls the Saiyans monkeys.
@@natesteward1443 there are of course a lot of parallels to be made but knowing Toriyama as a very "as he goes along" writer, as well as looking at the broader details and other representations of black people within DBZ as a whole, suggesting that there's any sort of allegory doesn't hold up. It's doubtful he had the African slave trade in mind. Picollo was originally just a demon king in DB, which was later retconned as a namekian. Frieza calls the saiyans monkeys but the saiyans literally are monkeys. Goku was originally conceived as a "monkey boy" based on Sun Wukong. They literally have monkey tails and turn into giant apes. Frieza's force is also hugely racially diverse made up of all manner of alien races, he just wanted to destroy the saiyans because he believed they had the power to destroy him. And Mr Popo aside, there are occasional one off black human background characters that show up in DBZ and they are drawn as pretty horrendous stereotypes. As fans we can read what we like into it but Toriyama's writing, whilst very imaginative, it just isn't that deep.
@@murrayisarobot Oh, I don't think Toriyama specifically had African colonization in mind when writing the story. It definitely has influences from real world colonizers, but it could be countless instances and not Africa in particular. I was just saying that a lot of black fans have seen these influences and kind of projected blackness onto the Namekians in general and Piccolo specifically.
Yep. Piccolo is my avatar in Dragon Ball FighterZ. It’s just my little green guy walking around a sea of Seiyans with blond or blue hair.
Isaac form Netflix's Castlevania is probably the best example of good black representation in anime that I have ever seen. He started off as a henchman for the big bad, but throughout the four seasons of the show he developed into my favorite character of the entire series.
He's legit one of my favorite characters in the series
Funny thing is that it's an American production
Yeah, unlike for instance Puchi or Dedue, he developed a life outside and beyond thier master. This shows that Black characters don't have to be servants of White characters in order to be plot-relevant.
@@kenshix7902 you're right. But I'd still argue that Castlevania is anime and that Isaac therefore counts as black representation in anime. Anime has become such a worldwide cultural phenomenon that claiming anime could only made in Japan or only by japanese people would be like saying Pizza can only be made in Italy or by a italian person (I'm not saying that you're claim this, I'm just saying this claim would be wrong).
@@ObservableObserver there cannon buster , yasuke, Afro samurai, super crooks, michicko and hatchin, Carole and Tuesday, great pretender like really
As someone that is mixed with Black and Mexican, I really appreciate this video. I am an anime content creator on TH-cam.
So one thing I will say is that I am a bit older than the average anime watcher these days as well as people who make anime content. I’m 40. Being into anime as long as I have been, I think back to all the Popos I have seen in anime over the years…and I am reminded of that pit in my stomach I felt when I see the super dark skin characters with big lips and beady eyes.
I am also someone that has attended many conventions. So feel as if I am deeply entrenched into this culture. I also have been to Japan once. I have never experienced any racism as an adult. But I do remember as a high school student in the 90s being reminded that the anime girls I liked as a kid (an anime thing) they would never like me because I was too dark. Such a weird thing to state when we are talking about imaginary characters. I don’t think any of this talk effected my dating life…but it did keep me from cosplaying. I just felt like there was no one I looked like. But whenever I see people half my age walking around with a blonde or blue haired wig, I cheer them on. I go out of my way to let them know their cosplay is good and they belong here just as much as anyone else. 💪🏾✌🏾
nice to see input from other older folks in the anime community :D
Thanks for sharing your story. I hate it when people try to defend Popo or Jynx. Anyone who took the time to look back at old Disney and Hanabara cartoons will see where the Japanese got the idea of black face from.
Racism is like that sadly. Black people even entertain the idea of liking anime characters with a lighter complexion is seen as unthinkable because "how dare a black person like the same things I do" logic.
Glad to see things are changing tho, and seeing you being so supportive of the younger generation makes me feel happy that the anime community. Its definitely much better than it was a decade ago.
@@OtakuGunsoNY the first convention I ever went to I remember seeing 50 year olds and 60 year olds. This actually made me feel relieved because there were people much older than me that still thought anime, comics, and video games were still cool. 😎
@@kappadarwin9476 it has gotten better. 🙂 Of course some things still need work. I'm sure black cosplayers have had to deal with a lot over the years...I am so glad people are finally sticking up for them. We all just want to celebrate our love of anime.
@@TheGamingHarbinger oh wow, representation matters too. I remember when I first started there were many teens and 20s at that point so not too bad xD
I've been a anime fan since my grandmother introduced it to me as a kid. I always hated how they animated and portrait black characters in early the 80's, 90's and 2000's. Some creators do try to represent us in a more positive with shows like Cowboy Bebop.
I think American anime fanbase can be extremely toxic, especially when issues of race come up. They either ignore it, or try to silence, put down, and quickly cancel those voices.
The representation of black characters in DBZ is largely positive
@@blackpathos5791 LOL
@@blackpathos5791 bruh
@@blackpathos5791 you joking bruh Bleach has the best designs for black folks not dragon ball lmaooooo
My experiences with the anime community has been nothing but toxic. The anime fans at my school acted like they knew everything there was to know about Japan (even though it was very obvious they didn't). Whenever someone would say that their not into anime those fans would go crazy and start calling them racist and that they hated all Asian people. There are good anime fans but I feel like the toxicity eclipses the good a lot.
Homogeneous societies seem to almost always be xenophobic.
Just realizing that now? Lol
Yeah lol, they also have tons of undocumented crime and the society thrives on overworking their people. Like its bad in america but its even worse in japan. Im not saying japan is horrible, but its sad
Because in order to maintain that homogeny.....
I don't think you have to make a huge jump in logic, considering history, to acknowledge Japanese culture has massive racism issues. Imagine the PM of Germany yearly visiting a memorial to the dead Nazis of WW2 and you'd get just a taste of the unchecked nationalism that is rampant amongst Japanese society.
Yes the Japanese I've always had this love affair with white supremacy. I had a great uncle that served in Japan during the occupation after World War II. And he told me all about it and he told me how white American soldiers, especially would get angry if they so Japanese women dating black soldiers so they would spread a lot of lies about black soldiers.
@@grapeshot they have a love affair with JAPANESE supremacy. Kinda like the germans thought they are the Germanic Aryan Race. If Japanese people would be tending to white supremacy, they wouldn't have a problem with all the white people visiting or trying to work in Japan.
@@n3ff848 like I've said they have a love affair with white supremacy. And many of them get off into Nazism also.
Its partly due to the exact same reasons racism and intense nationalism in England or America exists, a poor education system that doesn't teach atrocities which leads people to think they're okay and then later be happy for them
America does have that all in one phase "State's Rights"
Imma be honest it was really rough as an anime fan in the late 2000s early 2010s, not only did I have to deal with a general anti blackness from non black anime fans, but even the black fans (mostly men) were aggressively anti black, tolerated the racism black anime fans received without pushback and relentlessly fetishized Asian women. It was a wild time
Yup
I'm black, and honestly online I've experienced more of the creepy side of the fandom, especially when it comes to fetishizing darker skin. But a lot of anime fans have an extremely poor understanding of racism if they aren't flat out racist, making damn near impossible to discuss certain parts of anime with them. After all, this is the same community that literally struggles to understand why lolicon and shotacon are so fucking disgusting.
Also, my mom had claimed Brock as black, lol. Which is awkward with his family situation, but that's how bad anime was on that front.
Dunno if you got into YuGiOh but they could have claimed Marik, Ishizu, and the attendant dude because they were at least Egyptian and that was depicted very well in the anime especially once they got to the last season with the pharaoh trying to find his memories and stuff
My experience is most topics of racism among anime fans involves a lot of gaslighting black fans and complaints about “wokeness”.
@@majorlazor5058 back then they called it "playing the race card" x-x
@@majorlazor5058 I think I had stepped away from anime fans by the time "wokeness" was the buzzword of the day. Regardless of the term used, yea, that's definitely a major problem.
@@OtakuGunsoNY Yugioh was the shit and was surprisingly not full of ugly stereotypes. At least, not that I remembered.
