FADE IN:
A single plume of smoke rises at the edge of a steep, rocky cliff. We ZOOM OUT to see the land in the valley below, a camp of tents smoldering and decimated. The people below are gathering their things: a torn Goku T-shirt, a replica of Killua’s skateboard, now snapped in half, a giant Snorlax plushie missing a foot.
NARRATOR
The Black Fandom came close to being decimated by the Ashamed, the Normies, and, perhaps the most dangerous of all—the Gatekeeper.
We PAN UP the cliffside to see the feet of three people now standing at the edge of the precipice—one pair of beat-up Chucks, one pair of thonged clogs with white socks, one pair of bright red, chunky, knee-high rubber boots.
NARRATOR
But just one group of fans saved the nation . . .
We PAN UP even farther to get a full view of the group. The first, II-COOL (man, early/mid 20s), is dressed in a Dragon Ball Z character tee and worn jeans. The second, COSPLAYA (nonbinary, mid 20s) is wearing full Tanjiro Kamado Demon Slayer garb, down to the wicked forehead scar and black katana. The last, CHYCK (woman, early/mid 20s), wears a Sailor Moon–inspired outfit, complete with the short blue skirt and bright red center-chest bow. The only thing she’s missing is the yellow pigtails, which would, to her mind, clash with her warm undertones and ruin the whole look. They dap each other up (yes, even the chick) and turn to look over the horizon, that classic diamond-shaped glint beaming in each of their huge, heavily stylized eyes.
NARRATOR
They were known thereafter as Sho-Gang, and they became legends.
We turn away from the Sho-Gang to pan the horizon, just as the sun sets over the cliffs.
FADE OUT.
Just before the beat drops in over the electric-keyboard intro to the theme song of Sho-Gang: The Legend of Black Fandom, you hit pause on your laptop, opening up a new tab in the same browser window. That opening was hella dramatic, you think to yourself, wondering if you were just seeing things, or if the profile of those cliffs really was the shape of the Black Power fist.
Your older brother swore on his (read: your) brand-new PS5 that you would love this series, and anime in general, especially being a writer yourself. He put a weird emphasis on the “writer” part of the statement that you were unsure what to make of and chose to ignore in the moment. He did give you fair warning, though, that some of the references might go over your head if you didn’t have the best understanding of the tropes and lore of the genre. You gotta build up to watching Sho-Gang, it takes a while, but it’s soooo much better that way.
You concede that he may have a slight point, and type “wiki Fandom Sho-Gang” into the search box, hoping to give yourself a quick, spoiler-free overview of the characters and story world. Your eyebrows creep up your forehead as you realize you’ve scrolled half a dozen times and only made it halfway down the page. You ready yourself to skim like your life depends on it and open the tab marked “HISTORY.”
Before developing Sho-Gang: The Legend of Black Fandom, the now-anonymous creator A. B. was a cultural critic whose work often explored phenomena related to Black narrative histories, storytelling practices, and television viewership patterns. In a blog post now attributed to A. B., the mysterious writer once investigated the anomaly that is the Black anime fan:
The history of Black anime fandom is particularly difficult to pin down because of the widespread and incredibly varied nature of the genre. However, one can argue when looking at cultural trends and branding that anime really began being marketed towards Black fans in the late ’90s and early ’00s, during an era of Saturday cartoon programming that introduced fan favorites and cult classics like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Naruto, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball Z to millions of viewers . . .
You think back to those lazy childhood Saturday mornings, wiping the sleep out of your eyes as you searched the couch cushions for the remote, determined not to miss the next episode of whatever loud, bright, boom-crash-bang show the channel was airing that day. This was the height of leisure: no school, no need to get dressed or look even remotely presentable, no parents awake to interrupt your regularly-scheduled marathon (an early version of what we now call “binge-watching”) with chore requests or boring errands—just a bowl of sugary cereal, an incessantly flashing screen, and an indulgent kind of innocence specific only to the ritual of weekend cartoon watching.
You feel a lament for that version of you, that harmless naivete that allowed you to fully immerse yourself in a fantasy world—a world where the rules actually made sense. A character’s power was directly measurable by their level, which was illustrated by numbers and symbols that flashed on cards in a magic deck or a sparkling ball of light that indicated “evolution”—a transformation into a higher being. Everything the protagonist had, they’d earned. Every fight they won, they won by grinding to the level of strength required. You try to remember what it was like to believe that your world operated on a similar system, that all you had to do was work hard and believe in yourself and your dreams would eventually materialize right before your wide, sparkling eyes.
