How long until Mr Popo gets cancelled?

[ABED]

I still wonder what the hell Toriyama was thinking when he designed Popo.

Blackface has always been pretty common in manga and anime, especially back in the 80s. I doubt Toriyama put any thought into whether or not Popo’s design would be seen as offensive.

On the subject of Pokémon, there was definitely some controversy towards it back in the day. It ranged anywhere from it supposedly promoting violence (which has always been a common complaint against video games), evolution or animal cruelty.

My question then is why does Japan seem to have an affinity for that racial stereotype?

[MasenkoHA]

I still wonder what the hell Toriyama was thinking when he designed Popo.

Blackface has always been pretty common in manga and anime, especially back in the 80s. I doubt Toriyama put any thought into whether or not Popo’s design would be seen as offensive.

On the subject of Pokémon, there was definitely some controversy towards it back in the day. It ranged anywhere from it supposedly promoting violence (which has always been a common complaint against video games), evolution or animal cruelty.

My question then is why does Japan seem to have an affinity for that racial stereotype?

To my understanding Little Black Sambo was very popular in Japan when it came over in 1953 until it was pulled in 1988

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.thegua ... ooks.japan


It wouldn’t be surprising if that was the reason it had an influence on Toriyama when designing Popo and even Staff Officer Black given that Toriyama would have been a child in the early 60s.

[ABED]

Having read the article, it seems like the story itself was popular because there's a good message about survival using ones wits, but it's mixed with horrible stereotypical imagery. I can see why someone would brush over the latter part.

[JulieYBM]

I can only vaguely remember the fad era of Pokemon due to health issues but I do recall there was a lot of talk about it being Satanic. It was borne of the superstitious 1980s thanks to major religious leaders and Reagan working to mainstream the US as a Christian nation.

Ironically enough Pokemon likely never would have crossed over to the US if the Reagan administration hadn’t deregulated advertising toward children go figure.

Fire burns down the house until it no long has a house to sustain its existence.

[MasenkoHA]

Having read the article, it seems like the story itself was popular because there's a good message about survival using ones wits, but it's mixed with horrible stereotypical imagery. I can see why someone would brush over the latter part.

I think it’s because there’s no active malice with Mr.Popo that at worst most fans just sort of sigh at
his existence. Almost nobody would argue his existence is actually harmful. Most people are aware he’s born out of cultural ignorance than any active attempt at degrading another race.

[NitroEX]

I've never really been one to focus on race, especially having grown up in a very diverse family and set of communities when I was younger. When I started watching DBZ as a child, Popo wasn't a character that immediately struck me as problematic mostly because of his Arabic/djinn clothing and elf ears throwing me off. I also just hadn't yet been exposed to the negative racial stereotypes of the past so you could say some of it was down to the naivety of being a child. For the most part I mostly just didn't understand what he was (human, alien, demon or otherwise) rather than what race of human he was.

Having grown up and being surrounded by increased racial politics, and having a better understanding of the past and other cultures, it's more apparent where Toriyama took inspiration from for the design and from an artist's perspective there's definitely blackface influence in there which I think unfortunately does detract from his work. I now view Popo more questionably than I used to and definitely feel he should have at least been a different skin colour, if nothing else, to at least better convey the djinn influence and avoid the confusion I myself had when I was younger as the design just lacks clarity.

Despite the shoddy implementation of the CW/4Kids DB Kai censorship edits, I do think they had the right idea in changing his skin blue as 2010s America didn't seem as forgiving when it came to racial stuff, at least for kids content.

As far as cancelling goes I don't see that happening, though I think Funimation could have a lot to answer for in terms of the Z dub voice for Killa (which is now, unfortunately, the default English viewing experience for most of the world on home video). Sadly that company seems mostly immune to repercussions for their bad decisions.

[VegettoEX]

As far as cancelling goes I don't see that happening, though I think Funimation could have a lot to answer for in terms of the Z dub voice for Killa (which is now, unfortunately, the default English viewing experience for most of the world on home video). Sadly that company seems mostly immune to repercussions for their bad decisions.

I purposefully avoided bringing that up in case anyone else wanted to, but now that it's done, and knowing exactly how certain folks out there think, I just wanted to confirm/prove that fans at the time absolutely called this out as racist the instant it was released, and it's not JUST retroactive criticism decades later:

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.dra ... 84oCSezzsJ

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.dra ... 7VR0TaMMYJ

[WittyUsername]

I still wonder what the hell Toriyama was thinking when he designed Popo.