Ive also noticed that if a new anime or manga character is introduced and they are a woman with dark skin or a different ethnicity the more toxic fans will go out of thier way to draw her with white skin and when criticized for this they often say that her whiter skin looks "better" or lighter skin is how she ought to look anyway
I noticed that too. Bishoujo Rainbow Dash getting lighter skin tone in fan art.
I saw fanart of a character I thought was black with white skin. Apparently she’s just tanned, but even if the character is just tanned, people should probably still colour them with their skin tone.
People have also Darkened the skin of characters such as Sailor Moon and said they were "fixing" her design It cuts both ways.
Man what i would do for robin and ussop to have darker skin again
Two black hairstyles in Elden ring :
Afro and Bald.
I don't get the racism in anime, you'd think that Africans dropped an atomic bomb in Japan or something. XD
Most of it happened in the early days of anime because they got the racist cartoons late compared to when America got them so many creators in japan saw that as the acceptable way to draw a black character that's didn't start to shift till the 2000s
@@crossdaboss8914 interesting
Since forced Westernization and the post war American occupation, Japan has had a lot of exposure to cartoons and comics made by the west, and because of that were also exposed to a lot of racist tropes. Its also not helped that they had a hand (and still do) in the production of Western cartoons as well, since labor was cheaper to Western animation studios.
Japan inherited a lot of racism from the West, but conversely Japan also wouldn't have been able to develop a thriving domestic animation industry if they weren't forced into trading with the West and America.
Yeah, Darkshine in early One Punch Man was just ridiculous, but in the most recent arc his design was completely overhauled and he looks amazing, pretty much every single one of his panels is glorious and it's almost as if Murata wanted to make up for his past mistakes. Also just a side note and a very slight spoiler, he's technically not black, he's asian like pretty much the entire cast and his skin just happened to turn darker and shinier due to the constant use of tanning oil, which is something that can happen to real life body builders as well.
it's...still really weird. he's clearly drawn in a way that's supposed to make him look black so...
Thank you for doing this because a lot of black people can't comment on this stuff without HUGE backlash accusing us for being " SJWs snowflake" while calling us the N word....
I Don't watch a lot of anime besides Dragon Ball but Killa was that one character that makes it hard to watch I'm tired of black male characters always having beady eyes and lips that are the exact shade.
Another thing that annoys me is how black female characters always seem to get lighter in skin tone in video games.
Christie from Tekken, Vanessa from Virtual Fighter for example.
Those are videogames I know,but a lot of that creeps into games as well.
Honestly I stopped caring some of you guys let’s these words have so much power over you. They dictate your whole lives even though honestly I feel more pity for the racist than anything. Also, there are a lot of black snow flakes think Tariq nashid or even Jussie Smoolet. They use racism as a bait. My point is I stopped caring about the small stuff and just enjoyed the anime for what is was in that time period trying to delete only allows for it keep repeating.
@ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ which anime was that?
@ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ i am not defending it but from what i could find
Author had no idea what is blackface and the character didnt paint herself black
All the character did was getting overtanned
Thats like saying spongbob did blackface because of that one time where he was tanned to the point he was a darker color
Its uncomftrble to watch
But it isnt related to black people
@ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ ᴀꜱᴜᴋᴀ oh i see
I didnt know what soul sister is
So while the story said she overtanned the anime just gave her black stereotypes?
Am i getting this correctly?
@@SiriusWulf It's funny that Black Americans are the only ones who are told to brush off racial slurs, no other group will tolerate such abuse. Other groups will set up hate crime laws even if you just criticize them. Complaints rather you like it or not has has sometimes bring progress. If you want my opinion, Black Americans can create their own cartoons and animations.
The racism (along with some other things) in both anime and the fandom itself made me slowly lose interest. I even wrote it off as trash for a while.
Hahahah l for u
@ms honey your PFP and names more cringe 😬
@ms honey anime their adult and mature theme so the person who age should be brought up is yours because you couldn't comprehend it rather than being a cartoon
Girl there's a lot of great black representation in anime the fact that you don't know that shows that you didn't watch much anime LOL
@ms honey I'm guessing your not smart
As a black anime fan I haven't been harassed in any significant way but that's only because I don't interact all that much online. At most I've been given the silent treatment and down voted on social media for asking if there were any manga with a black male love interest.
I have however seen many screen caps of racist twitter comments involving black cosplayers and fanart reinterpreting characters as black.
Some really don't what black people in "their anime". Going so far as to say it's an escape from reality and having black people in it ruins their fantasy. It's easy enough for them to self-interest as characters when they're light-skinned and have hair ranging from blonde to green. Not to mention all the midevil fantasy anime or the ones with actual white characters. Could factor into why some are fast to deny the thought of any ambiguously dark-skinned character being black.
I could go on a lot longer I feel like I'd just get more rambly. There's a lot when it comes to blackness and the anime community.
I know the feeling, Black male love interest are so rare its a joke. You are better off getting water from a rock. Dark skinned female characters can be found more often.
Isekai is often the worst offender if they aren't a dark elf or a demon and female they aren't anything other than a bandit or support at best never a main character. it is really disgusting to be honest and it only reinforces the whole white ethno space myth that was Europe.
I would kill for a well written romance anime/manga with a black main lead 😭😭
Black anime fan here. A lot of the older animators in Japan were influenced by Disney and old American animations (hence why astroboy looks the way it does). I believe that's also where the racist art of black people stem from since old American cartoons were racist as fuck.
Nowadays Japanese animators have gotten way better in the art of black characters. Sometimes we're doing stereotypical things like rapping a a character trait (killer B) but I don't believe it's coming from a hateful place.
Special shout out to Schinichiro Watanabe whose shows have some of the best drawn black characters, especially Carole and Tuesday.
The influence Disney had on Japanese Animators is greatly exaggerated and most of the Influence came from Disney's Animal characters not their human characters.
Afro Samurai. I see a handful of comments mentioning it. It’s mentioned because Takashi Okazaki, its creator, got it right…BOTH times. It had so much that would appeal to not only Black people who enjoy anime but fans of Japanese animated productions, full stop. All of the research put into this video, and Kavernacle failed to bring up a prime example of a show so close to doing it correctly and respectfully.
The music score and soundtrack are produced by The RZA. Samuel L. Jackson leads Ron Perlman and a star-studded voice cast for the English audio track. Their performances are so solid and fitting to the designs of the characters, it’s the only anime that I prefer to watch over its Japanese voice talents. The story is simple yet the writing is sharp and well paced. The animation by Gonzo is top quality and consistent. It’s mentioned in the comments, but not referenced at all in this video.
Afro’s race isn’t even brought up in the show or movie. Yet, the anime FEELS unapologetically Black. Afro’s father, the Number One warrior in the world, was slain in front of him at the hands of Justice, a White man with a pistol. Then, the White man claims his headband and the title of Number One for himself. Fast forward to the present, Afro is number two, after beating all odds stacked against him, to challenge Justice for the Number One headband. See, only the Number Two can challenge the Number One, but anybody and everybody can step up to the Number Two. So, there’s no chill for Afro. Every step forward in his path of revenge is a fight. To reclaim what was stolen calls for conflict, time after time. That’s the Black struggle.
Still, the story is told as if it was a Kurosawa, samurai revenge tale. Even its color palette is slightly muted to mimic film in this black and white. It’s an old spaghetti Western, with a splash of Blaxploitation, coated with a slick action anime shell. It has the feeling of watching old-school Kung-Fu flicks of Hong Kong cinema on TV back in the 80s and 90s. Are you aware of how common that was in Black households?
Kavernacle, you instruct Black viewers among your audience to give our insight in your comments section of a video essay delivering your observation and opinion on the matter anyway. Did you ask anyone Black first? Did you conduct a survey? That’s my frustration with White “allies”. You all always want to speak for us while hardly ever involving us in the conversations. You talk before you listen rather than listening before submitting your input. That’s why the effort in this video seems underwhelming to me. It’s merely performance theater. You all bring light to the problems, but ignore opportunities to celebrate and promote endeavors towards solutions.