You try to pinpoint the exact moment when you realized the fantasy of anime worlds, their nobility and hard-fought moral codes, did not extend to your world. Your memory is too foggy though, mixed up in memories of grief and rage and disbelief that look like flashes of faces that look like yours, except still, except frozen in youth forever. You can’t remember the last time a week passed without the news of an untimely death flashing its way across every device you own, all those headlines accumulating in your subconscious, deepening earlier wounds. You don’t remember when you forgot how to suspend your disbelief.
Did you really outgrow cartoons, or did your imagination shrink, its growth stunted by a landscape too broken and small to accommodate the kinds of dreams that propelled your favorite characters into legendary greatness? When did you accept that you weren’t the hero in the story of your world?
. . . The advertisements for these series seemed, in some ways, specifically aimed at Black children—the hip-hop-inspired backing tracks, the arguably Black-coded characters (see also: Black coding, Black characters in anime) and bombastic colors, hairstyles, and fight sequences stand out in my mind as elements that felt included precisely to pull me (and kids like me) into the genre’s spellbinding orbit. But beyond the deftly employed aesthetics that hooked me, it was the characters and stories that reeled me into the world of anime for good.
You stop reading, your mind still caught in the snare of the term Black-coded. As the kind of writer who primarily traffics in realism, you’re not sure what coding means in this context. A character is either Black or not, right? Convincing yourself that a short detour (especially when taken for purely educational purposes) can be a noble pursuit, you click the link embedded within “see Black coding,” grabbing another handful of chips in the few seconds it takes this advertisement-laden site to load the page.
Black coding is a phenomenon through which a character is not phenotypically “Black” but is imbued with and expresses characteristically Black traits, visual cues/physical features, and/or a Black voice actor or “Black” accent (stereotypical or otherwise). Examples of Black-coded characters include Mushu the dragon in Mulan (voiced by Eddie Murphy), Marty the zebra in Madagascar (voiced by Chris Rock), and Oscar in Shark Tale (voiced by Will Smith). See also: List of Black-coded characters in animation.
This operational definition is rooted in a lengthy history of animation’s proclivity, particularly in the early days of cartoons, for utilizing negative stereotypes to designate characters as Black when they could not be recognized as such based on design alone. For evidence of this, we can look to one of the major influences of early animation: vaudeville.
American vaudeville performances relied heavily on Black stereotypes, including visual ones—such as large red lips, braided hair, and dark skin—for laughs, a practice now known as “Blackface.” It wasn’t much of a leap, then, according to cultural studies scholar Xavier Fuster Burguera, from the “black-and-white images” produced by vaudeville performances to the then black-and-white medium of animation. Characters that were modeled after Blackface actors enjoyed dancing and singing—a form of minstrelsy. They would employ African American accents, mostly characterized by Southern dialect and slang, and just couldn’t help but perform slapstick comedy, often at their own physical expense.
You think you understand the concept now (Numbuh 5 from KND = Black, Donkey from Shrek = Black-coded), but are not sold on its utility, especially in shows that feature—primarily, at least—humans. Why would a character need to seem Black, but not look so? Why was Blackness so often mapped onto nonhuman figures, and why hadn’t you noticed this on all those Saturday mornings?
You knew very well what Blackness was, since your parents had given you “the Talk” at around five years old. You remember reading children’s books about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.—educational but relatively sanitized retellings of the histories of racism and discrimination in America. You knew very well what your skin meant, how its hue correlated with your perceived status and value. You knew, because your parents made you know, that you were, despite all that, beautifully human. No more, no less. But, upon being confronted with dozens and dozens of nonhuman Black-coded characters, you can’t help but wonder if you’d ever been seen as human at all . . .
You wonder if watching Sho-Gang is even worth it. Your brother is younger than you, has seen that much less of life than you have. Maybe a bit of that magic is still there for him. But if you can’t recapture that childhood-weekend innocence . . . if you know too much now in your gnarled old age (read: midtwenties) to fully immerse yourself in the fantasy of a world propelled by belief and promise, what’s the point? Frustrated, and now a bit bored (seriously, what kind of nerd cites academic sources on a wiki Fandom page?), you go back to the Sho-Gang page. Maybe you’ll just read the synopsis, get the gist of the series enough to hold a short, critical conversation without revealing that you never actually watched it in the first place.
