So are we biased?

[rereboy]

Looks like you won't like Dr. strange then too since The Ancient One has been cast as a woman. That character has been an older Asian man since the beginning. Ditto with Johnny Storm and Franklin Storm in the new Fantastic Four (both black), Jimmy Olson in Supergirl (black), etc. how about the all Japanese cast for Attack on Titan? East Indian man for The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 was a big let down. It goes on and on...

Like I said, I prefer that they are close to their original depictions. That doesn't mean I'm any sort of extremist that will absolutely dislike everything about their portrayals just because of that. Also, there are characters where changing stuff like has more importance than with others. Changing Nick Fury into a black dude isn't really much of an issue because race is literally a non-factor when it comes to his character, for example. However, for other characters, stuff like that is implicitly a factor so, for those, it would be a much bigger issue.

But, like I originally said, I prefer that they remain close to their original depictions and changing stuff like that just to change it seems to me that it's either pointless, stupid or just driven by agenda, which I don't like.

[SSJ Human]

So you made this thread with purpose that you will solve the discrimination.... OK, good luck then.

No, I made it with the intent of pointing that out to the whole community as something that really is bad. It's a shame you don't realize it, but whatever.

[Cure Dragon 255]

There is no discrimination here, even black people feel that Goku shouldnt just be black for the sake of it. You have a lot of nerve implying that anyone who doesnt agree with you is racist and or Discriminative.

[dougo13]

Looks like you won't like Dr. strange then too since The Ancient One has been cast as a woman. That character has been an older Asian man since the beginning. Ditto with Johnny Storm and Franklin Storm in the new Fantastic Four (both black), Jimmy Olson in Supergirl (black), etc. how about the all Japanese cast for Attack on Titan? East Indian man for The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 was a big let down. It goes on and on...

Like I said, I prefer that they are close to their original depictions. That doesn't mean I'm any sort of extremist that will absolutely dislike everything about their portrayals just because of that. Also, there are characters where changing stuff like has more importance than with others. Changing Nick Fury into a black dude isn't really much of an issue because race is literally a non-factor when it comes to his character, for example. However, for other characters, stuff like that is implicitly a factor so, for those, it would be a much bigger issue.

But, like I originally said, I prefer that they remain close to their original depictions and changing stuff like that just to change it seems to me that it's either pointless, stupid or just driven by agenda, which I don't like.

Nick Fury you can get away with. He was originally depicted as white until Marvel came up with The Ultimates universe. Most of the current MCU is based on the Ultimates universe and not the original from the 1960s. I guess that worked for them. I had a hard time with Iris West being black in The Flash but the actress who portrays her did a fine job with the character. Throws the comics out the window though...

[SSJ Human]

There is no discrimination here, even black people feel that Goku shouldnt just be black for the sake of it. You have a lot of nerve implying that anyone who doesnt agree with you is racist and or Discriminative.

I'm not. I mentioned earlier that if you didn't feel an actor looked like the character or could play them then that's fine, but you are discriminating against them if you're sole reason for not liking them in the role is that they are black. Goku has no race.

I also didn't say he had to be black "for the sake of it". I'm really getting at the idea that it shouldn't matter the actor's ethnicity for a character that does not have one and if an actor comes along that can pull him off that is also black, you shouldn't rule him out just because of his ethnicity.

[Kendamu]

If I want him to be black, then I'm not respecting the source material.

If I don't want him to be black, then I'm a racist.

Honestly, a live action Goku looks something like this in my head:

Spoiler:

If Goku has no race, then it's really no big deal. That's just my interpretation. Right?

[SSJ Human]

If I want him to be black, then I'm not respecting the source material.

If I don't want him to be black, then I'm a racist.

Honestly, a live action Goku looks something like this in my head:

Spoiler:

If Goku has no race, then it's really no big deal. That's just my interpretation. Right?

No one said anything about not respecting the source material if you have him to be black. At least I didn't. That's ultimately someone's opinion.

I keep saying this over and over again, but you're not racist if you don't want him to be played by a black actor if it's because you feel whoever the actor is they could never look like him. That's pretty valid. I would say the opposite if it's just because they are black you have a problem with them playing him, even if they can capture the character.

Goku's race isn't defined as anything human so any human would work. Go with what you want. That's what I'm doing.

[TheKingOfKamehamehas]

In all honesty, I don't give a crap about the race of a character. As long as he acts really good and knows the character well, I am all for it. I am pretty sure a lot of actors like George Clooney don't even care about Batman and look what it turned out to be. If an African Amercian can play Batman better then why the heck not!

