What are you waiting for, huh?
What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?! What am I waiting for? What am I waiting for?! What are you waiting for?! Fuck you! Oh, my god! Every morning when I wake up, one of
the first things I think about is: What am I gonna watch today? Am I going to mindlessly scroll and watch the
latest uploads from my favorite YouTube channels? Am I going to finally finish "What We Do in The
Shadows" after tries and tries of restarting? This is not at all a dig on
the show. I love it so much, I'm just a person who struggles
with committing to new shows. Most likely, you'll catch me on my umpteenth
rewatch of some of my favorite shows like: Avatar: The Last Airbender Disastrous Life of Saiki K or the Bold the beautiful,
Arcane: League of Legends. I thoroughly enjoy shows with long seasons, vast amounts of world building,
and in-depth character development. So as a die-hard lover of animation, I've
been kind of noticing a pattern when it comes to character design that I feel
like we need to talk about one-on-one. What's up! My name is Indigo, and I
am a 25-year-old artist from Chicago who loves all things animation, anime, design,
gaming, music, internet, pop culture, etc etc! So when I was thinking about what video I wanted
to make to kick off my YouTube channel career, I wanted to pick a topic that
I feel like would represent the standard of what y'all can expect
from me when consuming my content. Something that I'm really passionate about, something that's really been... you know,
on my mind for the for however long um... And you want to know what that thing is?
You want to know what's really been grinding my gears for the past couple of however
long I've been watching animated shows? Racial ambiguity in animation. And specifically, characters whose designs
don't lead you on to know exactly who or what they are unless you've at least watched
the show or are part of the show's fandom. Quick disclaimer: I'm only going to
be talking about American animation in this video. I have my own thoughts on racial
representation when it comes to Japanese anime, but that would need to be
for a whole separate video. And I also don't want to use this
video to bash on these shows creators or their artists. As an artist myself,
I understand that it takes years--years and years and years to put out content
of the quality that we receive today. And lastly, I'm also not using this video to
discredit the experiences of mixed people or racially ambiguous people in their own way. I'm
not mixed so I can't speak on that experience. And with that being said, I will be talking
primarily from a Black-ass perspective. Sorry for the bangs, haha. Now, just to start off on a high note I want
to talk about how I fully adore the massive strides we've made in racial diversity when it
comes to animation just in the past 15 years. I remember growing up as a little
black girl in the early 2000s, really only seeing myself in a
handful of animated characters. Some examples were: Suzie from "Rugrats"; Bumblebee in "Teen Titans"; Storm from
"X-Men"; and Alex from "Totally Spies"??? Who wasn't even Black, she was
just one of the only melanated characters in the show from what I could remember. So, after leaving my patronage of the big three
children's entertainment channels Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney Channel, I remember
looking back and being excited to see the amount of diversity in the shows that kids younger
than me were about to be growing up watching. I think we can all agree that Garnet from Steven
Universe, which dropped in 2013, was one of the first black femme characters to really take
over the animation fandom of our generation. To see such love for a character that
not only was unapologetically that bitch, but also unambiguously designed to
look Black was amazing. It was amazing! And I remember running to watch the show
like 50 times when I finally got into it. Nowadays we have shows like "Craig
of The Creek", "Doc McStuffins", "Amphibia", "She-ra and The Princess of
Power", and "Dead-End Paranormal Park." All of these shows hold a certain
amount of intention behind inclusivity, as well as a desire for their audiences
to feel seen in one way or another. So you can only imagine my confusion when the well-renowned show "Adventure Time"
had a Black character and I saw... this??? Question mark? To reel back into the main topic of this video, I'll be referencing three specific
characters from three animated shows: Marceline from Cartoon Network's "Adventure Time" Luz from Disney Channels "The Owl House" and Sokka and Aang from
Nickelodeon "The Legend of Korra." I've watched and rewatched these shows and
their spin-offs to various amount of degrees, so I feel like I have a strong foundation to
talk about this topic. But if you have any of your own thoughts, or if I get anything