A. B. has often noted in interviews and other writings that Sho-Gang was inspired largely by the fact that, despite the considerable contingent of Black fans that anime had amassed, there were very few Black characters featured in the genre at the time of the show’s inception.
. . . and the few Black characters that did appear on-screen weren’t exactly sterling representations of us. Anti-Blackness has often reared its ugly head in the form of stereotypically drawn characters, like the Pokémon Jynx or Mr. Popo from DBZ (see also: Racism in animation), both of whom at one time sported black skin, deep-set, beady eyes, and big, red soup-cooler lips [Jynx’s design has since been updated—the character, while still somewhat resonant of Blackface imagery, now has light purple skin].
While disappointing, this phenomenon—likely the result of other cultures metastasizing American animation’s oldest anti-Black tropes—has not deterred a significant number of Black fans from enjoying anime. Furthermore, Black representation in general is nearly nonexistent in the genre. While there are a handful of notable and popular exceptions, like Cowboy Bebop’s Jet Black, Kaname Tōsen and Yoruichi Shihōin from Bleach, or (my personal favorite) Canary from Hunter × Hunter, Black characters are overwhelmingly underrepresented in this medium that, while Japanese in origin, seems to greatly overrepresent whiteness, with the featured character of every other series being blond-haired, blue-eyed, and often Eurocentrically named.
So, if the draw for Black anime fans isn’t, as we so often see lauded in articles and essays about Black films and series, visual representation, then what is it? What makes anime so relatable to an audience that largely does not see itself represented within the form?
Now this, you think, is interesting.The kind of thinker you are, you can hardly resist a theory with this much potential, with this much meat on the proverbial bone. Even when applied to other contexts, the idea that representation could exist beyond the visual (and thus, racial) has legs. It seems like an idea that could be mapped onto, for example, the way Black people go up for John Wick, a film series that, distilled to its most basic elements, is about a white-coded man avenging his dog? Or why a certain generation of us loves rocking out to Paramore, or why our grandparents tuned in religiously to watch the messes unfold on soap operas that rarely featured more than a handful of Black players . . . This media was by no means relatable on the surface, but there was definitely something there . . . Something that held our gaze, despite rarely reflecting our faces.
In an attempt to answer this burning question, A. B. proposed the idea of schematic representation, whereby viewers who are not racially or culturally represented on-screen still experience a kind of fictive kinship and relation to the characters that is instead rooted in the work’s functioning schematic: the way the story is told.
Anime is a genre that, perhaps more consistently than any other, relies heavily on tropes and common plot arcs to tell its stories. This is especially visible within the subgenre shōnen (main article: Shōnen), a form of “Japanese comics and animated films aimed primarily at a young male audience, typically characterized by action-filled plots” (Oxford Languages Dictionary).
Shōnen is bombastic, with fights and scenery that leap off the screen. It often doesn’t take itself too seriously, and characters will frequently fight to what appears to be the death, only to be magically healed by some built-in plot armor. This phenomenon is a crucial element of what I call schematic Black representation in anime. The heroes have a cause and will fight for it until they drop, dedicating their whole lives to the achievement of a singular goal that, more often than not, represents some larger moral tenet of humanity: justice, love, freedom, revenge.
In many ways, to exist as a Black person is to be fighting each of these battles, with all the requisite drama and blood and tears, from the very moment you are born into the world. You, like almost every shōnen protagonist, are an outlier, an outcast, a never-should-have-been. Anime, with its constant violent battles and explosions and injuries and hard-fought wins, tells a story that, more closely than any other genre, represents both the struggles and triumphs of Blackness—the tiniest nuances that explain why, even though being born Black is to be dealt one of the hardest hands in life, the vast majority of us wouldn’t trade our cards for anything. This bloody, stylized, death-proof hero’s journey is an example of schematic representation whereby Black anime fans come to understand themselves as being represented by the genre, not just at a skin-deep level, but in a way that is perhaps more relatable and lasting in its effect; one that, in dramatizing the struggles and battles of its protagonists, demonstrates an understanding of both our material and interior lived experiences.
