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Forum - View topicHow Black Creatives Are Influencing The Anime Fandom
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Punpun's ghost
 Posts: 73 Location: Wales |
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This is really cool. Culture only thrives - as society does - when it's accessed and shaped by a wide diversity of people, from many different backgrounds and perspectives. Anime and manga is so vibrant and so much fun, but it can be socially really cloddish sometimes. There was a video put up on the UK's Guardian newspaper recently, and that really opened my eyes to black fans' perspectives and how they felt about they way black characters were often drawn and portrayed (I'm rereading Alita and am now really aware of Vector's character, for instance, and it's making me feel uncomfortable in a way that I admit I wasn't aware of before). It's good to see things are starting to change and develop. If you love something, you should be A) able to make it your own, and B) be able to inform other creatives: if you want a black or LGBT character in your story, this is how you do it.
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Siegel Clyne
Posts: 201 |
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The Black Experience Japan channel on YouTube, run by Ranzo, a black man originally from Jamaica who has made Japan his home, has on a few occasions covered anime, including The First Black-Owned Anime Studio in Japan (Black in Japan) | MFiles, uploaded on September 27, 2019, and The 1st Black-Owned Anime Studio in Japan (Black in Japan) | MFiles, uploaded on September 29, 2019.
Ranzo also interviewed a Black British woman of Ghanaian descent, Reina, who moved to Japan from the UK to study becoming a voice actress, Being A Black Voice Actress in Japan (Black in Japan) | MFiles, uploaded on July 4, 2019. Reina's experience as a foreign voice actress in Japan kinda parallels those of other foreign voice actresses in Japan, such as Chinese-born Seira Ryū and U.S.-born Sally Amaki, an American of Japanese descent whose parents are Japanese immigrants who met in the United States. All three being anime otaku helped drive them to pursue a voice acting career in Japan. Sally Amaki's story is particularly interesting. While she is of full Japanese ancestry, Amaki's first language, like so many Americans born to Asian immigrants, is English. (This holds especially true for children of Japanese immigrants, since there exist few Japanese Americans who can speak Japanese; there are not many first- and second-generation Japanese Americans around. Japanese Americans are a predominantly native-born American population, unlike other Asian Americans. Also, most American who claim Japanese ancestry on the U.S. Census are now only part Japanese.) While Amaki speaks fluent Japanese, written Japanese is difficult for her (not surprising considering she was born and raised in the U.S.). She decided to move to Japan from the U.S. on her own to pursue a voice acting career. It takes years to learn and memorize kanji. As voice acting in Japan requires one to read scripts written virtually all in Japanese, one begins to realize how big of an obstacle it is for those who did not grow up learning all those kanji, among other grammatical and language skills. Sally Amaki struggled to land voice acting roles until 2016 when she got the role of Sakura Fujima in the anime idol project 22/7, created by AKB48 founder Yasushi Akimoto. Fujima Sakura debuted in 2018 as a bilingual virtual YouTuber, or Vtuber - currently about the hottest trend on YouTube now, led by Yagoo's hololive. Fujima is more of a traditional Vtuber in the mode of Kizuna Ai. Fujima hasn't uploaded any video on YouTube in over a year. Amaki still uploads videos on her own YouTube channel, Sally Amaki[official]. Elijah Nang is a black man of Nigerian heritage from London, England, UK. He travels across Japan, mostly Japan's countryside, creating music narrating his travels, such as Elijah Nang - Gaijin 外人 [Full LP] and Elijah Nang - Gaijin II Tale of Rai 外人 [Full LP]. Last edited by Siegel Clyne on Sun Nov 01, 2020 9:08 pm; edited 7 times in total |
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Mr. Toto
 Posts: 139 |
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Anime in 2020 is considered “cool” in the west often because of the work of black creatives. I hope that those in power start realizing this... it’s the only reason why Jump series continue to thrive in mainstream western culture.
Think about all of the top-20 artists who routinely reference anime like Lil Uzi Vert or Doja Cat. KING VADER and Mark Phillips’ parody videos. I’m old enough to remember the rampant racism in these communities in the 90s and 2000s and the tide is shifting. Those who aren’t paying attention will be left in the dust economically. |
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