wrong and you want to elaborate on why, I'm happy to talk about it in
the comments! I want my YouTube community to be one of discussion and
of collaboration and of education. But with that being said, if
I see any isms in my comments, you will get your shit rocked,
okay? Let's get into the video. Okay, okay, hear me out! I know we all
know that Marceline is canonically Black. I know that we have all seen Marshall
Lee's redesign in "Fionna and Cake." And I know we all know, or may not know, that the original creators of "Adventure Time"
did not intend for Marceline to be as much of an involved character in the show as
she ended up being by the end of it. However, I think we can all agree
that the internet was shook when they found out that Marceline was half Black. In November of 2015, Cartoon Network
dropped "Stakes," the first of many Adventure Time miniseries that center
the journeys of specific characters. "Stakes" follows Marceline and
her coming of age story growing from child victim of apocalypse
to our beloved Vampire Queen. In part two of the series titled, "Everything Stays," we watch a new scene from
Marceline's childhood post-Mushroom-Bomb. Yet this time, her companion is not the mentally
and emotionally unstable Simon Petrikov, but Marceline's mother who sings the famed
song that the episode is titled after. At this point in the show, we've already
met Marceline's soul-sucking demon dad Hunson Abadeer, and by the end of
"Stakes," we learned that her pale skin and pointy ears come from
him not from being a vampire. So when we place Marceline next to her mom, it
kind of begs the question of... where's the rest? Oh no, where's the rest of it? You know, maybe Marceline's mom's hair is straight
for a reason that we just don't know, okay? Because let me tell you that you would never find one of us looking busted in the
middle of an apocalypse, okay? Her hair stays pressed! Might be a
perm that she made up a recipe for. Might even be a wig that we
don't even know about. Who knows? But y'all get what I mean! Like I said before, the internet was buzzing when
"Everything Stays" dropped on Cartoon Network. I even found this hilarious thread from 2015
on the website Lipstick Alley. And it's just a bunch of Black folks hashing out her genes,
and whether or not they claim her and her mom. I'll drop the link in the description in
case you want a little bit of a laugh. However, even more recently, but before the
release of "Fionna and Cake," people online were still up-in-arms about denying
Marceline's Blackness. Either due to her mom's straight-haired design, or
for morons just needing a reason to be racist... Anyway! I feel like I can't bring up Marceline's
racial design without bringing up her voice actress Olivia Olsen, who is mixed with
Afro-Jamaican descent through her father. I found this tweet she reposted in 2019, asking
fans when they found out Marceline was half black. And the comments were still mixed on whether they knew or not--almost four years after
"Stakes" had aired. Which is insane! Now, I also want to quickly address Marshall
Lee's redesign in HBO's "Fionna and Cake." In case you haven't watched the series yet, which might not be many of you at all,
I'll give a quick plot summary for you. HBO Max's "Fionna and Cake" stars
Ice King's gender-bent fanfic cast. Yet this time, we are set in
a very modern and realistic environment which is very different
from what we saw in the original show. After learning that they are in fact real
people living in a world placed in the head of Simon Petrikov/The Ice King by Prismo
The Wish Master, Fionna, Cake, and Simon Petrikov jumped from universe to universe trying
to find the power to restore their magical world. Donald Glover fortunately reprised his
role as Marshall Lee, which I'm so glad for because his voice and personality
are just so perfect for the character. Yet something this time, something was a little
bit different concerning his character design, and I can't quite put my finger on it... Who's the man? You're the man! Strong, healthy, Black man! [scatting] Time to celebrate! He looks Black as fuck, and I
love it! I love it! I love it. Even Hunson Abadeer's gender-bent mom character
has a little bit of melanin in her, and I love it. I already knew Marceline was not getting
a character redesign from the promo and the trailers that I saw, but that doesn't
mean I'm not curious for the reason not to. And I don't want to jump to say is
for the sake of keeping the original design of a beloved character and appeasing fans. Because the team in charge of Marshall
Lee's redesign already did *this*, while still paying homage to his
original design in Adventure Time in-universe when the characters finally
visit Prismo and learn their true identity. Of course you want to keep continuity with the
original show, but now I have the question: Does being a demon make your hair straight??? All-in-all, I thoroughly love Marceline.