You really want to know why we sorely lack diversity and inclusion in anime, manga, video games, comics, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy in general? You folks don’t buy them. You don’t watch them, play them, or read them. When you do, you don’t celebrate them. You don’t recommend them to your friends or reference them-especially when they’re Black. You brought up Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Beyblade, Digimon, DBZ, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Blade Runner, and Star Wars. All of these are mainstream IPs and franchises, which you are the target of. YOU are the mainstream.
These genres aren’t completely void of Black leads. You all simply allow them to be overshadowed. They aren’t designed, produced, and/or marketed because y’all honestly don’t care for them. So, we can’t cosplay as we’d like to because we aren’t normalized. Venture out of your comfort zone and what you already know is marketed as being popular. Discover niche presentations and formulas of the entertainment you like and elevate them towards popularity. If there’s no demand, there will be no supply. Merely expressing a wonder of why there isn't enough of something doesn’t initiate action to balance, change, or improve. Quit talking and put your money where your mouth is. Consume, demand more, and consume, again. Celebrate when it’s not only done, but done right and done well. If it’s the Number One headband you seek, do whatever it takes to be the Number Two, and duel the Number One once and for all.
I absolutely agree! Thank You! This the perspective that so few people think about let alone try to understand.
100% agree with this. Enough is enough, Its time we really take charge and create the media thats so sorely lacking to our perspective.
I am a black man. And a massive weeb
Anime is bad for black representation. But Anime is no worse than any other media.
We are more critical of Anime because it's cultural differences make stereotypes stand out even harder. But let me make this clear: I am a video game developer. I've played video games in the west for over 30 years. And the grand total of times I have had the chances to play a a regular black man is.... Once
30 years of westerns video games. It's 2022 And I can think on 1 Black Male Normal protagonist.
Do it yourself. Think of all the times a piece of media has asked you to empathize as a black man. And not given you the option to empathize with someone else. No Gangsters. No druggies. No roadmen.
Think of all the: I am a man with a job, I go to work, I have friends and my emotions are relatable.
Lee Everet: Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1. Is all I can think of.
Now surely in 3 decades, we should all be able to come up with at least double digits. But we can't. And that should tell you something
There have been some pretty good black male leads but like you say a lot are gangsters. CJ and Luis from GTA were cool, and Lincoln Clay from Mafia III is a good one. Bayek and Adewale from Assassins Creed are great black/darker skinned characters imo but yes like you say they aren’t that many
@@TheKavernacle CJ was great. The lead designer and I worked on a project that never got released
Bayek was phenomenal. I was honestly surprised at the commitment to the concept. But the voice actor is a black and and has had to set up his own Studio just to create roles that are relatable. Silver Rain. Keep an eye on them, they'll be announcing something soon enough that is pretty exciting.
Bayek was innitially meant to be female. And Was recast as male by Ubisoft because no-one would want to be a black woman...
Shit is fucked for black people. And I don't think white people can actually see how bad it is.
@@Kazekou I've always thought, if black people ran the country it would be better for white people. We can't govern shit, we only know domination and retribution.
@@TheKavernacle lol if u think anime has bad female characters then u don't know that most anime are from manga and most manga are made by women . There's literally anime made by and for women like u think generalize an whole medium not genre u dummy the fact u use other people options and don't the basic understanding of anime ...u shouldnt be making anime videos because it will make u look more dumb then already are
Shadowman is the only one I could ever think of
The funny thing ,as a Black child I loved both Jynx and Mr Popo. It’s only as I got older that I realised they were racist caricatures. My parents never mentioned anything, I guess they didn’t notice? Strangely, I still have a soft spot for them, but that’s more so childhood nostalgia than anything.
A lot of the explicit racist cartoons in the states was faded out during the sixties and 70s. Tom and Jerry stopped using racist depictions of the Black mama in the late 60s though you could catch old reruns of her in the late 2000s and early 2010s on Boomerang but I think those were faded out recently.
Jynx is actually based on japanese Ganguro subculture, which developed as a way for girls to fight back against japanese light skinned beauty standards.
It has entirely different historic meaning. Ganguro evolved to fight colorism, but because of america's history with racism all americans see is blackface. I know Japan is xenophobic, but americans applying their own views to all other cultures is wrong. People get tunnel vision and nobody even mentions what Jynx is actually based on or its history, to americans it's only blackface. And if you try to point out actual history americans pretend you're defending blackface and racism. It's impossible to talk about it.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 Its black face. Black face is Black face no matter how people try to sugar coat it. The Jazz Singer despite being very progressive for its time was still a classic example of the Black Minstrel shows that made Black people the joke.
@@kappadarwin9476 The Jazz Singer is blackface and I won't watch it because it's racist. I don't know what you tried to say by that but it didn't work.
I am trying to say that you have tunnel vision and as hard as this might seem to you, I understand americans believe you are the center of the world, but other counties have a different history that you.
Please do at least 2 minutes of research on what ganguro is before applying american logic to it. I'm not sugarcoating anything, I am just pointing out actual history. (please I hope you're not one of those americans who make up their own version of history)
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 I don't think you understand what I am saying. Black face is black face it doesn't matter the intentions behind it. The Jazz Singer is about a white guy whom trying to understand Black music became black. The Jazz Singer tried to address the issues of racism at the time but it was undercut by Blackface. Meaning despite being well intention it was undone by Blackface. Jynx falls into the category. No matter how well intention the character is it is under cut by Black face.
(Jynx appeared in a Christmas episode serving in the role as a helper to Santa which is what Black Pete does in the Netherlands and Black Pete was based on a racist caricature of a Moor during his creation so this further narrow's home the point)
I don't have tunnel vision. Jynx is black face, and the fact that you are getting so defensive about it is concerning. You have to learn to take criticism. It is a common thing to see people get defensive when Americans call out another country's social problems especially when it comes to the history of said country's racism.
Thank you for this. I literally got into an argument with some weeb dork, and their defense was, "negative stereotypes aren't racist". Like...what!!??
never argue with weebs. bully them and move on
The racism and transphobia in some of the anime community and some anime makes it hard to interact with it.
interestingly enough my homophobic brother watched episodes of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and apparently that style of art is meant to appeal to gay men which is why alot of woman like the series. Don't know if that's true or not but transphobia sure hits with Kochikame unfortunately with the character Maria and how she came to exist ...
@@theresaurus9820 he calls her a man ... xD Once he found out that she used to be the boxer who trained under a dude who looked like Ryotsu which is why she's in love with him he turned ice cold. I actually have that episode on DVD hilariously enough detailing how they got together, how Buchou told him he should settle down and all that jazz and he was literally gonna marry Maria until he found out she was trans. Then after that it became a bit of a punch line. I still like kochikame and will probably always have love for the series but even I have to be fair and call it what it is
@@theresaurus9820 oh totally, it's very low key and tame but I once had a trans friend who didn't like it because of that fact XD Good to see other folks outside Japan liking Kochikame :D
@@OtakuGunsoNY Tf are you taking bout? The artstyle isn't for "gay men" I don't know who told you that but you shouldn't trust them 🤣 cause they fucking weird its just a unique artstyle
Japanese people aren't fond of either so good luck lol
I'm not into cosplay myself but I've always found the whole "you can't be this character because you're black" logic to be stupid since it's usually coming from a white person posing as a Japanese character. Anyway as an anime since about the late 90s even as a child it the lack of and quality of black characters was obvious. Now I still enjoyed and continue to enjoy anime, I was even inspired by it to start writing, but I'm glad to see that things are improving.
I mean I’ve seen white men cosplay as sailor moon…. With full beards and all. They don’t get heat over it.
14:30 is surprising to me. I’m black & lived in Japan for 2 years & never really noticed any racism towards me personally. Also, American racist stereotypes don’t really follow you everywhere. I live in the Netherlands & I can’t say racism doesn’t exist here but it’s not like in the US where you’re super racially conscious because your race directly impacts your daily experiences
I saw a video were a guy was asking random Japanese people what they thought the ethnicity of aime characters and all of them said Japanese or some other Asian nationality. Anime is made for Japan by Japan, the fact that the West likes it is almost an inconvenience for them to some extent. I'm not justifying some of the really bad designs for actual black characters in anime and I'm glad that some artist have begun to notice and want to do better but why are people surprised? Most Asian cultures have a negative perceptions about black people in general, that's why Asians are considered to be one of the biggest allies of white supremacists because many are anti black.