Blackface has always been pretty common in manga and anime, especially back in the 80s. I doubt Toriyama put any thought into whether or not Popo’s design would be seen as offensive.

On the subject of Pokémon, there was definitely some controversy towards it back in the day. It ranged anywhere from it supposedly promoting violence (which has always been a common complaint against video games), evolution or animal cruelty.

My question then is why does Japan seem to have an affinity for that racial stereotype?

Ignorance is the most likely answer. Japan is an extremely homogeneous country, and most of the people who live there have probably never even met a black person. Blackface was also fairly common in Western cartoons back in the day, and it’s likely that authors like Toriyama might have watched those cartoons when they were kids. Also, Osamu Tezuka is widely considered the Walt Disney of Japanese manga/animation, and he depicted blackface in his work, so Toriyama and other manga artists may have been influenced by him as well.

As far as cancelling goes I don't see that happening, though I think Funimation could have a lot to answer for in terms of the Z dub voice for Killa (which is now, unfortunately, the default English viewing experience for most of the world on home video). Sadly that company seems mostly immune to repercussions for their bad decisions.

What repercussions could they possibly face at this point?

[NitroEX]

What repercussions could they possibly face at this point?

Realistically none, but online rage mobs have seemingly gone after companies for less in the past. I realize it's been left too late now. I'm honestly surprised it even got past Toonami US when it first aired but they seemed to have a lax attitude to things that weren't nudity. I do think Toei should have at least had the foresight to tell them to rerecord the dialogue for the remastered sets when they had the chance, or even for the later Blu ray versions. Funimation were no stranger to making changes to their dub track after all.

[Demon Prince Piccolo]

Yep, the Z dub voice for Killa was undoubtedly racist. No debate about that one. Insane that they thought that was OK.

[WittyUsername]

What repercussions could they possibly face at this point?

Realistically none, but online rage mobs have seemingly gone after companies for less in the past. I realize it's been left too late now. I'm honestly surprised it even got past Toonami US when it first aired but they seemed to have a lax attitude to things that weren't nudity. I do think Toei should have at least had the foresight to tell them to rerecord the dialogue for the remastered sets when they had the chance, or even for the later Blu ray versions. Funimation were no stranger to making changes to their dub track after all.

FUNimation seemed to more or less stop making changes to the dub track by the time they got to the Majin Boo episodes, outside of removing the voice filters for certain characters, and retaining certain moments of dialogue that were cut from the broadcast and the singles. If Killa were in Season 3, I imagine they would’ve redubbed his dialogue, since FUNimation went out of their way to redub a lot of the goofier voices from that season.

Also, I seriously doubt Toei cares about that. I don’t think a company from Japan is likely to be especially concerned about cultural sensitivity.

[NitroEX]

FUNimation seemed to more or less stop making changes to the dub track by the time they got to the Majin Boo episodes, outside of removing the voice filters for certain characters, and retaining certain moments of dialogue that were cut from the broadcast and the singles. If Killa were in Season 3, I imagine they would’ve redubbed his dialogue, since FUNimation went out of their way to redub a lot of the goofier voices from that season.

Also, I seriously doubt Toei cares about that. I don’t think a company from Japan is likely to be especially concerned about cultural sensitivity.

I get why things are. Funimation basically took a cheap approach when it came to the uncut remastered dub and didn't want to go to the extra effort to improve the later sagas, but the reality is that they control the audio stems and always had the power to change things at any point. Obviously, they didn't see it as tasteless or in need of changing but Toei had a US and Europe division by 2004, they should really have known better and marked that as a red flag, particularly by the 2010s when the dub started to be exported to more places than just America. If the excuse is that they don't bother checking then it's inexcusable.

Putting aside personal feelings, from a purely business standpoint they're leaving themselves wide open for criticism and potential future backlash. All this because of a dumb joke that either Chris Sabat, Barry Watson or Dameon Clarke decided to adlib on the day, because we know it wasn't scripted that way (because the Westwood version had normal lines). It's just not smart and pretty reckless of all parties involved. Anyway, that's all I'll say on the matter as it's getting off topic.

[WittyUsername]

FUNimation seemed to more or less stop making changes to the dub track by the time they got to the Majin Boo episodes, outside of removing the voice filters for certain characters, and retaining certain moments of dialogue that were cut from the broadcast and the singles. If Killa were in Season 3, I imagine they would’ve redubbed his dialogue, since FUNimation went out of their way to redub a lot of the goofier voices from that season.

Also, I seriously doubt Toei cares about that. I don’t think a company from Japan is likely to be especially concerned about cultural sensitivity.