And I love how her character has brought more Black women and young girls to feel
welcome in the Adventure Time fandom. One of the most popular Marceline
cosplayers is in fact a Black woman, whose name is "Phillicia D." on TikTok. Plus, the abundance of fan art
I've seen since the release of "Fionna and Cake" that give Marceline a
kinkier hair texture is just... I love it. Who knows? Confirmation for season 2 of
"Fionna and Cake" came out not too long ago, so maybe this time we'll get an
alternate universe version of Marceline that looks a bit more... you know,
"nigga-fied" if you get what I'm saying. Okay, let's move on to the next character. Before we continue with the rest of the
video, I just want to give a shout out to the private Facebook group I'm
in called "The Blerd Girls Club." When I was working on my script, I
posted a question asking if anyone could share their characters that they
thought could relate to today's topic. And I had a very, very nice time
going through the comments to see other people's perspectives
and to receive a lot of love. I just love y'all. Kisses! I also want to give a shout
out to you, the viewer. This is my first Youtube upload,
so I'm grateful for anyone who makes the time to get this far in
the video and watch my content. Subscribe if you'd like to stay connected
and want to see more of my content, and have input on the future
videos that I make on this channel. When looking at Luz, a canon quote
unquote, "Afro-Latina human," in the universe of The Owl House, I can't say
that I'm confident that non-fans would look at her character design and assume that
there's any "afro-ness" in her genes at all. People who have already watched the
show are already familiar with how Luz's mother Camila looks. But in doing
my research for this video I couldn't really remember remember if we had seen
her dad directly in any of the episodes. L'uzs father passed away from an illness when
Luz was a little girl, leaving her behind a copy of "The Good Witch Azura," the book that would
propel Luz's motives for the rest of the series. The entire time that I watched The Owl House, I always assumed that her father was
the parent who had Black ancestry. However, when I pulled up the Owl House
Wiki page, his description reads as follows: "Manny was a man of Latino descent with
dark brown hair, a beard brown eyes, and olive skin. He had a lean build,
and was hairy on his arms and legs." Again, no "afro" in his
description or in his looks. Interestingly enough, however, the Wiki does state that Luz 's mom is
Dominican, with her description saying: "Camila, similar to Luz, is a
Dominican-American woman with tan skin and a medium body frame and
brown eyes, as well as brown eyebrows." Even with this new knowledge
of Camila and her ethnicity, we still need to acknowledge the
historical context and discourse surrounding the Dominican Identity and
Blackness, colonialism, colorism, and more. The website "Dominican Abroad", a blog and
media company, has a phenomenal breakdown of these concepts that I'll be linking in
the description below for you to read. When I don't have the knowledge to speak on
a topic, I will always reference a page or platform that does. Especially if that platform
hails from the community that I'm talking about. All of this to say, there are a lot of
nuances when it comes to racial identity versus racial perception that I don't
expect a kids cartoon to really get into. However, when there are Black Dominicans
in the real world who refuse to claim said Blackness--whether that be through a
desire to approximate closer to whiteness, or wanting to avoid struggles with systemic
discrimination--as well as the fact that a majority of the Dominican population is
of mixed ancestry, boxing down Camila's identity to just quote unquote "Dominican"
is definitely an interesting choice. Like I said, I don't expect a kids cartoon
to cover such grand topics. But what I do expect is that if you're going to label
the character as "Afro-blank," then you need to give them some distinguishing
features in their character design. Even if you need to pull inspiration
from the character's own voice actor. Luz is voiced by Sarah Nicole Robles, a Latina-American, and she has
*much* curlier hair than Luz. I even thought Anne Bunchoy, who's a little Thai girl in "Amphibia," was a Black
girl before I watched the show! I just want to read some comments I found on
TikTok from a video by judgmentdayfangyal, as they redesign Luz to look
more like her voice actress. "She looks Latina of course, anyone
can tell that. But Afro-Latinos are Black Latinos. When I first started watching
the show, I had no idea idea she was Black." "Anne Bunchoy out-fro'd her
and she's not even Black." "I just recently wrote a fic where
Luz had curly hair cause the show and fandom rarely ever acknowledge
the 'afro' in her Afro-Latina." "Yeah, Luz is s'posed to be Afro-Latino.
But as an Afro-Latino myself, I never considered her proper rep for us. Her
features don't at all show her 'afro.'" "I have no idea if this is true or
not, but apparently Luz is supposed to be Afro-Latina instead of just Latina.
