Good afternoon readers! I’ve been steadily building my own manga behind the scenes and even started world building another one on the low. I honestly can’t believe I never went into this field in the first place and am so glad I did. For those who don’t know: Black Manga is simply Manga written by black writers or created by black creatives as a whole. As there are an abundance of Black Manga readily available, with one from me currently on Kickstarter, I wanted to gush about one that’s hit my timeline (and the sudden backlash against this medium): Clock Striker!

Originally created by writer Frederick Jones and artist Gladiskstudio (earlier I had Odunze as the creator, but he’s actually the co-founder of the publishing company, but he did create a manga series called Apple Black. Check it out! Smooth move on my end), this design is a much needed reprise in the manga industry as seldom do we see something so representative of both the creator and the intended audience. Hailing it as the first black Shonen female character from the publishing house Saturday AM, a lot of skepticism from the peanut gallery is indeed increasing as the project gains traction and eyes over time. Most of the skepticism being over the fact that “No, this is not the first Shonen black character lead” and “This isn’t manga because the illustrator isn’t Japanese” in the era of Google being freely available is abhorrent, but telling of the normal anime community when it comes to anti-blackness.

If you’re reading this, hopefully with vitriol in your heart about how black people deserve the same spaces to both cosplay and enjoy a medium that’s not even yours to gatekeep and dictate, then keep reading. I’m about to make another point.

I’ve been reading too many complaints about “this can’t be manga if it isn’t Japanese” from a lot of people, more white followers of this medium than black, but still too many to ignore on that side. I’d like to refer to a tweet I was sent today by the user @NakimushiArt right here (Editors note: They also are a mangaka that works for the studio Concept Moon, a studio that has a plethora of black creators. Also follow them as they have a manga on the way sometime this year!) stating that you really don’t have the wherewithal to gatekeep anything. If anything, black people have skyrocketed most of the anime trends to date, mainly because we seldom illegally pirate anything we want to see grow. We created this and are deserving of this form of hype that comes from crossing over to Japanese culture when creating. Don’t blame us for making anything, blame yourselves on why you have to hate something you don’t even dive deep enough in.

In short, it’s time to ignore the ones who tell us we cannot be in a space we helped build. It doesn’t matter if you “feel” like we don’t belong, we’ve proven time and time again we’re more accepted more than ever. We don’t even need to fill your spaces anymore with the abundance of black anime cons becoming more and more frequent and popular, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all the way crossed over. On that note, I’ll leave you all with a Twitter thread you must check out and don’t forget, subscribe to the site if you loved what you read and be sure to check out Clock Striker when it drops in February of next year!

With the exceptional amount of Anti-Blackness propagated in #Anime fandom this past week due to @WhytManga’s post about @Saturday_am’s #ClockStriker, I think I need to clarify a few things.

Time for a 🧵… pic.twitter.com/owoSBjTIlL

— Black Anime Podcasts (@BlackAnimePods) August 1, 2022