I get why things are. Funimation basically took a cheap approach when it came to the uncut remastered dub and didn't want to go to the extra effort to improve the later sagas, but the reality is that they control the audio stems and always had the power to change things at any point. Obviously, they didn't see it as tasteless or in need of changing but Toei had a US and Europe division by 2004, they should really have known better and marked that as a red flag, particularly by the 2010s when the dub started to be exported to more places than just America. If the excuse is that they don't bother checking then it's inexcusable.

Putting aside personal feelings, from a purely business standpoint they're leaving themselves wide open for criticism and potential future backlash. All this because of a dumb joke that either Chris Sabat, Barry Watson or Dameon Clarke decided to adlib on the day, because we know it wasn't scripted that way (because the Westwood version had normal lines). It's just not smart and pretty reckless of all parties involved. Anyway, that's all I'll say on the matter as it's getting off topic.

This doesn’t really strike me as particularly off-topic.

[Thanos]

Yep, the Z dub voice for Killa was undoubtedly racist. No debate about that one. Insane that they thought that was OK.

What's weird is that in this instance, the dub was more racist than the original. He didn't have any problem talking and was just a normal guy basically in Japanese, but the dub makes him seem perpetually confused and stupid. Big yikes on that one.

[MasenkoHA]

What's weird is that in this instance, the dub was more racist than the original. He didn't have any problem talking and was just a normal guy basically in Japanese, but the dub makes him seem perpetually confused and stupid. Big yikes on that one.

The dub is filled with a bunch of little racist things like that. The Killa one was just the most “How the fuck did they think that was okay even in 2001?” In Dragon Ball pretty much any vaguely coded South Asian or Middle Eastern character (see the villagers in the Boss Rabbit episode and Nam ) would have the Apu inspired “Thank you come again” accent. Murasaki was given a Japanese Engrish accent.

[PurestEvil]

Murasaki was given a Japanese Engrish accent.

White was given a Russian accent and Red was given an Irish accent. Is it racist to give nonwhite characters accents?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

What's weird is that in this instance, the dub was more racist than the original. He didn't have any problem talking and was just a normal guy basically in Japanese, but the dub makes him seem perpetually confused and stupid. Big yikes on that one.

The dub is filled with a bunch of little racist things like that. The Killa one was just the most “How the fuck did they think that was okay even in 2001?” In Dragon Ball pretty much any vaguely coded South Asian or Middle Eastern character (see the villagers in the Boss Rabbit episode and Nam ) would have the Apu inspired “Thank you come again” accent. Murasaki was given a Japanese Engrish accent.

Accents (and stereotyped ones at that) seemed to be a thing used at that time to cover up there being so few VA's working for FUNi at the time, like giving Jheese/Jeice an Australian accent despite being him an alien from another world or some of the Red Ribbon officers stereotype Russian or other European voices. 4Kids in particular seemed to be the company most infamous for giving characters in their dubs over the top accents with One Piece being by far the biggest offender in that regard (like the god awful Sylvester Stallone-esque Brooklyn voice that David Moo used for Sanji or Robin's southern belle country accent. Eww) and as you mention a lot of the Middle Eastern type characters have that very stereotype India or wherever voice.

[MasenkoHA]

I don’t think giving character’s accents is innately wrong. It’s not like Masako Nozawa naturally sounds like a hick.

But here’s the thing when Funimation’s cast is largely white, I think pretty much exclusively white for the late 90s/early 2000s it does come off as mocking to have them do a caricature accent of a black man or a south asian person or a Japanese man. It’s less “Let’s give this character an accent to make things interesting” and more “Don’t these people talk funny?”

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I don’t think giving character’s accents is innately wrong. It’s not like Masako Nozawa naturally sounds like a hick.

But here’s the thing when Funimation’s cast is largely white, I think pretty much exclusively white for the late 90s/early 2000s it does come off as mocking to have them do a caricature accent of a black man or a south asian person or a Japanese man. It’s less “Let’s give this character an accent to make things interesting” and more “Don’t these people talk funny?”

True, many of the voices they did for characters of those ethnicities in the dub have that type of caricatured, stereotyped delivery and almost in a parody or mocking fashion.

[MyVisionity]

White was given a Russian accent and Red was given an Irish accent. Is it racist to give nonwhite characters accents?

Particular attention must be paid when giving non-white characters accents, unlike with white characters. So as to avoid racist portrayals.

Racial and ethnic stereotyping of non-white peoples is naturally a greater concern than stereotyping of white peoples.