Current Events > Is akira toriyama racist for his depiction of black people in early db dbz ?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Id say no because its pretty clear his intent wasnt racist.

however those designs where clearly inspired by racist art that he had saw without proper context.

Im mainly curious what everyone thinks cause Im finding out a lot of non black people didnt realize it was offensive.

his depiction of black people is racist regardless of intent

He's a fucking degenerate pervert. Remember when he drew a comic about a woman turning to prostitution after repeatedly getting raped? Or when he said he wanted to spy on his daughter in the bath?

I never played the game so i dont know

No, Toriyama wasn't racist but you can bet he was definitely influenced by those old cartoons that had black face caricatures. He probably thought that was how to draw them as in Dragon Ball had a lot of different ethnicities in its world.

averagejoel posted...

his depiction of black people is racist regardless of intent

i agree completely.

Intent only matters when deciding if he was racist himself

Adam posted...

He's a fucking degenerate pervert. Remember when he drew a comic about a woman turning to prostitution after repeatedly getting raped? Or when he said he wanted to spy on his daughter in the bath?

177013 by Akira Toriyama

When did he say that about his daughter?

As for the topic. I don't know if he is racist, but his character drawings sure as hell were. One black character lips took up half his face, and where "pinkish". I like DB and DBZ but that shit was fucked up.

I'd say its based more on ignorance (meaning it wasn't truly harmful, just did not know any better) and didn't know how messed up the big lips thing was since he is a japanese dude born in 1955. The only exposure he would even have with black people is whatever he seen on japanese TV or on the news......which probably was the absolute bare minimum. Besides that, there would be whatever international movies that played in their theaters and TV, and that was most likely only the most popular western movies with mainly a white cast straight from hollywood. Star wars, E.T., indiana jones and the like.....doubt eddie murphy movies/some golden child and new jack city was a common thing there, lol.

Basically, he wouldn't have any exposure with black people and he for sure would have no idea whatsoever on the complex history between that kind of thing, the racial tensions that was a thing in the west, etc. etc.

Like post 5 said, those old looney tunes shorts etc. was a huge influence to a lot of people then. Got the back in the day cyborg 008 looking all kinds of fucked up lmao but the modern version is dialed the hell back.....its definitely some progress. The internet being a thing a lot of people have easy access too=younger generations of mangaka actually realizing the mistakes their seniors made with character designs/possibly learning some history theirselves and thus making cool modern black designs:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/8/7/AARkkPAADt9f.jpg

He does draw a lot of anthropomorphic characters for some reason.

By the standards of the day as far as Japanese people I don't think there was any racist intent in his early material. However it's relic of 20th century anime that should be left in the past, where it belongs.

ForsakenHermit posted...

By the standards of the day as far as Japanese people I don't think there was any racist intent in his early material. However it's relic of 20th century anime that should be left in the past, where it belongs.

I would be quite glad if they changed Popo and the Red Ribbon Army guy. They would even only need the visual change sin e the story doesn't have them do anything particularly racist.

GreenMario posted...

I would be quite glad if they changed Popo and the Red Ribbon Army guy. They would even only need the visual change sin e the story doesn't have them do anything particularly racist.

Officer Black had his design changed 2 decades ago in the Path To Power movie

Did he? Wonder why they use the old one in Dokkan Battle

Yeah that part is a bit awkward.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


TBF all the RR army named characters are named after colors. But of course Toriyama had the one black guy's name be Black.

it was racist but not by ill intention.
casual racism still a thing even now.

must have been based on white people's racism

Ricemills posted...

it was racist but not by ill intention.
casual racism still a thing even now.

Sad but true

It was not racist though styled after racist art. America isn't the only country in the world, and Japan doesn't have the history with racism America does. The connotations are not the same as they would be for someone from the US.

EmbraceOfDeath posted...

It was not racist though styled after racist art. America isn't the only country in the world, and Japan doesn't have the history with racism America does. The connotations are not the same as they would be for someone from the US.

No the connotations are the same because it was literally copied from American media.

The difference is Japan has no significant African American population so their voices are silenced for the few who do try to complain about it.

Racism doesnt require malicious intent

EmbraceOfDeath posted...

It was not racist though styled after racist art. America isn't the only country in the world, and Japan doesn't have the history with racism America does. The connotations are not the same as they would be for someone from the US.

You can't make someone lips take up half their face and think hey that is how a person looks. Also with whole lips thing, he was living his life never stepping out a small village hidden in the mountain or some shit, he knew what black people looked like.

I still don't know if I would call him racist , but he art still was. Lets not act like he was isolated from the rest of the world.

averagejoel posted...

his depiction of black people is racist regardless of intent

That makes no sense.

I mean, you could be going for the umbrella racism, which isn't specific to malicious racism, so I could be wrong. But I'm getting this read of "racism as external factor".

GreenMario posted...

I would be quite glad if they changed Popo and the Red Ribbon Army guy. They would even only need the visual change sin e the story doesn't have them do anything particularly racist.

You forget the travesty of Blue Popo.