A while back, a big controversy was going on about a black girl cosplaying as Nezuko. You have one side saying that she couldn’t cosplay Nezuko because Nezuko wasn’t black, while the other side was saying that it was okay for her to cosplay Nezuko because Nezuko is just an anime character. So what side of the argument do I stand on? Funny thing is, I have my own thoughts on this situation, and black people cosplaying in general.

So yeah, Nezuko is definitely not black, which alot of anime characters aren’t. But let's be honest, a lot of anime characters aren’t white either, they just have white skin. This causes a problem for a lot of black anime fans who want to cosplay their favorite anime characters. A lot of time when black people try to cosplay an anime character down to the letter, it usually looks like a weird disconnect. The pieces sometimes don’t look good together, and make the cosplay look jarring.

But I have a solution. You know about gender bending? Where people will change a male character female and vice versa. Usually giving them the characteristic of the opposite sex from their orginal. Well how about racebending cosplay. You get a character with white skin and white features like blue eyes and straight hair, and then black them up, giving them maybe brown eyes and curly hair. I saw a few cosplayers do this, and I think it really looks cooler than copying the character in their entirety. 

I feel like this looks cooler, and away to avoid another Nezuko situation. But the thing is, if black people believe that it’s okay to cosplay white characters, they sadly have to be okay with white people cosplaying black characters. I know that there’s less black characters in anime so you feel like they shouldn’t need to cosplay a black character when they already have so many white characters to cosplay. But what if a white guy just really loves Dutch from Black Lagoon and wants to cosplay him. We got to support him in wanting to represent our black brother.

I'm loving the racebend Dutch cosplay.

Do you think people went too far criticizing the Nezuko cosplayer? What do you think about the whole racebending idea? Should white people be allowed to cosplay black characters? Tell us in the comments.