Forum - View topicHow Many Black Guests Are There at Anime Conventions?
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Gray Lensman
Posts: 143 |
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I think the issue also becomes self perpetuating. Since the people in charge believe that minority VAs aren't as big of a draw, they sign them up less and don't promote them much when they do, leading to them not drawing much, thus perpetuating the cycle. It's similar to how Hollywood execs insist women can't lead action films, but when they eventually try, it's typically a half-assed job around a weak script that results in a terrible film, (and one that would certainly be just as terrible with a male lead) which they then use to justify pre-existing bias. "See, we told you no wants wants to see that!" I'm going to go on an only semi-related rant here, but that bothers me. Tossing out some crap as a sop to whatever group they want to appease for a moment, then blaming either lack of enthusiasm or bigotry from the public for the failure when a fair assessment of the 'work' would find plenty of problems in the production that have nothing to do with the leads being black, or women, or gay, or whatever else. It isn't enough to say that under represented groups deserve to be in productions - they need to be given a chance to be in GOOD productions. |
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AyanimE
Posts: 5 |
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"How Many Black Guests Are There at Anime Conventions?"
Before asking that question, I guess we should ask "How Many Black/PoC Are Related to The Anime Industry?" P.S. I hope mods don't remove this |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10420 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Won't be removed because it's a legitimate question. Not sure the context you're asking it in though. (Are you asking about the US or the Japanese industry. Are you asking as a legitimate concern, or to try to torpedo the discussion). Both questions should be asked together though. When asking, "How many Black Guests at Anime Cons," ask "Why so few?" And part of the reason is "Because there's not a lot of Black talent in the anime industry." Then you ask, "Why isn't there more Black talent in the English/US side of the industry?" Are black people not trying to be VAs, or are they unfairly under-represented in the VA industry? Why ? But even though there isn't a lot of Black VAs active in the industry, there are still more than enough (we published an article about them recently) that they should be better represented among convention guests. This is something that needs to be addressed at a lot of levels simultaneously. Conventions should make sure that they are reaching out to the established black talent; dubbing studios and publishers should make sure that their casting process is inclusive. Maybe the issue can be addressed by just making sure there is no discrimination going on, or maybe affirmative action is required. -t |
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ANN Forum Mod / Admin
Posts: 6 Location: This account can not receive PMs |
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More posts are gone. It was made clear that trollish, insulting, and blatantly bad faith posts would not be allowed. Several users are clearly arguing in very bad faith trying to dress up disingenuous comments that equate to not much more than "i don't want diversity".
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InsideJob
Posts: 2 |
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Pretty clear most people here are just speculating, so I figured I'd create a throwaway to address some of what's going on here. I actually work in dubbing anime and have had the fortune to meet with the Japanese executives of a few anime companies and I can tell you without any doubt, they REALLY don't care about ENG dubbing on the Japan side of things (with a few exceptions). They are solely focused on the JPN VO and on how it sells. They absolutely should care but they simply don't have the time to. So, who ends up deciding who gets cast and why aren't more POC being cast in ENG Dubbing roles? It's slightly complicated. The Japan side usually gets final say on which person to pick, with a few exceptions where they trust the production or they don't care about the show. But HOW they pick, is where bias on the American side of things can show up. Long story short, Japanese people can't tell good acting from bad acting in English any more than American people can tell good acting from bad acting in Japanese. So what do they do? 99% of the time, they go with a voice match: which actor's audition matches the tone/pitch of the Japanese VO. If you have even a slight accent outside of neutral Midwestern English (I.E. Southern, Brooklyn, etc.), you'll be disqualified (again with a few exceptions). Now there ARE people in the industry who solely cast their friends, but the way they do it is by letting their friends hear samples of the Japanese voices and try to match the pitch/tone as closely as possible. Not everyone does this mind you, but it does happen. So, as Key was implying, would having more ethnic roles in Anime allow for more POC to dub in English? The answer is, maybe. People on the Japan side would be more open to hearing a wider range of voices if the character they are casting is ethnic, but none of that counts for squat if the people on the American-side filter out POC talent before the Japan-side even gets a chance to hear them. More over, who decided that Midwestern or White-sounding voices are automatically the right ones for JAPANESE CHARACTERS??? It wasn't the folks on the Japan-side, I can tell you that much for certain. They don't have the time to think or plan things like that. People want to believe casting Anime Dub roles is akin to a talent competition, where the most talented person gets the part. It's not. It's a game of, "who sounds the closest to the original" and a small, mostly white, group of people get to pick who the Japan-side gets to hear. I would personally welcome fresh talent and POC into the industry. So many dubbers have massive egos and are complete divas. It'd be nice to get a breath of fresh air. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18180 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Although I cannot say this with certainly, I suspect that the reasons are similar to the long-time practice of using national news anchors who have neutral-sounding Midwestern "accents." Even to this day it's pretty rare to hear a national news anchor who has a distinct accent of any other type, even if that news anchor is non-white. Presumably that's because they want listeners to pay attention to the words, not the accent, which would be unavoidable for those not raised around that accent. This issue might be even more prominent in anime dubbing because it has to find ways to interpret accents in Japanese that do not have English equivalents; the Osaka dialect, for instance. But if you work in the industry then you probably know more about that aspect than I do. |
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writerpatrick
 Posts: 671 Location: Canada |
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Anime is not known for having a lot of black characters, so there just isn't the opportunities to use black VAs unless you're having them voice non-black characters. As such there's not going to be a lot of black guests you could invite. It would require Japan actually changing the anime it makes.
This isn't the same as you find with animation in general since it comes from many countries, however many of these countries are not English speaking and don't have the animation budgets that Japan has so they're just not noticed. And the US isn't producing the animated cartoons like Fat Albert or the Harlem Globetrotters that it use to. What animation it does make is mostly for a children's audience and not of interest to anime fans. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2939 Location: Email for assistance only |
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To the above commenter: white people voice Asian characters. A character obviously doesn't have to be Black for a Black VA to provide a dub voice for the character anymore than a VA has to be Asian to voice a character in an anime.
There's also a surprising number of comments that seem to be ignoring that a large number of dub VAs are based out of Texas, not the Midwest while indirectly supporting the idea that Black people sound a certain way and that Black VAs would not be able to mask their "Blackness" despite the fact that being able to do a variety of voices is...the whole point of being a voice actor. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Why would Japan have to change the anime they make? Going by your line of thinking since 99% of the roles in anime are for Japanese characters I suppose we should only have Asian Americans doing VA work for anime. I guess Johnny Young Bosch is going to be really busy from here on out. How about other foreign country dubs? So for shows that air in say Britain, Mexico, Italy, etc. those dubs native to those places should also only use Asian VA's right? Man, Johnny is going to be REAL busy now. Hope his passport is up to date. The whole premise of being a voice actor is to be able to voice many different roles. The fact that you and others think black VA's would be too "black" when voicing a role, and thus in turn have to downplay their blackness in essence, is rather ignorant to begin with. I'm not going to even go into the myriad of ways that line of thinking is simply ignorant and bigoted. I guarantee you if someone talented in VA work, let's say Khary Payton for example, were to do some "white characters" in an anime it would sound just fine. Furthermore if you're going to make a statement along the lines of "well a black VA would make that anime character sound black" then every white VA should be doing their best Asian accent for their characters right? I mean we sure don't want them to simply sound white if they're supposed to be Japanese right? I will say that something else you, and many others, can't seem to fathom is this is about the NORTH AMERICAN ANIME MARKET. Repeat after me, NORTH AMERICAN ANIME MARKET. Try it again. We're not talking about actual black character representation in anime. We're not talking about the Japanese VA market. Or any other VA market. We're talking about the North American, specifically American, voice actor market. A market where POC have repeatedly time and time again not been given equal opportunities or promoted equally. So whoever Japan uses for their VA market has close to zero relevance to this discussion. Whoever Mexico uses for any Spanish dubs have zero relevance here. Which back to my point above I suppose they better not use their own Hispanic VA's to do Japanese characters because they'll sound too Hispanic. Guess they better re-dub all of the Hispanic Saint Seiya dub. |