As a black and Japanese person who spent a lot of time in Japan growing up, throughout my teenage years and adulthood there's a few things I've come to understand about how the Japanese treat black people and alot of it has to do with American capitalism. Straight up, Japanese people do not see black people outside of tourist,visitors and soilders. You might see some tan folks in Okinawa but you will never see a Japanese person who is born with black, brown or darker skin. Japanese racism is very largely rooted in ignorance and how their lack of knowledge is perpetuated by American media of black folks, caricatures, minstrel shows etc exported to the rest of the world. Japanese people's perceptions of black stereotypes and people are exclusively tied to the media America sold not just Japan but the rest of the world. Racism in the states is rooted in systemic roots of slavery, supremacy,capitalism etc. While Japanese racism is very largely rooted in ignorance and a general lack of knowledge and or authentic interactions with black folks of any culture. Frankly any racism you experience in America is FAR more threatening and or dangerous to your life while racism in Japan is just kinda hurtful. Not only that, Japanese people do not learn in school the roots of American racism until they choose to pursue a college with those types of studies so they generally lack the context of certain stereotypes, caricatures, portrayals etc.
I say all that to say that a large reason why Japanese people perceive black folks in a twisted light is strictly because of American media companies pushing racist/harmful/ problematic content and rhetoric warping their perceptions for a pretty dollar.
This is NOT however an excuse for any racism or justification but just an added context from my observations and things I've learned dealing with ignorant and or racist folks in my time in school in Japan, in family outings in japan, and or in the city when people look at me and my clearly Japanese mother funny as if we're not related. Shit absolutely hurts but I say all this to say that to all the black anime fans who love Japan, please visit, it's an incredible place for anime and fashion and typically if you go into the city people are more tolerant than some of the more rural parts of Japan. It's a culturally rich country that is absolutely not perfect but has alot to offer and is a life altering experience.
Ps. Yasuke fucking sucks, representation is cool but shit was grossly cliche, and kinda tasteless especially from 2 artist I fuck with heavy and know fuck with anime heavy
P.s.s white capitalism is absolutely the problem
I liked Yasuke to a degree. I liked the character arc he went through. Back in the day, I constantly searched for characters that looked like me. Yoruichi from Bleach, as an example. It felt nice to have one, but you recognize that's kinda scraps considering the sea of characters with eurocentric features.
The fandoms? Had to stay away lol. I feel like most of us had to make our own fanworks bc there was nothing. It's a little better now but even in fandoms like Genshin Impact, there's a passive scrutiny of "Why do you HAVE to have a brown character?" And that sucks a bit lol.
I'll be pissed if Sumeru comes up in Genshin Impact and there is still no black people.
@@Miraihi I've already braced myself for just pale characters. Almost sure we won't get characters any darker than Xinyan or Kaeya. Which is...ever the disappointment. We have no brown characters for Inuzuma. :/
@@emberthrace4766 I was just reading an article about how they're gonna add in more countries and the fact that they have a South Asian/Middle Eastern one coming up but have yet to include anyone or announce a character darker than off-white is wild. You got all that money to be hella accurate but still too lazy to draw POC darker than a dry paper bag?? That's sus.
bro ain't that shit made by china? china is just asian america lmao they fucking HAAATE us over there, we ain't gettin shit and if we do it'll be some racist bullshit. i'll eat my words and actually download genshin impact even though i hate gacha shit if this happens. (un)fortunately i'm pretty sure it won't lol
Yasuke goes through a character arc? I watched a review of the anime that said he didn't change. I didn't watch the anime Yasuke myself though.
I recommend reading "World Apartment Horror" by Katsuhiro Ōtomo (the creator of "Akira"), possibly the only manga I have read addressing immigration and racism in modern Japan, with particular attention to Japan's history of racial persecution in WW2. The story is a horror comedy and Ōtomo's art style couldn't be furthest from the hyper-cute style of many authors but I was amazed at how low it ranked in the readers' survey of the Italian magazine it was published in - I guess anything straying from bright eyed princesses and martial artists was not tolerated.
There are a few that get at the racism in japan, devilman has a half white character with green eyes, who talks about how she is bullied for not being fully japanese. Its not like a main part of the show but its still there. I can't think of many other that directly comment on racism in japan though. Attack in titan with the onyankapon moment, if you know you know, it parrallels to how a japanese person ignorant of races beyond japanese people would react to seeing a black person.
@@jambott5520 What I find interesting is that many Anime/manga seem to condamn racism almost only when it involves Hāfu people that are part caucasian (I am thinkinng of Sakigake! Otoko Juku, Sword of the Stranger etc.) - as there seems to be a certain fascination for white westerners. I can't think of a time when black people (or even other Asian ethnicities) in Japanese animation are depicted as something different than a trite stereotype (at least in my limited perspective).
Gotta love Shinichiro Watanabe, the way he portrays black characters was soo refreshing in Cowboy Bebop.
I guess his love from jazz, hip hop is also a factor on why he depicted black characters less stereotypical especially with Carol and Tuesday.
Samurai champloo is the perfect mix of hiphop and anime imo, i'll have to check carole in tuesday as well
He also has a thing for Brazilian music because he produced the soundtrack for Michiko & Hatchin.
I live in Japan (for about ten years) and a friend of mine is black. When he lived here, he was definitely treated differently by the Japanese and even got hassled by J-cops on more than one occasion, sadly. It was so obvious that it was because of his skin color that the Japanese police kept hounding him for his passport visa and such. Luckily, I think the J-cops have cooled down with that BS in recent years.
I'm white and my local train station officer hounded me for my Visa every day he was there to the point I would get it ready when approaching the station. He knew I was a legal resident, but he was often very rude and did what he could just to slow me down. This was in 2014, but nonetheless, it's still around.
I've lived in Japan here and there since my childhood, having gone to school there a few times. While there's plenty of great people, you'd have to be blind not to see blatant racism everywhere, especially when you speak fluent Japanese and they think you're a "Half" instead of a visitor. Despite being white and "privileged" in the US, I've been super conscious about subtle and blatant racism toward non-whites because I've been there in my own way.
But yes. I once managed trainees for an eikaiwa and the black teachers ALWAYS experienced racism 10x worse than the white teachers.
Cops really do be bad
He should sue for racial profiling. Japanese cops don't sound much different from American ones, outside of trigger discipline.
@@kappadarwin9476 actually booth police and beat cops don't carry guns. Only detectives I believe or higher ups. There are much better gun laws than we have over in America. Not to say that the police aren't still scum. They just can't outright pop you on sight.
@@kappadarwin9476 Trust me. American police aren't even in the Top 100 in terms of corruption globally. The only thing that keeps Japan's police in check is that they can't arrest you unless there's enough evidence to guarantee a guilty verdict. Same applies to lawsuits. No lawyer would take that case cause they have no way to prove it was absolutely about race.
Black person here. I dont really fuck with anime (the stuff in this video is part of the reason why and i think most of it is poorly written) but bleach still has probably some of the better depictions of black people in anime.
It takes a lot of courage to be black in the anime community everything is all hunky dory until you mention black people and anime especially black guys and then watch the whole chat just melt down.
@@kappadarwin9476 That's literally never happened to me, and I been into anime since like 2010. But I really only talk about anime either irl with my homies, on TH-cam or Discord. I'm just gonna take a guess and assume most of the toxicity comes from Twitter
@@mwaffle3568 how would u know u don't fick with anime dummy
@@kappadarwin9476 No, not really. Why do you guys think being black is this constantly uphill battle, that you have to worry about racism everywhere and everything!
Mr Popo never bothered me because i literally thought he was a weird magic alien creature. Somehow naive little me never made the connection to a racist caricature despite him looking like he walked out of a minstrel poster from 1850.
