There is a short sightedness when it comes to understanding why certain things take off and others do not. We are going to get deep on this one boys and girls. Sometimes, you have to let people rant and rave about stuff and then there comes a time where you have to be like, "aight 'chall chill out". Translation, I hear you but now, I'm tired of hearing you. This situation with Anime and Manga has people feeling some type of way. Especially, some Black folks. It is times like these I feel like I need to speak to it and give a perspective that some may or may not have considered. Malcolm X has been quoted as saying, "Of all our studies, it is history that is best qualified to reward our research". Time for a history lesson. A real one. Perhaps, it will give some pause regarding the almighty timeline. Every generation wants and has their own thing. No one is exempt. As a child in the early 70s, we had our own thing. Let me run some of it down.
In September of 1970 Hanna-Barbera debuted the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon show on CBS Saturday Morning. The world famous Harlem Globetrotters who traveled from city to city all over the world had a cartoon show. These were real Black basketball players, men who were being shown in a cartoon show. Later on, The Harlem Globetrotters were featured on NBC back in 1978. Josie and the Pussycats another show on CBS came out in September, 1970 too. This show featured a Black woman named Valerie. The show only filmed one season but did have a season of reruns.
In September, 1971 The world famous Jackson Five had a cartoon for a season on ABC. This was a show featuring the hottest Black music group in the world. So, as kid I saw myself onscreen. Most cartoons to that point featured anthropomorphism which is the process of giving animals, human like behaviors. We see this in all the Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck or the Warner Brothers characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Those characters are older and have been around since late 1920s and late 1930s respectively. All of us watched those characters in cartoons for decades but they were not "ours". Other characters that were ours included a superhero team called "Superstretch and Microwoman" which debuted in September of 1978. Now from 1970 to 1978 is a stretch indeed but the seeds of visibility for Black children such as myself had been planted. We were not dying of thirst for representation. We enjoyed everything that the major networks put out, whether it was Land of the Lost or the Banana Splits. Naturally, we wanted more but we were present. Let us also remember Bill Cosby and his smash hit Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids which ran from 1972 to 1985. However, in 1969 there was a show on NBC that preceded Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids called "Hey Hey Hey, Its Fat Albert". There's a small clip on YouTube from that show. So Animation and Black folks been together.
So fast forward to 1989 when Dragon Ball Z debuted. This show roared into the 1990s and is probably the most popular Anime ever in my humble opinion. My brother owns most if not all the original VHS tapes of this show. Couple this smash with the golden age of Hip Hop in the 1990s and this a cultural mixture produced a generation that loved Japanese Anime. These kids had kids and those kids found love in Anime because they were introduced to it by Millenial parents. Lets not forget that IPs like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter killed it in the 1990s too. Kids grew up loving these franchises as well. This affinity for Anime isn't weird its has been natural for the most part. For my generation, we did not have Japanese anime. However we did have Kung Fu theatre which came on at noon on Saturdays after cartoon line ups.
The exposure of Chinese martial arts influnced hip hop groups like the Wu-Tang Clan. We watched a lot of those movies and then we would go outside and play with our friends trying to mimic the martial artists on screen. We loved the colors and acrobatics and the stories about revenge and the loud sounds coming from our televisions. Let me be honest, I cannot recall no folks dissing us for loving those old Kung Fu movies. We did have one hero who starred in a few movies named Jim Kelly.
Jim Kelly was to us like Bruce Lee was to the Chinese community. So now fast foward to this day and age where kids of this generation are finding fandom in Japanese Anime. Why is it a problem? Is it because it looks weird? Is it because you do not understand it? Is it because kids find more identity in these far east mediums of entertainment than what is available in the west? Some of us think the answer is in telling "our" stories. I do think that telling our stories is important. However, that is the job of the family and not hollywood or any entertaiment conglomerate. Lets be clear.
The best place to tell our stories is not on paid television. The best place to tell our stories is in our own homes. Would you like to share somethings that entertainment can provide, yes. However, it is not the end all be all. It is a cultural problem that can only be solved at the dinner tables and bookshelves of our homes. If a kid has a great sense of who they are, they can find fandom in Japanese anime and still be authentically Black. The situation with cosplay triggers some of us because it looks straight weird and it does not match. Clearly. I remember the first time I saw two ashy heavy set negroes wearing pink wigs. Yeah, that wasn't the lick. Yet, often times these kids are looking to find themselves and they are looking outside for it.
Too many young Black teenagers do not know who they are. Their parent or parents allowed them to be raised by these "brands" without affording them some sense of who they are prior to. Too often we dis them without really fully knowing what is the source of this "dysfunction" or "awkward" pursuit of consumption of Japanese anime. Some kids want to be like Goku, some kids like me wanted to be Superman. Is telling "our" stories the answer? Lets keep it a stack. We have to be careful of what we consider as "ours". Black Americans get called out for cultural appropriation too. You think its all gravy to take a West African tale and "speak" on it only to have someone come around the corner and shade you for it. We don't want to talk about that though. So what's the answer? The answer is to chill. Each one teach one but do not disrespect or belittle anyone's prerogative to watch, or identify with their generation's fondness. I may hate it but its not my choice because its not my voice. That is defined or should defined in our homes and not by these corporations whether they are in Japan or in Atlanta Georgia. Representation begins at home, not on Netflix or Hulu or any streaming service. Charity begins at home, so does education. If you want to change things, then be the change you want to see and help some one you think needs to see like you see. Whining about it, crying about it, or lying about it does not change or help anyone to see. Create the representation or just chill because if you don't; you are not the way, you just standing in the way. I'm just saying.
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