Additionally, the characters aren’t punished for justifiable violence. They are allowed, and generally encouraged, to run each other fades. They aren’t demonized or labeled animalistic; rather, fighting is a means of self-expression. Each character has their own unique combat style that often aligns with an element of their personality or backstory. Taking, for the sake of argument, an agnostic position to unarmed, peer-level fighting among Black youth, one could understand anime as being representative of this long-standing in-group phenomenon. Don’t start no fights, many a Black mother warns, but if another kid tries you, beat their ass. A contained, one-off fistfight has long been understood by many Black folks as an effective, if not flawless, method of conflict resolution among equals—but when taking place in a white world, these fights are often mischaracterized as symptomatic of some kind of inherent brutality and lack of humanity. In shōnen, if you throw a punch, you better be ready to punch back—it’s as simple as that. Conflicts are, in large part, resolved in the moment and between the interested parties, without the interference of law enforcement (because lol what laws) and policing tactics.
In this way, many series schematically represent successful examples of community accountability, wherein all members are responsible to each other and to the established values of their society. It could be a mere coincidence that a genre that does not demonize justified violence also seems to enact a concept that is one of the most-cited alternatives to police by modern-day abolitionists. But, considering the other ways in which anime has always demonstrated a radical eschewing of the status quo, I’d argue that it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch.
……
That’s exactly it. It wasn’t that the characters looked like you, it was that their world looked like the one you would thrive in, one where the rules made sense. It was that their stories mirrored your personal hero’s journey: one that reflected what it was like to be born an underdog, one that, because of all those disadvantages, would be that much richer to follow, with an ending that much sweeter when you reached the mountaintop. There was also an inherent fairness, or at least, an idea of what fairness could look like.
So maybe, while you no longer believed that the real world would ever look like the ones in your favorite shonen anime, there was something redeeming—hopeful, even—about the way that media meant for children demonstrated a model of a world you’d be much more likely to thrive in. Maybe schematic representation could provide a blueprint of sorts for imagining a different way of life. In that way, watching anime could be more than simple, mindless escapism, more than a way to revert to your former self, and instead a generative, freeing kind of relaxation.
Your eyes do start to gloss over, though, at the hyper-theoretical and perhaps overthought—albeit surprisingly interesting—summary of the show’s history. You’d started the night intending to watch a cartoon, not to spend it reading about all the ways everything is racist (you’re well aware). Just gonna scan these character summaries, you tell yourself, then it’s back to the show.
The Sho-Gang features three main characters who hail from various factions of Black fandom. These characters, as A. B. has alluded to, are thought to be inspired by real-life Black anime fans. Their highly stylized, bordering-on-stereotypical design can be understood as both a nod to anime’s heavy use of character tropes and a lampooning jab at its history of flattening Black characters into racist clichés.
II-Cool is an example of the standard Black anime fan archetype. He’s male, average height, and of slim build. He has all your basic shonen protagonist powers rolled into one: the ability to generate energy blasts from his hands, the ability to use a moveset based in the ancient techniques of legend, and borderline invincibility.
He was initially a covert member of the Ashamed faction. Embarrassed by his fandom in secondary school, he distanced himself from, and sometimes even made fun of, the Naruto hall-runners and cosplayers. He would’ve rather died than associate himself with nerds. But after witnessing Cosplaya being bullied by a group of Normies (the anti-anime faction), he stepped in to defend them, and, during the resulting brawl, discovered his powers. He and Cosplaya became fast friends, and—though II-Cool still refuses to don full character garb—he will attend an occasional convention and defends Black Fandom with his life.
Reading II-Cool’s character bio unlocks long-buried memories of guys you knew in high school. They weren’t exactly your friends, but being a minority in that environment required a kind of united solidarity that made anyone Black more than a mere acquaintance. They were the guys you ate with when none of your other friends had the same lunch period. They argued Goku vs. Vegeta like it was life and death, creating scenarios and battle arenas in which one would have the advantage over the other.
You were (late reveal alert!) a girl, so of course you were mostly relegated to the role of pleasant observer and occasional referee/checker-of-the-lore. These guys were way too proud to call themselves “fans” and wouldn’t be caught dead in anything more demonstrative than a graphic tee. They subtly looked down on the likes of Sailor Moon and My Hero Academia, for reasons that were, of course, rooted in the rejection of anything that didn’t outwardly demonstrate the kind of masculinity they were, in nascent adolescence, determined to perform. They weren’t perfect, but they gave you a space to nerd out. You’ll always be grateful for that haven.