Hate to break it to you, but Mr. Popo is based on a Hindu god, Mahakala. Which whrn you think about it, makes a lot of sense since he is also a deity in Buddhism as well; and is even a deity in Japanese Buddhism known as Daikokuten. Just because it may look offensive to some people in the West, doesn’t mean it is, because leftist people are especially guilty of being incredibly chauvinistic towards other cultures that don’t adhere to their values and beliefs. Not everyone is about you nor is everything for you. Other cultures exist. The whole Mr. Popo thing reminds me when a bunch of students at UCLA got a professor suspended because he said a Chinese word that sounded close to the N-word.
Black female anime fan.
TLDR: anime and gaming fans often excuse racism and belittle those who call it out because they assume that these things are inevitable or black fans are just whiney sjws
Never specifically experienced racism from anime fans directly. But there is this “miasma” surrounding the anime community similar to the gamer community, that I can compare to the natural gas coming from your household stove, where there is racism but its inert and undetectable until something sets it off. For me, its the art. See the controversy about any dark-skinned character, i.e., Nessa. The fans seems to see a character’s darkness as something to be existed or as an accessory, not as a part of her being. This could arguably be seen in One Piece, for years Robin, Zoro and Luffy were brown.
It was implied that they were naturally brown, not sure if they were non-white, the moment the manga author retconned them to be ‘sun-kissed white people’ there seemed to be an acceptance of this. Even though it made mono logical sense considering other characters living in the same environment (hell the same ship) were obviously pale-ass white people. Firstly, that feels like a betrayal from the author for denying that even tanned/non-white humans exist in their universe and furthermore a betrayal from fans who didn’t care that a part of their beloved character was erased to fit the the white norm. We can’t even have ‘’’’spicy’’’’ light brown people, everyone is white!
Then there’s just the way black people look in anime. Black women, as far as 99.99999% of manga authors are aware, do not exist. The 0.000001% is the author of hunter x hunter. I’m NOT counting bleach or Naruto, the latter are tan Japanese people appropriating black culture for shits and giggles and the former is a palette swapped anime girl with very little indication of being an actual black/African human. She’s on the level of dark-elves in hentai, and you can be mad, idk. Black men are literally just thugs, criminal or murders. Even if they’re apart of the protag crew, ie..e the guy from Tenjou tenge or Simon from Durarara, they’re the most ridiculous overblown Mr Popo looking mofos, with huge pink sausage lips and or some crap (Simon) OR they’re and accessory to make the main character to cool and dangerous (Tenjou tenge guy/bleach girl). (seriously none of us have pink lips, and they dont create a ring where our mouths are?). it’s DIRE. God for vid you call is out, because anime fans black and white alike might come to the side of their beloved anime waifus
Furthermore, cosplay. I wanna cosplay! But I’m afraid to because then I’d have to cosplay one of the 2 good black characters or blackify a ‘white’ (JAPANESE BUT SOME WHITE FANS DEFAULT TO WHITE) character, EITHER WAY, I’m getting bullied. Notably, a lot of well-loved cosplay is done by the same slender WHITE girl/guy wearing cheap badly put together costumes and nice make-up. Usually I see a lot of praise given to these cosplays and I kinda cringe considering I’d have to break my back and my bank account to get half their kudos.
Or the casual sexism that just exists in anime and which is perpetuated by the medium, as seen with a video by a creator critiquing a beloved Isekai’s waifus (a wish-fulfilling male fantasy-esque genre). Similar to the N word incident with Pewdiepie, there is an implicit belief amongst the majority white gamer/weeb community that all content is made for them and that any deviation from that is for their amusement or just a form of wokeism. You’d be surprised how many people in the Nessa or the Pewdiepie situation simply brush off black people’s concerns as over-reactions and deny that either scenario is racist or not simply apart of the culture.
Edit for clarity and continue my 50 year rant cuz wow i didn’t realise how traumatising being a black anime fan actually is
This was a long read, but very worthwhile.. I suggest ppl take the time to read it, it’s truly worth the time taken out.
It’s simply tactics to be dismissive of the obvious, a very passive aggressive way to be racist without dealing with the consequences, or reactions.. act like the ppl you’re attacking is the problem, because they have a problem with being attacked. Use buzzwords like “woke-ism”, “SJW”, “oh here we go again, everything is racist.” while they’re literally being racist, and ignorant.. they’re just losers that need a group to fit in with, so they ruin it for others that enjoy the genre- because, they’re not happy with themselves, and very insecure- they need somebody to blame for their disappointing life.
@@MidTierVillain I appreciate you saying that. I honestly just went on a rant and it’s annoying because I wanted to keep it simple and short. The issue is that when you start thinking about these issues more deeply you realise how terrible things are. I also just feel like giving specific examples helps a lot of people understand why black fans have a bad time.
@@sailortwilightmoon I completely understand, I’m the same way, as well. Once I get to going in on certain topics, that passion spills out into a novel worth of a comment. Lol but, that’s good, it’s just so many have no patience, and won’t read past 2 sentence, sadly.
It didn’t really hit me until a few years ago when I said to a former friend I could cosplay as ryu from street fighter, only for him to say I couldn’t because the character isn’t black. I was stunned by that as I never thought of it in terms of being restricted by races. After all white people be cosplaying as Japanese characters all the freakin time and nobody bats an eye. I think part of that mentality is that white folks wouldn’t feel comfortable cosplaying as one of the few black characters in anime because they would probably want to put on shoe polish to “get the skin right” but they know that isn’t socially acceptable anymore so the thinking seems to be “just dress up as the character with the skin tone/look that’s closest to what you already have”. Which on the surface seems fair until you realize how restrictive that is for non white people. That was one of the rings that made me fall out of love with the cosplay scene. It emphasized how much it’s a scene dominated by white otaku. Not all anime fans are like that former friend but many are and don’t realize the racism in their attitudes. Which says a lot about how subtle that kinda racism in anime is. As kids watching it we just got used to that standardized stylized European look being applied to characters who are either specifically East Asian, European or unspecified ethnicity on a fantasy setting. It put darker skinned people into a very otherized bracket. Sometimes they had the same hair and features as their light skinned counterparts other times their look was derived from offensive stereotypes and occasionally they’d look like real black folks in a non offensive way - it’s surprising how rare that last one seems to occur.
For me this was particularly problematic as I love the aesthetics of anime in general but not being white or East Asian knowing it had such a questionable representation of black people was always in the back of my mind. It has always been a bit of a dilemma with my own stories that I’ve been developing as creating characters that follow from that typical anime look is quite straightforward but creating characters that deviate from that look and reflect real groups of people without being offensive stereotypes is quite challenging as there’s not an easy standardized look to fall back on. And that doesn’t only apply to black characters. Ironically one story I’ve been working on features a main character that travels to a fictionalized version of feudal Japan and I really would want the people of that country to look like Japanese people and not the conventionally European way they’re drawn in anime. It’s not an easy balance as primarily there’s a desire to avoid offensive stereotypical depictions (from western media such as Mickey Rooney in breakfast at Tiffany’s or the looney tunes propaganda toons of the 40s) but also there’s a need to stylize and make the characters easier to draw so photorealism isn’t practical, the art of ukiyo-e prints is a valuable source of inspiration as that was art done by Japanese people representing themselves in a stylized way that nobody found offensive so finding a way to modernize that is the goal. There are references to draw upon but still it takes a lot of work and there’s still no guarantee that wokescolds on Twitter won’t take offense but that’s just how it is these days I guess
Thank you for posting the black experience when participating in Anime fandom/spaces.
Without social media, companies can lie and say one thing. Yet, as other black anime fans have mentioned. Their experiences have been different.
@@ahanna76 yeah and my experiences have been quite mild compared to others. I feel for the black anime fans who had to deal with full on abuse over social media for daring to cosplay as a character that canonically isn’t black or drawing a fan favorite characters (except what if they were black). It just goes to show how white dominated the western Otaku scene is because it wasn’t _that_ long ago that western otaku were the ones being bullied by jocks and treated as outsiders. But that never made them immune to racial bias but I would have hoped they’d have managed to be a bit more inclusive and open minded on the whole.
