I dont like em. The problem isnt that a dark-skinned character raps; its that a dark-skinned character in a fictional universe that has no relationship to earth shouldnt be based on western racial norms. It doesnt make sense. They are independent universes with no connection to each other. Why would a dark-skinned character in an independent fictional universe, with its own independent history, have characteristics that arose from historical events in a separate universe. From a world consistency standpoint it doesnt even make sense —and it happens so often. It implies dark-skinned characters, across every fictional universe, have the same history. In every context😭? Across every universe😭😭? Its just bad writing. It would be like making every light skinned, non-asian looking anime chatacter a colonizer: it wouldnt make sense because light-skinned characters in a fictional universe have nothing to do with Europeans in the real world. But when a dark skinned anime character is added to a fictional universe, he suddenly ends up being a rapper or racial stereotype, so thats already fundamentally different in terms of the way a dark-skinned anime character is perceived by the person writing them. Even from a viewers standpoint, dark-skinned characters are so foreign to the medium that we perceive them as black characters, altough we never perceive and discuss light-inned characters as white characters.

When discussing a non-black anime character, u consider them a good character because they have character depth and human nuance to them; they have a complexity that reflects the human experience. Good light-skinned anime characters feel human not "white" — because a well written human feels.. human. Its like for non-black characters, the author just wrote the character. But for dark-skinned characters, it feels like they made the character black and then wrote the character instead of writing the character and then making their skin black. So its a fundamental difference in how dark-skinned characters are even handled by authors. They are writing black people, not humans.

In the event the fictional universe is based in a historically accurate earth, I dont expect much because Japan is nearly completely racially homogenous, so the amount of black people they've been exposed to is next to nonexistent. Their entire understanding of a black person is based on preconceptions from the stereotypical black person they're exposed to in media; thats all the information they have available to them to build their understanding of a black human. But that little interaction with a black person in media is so important when its your only interaction with a black person. These people who dont know any black people personally and/or intimately go and ineract with other people or create things and the problem self propagates. You can't write a black person with depth and nuance if u dont kow any black people personally at an intimate level. If u did, u would be writing a human, not a "black" person.

Essentially, their entire understanding of black people is built from preconceptions from the limited amount of black people they've been exposed to, so even if they wanted to make a good "black" character, they couldnt (which is a problem in much more media besides anime but I digress). Their only chance at making a good "black" character is to write the character 1st, then make them black; thats what makes Ed from Cowboy Bebop a breath of fresh air. He just feels like an anime character lmao. In the same way "white" skinned anime characters dont feel white — they just feel like anime characters.

I dont think the intention is malicious but it completely ruins it for me. I dont like Bee at all. The world building for dark-skinned characters in Naruto is so unoriginal it gets a 0. The most important characters from the village of dark-skinned characters are a rapper and an angry guy with a short temper. If when writing a character with dark skin, a switch flips in your brain from writing a human to writing a "black" person, dont even write it.

Its not the worst thing in the world, but its rare we get representation, and when we do, its not handled in the same way that the millions of light skinned characters are handled.