Japanese Cosplayer Accused of Racism After Mohammed Avdol Cosplay at Comiket

A Japanese cosplayer was accused of committing a racist act by some foreigners after he did a cosplay of the character Avdol from Part 3 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

The reason for the comments is that the cosplayer allegedly did blackface, which is the act of painting one’s face black. The cosplayer in question dressed up as Avdol, who is a Black character in JoJo. You can check out his photo as Avdol below. He went to the December Comiket wearing this cosplay, and the photo was taken at the event.

The tweet eventually reached foreigners, who began to criticize him. Below are just a few of the comments he received:

“I know you don’t want to do anything bad, but you painted your face black and that is a type of blackface and is extremely racist.”

“This cosplay would be much more amazing if you hadn’t painted your face. That is racist, with intent or not. If a character has darker skin than you, you CANNOT paint your skin.”

“If you’re going to cosplay a dark-skinned character, don’t paint your face to darken your skin color. It’s better to leave your skin natural. This is called blackface and it is racist.”

“Dude, tell me you didn’t paint yourself black to cosplay.”

And that was it… yeah, I only managed to find these 4 comments talking about this Japanese cosplayer not painting his skin color. Soon after, a flood of people appeared to defend the cosplayer, and his photos reached huge view counts and he became quite popular.

I don’t know if there were more comments and other people deleted them, but for now I believe that only 4 comments caused all this commotion.

Anyway, another tweet went very viral during this discussion, which is the tweet below:

“When I cosplayed Avdol from JoJo at Comiket by painting my skin black, I received a flood of complaints from overseas saying that ‘painting your skin black is racism against Black people, so stop it.’

Huh? Painting your skin black is discrimination against Black people?

People who have fun painting Japanese manga characters black, be careful, okay! That’s discrimination, you know.”

Some time ago there was a trend where several foreign illustrators took Japanese characters and remade them as Black. At the time there were many complaints, and even some Japanese people complained about it as well.

Some reactions:

“And there’s more, some of these artists said ‘I made him better,’ ‘let me fix this,’ or something similar when they did it. The one in the center is the worst, it was traced from the original source. The artist opens commissions to modify and turn manga characters Black.”

“No offense intended, but I just want to say there is a difference: blackface has a history of ridicule and oppression of Black people, while changing the ethnicity of a fictional character from white to Black is simply a response to the lack of representation of the Black population.”

“Honestly, I always understood blackface as something meant to mock and exaggerate. Painting yourself for a more accurate cosplay doesn’t fit that criteria. It’s less mockery and more a display of appreciation. But the complaints are ridiculous and make me roll my eyes.”

“It’s the same as someone pulling their eyelids to look Japanese. The reason people draw Japanese characters as Black is because anime is very popular in the Black community, but it’s very clear that there is little to no representation of them in media.”

“I think it’s because blackface was used to promote racism in the past, just like the word ‘nigga.’ People simply assume that by using it, you become the same as those who used it before.”

“Honestly, I think the Mohammed Avdol cosplay was blackface. If you understand the history of blackface, you know it was created to mock Black people. However, in this photo, he wasn’t mocking a Black person, but cosplaying one, which is different.”

“I’m also confused. It seems like the people complaining follow an obscure rule of doing one thing and rejecting another. An example would be painting Kasumi (Misty) as Black, but God forbid painting Rurina (Nessa) a lighter shade just because she’s in a very well-lit environment.”

You can read more reactions in the original post.