As a African American ex-anime/manga reader, my experience with the anime community has been nothing, but toxic when discussing such things like character's skin color as well as other subjects similar to that.
The reason why a lot of anime characters look racially ambiguous is because character design in early anime was heavily derivative of old Disney cartoons, and as the genre evolved it kept those particular stylistic features. Western anime fans read it as "white" simply because we see whiteness as the default. In fact, I once came across a Japanese forum where the posters said that anime characters actually have what they consider to be distinctive _Japanese_ features ("set eyes," small mouth, small nose).
There are definitely some bad examples, but I can think of quite a few accurate/decent representations of black people in anime over the past 20 years. There's Canary from Hunter x Hunter, Carole from Carole and Tuesday (same director as Cowboy Beebop), and Afro Samurai from the series of the same name, which was in part also inspired by the historical Yasuke and stars Samuel L Jackson as the titular character in the English dub.
I think there's also a well-spread lack of attention and care about the representations in manga and anime, and not only about the skin. (i.e Krone from Promised Neverland...in 2016!) We use to minimize the reactionary and conservative side of Japanese society because of their bright culture, yet it seems a lot of people are not sensitized to the racist/sexist representation issues : I wouldn't be surprise if most of the mangaka just shrug "not important"-like when you criticize their problematic representations. Not in a mean way, denying the issue or arguing about it, but rather not realizing at all the offense, the issue.
I remember reading about a survey made among Japanese Zelda fans about their perceived ethnicity of Link. A lot of them thought that he looks Japanese.
The hair colors of Japanese anime/video game characters can throw people off, but they indeed are often considered to be Japanese despite being blondes, redheads and even more outlandish looking. It is also leftover from older age of manga, when publishers wanted flashy and striking covers for the comic books, and giving characters flashy hairstyles and bright hair colors was a popular method of doing it.
Whenever people bring up Disney I see Anime fans get really defensive. Like they know the connect is there but don't want to acknowledge it.
@@crabe804 Ignoring the rampant racism in Japanese society is like ignoring a dead rat in your wall. Its there you can smell it but overtime you find ways to cope with the smell until someone visits and then calls it out. but instead of dealing with the issue you get into an argument. It is really strange how people can look at Japan and then hold it up as a society that should be emulated.
I love one piece but the first time I saw that "black woman" that looked like a body building man I was pretty done. I do like the anime but really left a bad taste in my mouth that I can't get rid of. There are plenty of examples of racism in anime but it doesn't come up often. Thank you for being an ally ❤️🔥 we appreciate you, Kav!
Well, there are some other black characters in One Piece - but they usually end up being beaten by Zoro
I remember that episode it was a real low point. Showing that while Oda is a great writer he limits himself by not growing out of using stereotypes that were pretty common in the 80s and 90s in anime.
@@anmolt3840051 And they still look like caricatures
@@kenshix7902 One Piece character design is fundamentally cartoonish. Also, Usopp and his father Yasopp are supposed to be black
@@kappadarwin9476 Usopp and Yasopp are both supposed to be black but then again, Yasopp abandoned his wife and kid to go adventuring with Shanks ...
One of the hardest realizations was when Anime Toriyama creator of Dragon Ball constantly either drew or wrote stereotypical and racist images of Blacks. He also constantly portrays East Asians as poor.
Yeah Blacks in the Dragon ball series were so rare that you could count them on one hand and they were often written very poorly.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 India at least had a mention thanks largely to Nam. Pikkon also is a great example of Japanese Orientalism b
Gohan, Bulma and Mr Satan are rich tho.
As a black man in the anime community it's mostly been positive. Most anime fans are very left leaning.
I live in Texas (San Antonio) of all places. Most of the major cities in TX are pretty liberal unlike the rest of the state.
Killeen is pretty liberal a lot of Korean places here.
I think the problem is that online the right wing anime fans around the world can group together in a mass. All the people I know in real life who watch anime are left leaning as well.
Why do you guys see left as good and right as bad? That's a genuine question
@@TricksterLawlet Because the right in an American sense is mainly run by billionaires, millionaires, gifters and bigots who want nothing more than to preserve their own power and get tax cuts.
Think about it most politicians in America on the right hate taxes but the ones who benefit the most from tax cuts are the wealthy.
The fact that you even had to to bring up left leaning tell me all I need to know about you. This coming from a black person here as well 🤦🏾♂️
couple years ago a black-japanese woman became teen miss japan or something like that and man, the reactions on online communities like 2ch or girls channel... it was before naomi osaka too. in general the topic of "half japanese" people often getting othered, in early 2010s there was a rise in "half" celebrities appearing on variety shows but it felt like more of a trend than anything else. okinawan people still face discrimination, and for a long while celebrities like toshinobu kubota hid being half-black. in 2000s crystal kay or exile members chose to be open about being mixed race, and you have rola who is half-bangladeshi
I saw an mini documentary about her a few years ago. Very beautiful young woman. I often wonder how she won in a society that despises darker skin.. not that she was even darker brown.
I got turned off Anime during my High School years when I picked up on the racist portrayal of people of African Descent and how they portray Asian people as White. I always took it as a sign of an inferiority complex in how they denigrate themselves and aren't more appreciative of their Asian racial features.
I remember so many years ago during my second year of college watching DeathNote and thinking there's no difference in how they draw a White person and an Asian person. The one character of African descent who made an appearance on DeathNote was an African American who was a vile and disgusting stereotype - a gangster with thick lips and whose speech was incomprehensible. DeathNote was also very bizarre because there's a hijacking scene in the earlier episodes where the criminal is of Asian descent and he looks it. I struggled to understand this dimension, but it suggested to me that the decisions were conscious from the side of the artists - it's not that they didn't know how to draw Asian people, they just preferred them to look white. I remember much of DeathNote because I thought eveything was good, with the exception of the subtle racism.
I have a niece I love who loves watching cartoons. When I was in Scotland for a month ( a while ago) on a work trip just 2 months before Covid hit, I bought her some cartoon DVDs. I regularly try to do this. I would never expose her to the racist poison in Anime.
I've skipped the Anime genre generally and in its entirety after I saw the patterns of racism in show after show.
There is a lot of classist colorism in Asian cultures. It predates European influence, their beauty standards commonly consider pale skin most attractive because traditionally having a fair complexion in Asia has been a sign of nobility and privilege, since it means that the person does not have to do outdoors physical labor to live.
There are a few anime that don't have the asian characters look white, like full metal alchemist, monster, attack on titan, but in a whole load of anime its impossible to tell if the characters are supposed to be asian until you hear their names.
I think a lot of white people think that anime characters are white because in America the presumption is that every cartoon you see is white. Most asians don’t even think that anime characters are white, because they presume every person in a cartoon they see is asian. Artists just wanna draw characters with crazy hair colors and different eye types, without thinking about how the race would be perceived because they don’t even think about westeners seeing their art and perceiving them as white. I think it’s kinda weird to say that anime characters look like they do because of some secret self hatred from asians, because it seems like you’re denying asians their own individualism and as an asian myself I can say that anime has inspired me to be more proud of my asian features rather than want white ones.
@@aperson2140 100% i don't get this argument 🙄 its been made over and over again but the argument is never made by someone from the culture
Yeah I tried to stomach the racism in Japanese anime but it does become unbearable at times. Yu gi oh still has that black problem, so it does feel like an elephant in the room.
Back in the day, Cowboy Bebop was the first time I saw depictions of black characters that looked like black people. And the episode was awesome. They didn't lighten anyone based on how pretty they were supposed to be. The first episode was in Mexico and I was happy that they weren't light skinned either. But Bebop was and is a superior show.
I never saw Popo or Jynx as black. (There was already a yikes black minor character in DBZ, I didn't need Popo for that).