There's no way I would have been able to tell that she was that because of her
design. I love The Owl House deeply, but they messed Luz up so badly
and it needs to be better." I don't know why the creators were so
hesitant to give Luz unambiguous Afro features considering the material we've gone over. And what's more is that we've already
witnessed The Owl House team design an unambiguously Black character
in their main cast: Gus Porter. In the ending montage of the series finale episode "Watching and Dreaming," we see
that Gus has grown up from a young dark-skinned boy with a chunky drop fade
to a young man with chunky high-top locs. Not even just a bigger afro or braids, but *locs*. Locs with gold hair cuffs in them! Like, are you telling me that there's a
beauty supply in The Boiling Isles? Amazing. Quick headcanon: I could fully see Gus
listening a Chief Keef and shaking his dreads in his room. That's just my
little headcanon, that's just me! I will say, though, that I very much loved
Luz's Titan Form design in the series finale. Her hair is much more curly and voluminous, and if it was up to me this would be
her jumping-point design for the show. Sans glowing eyes and sharp teeth, of course. Afro-Latina women come in a vast
range of skin tones, hair textures, and facial features. And while yes, there are many
Afro-Latina women who look like Tessa Thompson, there are also many others who look like Yaya
DaCosta and Emayatzy Corinealdi, for example. Those young girls deserve representation, too. Alright, on to our last character breakdown! And this time we are covering
our favorite dynamic duo. If you're anything like me, Avatar:
The Last Airbender is your favorite, if not your #1 favorite animated show. I remember growing up in fourth grade
watching the show as it aired on Nickelodeon, and making sure that our Comcast
DVR recorded the finale episodes. One fact about me is that I'm autistic, and one
of my favorite stims is to repeat and replay sounds that are very satisfying to me--whether
that be music, or in a movie, or in a TV show. So imagine little me glued to the TV, just
replaying the scene of Aang sending down his elemental spike on Ozai just because the
roar that he made was just so... just hype! [squeal] That's my mimicking of what he was doing. [squeal] As you can imagine, there was a curious
and cautious, and bittersweet air as fans awaited the series sequel
"The Legend of Korra" in 2012. I personally didn't watch the show until years
later in college, but I do remember growing up and one of my oldest siblings just raving about how
much more mature and developed the new series was. And I was curious about, you
know, very important questions: What was Aang gonna be like as an Avatar Mentor" What was this new Avatar gonna be like? Were we gonna get moments with the old old
Gaang, and how were they going to look as adults? I was open to and prepared for anything! What I was not prepared for... Was for them to be *white*! [gasp] I am disgusted. I remember being shocked and, honestly,
a little bit disgusted when I first saw adult Aang and Sokka's designs in the
season 1 episode "Out of The Past." In this episode, when Avatar Korra is
is captured and tortured by a group of Equalists led by the season's antagonist
Amon, she receives flashbacks that lead her to the villain's true identity. As well
as our first moments with the adult Gaang. Minus Katara, you know. We see her several
times throughout the show at this point, and I have no critiques. I think she looks great! The Gaang is included in a trial persecuting a
new character named Yakone, Amon's father who- [record scratch] I'm sorry. While I'm talking about The Legend
of Korra, I need to get on this man Yakone. Because what the fuck?! First off, I know that the flashback
has a super pale sepia filter, and I know that Yakone is a
Waterbender, but I don't know. How did the world let Brian and
Michael get away with a race change??? Yakone, to escape accountability for his
crimes, got facial reconstruction surgery, ran away to the Northern Water
Tribe, impregnated an innocent woman, and raised his two somehow *darker* kids
to be bloodbending killing machines! Honey, if that's not textbook colonization and
indoctrination then I don't know what the fuck is. He can't keep getting away with this! Anyway, during that trial scene is when we get
our first look at adult Aang and adult Sokka, and they were not at all what I was expecting. Especially considering the cultural inspiration
that was taken to design these characters. Creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael
Dante DiMartino are known to have done extensive research in East and South Asian
cultures when building the worlds of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. The Water Tribes being primarily based on
Arctic cultures like the Inuit and Yupik. The Earth Kingdom inspired by
China across different dynasties. The Fire Nation a combination of East, South, and Southeast Asia. Notably borrowing
influences from Imperial Japan. And finally, the Air Nomads being heavily
influenced by Tibetan and Bhutanes culture. One of my favorite things that I found
when doing research for this section of this video was this old Reddit
thread from about 2015, maybe. That's this person posting about how
they were unable to see Aang, Suki, and Ty Lee as anything but white.
And the comments are just like,
"What the fuck? What the fuck?
