Japanese Pokémon Cosplayer Accused of Blackface Over Jacinthe Cosplay
Wow… again? Anyway, once again, the global otaku community has become the center of an intense cultural clash on social media. This time, a Japanese cosplayer went viral on X after sharing photos of her latest Jacinthe cosplay, a character from Pokémon. What was supposed to be a celebration of an accurate and dedicated costume ended up triggering a wave of attacks from Western users accusing her of blackface — prompting an immediate and strong response from Japanese fans.
Looks like this is becoming a regular thing, huh?
How the Pokémon Cosplay Controversy Started
For those who aren’t keeping up with Pokémon, a game called Pokémon Legends: Z-A came out last year (and it’s the best worst game I’ve ever played in my life. Like, the game is incredibly fun and enjoyable, but the graphics are absolutely terrible and lazy). One of the characters in the game is Jacinthe:
I’ll be honest… I think she’s pretty, but her personality… once you actually get to know her in the game… well, anyway.
It all started when Japanese cosplayer @tera_abu shared photos of a duo cosplay. She appeared dressed as Jacinthe (Yukari in the original Japanese version), alongside a friend cosplaying Lebanne:
To faithfully recreate the character’s appearance — which includes dark skin and voluminous white hair — the Japanese cosplayer used makeup to darken her skin tone. In her original post, she was simply celebrating the results of the wigs and costumes she had worked so hard to create.
Western Backlash and Blackface Accusations
As the images spread beyond the Japanese internet and reached English-speaking audiences, hundreds of accounts began harshly criticizing the cosplayer, labeling her makeup as blackface — a practice historically associated with racism in the United States and the West, where white people would paint their faces black.
Many users argued that darkening your skin for cosplay is an unacceptable taboo in almost 2027, regardless of the artist’s intentions.
You can check out more screenshots of the complaints on Yaraon.
Others argued that it’s perfectly possible to cosplay dark-skinned characters while keeping your natural skin tone, without resorting to makeup that darkens your skin.
Some even wanted to impose their own culture, arguing that the act itself carries a long history of discrimination in the West, and that ignoring these criticisms only makes the situation worse.
The discussion got even more heated when Western accounts became outraged after reading comments from Japanese users who argued that a fictional character shouldn’t even be categorized according to real-world racial classifications.
Japanese Fans Respond: Defending Cosplay and Criticizing “Cultural Imperialism”
On the other side of the world, the Japanese community came out in force to defend @tera_abu. For cosplayers and fans in Japan, the American historical context of racial caricatures simply doesn’t apply in the same way; in Japanese cosplay culture, changing your skin tone with makeup is seen as an attempt to achieve visual accuracy and pay respectful tribute to the original character design.
Several Japanese users pushed back against the criticism:
“If the character has dark skin and you want to make an accurate cosplay of her, of course you’re going to use makeup, right? That’s not racial discrimination. It’s actually the complete opposite!” — replied a Japanese cosplayer.
Other internet users pointed out that Jacinthe’s creators (her original Japanese name is Yukari) designed the character with the idea that dark skin is beautiful, and that the cosplayer simply wanted to recreate that beauty. Many also asked foreigners to stop trying to impose their own social rules and historical traumas on Japanese pop culture, pointing out that different countries have different cultural backgrounds.
The discussion took an even more intense turn when some Japanese users brought up a point that left Western audiences baffled: for many fans in Japan, Yukari (Jacinthe) shouldn’t even be classified as a “Black woman.”
Western users reacted with outrage on social media after seeing this argument, mocking the idea that “she isn’t Black because she’s fictional” and pointing out that Black characters do exist in fiction. However, the Japanese audience’s response followed a completely different way of thinking, one that doesn’t necessarily rely on real-world ethnic divisions:
“Obviously, she’s not Black, and she’s not even from Earth [she belongs to the fictional Pokémon universe]. Can’t foreigners tell the difference between reality and fictional characters? Why do they try to decide a character’s race for themselves? She’s simply a Japanese character.” — replied a Japanese user.
It was only today, while writing this post, that I finally understood what happened. Yesterday evening, I was just casually browsing the internet when several tweets from FOREIGNERS ANGRY at Japanese users started showing up on my feed.
Most of those tweets were from people insisting that Jacinthe was Black, period, while making fun of the Japanese fans. I was just sitting there thinking, “What is going on?” But I didn’t bother digging deeper into it at the time. Only now did I finally understand the whole controversy…
Anyway, the cosplayer locked her account after the attacks.