I’m a black woman who doesn’t really involve myself with anime community due to a few negative experiences. I get the impression that a lot of men who watch anime have a fetish for weird Japanese porn. When I was studying Japanese because I occasionally learn a bit of a language for fun, I was told that I was the one with a strange obsession and that I should go to Africa or learn an African language. Whenever I study European languages Or watch European media, I never get negative feedback
Uhh...what? lol
Growing up in the 80s in Ohio as a painfully nerdy black girl who liked programming computers math and bugs (and not much else) I wanted to be an anime fan so badly! When I'd go to a science fair, or robotics meet up it's what all the other kids seemed to know about and like. But this is Ohio in the 80s ... I was able to get some manga from the public library, but it wasn't always translated (by someone leaving tissue paper between the pages with the english) so I didn't get much out of that. I obtained a set of Sailor Moon VHS tapes somehow, and liked some of it, but still wanted to know more.
So, I was pretty excited to go to a friend's house to watch anime one Saturday. It was a lovely spring day. And those cartoons were the most racist thing I'd ever seen.
The kid hosting the party was from Japan originally, his family moved over a few years back. I was pretty nice to him because I knew the kids at our school could be kinda insular and racist.
I was so confused that he'd enjoy anything like that much less put it on for me and a bunch of white kids.
I didn't want to be difficult so I just ended up leaving early with some excuse and I never really was nice to that kid again. Lost all interest in anime.
Yeah I was at the point when I found out about the racist discrimination of bathhouses. It took a lot of courage to continue being in the anime fandom despite knowing its racist history and where it comes him. But I think the friends I made in the community helped me stay in it.
Bro literally did nothing wrong wtf
@Susan D. Thank you for sharing your experience. I imagine it was disappointing how there was so little care given towards black characters yet there was & still so many examples available to prevent such ignorance.
you re actually shallow what
Where my Michiko to Hatchin fans at? It was really refreshing seeing anime actually immersed in an Afro-Latin setting.
Also, footage from Twin Snakes is objectively more heinous than anything you covered in this vid.
What does Latin has to do with the video?
@@BRIAN09157 Have you ever heard of Michiko to Hatchin? They are referring to the fact that the story is set in Latin America/Brazil.
Wow, as a Black Girl Anime fan, thank you so much for taking an extensive amount of time to discuss a very controversial topic for non-Black Anime fans. Most actual Anime fans steer away from this subject, but You are not even a fan of Anime, but you did your homework and listened to our voices. Thank you for using your platform to amplify the validity of our complaints within the Anime community and the presentation of Blackness within Anime.
I have been a fan of Anime for almost 30yrs and I knew exactly what I was looking at when I first saw Mr. Popo and Jinx on TV. I was in my early teens, but I knew this was a disrespectful depiction of black-skinned characters, which made me wonder what Japanese really thought of Black people in general. Did they really want to hurt us? Would they rather we not exist at all? Oh man, that Shaman King character Chocolove was one of the worst! I remember refusing to watch Shaman King ever again after they introduced him. I was so angry and Hurt! I watched every character (bad guys AND good guys) beat the hell out of him on that first episode. I had to let that show go. Over the following years I searched for better images of Black characters in Anime, and was happy to find Nadia (my profile picture^_^), because she is actually the main character of her own Anime when Black characters were still hard to find at all.
Times have definitely improved thankfully, and it's about time! We just want to be given a fair representation like anyone else the in the Anime medium. If you are going to have diverse characters, allow us to be cool and heroic characters too. We deserve to be more than punching bags, and idiot jokes for other characters to abuse.
As for the Cosplay community, I remember attending my first major anime convention Youmacon in Michigan and saw a lot of Black people playing as Bleach characters since they had the best looking Black characters at the time. I never cosplayed, because I didn't think I could pull off any of the Anime looks, including the Black characters, but that was just my choice. I contemplated cosplay and always wanted to choose a Black character to give more representation to them. But I see where this has changed as well, with more Black TH-cam Anime fans embracing cosplay like RDCWorld and KingVader. I think it was just a matter of time before Anime and Anime fans recognized that our world is made up of many different people who mold the world live in, and it's just time for Anime to catch up. Thank you again for support.
2:22 "There is more black representation in
this genre."
Well, you've angered the anime fans, Kavernacle! Prepare yourself for some nasty words in the comments.
The picture of Ruby Bridges, as a little girl, walking up to a school entrance surrounded by ADULTS screaming at her, comes to mind often. Then I think about how she isn’t even that old…recent history.
I really wish Yasuke was better. Like, I get what they were going for, and wanting this over-the-top final battle with robots and stuff, but it just turned out to be another black character used to protect a more powerful light skinned girl with greater powers. I would've loved a story focusing on him in his prime, like in the flashbacks. I think it would be far more compelling, grounded and more about him and his life as a samurai.
Same! I felt pretty underwhelmed by Yasuke. It would have been so much better if it focused on him. It was a shame his background was just a few flash backs I think. I'm not sure if I cared for the robots and Sci elements either tbh
I'm a black woman who proudly (cringely?) called myself an otaku when I was a kid. Now I work with nerdy properties (mostly games) in Japan, where I've been for about eight years now.
A lot of the racism that pops up in Japanese media is definitely imported. "Little Black Sambo" used to be a common children's book here. Many people have watched a Hollywood film with the black gangsta archetype. Recently, Japan's coverage of BLM wasn't the greatest either. However, in my everyday life I don't experience much over racism.
On the other hand, I hate dealing with Western fans on SNSes. There's so much racism (pedophila, and as of late, transphobia too). It's annoying since they always try to talk over Japanese people, academics, and immigrants like me about what "should" be in Japanese media.
The TH-camr Sarah Z did a video about geek culture, and how much gatekeeping has grown in some spaces. I think that Western anime fans are like that too, but it extends to their fairy tale verson of Japan, which often has their reactionary twist.
Also, I'm glad you talked about Naomi Osaka. Usually Japan is super-happy to "claim" worldwide notable people with Japanese ethnicity, even if they've personally never been in Japan. However there was a lot of controversy about her lighting the Olympic torch, as she's "not Japanese enough". Anyhow, she does have a ton of popularity here and is definitely a symbol of how the country is changing (slowly, but still).
it's funny because most of these ppl who cosplay are white and the characters they portray in the anime are ASIAN SO the hate doesn't make sense at all
Black creators need to create our own style n stories and b our own fans of our own greatness since people want to b on white supremacists bullshit
The depictions are getting better with yasuke, charicters like onyankapon who was probably one of the best aot charicters and poc in stone ocean. And there are creators that are getting better and useing actual black people as inspiration not outdated and offensive stereotypes. There are still some not great ones but and quite a few fans are really racist.
I think these changes will help bring more anti racist and progressives into the community and it will drown them out hopefully
Never actually saw the Yasuke anime, but I did see a few cliff notes and there seems to be a lot more attention to actual Japanese history than you might expect. This series appears to be one of the few, for instance, that doesn't have Oda Nobunaga portrayed as this demonic usurper king and portrays him quite positively.
Also Hojo Masako seems to be the final boss of the anime series for some reason. Seems like kind of a random choice since I don't recall any weird myths surrounding her. She was just the major powerhouse behind much of the Kamakura shogunate for most of its reign.
What turned me off from anime was starting a show and then 15-20 minute in, the shows start sexualizing a child.
Most anime don't do that
@@frannava7175lol yes they do don’t even lie
My girlfriend is 1/4th Puerto Rican and she looks tanned white, but she has really curly hair because of her PR ancestry (which includes African ancestry). It's so hard to find representative hair in Japanese games for her. Just last week we struggled with making her avatar in Switch Sports.
„Ash Ketchum and Misty are white“ Yeah, people who’s original names are Satoshi and kazumi are clearly white.
Yasuke was terrible, should of went full historical. Also a correction, Nobunaga never unified Japan, he was assassinated before he could and Yasuke was (likely) kicked out of Japan by Hideyoshi Toyatomi soon after the Bateren-tsuiho-rei (the Purge Directive Order to the Catholics) edicts were declared (politics).....Though in reality no one knows what happened to him after Honnō-ji Incident , he was killed with the rest of Nobunaga's loyalists and he was expelled from the country with the Jesuits and other Catholics are the main lines of thought.
NIOH had an ACTUAL HISTORICAL (based) black Samurai. And Nioh actually is set in 1600s Japan. Yasuke was a personal retainer to Oda Nobunaga. Those rabid complainers are idiots. But then you knew that.