What are you talking about? This is a show that is heavily
inspired by Asian culture, what do you mean you think that
these characters are white?" Fans and non-fans alike have commended the show's
vast world building and character development. So how these Tibetan and Inuit-inspired
children grew to have such eurocentric features in adulthood fails to make
sense for me, and I'm not the only one. There have been a few artists online who
took it upon themselves to redesign Aang and Sokka's facial features to better
reflect their cultural inspirations. On December 9th 2019, user sabertoothwalrus
posted these illustrations on Tumblr saying quote, "It's not perfect but they look a little bit more like themselves when they
don't have white people noses." Others online joined in to share their thoughts on the two men's original designs, like user
kanadia413 posting their own Sokka edits. sabertoothwalrus even shared
this image claiming that Aang's adult face was inspired by Michael DiMartino's? Which I have yet to verify but
would be insane if that was true. I personally always really liked Zaheer's facial
design, who's the primary antagonist in season 3 of "Korra". I always saw him as what it would
look like if an Air Nomad was jacked, you know? And sabertoothwalrus' edits kind of prove that
the original team's design efforts could have gone a little bit further when it comes to our
beloved, sharing-a-single-brain-cell dynamic duo. We have yet to learn exactly how and
why Sokka died, but we do know that it was when Korra was a young child, helping to
protect her from attacks from the Red Lotus. We do know that Aang died
at the biological age of 66, and it's theorized that Sokka
passed between his 70s and 80s. So what was the reason, then, for Sokka to
grow up looking like this wrinkled, distressed, white-passing older man at his age when his
father Hakoda looked like *this* at the same age? Justice for hot adult Sokka. So now that you've reached this point
in the video, you're probably asking: "Indigo, what do you expect these creators to
do? Do you want them to redesign, reanimate, and republish their shows to appease the masses? Do you want them to draw stereotypical-ass
features for the sake of clarity?" No, that is not what I want. In fact, keeping these old designs around help
artists like myself have reference to build off of to see what, you know, didn't quite work and
build off of it for the future in our own designs. But most importantly, I feel
like the easiest way to get around racial ambiguity and character
design is intention and research. Or at least making sure that the community you're trying to portray in your show has
members who are sat at the table. Especially when, for example, it
comes to properly styling textured and Black natural hair on an animated character. The account louham made an awesome
video about this specific topic over on their channel that I highly,
*highly* recommend that you go watch. "This might not be the most relevant, but
it's pretty annoying when the life-simulation, with its main appeal arguably being
customization, makes little-to-no efforts to actively include different skin
tones and hair types within the base game. And this wouldn't be as bad
if this turnaround happened within a short amount of time, but it didn't. For context, The Sims 4 came out in 2014. So it took EA upwards to 6 years to
start making some of these changes." I don't think that I have
to reiterate why quality, note *quality*, representation is important
when it comes to the media we consume. Not only for viewers who directly relate to the characters and identify to
the characters on their screen, but also for non-identifying viewers to see
what's possible outside of their own bubble. Even with Marceline being being known
as Black for almost 10 whole years now, Black punk and goth girls were going
crazy at the release of Henry Selik and Jordan Peele's stopmotion
film "Wendell and Wild" in 2022. Henry Selik really said, "Tim Burton, I
ain't playing witchu no more," and created a stopmotion spooky film starring a dark-skinned
punk-rock character who is also an amazing ally. Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse
also portrayed great examples of interactions within Blackness without making
a character scream their race to the heavens. The subtleties of Miles' sociopolitical dynamics with Hobie Brown and Margo Kess are often
missed by the movie's non-Black audiences. When Miles is quite literally about
to be oppressed by the Spider Society, it was these two who made
no hesitation to stop him. Who only needed to make silent eye
contact to speak volumes over the storm. If you've ever been one of the few Black people in a room and you've had to,
you know, give "the look" to somebody across the room, then you know
exactly what these scenes were talking about. *That* is what I call intention. And when you're working with a medium such as
animation, where practically anything is possible, I don't really see what the excuse
is anymore, and I need to see better. We need to see better. I loved doing my research for this video, and
seeing old posts and threads from fandoms. Especially since I tend to watch these shows a
little ways after they've already aired on TV. Just to reiterate, I didn't make this video
to drag on these shows or the creators, but to highlight that, you know, despite the
strides that we've made in racial diversity, there have been some hiccups
along the way in animation. I don't like Blackness being sprinkled
on, you know, as an afterthought. Or placed in, snuck in for redundant layers in a character that don't even
really get explored in the show. And I especially--I especially
don't like seeing characters get white-washed by their fans or their own creators! If you're going to canonize
a character as Black, brown, Asian, Indigenous--a person of color in
general, then you need to full send it. But that doesn't mean pull out the most
stereotypical mannerisms, and attitudes, and facial features, and
hairstyles out of the bag. Because there are so many little
mannerisms and nuances that can speak volumes to a character's identity. One example could be a character's hair
shrinking up when it gets wet from water. Or that character having a moment of solidarity
with another character from the same background. Or be loud as hell about it, that's
fine with me, okay? I don't care. With that being said, I'm going to close out this video recommending the animated
anthology series "Kizazi Moto." If you're anything like me, you'll love
this show because you're a lover of all things Black, and all things animation and sci-fi. And I'm also going to recommend
the video game "Season" if you want a short and sweet cozy video game
featuring a Black woman and her bike. I didn't see enough people talk about these two when they came out and I need
more of y'all to get on it. Like, share, and subscribe to my
channel if you like what I had to say, or if I got something wrong and
you'd like to talk about it. I'd love to see people go as far and
recommend topics for my future videos. And with that, I'll see
you in the next one-on-one.