Cosplaya is the ultimate anime stan. They go hard for their favorite series and characters and are never seen without a new manga issue in hand. They’re agender and demure in appearance, but looks can be deceiving. For as long as they can hold their breath, Cosplaya can transform into the character of their choosing, equipped with all the skills, powers, and weapons of the role they’re playing (think Mystique from X-Men).
Cosplaya’s special attacks are lethal but can only be unleashed after a certain amount of time has elapsed in battle, as their initial tendency is to avoid conflict at all costs. However, once cornered, they are absolutely deadly, having grown used to defending themself against the relentless attacks of Normies. Cosplaya wasn’t always a righteous hero, though—their dark past as one of the heads of the Gatekeeper faction eventually comes to light, causing friction with Chyck.
Ah yeah, you think. Like little dude who used to Naruto run through the halls between periods. Every high school in the 2010s had at least one of these types, whose unabashed love of their favorite franchise made them both a pariah and, on some strange level, respected. Anyone bold enough to wear their true self on their sleeve (or, in the case of the cape-wearer faction, tied around their necks) possessed an amount of bravery that could be simultaneously mocked and feared. They were the rare teenager who knew themself well enough not to care what anybody else thought.
They were also something of a chameleon, interfacing occasionally with many groups of people, from the queer kids to the athletes. They had a kind of confidence that allowed them to slide, even if briefly, into any space, any conversation. You wonder how different your life would be if you had learned to be that brave, to embrace that much of yourself, at such an early age. How much freer might you be today?
Chyck is the girl of the group. (Yes, there is generally only ever one girl in a shōnen gang. Anime is progressive but, as noted above, not without its faults.) She is very proud of her fandom and very feminine, her makeup and aesthetic always inspired by the hottest characters. Of course, this exposes her doubly to the ire of the Normies, who can’t decide if they hate her or want her, and the Gatekeepers, who constantly question the purity of her fandom lineage (mostly because she’s a girl).
Her strongest power is defense—her radiant confidence acts as a literal reflective shield, deflecting back all attacks launched against her. The shield also magnifies these attacks by a power of two or three, hurling them back at her opponent. She can be overwhelmed by large numbers, though, as her defenses will eventually wear down.
This section hit a bit too close to home. There was always room for one girl, but never more. This was the hardest role to occupy within Black anime fandom—you were at once needed and inessential. All this cartoon stuff was for boys, it had always been marketed that way. The II-Cools (and some of the Cosplayas) of your world couldn’t always wrap their heads around the idea that a little girl would have participated in that sacred Saturday morning ritual, just as they had. You think about the way your allegiance and fidelity were questioned, how you constantly had to prove that you knew just as much as the guys, that you were worthy of the badge. It was exhausting, but it also made you a fighter. Made you unafraid of the sound of your own voice.
Thinking you’re starting to get the gist of things, you take one last quick scroll down the page. II-Cool is essentially like the dudes who slowly started to publicly show anime love, helping it become more mainstream. Cosplaya . . . well, that’s self-explanatory, and Chyck is a Megan-Thee-Stallion-type. Makes sense enough. The satire, the way that A. B. seems versed not only in the lore of the genre, but also in the social dynamics of its Black fandom, appeals to you. Maybe your little brother is onto something after all.
Not wanting to spoil yourself too much (an indication that yes, you’ve become invested in the series and, even worse, your younger brother was actually right), you close all twenty tabs you’ve opened. All that clicking only further confirms just how far down the wiki rabbit hole you fell. It’s not even light outside anymore, and now you’re kinda hungry. You hop up to reheat last night’s leftover barbecue and head back to the couch with a little more excitement than you’d admit. The streamer platform asks if you’re still watching. Of course, you think. When am I not watching? That’s the nature of this thing called Blackness, isn’t it? Always on the lookout for the text beneath the text, the thing beneath the thing.
And maybe, after all these years, you can’t restore your gaze to its former glory, its ability to pause reality and dive headfirst into adventure and hope and freedom. But you might, through the world of this show, be reminded that you’re not the only one watching. You’re not the only one still fighting.
After a beat, you click yes, press play, and get comfy, ready to binge. Ready to be whisked away.