Mugen is one of my fav anime characters, BECAUSE they actually empathise with his trauma as a poc in japan and whilst highlighting that the issue is systematic and not a few naughty racists being mean.
Aren't Japanese people, "People of color" the term just means not white. Even if you're pale as hell, if you're not race isn't white, you're not considered white
Yasuke was just a discount version of Afro Samurai tbh.
Avatar the Last Airbender may not, technically, be anime but Katara and Sokka's melanin was so great for Brown skinned kids like me. And I'm continuously seeing new adaptations that are totally undermining their skin color.
One of my favorite animes growing up was Cyborg 009 in the show there was a character called pyunma who was african he had the black face design until they redesign his character in one of the films. If you haven't seen the anime or read the manga i highly recommend it kav. I dont want to leave the synopsis cause this comment is way too long.
Always enjoy the enlightenment and the knowledge, keep fighting the good fight 🤘😎👍
Anime communities can be pretty racist especially online. I think sometimes for me as an anime fan there is this cognitive dissonance when you see certain things. I loved DBZ growing up but the way they depicted Mr. Popo was atrocious. It always felt like the people making these animes had a racist view inspired by the west. It's like everything else in a world shaped by colonialism you just learn to live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance ie using currency with pictures of slaveowners or Black kids having to go to schools named after confederate generals. I still enjoy anime as an art form but i do have a lot of cognitive dissonance with it
While Sword Art Online has weird sexualization of teenage girls,It was noteworthy for me for having a black man who wasn't drawn as caricature and acts like a regular person
It’s weird that some anime can get one aspect of representation right but get everything else bad. There was one with an apparently very good representation of a trans girl, but the rest of the anime was sexist and racist.
In general, I avoid fandoms in general. I've always found them toxic.
I was so used to never seeing black people in media apart from shows like martin during the height of black sitcoms that i never thought about it, i identified with piccalo
I'm half black and half filipino nearly 40 years old. I became an anime fan in the mid 90s. Growing up in the 90s I just learned to ignore how black people were treated in anime. I became ignorant to the racism for a long time. When I was college aged, conventions started to become more of a thing, at least that's when I became more aware of them. I noticed the harsh reactions black cosplayers were receiving at the time. While so man other white cosplayers were getting praised for their interpretations of anime characters, black cosplayers were getting berated. I had initially wanted to start showing up at the few conventions I knew of at the time in costume. But seeing reactions majorly discouraged me from ever wanting to do that. I had wanted to do a Vampire Hunter D costume and a Street Fighter Ryu. I never perused cosplaying any characters because of that. I never even went to any major conventions because of how much it discouraged me. When the anime Afro Samurai came out I was super excited because there was finally a character with a similar skin tone that I would want to cosplay. I never did, because I had grown fatter by that point and had already gone through several years of feeling that I couldn't cosplay anything. I even stopped watching anime for about a 5 to 10 year period. When I finally got back into anime about 10 years ago I was more aware of racial issues. My entire life the heroes in anime and other types of fandom had never really looked like me. They still don't look like me. I enjoyed Cannon Busters just because they really tried with that. I hope things continue to progress... so that my children won't have similar problems that I had while growing up.
Yes they're definitely racism there and you can also see they favor the European look.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 and maybe you're just a plain old racist troll. Who lurks and troll on channels like this.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 nah it's classism and white supremacy but nice try 😏
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 man you are proving his point even further lol great job.
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 ah yes beautiful white features, you ever saw the people in 1700s and 1800s? Think you'd change your view if you saw all the incest going on in europe
@@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115 pretty sure in middle eastern countries were akmost no incest compared to europe
Do they realize the anime is Asian and not white when they Csll out blk cosplaying
Why are all English speaking videos about anime so American centric
Was hoping for a mention of Afro Samurai.
Kavernacle I'm anime fan and do appreciate that you show the darkness of my fandom
I think black characters having larger lips isn't problematic on its own...
But you don't need to make them look like minstrel shows...
- Black facial features can be done tastefully...
I think its also that black facial features are super apparent but Asian not really.
I think what annoys me the most about anime fans is how much they *deny* any racism on anime's part. Especially towards dark skinned people. It's no secret anyways that dark skin has historically been frowned upon in Japan, and that whitening cream is common there.
Almost all anime/manga I've looked up that has a setting where there *should* be dark skinned people, nearly all the characters are portrayed as light skinned, as though these stories are purposely trying to avoid portraying dark skinned people in predominant roles. For example:
Red River, Magi, and especially Blood Blockade Battlefront; all take place in settings that have historically or currently feature dark skinned people alongside light skinned people, YET nearly all, or all of, the characters appear to be light skinned.
Exactly.
I've watched a lot of anime / played a lot of Japanese games and one thing I noticed comes up a lot is characters from Okinawa, a southern island in Japan where people tend to have darker complexion. They are often drawn like these minstrel show characters and are treated as exotic people. Even in fantasy stories there are often characters from a distant island who are darker and treated differently. Luckily, it seems more modern takes at least use this to address racism
I never understood the inclusion thing. Why should anything HAVE TO BE represented. And then examples from the articles are just bizzar . Mr Popo is not black, he is an Guardian jin . They entered Japans culture in XIXth century when the empire of Japan established contacts with the Persian empire(roughly todays Iran+) , Lynx is not a black female, she is based on a mother protective spirit fetish(as in physical repesentation of a cult source) from northern Japan. Generaly this feels like a gigantic stretch , combined with lack of knowladge about the medium and culture.
Representation of minorities matters because it shows them to everyone. Alot of times, minority-status people fly under the radar and therefore become more susceptible to being stereotypified or portrayed in insensitive ways. And when you dont know many people of whatever minority group and only see them in media in certain negative ways, it can skew your perspective in a non-empathetic way. On the other hand, when minorities, whether they be racial, sexual, etc minorities, are shown in a nuanced and respectful manner you can break down that wall. It is well documented that when we read or watch from a character's perspective, we begin to empathize with them similar to how we become more empathetic to real people as you get to know them. This is why representation is important. For so long, whiteness has been seen as the default for stories in the West when in reality it really shouldnt matter what your skin tone is. Yet it does. So we must resist that pull
@@unovasfinest2623 but here is the thing you can't make a character just for inclusion or they just come off as one note or more stereotypical to be honest
@@davelucas7997 absolutely. Thats why you make a nuanced character that so happens to be a minority. Simple
@@unovasfinest2623there're billions of black people around the globe. Start creating your own stories, where you are the main focus, instead of trying to strong arm Japanese to represent you. They don't owe you anything, just like they don't owe white people anything, or anyone who's not Japanese.
I feel such a genuine hopefulness towards the future from anime. Positive feelings about where technology will take us, about how we can better understand each other, about good triumphing over evil. It truly seems like such a missed message for people to use these generally hopeful sentiments to turn around be be bigoted about it.
I wonder if there's a significant body of leftist anime fans like me.
Theres got to be a lot of leftist anime fans. A whole load of anime are very anti authority and anti capitalist, so will attract leftists.
Also because most anime are originally authored by a single person, you will often get their idiocyncracies in their works. Which will lead to a lot of bad messaging, with shit like fire force where it has a full blown anti sjw rant, but you will also find a few shows with very progressive messaging.
There are a lot of stereotypes though. Its unfortunate that anime is written that way, that a lot of characters writing is based on one character trait, which is...fine for personality traits, but often people mistake being a minority for a personality trait. So you get people whos on character trait is being gay, or black, or lesbian, and all the stereotypes that come from that. That can put off more progressive people for obvious reasons.
The Rose of Versailles is a good, communist anime
There was, but I grew tired and lost my hopefulness. I hope yours doesn't fade. Between the racism, homophobia, and covert pedophilia, I can barely stomach the medium.
@@blackpathos5791 I'll look into that, thanks. I haven't watched an old anime in a long time, and MAL makes it look pretty good.
I never considered mr popo as a black character lol.. there were other black characters in dragonball that didn’t have that stereotypical design