Takashi Okazaki illustrations in the manga comics
“Afro samurai” in 1999 had a sketchy tone to them. Everything was sketched in
black and white but there was an extra tone of red which made the blood in the
manga comics stand out but also the red in the image reflect the violence of
the character. In this image you can see there is an afro haired samurai
holding a sword in a fighting stance illustrated by Takashi Okazaki. Even
though he may be the main character and fights evil he isn’t the conventional
hero you would see in marvel comics for example superman. It’s not very often
you find a black main super hero however Takashi Okazaki said “the inspiration
for afro samurai came from different elements that I really liked from when I
was young, one of the thing was hip hop and soul music”(1). This illustration
is obviously influenced by different cultures just as West Indian and black
urban but also has some cross cultures as he is wearing a kimono. Takashi states in an interview in 2008 “I
just started doing some doodling of an African American I was just playing
around with it putting on some headbands and next a kimono to eventually
developed this character afro samurai in the end” (1).
References
1) Takashi
Okazaki interview at 0:23 7th October 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dwB6AVRxtM&noredirect=1
This image shows a very dark skinned man from the manga series “Dragonball” (1986) illustrated by Akira Toriyama. This character illustrated here is named Mr.Popo from the series “Dragonball” he is short, fat, has thick red lips and pitch black skin this is probably as derogatory as possible especially being the one of the only black characters in the Dragonball manga. As Akira Toriyama is a Japanese manga artist his interpretation of West Indian is very vivid in the sense of this is what black cultured people are represented as. When black character started getting recognised in the media their features were exaggerated like the image you see above similar to a “golliwog” created in the early 19th century. “African appeared as either brute savages or minstrel-show stereotypes with huge white eyes and white-rimmed lips, often speaking an imbecilic hybrid of Pidgin English and exaggerated African American slang” (1). When the show originally aired on TV around the world Mr Popo was pitch black and racial stereotypes wasn’t brought up as it was a show for children and wasn’t really taken as a serious topic. But as the show re- aired in 2010 on 4KidsTV as “Dragonball Z Kai” Mr Popo who we see is pitch black was re-coloured a royal blue colour as it more politically correct. The original fans found this more racist as it meant Akira Toriyama intentions of making Mr popo Pitch black a mockery of black culture like “black face” who was another character who was an interpretation towards black culture in comics. “To some, Mr Popo is claimed to be variant of darky iconography, a “racist” style caricature” (2).
References
1)
Bradford W. Wright (2001) Comic book nation – The
Transformation of Youth Culture in America P37
2)
Trivia- http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Popo#cite_note-3
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