I love anime but this does not explain why the majority of anime characters have blue eyes. If the characters actually looked closer to the homogenous population they represented then I don’t think anyone would have raised that concern. It’s the fact that so many anime contain blonde haired blue eyed characters which do not represent the typical features of that region either. I’m always surprised to actually watch an anime with a character that actually has features more typically represented in those regions. That’s how widespread it is. The fact that I’m surprised to see a non white non European character in a Japanese art medium is concerning.
Also, there is a lot of anti blackness in their communities as well. So while I do love and have an appreciation for their culture I am fully cognizant they really do not love black Americans. That’s sort of the issue of this whole thing. I can enjoy anything. I watch freakin British Broadcasting miniseries on the regular. I’m fully aware I’m going to see white Europeans in those miniseries and I don’t really care what color they are anyway because the story is what shines.
It is similar to anime in that I could really care less if they have blue eyes and purple hair. But I’m also not completely discounting what other black Americans say about the white supremacy in anime or how they feel.
Do I think they have a right to ask for black characters? I have no idea honestly. I think it is quite clear that they need to be aware of their market demographic which includes Americans as well as an increasingly large portion of African Americans. I’m pretty sure they will figure it out in the next few years but honestly I have a feeling anything they would try might come off offensive since a lot of what they know of black American culture comes from racist white media executives. I would honestly just like to see anime actually represent Japanese people and features instead of just all looking “Aryan”. That is honestly weird to me.
The other reason people are concerned is because many black Americans who love the idea of escaping to a fantasy land (which I do too don’t get me wrong!) to get away from the trauma of living as a black American. Yet they/we are escaping to worlds full of European drawn characters. Again, I can’t say anything because I’ve been escaping into Narnia and Lord of the Rings since I was like four years old.
Some black Americans are not making these distinctions though. They are not coming to similar stances. As I said before I don’t care what color any character in a story is because I pride myself on how well I pick my plots and media I consume. Which means everything I watch has to have an airtight transformative plot. Which for me removes the idea of watching European characters just for the sake of watching them. I’m actually deciding that the story and plot supersedes any white supremacy I might be engaging in.
There are many American black, Asian and other POC who consume anime with all these blonde haired blue eyed features and walk away with a sense that “White fantasy world is superior”. The amount of people with anime characters as their profile pictures saying things like “Black women are just unattractive it’s just my preference, I like the features of white people.” It is alarming how often I see it. We don’t know if the people behind those blonde haired blue eyed white anime characters is a black person, a white person or a POC. But we definitely know that the media they consume has affected their preferences and let’s hope not a huge contributing factor to their antiblackness and clear racism.
It does no good to just pretend the antiblackness and white supremacy isn’t there.
It is much more mentally healthy I believe since most of us Black Americans who love anime are in a similar spot. Where we love this medium but the creators of this medium really have no love for us.
The most mentally healthy position I think is not denial but a clear and distinct understanding that European worlds and ideas are not a superior utopia. They are a certain type of world which we can choose to engage in for our own reasons. But those worlds and characters are not these great imaginative landscapes just because they are filled with white people. It is because they are filled with people, period the end.
