This is Dragon Ball Z. My very first introduction to the world of anime.
And this is my cousin Dujon.
I watched Dragon Ball at his house.
Sick! I didn't even know you had the merch!
I've got probably about five or six t-shirts.
What?
But this is also Dragon Ball Z.
The first time I ever saw Mr Popo, I remember just thinking ...
Why did he look like that?
And this is quite a common portrayal of black people in anime and yet anime has a big black fan base.
A lot of people seem to kind of think that racism doesn't exist in Japan and of course
that's not true.
To be a fan is to be cheering in one scene and like hiding your head the next.
First of all, let's get something straight.
I'm definitely not here to cancel anime but as a black fan,
I am here to say:
One of my favorite anime shows is Durarara!! but the black
Russian is a problem.
For the love of God redraw him.
Sister Krone and The Promised Neverland, they lean on that minstrel look, huge lips,
bulging eyes and it just it's disgusting and it hurts because
it's so glaring that it is anti-black that it almost ruins the entire thing for me.
And even One Punch Man has Blackluster who aka Superalloy Darkshine, I mean it is very racist
and it's funny because I was getting into the show and I was like, you know, I just said OK we're
going to ignore that episode but unfortunately that's something that black folks again and again
have to do. If we want to be fans of something and we don't want to cancel the entire genre,
we have to pick and choose our fights.
But why does anime get blackness so badly wrong?
Try and understand what's going on here.
Especially with a lot of the older shows.
We need to think about this in context.
They're looking at us through the lens of American media, American television.
There were no images of black people in animation outside of Disney and Warner Brothers animation
and the 40s and 50s and those images of us were very racist.
I would direct your attention to the Jungle Book.
These references range from the grossly offensive to the unhelpfully reductive.
Coffee from Cowboy Bebop.
She's a black exploitation character, she's basically foxy brown but on Mars.
Some argue that since anime is largely created for domestic Japanese audience,
creators can't be expected to respectfully represent racial diversity because Japan is
not a particularly racially diverse country but these excuses don't hold water.
This isn't a case of ignorance, there's nowhere on the planet
where people haven't seen a black person.
You can't just say it's like a thing without agency, it's not just like, 'oh well it was an accident ...',
it's like a conscious choice that people make.
When we argue about racism in anime,
people are like, 'well, it's Japan, it's not here, it's not the same thing'
and what they don't realise is on a global scale it is the same thing
because it's all over the world.
And it's not just anime shows themselves that are problematic.
A large amount of anime fans, I'm not saying all of them but like it
is a lot of them out there hate when other people who don't look like them come into the fandom.
It was really only very recently that I talked about being an anime fan online because I don't
like having those conversations day in day out.
I think where I see it the most is from my friends who cosplay.
They'll get told, 'you can't cosplay that character because you're black'.
I've been called slurs, I've been called a fake fan, I've been called many names.
Or you only like it because Megan Thee Stallion likes it or you don't know any anime.
It's a lot.
So if being a black fan of anime subjects you to this much racism,
then why do we love it so much?
There's no one answer, for me the fact that I didn't have to engage with western politics and I could look at
something else for once and learn about something else and also just because these things are cool.
And a lot of anime that i'm familiar with, like, there's usually some layer of prejudice
against the hero like some people doubt them, some people think they can't achieve it
or just that they're hated.
So Naruto, for example, he's treated poorly for a large part of his life
but he still rises to the occasion and perseveres to become ...
I mean, like, there's tons of characters like that who face that in their journeys.
I think it resonates with me as a black woman because it is just something where like,
existing in itself can be a challenge, existing in a world that does not want to accept us
is challenging.
I love Kurosawa films and things like that and a lot of the anime
followed that those story lines just, let me avenge, let me walk the earth like Kane and avenge.
The death of my master.
There's a lot of parallels here with black people's affection
for kung fu films but that's another video.
It's a really interesting thing now that I
think everybody is sort of kind of coming out going, 'yeah I've been a fan of this for years'.
If they're over the age of 35, they're going to remember getting bootleg
vhs or friends got them and dubbed them and passed them around and that and that's why
the black anime audience is older.
People think, 'oh now black people like it too', no, we've been here.
Anime references in black culture goes back decades especially in hip-hop.
That is why there's so much of an anime influence in The Boondocks.
Aaron McGruder, he was clearly a fan.
LeSean Thomaswho was also one of the people who worked on that show,
he went on to actually move out to Japan
and work on anime on his own and he created Canon Busters that came out last year.
LeSean Thomas was also one of the storyboard animation production artists on Avatar the Legend of Kora
and he's part of a small but growing number of black people involved in the production of anime.
In the US, there's Saturday Am magazine that features manga from a whole host of diverse artists.
And then there's Noir Caesar, a black run company which has diversity and representation
as its mission statement.
They're currently adapting some of their manga into anime shows.
I will say that there are creators out there who are fixing it.
Black owned studios are stationed in japan, there's also shows like Carole and Tuesday
that have great representation for black characters.
So I do have, like, a lot of hope but I will say it's like creator by creator.
There's so many things that we've accepted for so long
because we were just so happy to be included at all.
We can ask for more, you know?
And i think that's what a lot of fans are doing.
You'll have more folks who are like, I would like to be in a space where I'm not feeling so entirely alone.
There are so many people like myself who are interested in this sort of thing, it's not just
like a white fascination, it's like a thing that a lot of people share in and enjoy.
I've got lifelong friends just off the back of the fact that we
I love anime, I do, I love it.
There's spaces that are like advertised, it's just like, look if you're black and you're into
this stuff, then like come on down.
It will be, you know, in a convention hall somewhere in the States.
We feel encouraged to make a space where fans like us can feel welcomed and no one feels excluded.
It's really about a community and being able to enjoy it together.
If you want to hear more from black British anime fans, I've put some links in the description to
some great podcasts.
Both Neysha and Karama have their own podcast and they're brilliant
so check those out as well.
I'll also include some links to some of Kambole's excellent articles and
reviews on a whole range of different genres.
Lastly, this is the first in a series of videos
called Black Enough, delving into black arts and culture.
Subscribe if you want to see more.