Yo, been a minute. If you know me personally, you’ve probably heard me talk about a mild obsession I have with the societal phenomenon of Piccolo, from Dragon Ball Z, being a ‘black’ character:
In short, I think I’ve cracked the code of why so many African Americans look at the guy above and go ‘he just like me fr’.
I did a presentation on it at this year’s Anime Expo, in front of a packed theater. It was a little surreal.
And later, we found out our panel won Best Academic Panel at the conference. That’s a first for me. Pretty cool.
Problem is: not everyone can afford a ticket to Anime Expo, and I got a lot of messages asking if I’d do it again.
So, we’re going to do it again, livestreamed. Thursday, 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern, on YouTube.
No registration needed, just click the link below and that’s it:
Oh, who’s this ‘we’? I didn’t present alone: this was a two-person panel called “Black Fandom and Anime: How we “adopt” our characters”.
So, here’s the rundown of the livestream, starting at 5p/8p:
first up: me, with Piccolo is (not) Black. next: Javon Goard, with Let the Red Clouds Go: Unpacking the Relationship between Black Anime Fans and the Akatsuki
then, Q&A. We’ll be responding to chat live, so feel free to jump in and ask questions.
One catch: this is a one-time only thing; we won’t have a recording available. We’re both working on developing these into longer projects, so we’re presenting this as a work-in-progress.
And I mean that. I’m already making some tweaks, so my presentation is going to be a little different from what I did at Anime Expo. So even if you were there, you might wanna pull up anyway!
see you there.
and seriously, we will start on time lol
one more picture of me looking extra serious about a cartoon
oh also, consider this a soft-relaunch of this blog/newsletter thing.