Why are Oda’s black characters super lightskin?
- Thread starter Shiroyru
- Start date
It's pretty common knowledge that black people are pretty racist against asian and japanese people. I have irl friends who can testify to this 
Tell me you know nothing about Asia while not saying you know nothing about Asia 
Japan literally has black people representing them in sports, entertainment, beauty etc. (Evelyn Mawuli, Rui Hachimura, Ariana Miyamoto, Ike Nwala, etc) but go off on how racist they are sure. US is far more racist against black people considering almost every shitty representation of black people come from that shithole
Japan literally has black people representing them in sports, entertainment, beauty etc. (Evelyn Mawuli, Rui Hachimura, Ariana Miyamoto, Ike Nwala, etc) but go off on how racist they are sure. US is far more racist against black people considering almost every shitty representation of black people come from that shithole
Africa is a big arse place. Not everyone has a skin tone on par with the void.
Look up some Ethiopian fellas. They can be fairly light skinned.
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Also the other reason Oda isn't going to go out of his way to cook up dark skin tones is because that requires more effort to draw in a black and white manga. I wouldn't be surprised if Oda cooked up Gear 5 to be as white as possible in order to give himself a break from drawing all them black Haki tattoos on Gear 4.
Look up some Ethiopian fellas. They can be fairly light skinned.
Tell me you know nothing about Asia while not saying you know nothing about Asia
Japan literally has black people representing them in sports, entertainment, beauty etc. (Evelyn Mawuli, Rui Hachimura, Ariana Miyamoto, Ike Nwala, etc) but go off on how racist they are sure. US is far more racist against black people considering almost every shitty representation of black people come from that shithole
Japan literally has black people representing them in sports, entertainment, beauty etc. (Evelyn Mawuli, Rui Hachimura, Ariana Miyamoto, Ike Nwala, etc) but go off on how racist they are sure. US is far more racist against black people considering almost every shitty representation of black people come from that shithole
Japan is known to be xenophobic
I didn't say there wasn't.
I'll explain what I meant, lot of Africans living outside of Africa, don't even bother distinguishing African countries in many cases. The phrase, "I am visiting Africa" is super common, and no one bats an eye or asks for more detail. Africa is often treated like this giant Country even among immigrant Africans. It just how it be, whether right or wrong.
I'll explain what I meant, lot of Africans living outside of Africa, don't even bother distinguishing African countries in many cases. The phrase, "I am visiting Africa" is super common, and no one bats an eye or asks for more detail. Africa is often treated like this giant Country even among immigrant Africans. It just how it be, whether right or wrong.
Tell me you know nothing about Asia while not saying you know nothing about Asia
Japan literally has black people representing them in sports, entertainment, beauty etc. (Evelyn Mawuli, Rui Hachimura, Ariana Miyamoto, Ike Nwala, etc) but go off on how racist they are sure. US is far more racist against black people considering almost every shitty representation of black people come from that shithole
Japan literally has black people representing them in sports, entertainment, beauty etc. (Evelyn Mawuli, Rui Hachimura, Ariana Miyamoto, Ike Nwala, etc) but go off on how racist they are sure. US is far more racist against black people considering almost every shitty representation of black people come from that shithole
There are multiple possibilities :
1 - I rule out the clear racism especially knowing what happens in the manga, but a simple lack of the understanding of the importance of representation might explain that and a bit of racist bias in that. (I would go for that first)
2 - It's not easy to represent skin tones in black and white. In reality, you have not a lot of choices and you are forced to used trames to fill dark spaces (I don't know the english equivalent). So it can be time consuming which could explain why some avoid it. But I don't think that is the case for Oda who has assistants.
3 - Some mangaka might have thought - wrongly - at first that the design was enough to suggest the skin of the color. This is a problem of representation once again
4 - Like I said, for black characters, you are forced to used trames. Meaning that it become harder to cast shadows on their skin. It can explain why some might be reticent to depict them. Even tho it's not really a good excuse.
5- (what I would go for that second). It's by design. If you look at the manga before wano, characters who have darker skin are not really that dark, it's more in the nuances and they only appear that way through the coloring. But black characters with darker sking appears with King and Lunarians.
A possible hypothesis might be that Oda intended to introduce the disappearance of the Lunarian race at Wano.. but the story took more time that expected to arrive to this point.
Also.. outside of the black and white : a good coloring makes the difference:
(Yes, go read Radiant)
1 - I rule out the clear racism especially knowing what happens in the manga, but a simple lack of the understanding of the importance of representation might explain that and a bit of racist bias in that. (I would go for that first)
2 - It's not easy to represent skin tones in black and white. In reality, you have not a lot of choices and you are forced to used trames to fill dark spaces (I don't know the english equivalent). So it can be time consuming which could explain why some avoid it. But I don't think that is the case for Oda who has assistants.
3 - Some mangaka might have thought - wrongly - at first that the design was enough to suggest the skin of the color. This is a problem of representation once again
4 - Like I said, for black characters, you are forced to used trames. Meaning that it become harder to cast shadows on their skin. It can explain why some might be reticent to depict them. Even tho it's not really a good excuse.
5- (what I would go for that second). It's by design. If you look at the manga before wano, characters who have darker skin are not really that dark, it's more in the nuances and they only appear that way through the coloring. But black characters with darker sking appears with King and Lunarians.
A possible hypothesis might be that Oda intended to introduce the disappearance of the Lunarian race at Wano.. but the story took more time that expected to arrive to this point.
Also.. outside of the black and white : a good coloring makes the difference:
(Yes, go read Radiant)
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Sure, but Oda could’ve just pulled some random African country out of a hat and said Usopp would be from there. I don’t think anyone would get on Oda’s ass for saying Usopp is Kenyan instead of Ugandan. It kinda just comes off as Oda knowing literally nothing about Africa except that it’s where black people come from