I have been a fan of anime since I could remember. The first anime that I was introduced to was Dragon Ball Z Kai. I used to watch it on NickToons with my brother, and we would act out the different scenes. As I got older, I started to branch out more and watch a lot of different anime such as: My Hero Academia, Soul Eater, Fruits Basket, Ouran High School Host Club, Attack on Titan, and many more! As I’ve gotten older and started being involved in fandom on social media, there’s something that I’ve noticed: anime fans are kinda racist.
Of course I’m not saying that all anime fans are racist, but I’ve seen some horrible things that people in the anime fandom have said about POC (mainly black people). I find this ironic because quite a few anime have preached about treating people equally, and accepting people for their differences. One of the things that Black people get harassed for is wanting better representation in anime.
Black people have been depicted in anime, but they’re usually drawn in a stereotypical way. They are usually drawn with overly big lips that are lighter than the rest of their body, and they usually forget to make their palms lighter, and not the same color as their skin.
While Black people have been asking for better representation, non-Black people have been defending this lackluster representation by saying things like: “they’re from Japan, they’ve never seen a Black person before” “you shouldn’t be asking for representation, there’s no Black people in Japan” “Black people don’t fit the art style.” To me these are just excuses.
Not only does the internet exist, but there have been instances where Black characters have been drawn correctly. It’s not impossible. It can be done. The only reason why it isn’t is because of stereotypes and just plain laziness. Not only have fans been harassed, but Black creators as well. There have been numerous Black English dub voice actors who have spoken out about the racism they’ve faced from the anime community simply for being Black. They are dismissed as “diversity hires”. Anairis Quiñones, who has voiced characters such as Mirko and Nessa, has openly spoken out about the hate and racism that she has faced as a Black voice actress, and has advocated for representation in the voice acting industry.
The biggest issue that has inspired me to write this article is the constant harassment of Black cosplayers. For those who may not know, cosplayers are people who dress up as characters from tv shows, movies, video games, and/or books. As previously discussed, there aren’t a lot of Black characters in anime, so it’s only natural that Black cosplayers may dress up as non-Black characters. After all, race shouldn’t matter when you’re dressing up as a fictional character right? Unfortunately this is not the case. Black cosplayers have spoken out about being harassed by non-Black people for not “looking like” the characters that they are dressing as. They receive comments like: “this character isn’t Black” or are called racial slurs. Hate comments such as these have deterred Black cosplayers from cosplaying or posting on social media.
Situations like these anger me because racist fans have turned something that’s supposed to be fun into a hostile environment. Fandom is supposed to be an escape from reality. Black people already deal with racism everyday, they shouldn’t have to deal with it in spaces that are supposed to be fun. It’s not fair how we have to be on defense all the time.
Final Thoughts
Despite all of this, Black people have been able to create a community that is safe for Black people. It sucks that we have to create our own spaces in order to have fun and be included, but this is how things have to be. I believe that one day things will get better, but until then, we’ll take comfort in the community that we’ve built for ourselves.