For example, I had no problem with Justin Chatwin being a white guy, but his acting as Goku was so *F-Word* horrible and that is what made Dragon Ball Evolution so bad. Goku might look Chinese Asian in the art, but it never specifically stated in the text that he was supposed to look Chinese Asian and Toriyama never said anything about the races of the Saiyans.

[SSJ Human]

In all honesty, I don't give a crap about the race of a character. As long as he acts really good and knows the character well, I am all for it. I am pretty sure a lot of actors like George Clooney don't even care about Batman and look what it turned out to be. If an African Amercian can play Batman better then why the heck not!

For example, I had no problem with Justin Chatwin being a white guy, but his acting as Goku was so *F-Word* horrible and that is what made Dragon Ball Evolution so bad. Goku might look Chinese Asian in the art, but it never specifically stated in the text that he was supposed to look Chinese Asian and Toriyama never said anything about the races of the Saiyans.

Exactly! I never said I wanted a black person to play Goku just because they were black. I was only saying that if an actor who was black came along and was able to do the role better than Chatwin, then should it really matter their race?

[dae428]

When I look watch a movie that's adapting a comic book, the only really thing that's important to me and what I think to a lot of other people is how faithful they are to the essence of the character. Everything after that is secondary as a movie has to make changes if it wants to produce a coherent story that works in an allotted 90-120 minute time slot. I would much prefer having a black Goku that liked fighting strong foes, was carefree, and was naive to a fault as opposed to an Asian Goku that was 'dark', 'tortured', and daydreamed about chicks eating strawberries. For instance, I was more annoyed (though not really) that they made Sue Storm the adopted sister of Johnny Storm because it messed with the brother-sister relationship a bit than the whole making Johnny Storm black thing. If they really wanted racial diversity I much would have rather they had Mr. Fantastic black or the Thing black as their race isn't really relevant to their character (I think anyways. I've never really read or watched the Fantastic Four except in bits and pieces)

However, I think I as well as most people if they could would want to see their favorite characters looking as they did in the comic books. Goku has Asian origin influences and has pale-ish skin (for most of his artwork). So it only really makes sense that a lot of people would see him as being Asian or I guess white or some sort of European whatever. That doesn't make them racist by any means it just means that they want their character properly represented. I'm pretty sure the very same people here would be complaining if John Stewart were played by a white guy or an Asian guy. This is personally understand why it can get a touch annoying when I see comic books and comic book movies doing the whole race swapping thing.

But, to play devil's advocate, while I don't like it. It does make some sense in a business sense. As mentioned before People like familiarity and they naturally focus towards it. This can kind of be seen as a double edged sword in which comic book writers and movie makers choose to replace a normally white character with another ethnically different character because they feel that that's the only way for that character to get any attention from readers and watchers in the first place. I feel that this particularly prominent in the comic book industry where people are often reading so many different comic books already that when something new comes out that they've never heard of, they would be hesitant to purchase it unless it were somehow related to a character they already knew.

Then again, if we go back to movies though we can kind of see how introducing new comic book characters can surprisingly work out quite well. Two examples that come to mind are Ant-man and the Guardians of the Galaxy. While these characters are not necessarily new comic book characters, to the movie going audience probably only like 1% have probably heard of these characters before. I personally never knew about the Guardians of the Galaxy when it came out and I only knew Hank Pym who was the first Ant-man and again knew nothing of Scott Lang when it came out. The whole black Goku thing can work in this sense. While the Dragon Ball fanbase is fairly big, it's not nearly as big as some other series out there like Starwars. (I think anyways) so I feel that the case for a black Goku can still technically work for the big screens as there are still many people who don't even know that much about Dragon Ball and most movies (in the past anyways yuk yuk yuk) are generally new stories anyways. And hey, if you're a fan of Dragon Ball, it's Dragon Ball, you're probably still going to watch it anyways (if it looks alright). Sure there are going to be people who won't watch it anyways because of the whole race thing but, unless you're a very pessimistic person, I really doubt they'll make up anything remotely close to a majority let alone a noticeable minority.

In the end, I can say that yes. A black Goku could work. A lot of people at Kanzenshuu as well as myself wouldn't really like it that much because we are protective of the image of Goku, but we, as well as many others, would probably watch the movie anyways because we love Dragon Ball. In a way we are biased a bit because we do really like Goku and generally want Goku to be portrayed by an actor who does resemble him and well. But, I really doubt this means that the majority of Dragon Ball fans or Kanzenshuu goers are prejudiced or racist by any means. If we were to see a great black Goku in a great Dragon Ball movie, we probably wouldn't care too much in the long run as long as they kept true to the character of Goku and portrayed him properly cough cough Screw Attack cough.

Sorry if what I'm saying is really messy... Basically just put me in the no we aren't biased camp. I think...