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InsideJob
Posts: 2 |
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Yeah, I know it's standard. Has been for the news for decades. The problem is, there's a LOT of things nobody tells you when you enter the industry, as an actor or as someone working behind the scenes unless you've got friends already in it. Something as simple as knowing you need to have a Midwestern accent down pat is an immediate roadblock for up and coming talent, POC or otherwise. All these small things you don't know add up over time. So, folks in charge of creating Anime dubs share knowledge of what the clients in Japan are looking for to their friends. Those people and their friends are mostly white, which is why the industry has vastly more white VO dubbing talent than POC. I don't agree with it, it's just how the system is set up right now and it's important to know that subconscious systemic racism is what's leading to a lack of opportunities to more POC VO talent. As for translating Japanese Accents into English, it's more of a project by project sort of thing rather than an industry standard. People tend to translate Osaka dialect into the Southern Dialect, but there's no standard for a Countryside dialect, Hokkaido Dialect, etc. To respond to some of the other people down below, I'm not saying only Asian actors can play Asian roles, at all. But right now, Black VO talent, Latin VO talent, Asian VO talent, don't get the necessary info to book roles more often. Honestly, the fastest way to get more POC voicing roles would be to hire more POC to direct dubs, since that's the step in the process where most of the auditions get filtered out, or to send out a list with all of those industry nuances that would eliminate potentially good up and coming talent. That or shoot for more dubs in the vein of Castlevania or Avatar so that people won't be expected to do the "Anime Voice" and can find success with Animation-friendly performances. All of this mind you, is aside from the fact that conventions really have no excuse to ignore someone like LeSean Thomas. He's even directing Yasuke, which is animated by MAPPA. And I think is the first time a POC has directed a project at a Japanese Anime studio? Since D'Art Shtajio is based in Japan but American owned, I wonder if naysayers would count it or not... |
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El Hermano
 Posts: 450 Location: Texas |
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The only dubs that don't sound like anime dubs are gag dubs, and I'm not sure if those are allowed anymore with how hands-on the Japanese companies are in western releases. I think the days of dubs like Ghost Stories or Shin-chan are gone, outside a show purposely being retooled for little kids like Glitter Force but those are far and few between these days. It does remind me when 4Kids would give their dubs silly, over-the-top accents like Ryu from Shaman King being Spanish, but he was still voiced by a white actor. Although given recent events in the cartoon voice acting community, I doubt Avatar's casting would be approved of these days since most of the characters were voiced by white actors. So who knows what they would have talked or sounded like. I imagine those actors would be forced to step down if a new series ever came out. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18180 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I'm honestly a little surprised that something like the latter doesn't happen already. I know there are training courses for voice actors, and I would have thought that would be a standard part of such training. As for the former option, the problem with that one is that the vast majority of ADR directors over at least the past 15 years are current or former anime VAs themselves. Since POCs are only a small portion of the current VA pool, the way things are done now, getting more POC directors would seem to necessitate having more POCs as regulars in anime casts. Hence it's a self-perpetuating cycle. |
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writerpatrick
Posts: 671 Location: Canada |
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[quote="Psycho 101"]
I never said such a thing. I was simply pointing out why there wouldn't be a lot of black guests a convention could invite. If there were more black characters then there would be more need for black VAs and studios would hire more of them. As it is, if they character can be played by anyone then they'll just get anyone. |
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YotaruVegeta
 Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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Just take this and replace "black" with "white" Most anime characters aren't black, but they aren't white, either. So just cast any English speaker you please. EDIT: The article that was linked exactly makes the point that you can cast black actors in roles of characters who do not appear to be black. So the industry has shown the ability to cast black actors for anime, but the list is small. As for Fat Albert and Harlem Globetrotters, what decade is this? These two shows are the apex of western TV animation? Your last sentence, I feel, makes a lot of assumptions about anime fans. The most popular anime are shounen, and anime fans have diverse interests. |
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