As a fan of Japanese voice acting, I tend to pay attention to the voice acting scene in the East. I pay extra attention when they begin discussing how they voice black/dark-skinned characters. Most recently, I watched a segment of three voice actors from Food Wars!, cooking and talking about their roles in the show. Hayama’s voice actor, Junichi Suwabe, spoke about the character’s dark skin and how that affected his portrayal of the role. That got me thinking about how stereotypes about dark-skinned and Black characters carry over into voice acting, particularly for Japanese voice actors.
As commonly seen in anime, Black and dark-skinned characters, the majority of the time, are created based on stereotypes. This is shown through male African athletes in sports anime, being recruited to play on Japanese teams due to their height and athletic ability. Kuroko no Basuke and Run with the Wind are anime that highlight this trope given their sports of basketball and track and field, sports in that Black people typically excel. Foreigner characters usually speak in broken Japanese and have an intimidating demeanor. In an episode of Kuroko’s Basketball, one of the opposing players, Papa Mbaye Shiki, picks Kuroko up and says, “Little boys shouldn’t be on the court,” despite him being a key figure on the team as well as a short character. The voice acting reflects the foreigner concept and masculine behavior by casting actors with deeper voices, such as Suwabe, Hiroki Yasumoto, Tomokazu Seki, and Kenta Miyake.
Good quality Black voice acting includes encapsulating the personality accurately. Most of the time, Black and dark-skinned characters are cast well, some better than others. Some good examples include Yoruichi (Bleach) and Noé (Case Study of Vanitas) for action, and Musa (Run with the Wind), Inomata (Re-Main), and Aran (Haikyuu) for sports anime. Yoruichi doesn’t feel like a caricature, and I adore the fun and bubbly attitude that she uses when talking to Ichigo. Noé is clueless and has a pure-hearted outlook on the world that Kaito Ishikawa reflects in his character.
In Run with the Wind, Musa addresses one of the comments about him succeeding in the race due to his height and seemingly athletic ability. He responded in typical Black fashion, “It’s prejudiced to think Black people are fast runners.” In my experience of watching sports anime, that was the first time I’d seen a microaggression being addressed, especially by a Black character. The voice actors for Inomata (Tasuka Hatanaka), Aran (Jun Kasama), and Musa (Hideaki Kabumoto) specifically use softer voices and are portrayed as wholesome characters, and are devoid of the masculine tones other VAs use.
There is no right or wrong way to voice Black characters. However, it is important that the acting isn’t ridden with stereotypical portrayals of Black people. Killer Bee from Naruto raps as he speaks, uses shortened words (yo, ya, da), and omits the ‘g’ in ‘-ing’ verbs, similar to a Southern American dialect in the English translations. His character is aloof and eccentric in nature and provides comedic relief (although “comedic” is subjective), which can correlate to how Black characters are treated in American television (being the comedic relief or wingman to the main character). The voice actress of Cho Cho from Boruto gives her a higher-pitched tone that comes off as very confident. In the series, she overcomes her concern about losing weight and maintains a happy-go-lucky personality that Ryoko Shiraishi perfectly encompasses in the role.
However, there is nothing wrong with masculine voice acting for darker-skinned characters; it depends on the anime and the role of that character. Elfman from Fairy Tail and Chad from Bleach, both voiced by Hiroki Yasumoto, have masculine personalities to fit the voice. Kenta Miyake fits Muhammad Avdol due to the manly nature of Jojo characters, yet he still retains a jovial and childish essence. Aomine Daiki from Kuroko’s Basketball has a stereotypical teenage boy nature that reflects his influence of Black American basketball but, thankfully, doesn’t depict any racist tropes of the culture.
To ensure Black characters aren’t type-cast, it is important for mangakas not to write stereotypical characters in the first place. With the newer sports anime, it’s refreshing to see Black and dark-skinned characters with softer roles that debunk tropes that Black people are put into. However, that may not carry over into mainstream action shounen anime. If the characters have dark skin or are characterized as Black, it’s best to minimize the eccentric vocalities and perform how the character is portrayed in the original story.