[Polyphase Avatron]

When I look watch a movie that's adapting a comic book, the only really thing that's important to me and what I think to a lot of other people is how faithful they are to the essence of the character. Everything after that is secondary as a movie has to make changes if it wants to produce a coherent story that works in an allotted 90-120 minute time slot. I would much prefer having a black Goku that liked fighting strong foes, was carefree, and was naive to a fault as opposed to an Asian Goku that was 'dark', 'tortured', and daydreamed about chicks eating strawberries. For instance, I was more annoyed (though not really) that they made Sue Storm the adopted sister of Johnny Storm because it messed with the brother-sister relationship a bit than the whole making Johnny Storm black thing. If they really wanted racial diversity I much would have rather they had Mr. Fantastic black or the Thing black as their race isn't really relevant to their character (I think anyways. I've never really read or watched the Fantastic Four except in bits and pieces)

Well a little-known fact is that the Thing is Jewish. If they wanted to play up the diversity angle, they could have emphasized that a bit more.

[funrush]

Marvel's movies aren't well known for their amazing ability to do diversity. They get some things right (Falcon is a badass) but they get lots of stuff wrong (It took them 19 movies for them to do one starring a black guy and 20 movies to do one starring a girl, and Black Widow merch is basically impossible to find) It looks like they basically stand by the idea that white dudes sell, and they throw in an occasional white woman or black dude to keep people from questioning them about it.

[SSJ Human]

Marvel's movies aren't well known for their amazing ability to do diversity. They get some things right (Falcon is a badass) but they get lots of stuff wrong (It took them 19 movies for them to do one starring a black guy and 20 movies to do one starring a girl, and Black Widow merch is basically impossible to find) It looks like they basically stand by the idea that white dudes sell, and they throw in an occasional white woman or black dude to keep people from questioning them about it.

That's really a shame.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Marvel's movies aren't well known for their amazing ability to do diversity. They get some things right (Falcon is a badass) but they get lots of stuff wrong (It took them 19 movies for them to do one starring a black guy

What about Blade?

[SSJ Human]

Marvel's movies aren't well known for their amazing ability to do diversity. They get some things right (Falcon is a badass) but they get lots of stuff wrong (It took them 19 movies for them to do one starring a black guy

What about Blade?

What about him? Don't tell me you didn't see that post credit scene where he took off his face and revealed he was white the entire time.

[Hellspawn28]

Nothing wrong with a different color of skin playing as Goku. People want to see a actor who can pull off Goku's personality and look close enough to the character. People act like Goku being white and not being faithful to the manga are the worst thing about Evolution when it's not. If you rename DBE into a different name and changed all of the characters names, the movie is still shit. Dragon Ball Evolution is a bad movie, no matter how you look at it. If you made Goku Asian in the movie, the movie is still shit. Hell there are Asian actors who suck at acting too. It's the weebs that act like that all characters from Japan should be played by Japanese actors or at least close to looking to them.

[DoomieDoomie911]

Nothing wrong with a different color of skin playing as Goku. People want to see a actor who can pull off Goku's personality and look close enough to the character. People act like Goku being white and not being faithful to the manga are the worst thing about Evolution when it's not. If you rename DBE into a different name and changed all of the characters names, the movie is still shit. Dragon Ball Evolution is a bad movie, no matter how you look at it.

Exactly. The fact that it's a Dragon Ball film is just the cherry on top.

[DarkPrince_92]

Well... I'm black and I'm sure I'll be weirded out by a black Goku. When I was a kid seeing DaBlack Goku website I was going crazy, it was cool. But honestly the only person I'd every say would make a great live action Goku is Jackie Chan... and he's pretty old now. Or that guy from The Protector maybe, since he's a darker tone of skin (aesthetically speaking).

[DoomieDoomie911]

Well... I'm black and I'm sure I'll be weirded out by a black Goku. When I was a kid seeing DaBlack Goku website I was going crazy, it was cool. But honestly the only person I'd every say would make a great live action Goku is Jackie Chan... and he's pretty old now. Or that guy from The Protector maybe, since he's a darker tone of skin (aesthetically speaking).

That's something interesting that I haven't thought of before! A younger Jackie Chan playing Goku. I'm sure Toriyama would be a fan!

[Hellspawn28]

Jackie Chan would have work as Goku in the early 90's if they did a DBZ movie back then. Now I think he would be better as Grandpa Gohan or Master Roshi. If they made Goku black, I would admit that it would be odd but maybe the actor can capture the personality of Goku. Justin Chatwin failed to capture the personality of Goku and his acting was horrible. No one in DBE did a good job on at acting expect for maybe James Marsters.