AUTHOR'S NOTE: This thread was written not long after the release of Pyra/Mythra, with the 5th character of Fighters Pass Vol. 2 not yet revealed & us being under the impression that Fighters Pass Vol. 2 would be the end of the road for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. In the 1-in-14,000,605 chance that a Black character is revealed between when this thread was posted & the actual reveal of said Black character, that still leaves the issue of the other topics discussed in this thread. One Black character getting on the roster doesn't magically erase the other problems. It's mainly a necessary step forward towards addressing said problems. Likewise, this thread is mainly discussing characters who are primarily & inarguably Black. Ambiguously dark-skinned characters like Elma & Steve (the latter of whom is already in Smash), while appreciated in the grand scheme of things, aren't relevant to this topic. Honestly, this was one of the hardest threads I've ever written (up there with the Black History Month thread). Not just because I have to tear into a series I otherwise love, but because I wanted to get across all of my grievances regarding Smash's anti-Blackness in one thread. This thread actually went through days of writing, editing, & additions because of me wanting to make sure I say everything that I want to say in the best way possible. But at the end of the day, I made this thread because I love Smash & want to see it (as well as Sakurai & the other parties involved) do better.
As many of you know already, I'm a huge fighting game fan who loves the Super Smash Bros. series to pieces (fighting game, party game, whatever you want to call Smash). I've been playing it since its inception on the Nintendo 64. And while I still stand by the opinion that Melee is the best entry in the series, Ultimate is very easily a close 2nd for me. From its massive roster to the plethora of stages to the great music, there's a lot to love about Smash Ultimate. But the game has three glaring problems that I've been very vocal about: Lack of Women, Lack of Melanin, & Terrible Netcode. Of the three, only the first one has been addressed in some capacity, though the success of their attempts to rectify the problem are up for debate. Min Min is great (more on her later), but Pyra/Mythra are basically the poster girls for objectification in modern Nintendo games (& that's coming from someone who enjoyed Xenoblade 2), with Sakurai & Co. not doing nearly enough to fix Pyra's design (Mythra's design is actually tolerable now). But that's a discussion for another time, one that I may circle back around to at a later date. But this topic has been boiling to the surface of my mind for the last month as I was writing the Celebration of Black Characters in Games thread last month, hence why I made the thread you're reading now. Before we start, let me preface my write-up with one thing: I do not think that Masahiro Sakurai is racist. As I've said in the past, there's a difference between ignorance & malice. However, said ignorance towards the need for diversity on the roster as well as his ignorance towards some of the racist stereotypes found in his games is legitimately concerning & bad in their own right (I'll elaborate on this later). I understand how important Smash Ultimate is, but that makes it all the more important to criticize the game on its mistakes so Sakurai, Bandai Namco, & Nintendo can do better going forward. We should be expecting more from the best-selling fighting game of all time, not less. With that being said, let's get to the meat & potatoes of this thread.
Before we address the main problem, I should certainly give credit where it's due. What Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing. Counting Pokémon Trainer & Pyra/Mythra each as one character, we're at 84 characters with two more on the way before Sakurai & Bandai Namco close up shop. However, the is also the palest fighting game roster in recent memory. Of the aforementioned 84 characters & counting, Smash Ultimate has literally zero characters who are primarily & inarguably Black. The game instead relies more on alternate costumes (more on that later) & an ambiguously dark-skinned character in Steve. In fact, Smash Ultimate is one of only three modern fighting games (alongside Dragon Ball FighterZ & Granblue Fantasy: Versus, more on them later) to not have a single Black character in its ranks. And considering that Smash Ultimate is now at 84 characters (as of when this thread was initially posted), it's even more disappointing that we've gone this far without a single primarily & inarguably Black character. We do have a character from a group based on various Middle Eastern cultures in the form of Ganondorf. But considering that he's the literal King of Evil (an offensive stereotype in & of itself), he may not be the best point of reference in terms of diversity in Smash. And even then, we're mainly talking about Black characters here. Anyway, I know there will be a ton of excuses & justifications as to why Smash continues to lack Black characters, & I'll get to many of those throughout this thread. But the fact of the matter is that even if there are few options, they do exist. And in a roster that's supposed to be a celebration of gaming, I find it hard to believe that there's not one Black character worth celebrating.
Yes, they do have dark-skinned alts, & those are most certainly appreciated (especially Villager's, who got theirs at the last minute......resulting in an unfortunate scenario that I'll talk about later). But they're nothing but a band-aid for a gushing wound within the context of Smash's current situation, basically table-scraps. To better describe what I mean, I'd like you to imagine a scenario where Injustice 2 didn't have any characters who were Black by default. In said scenario, the only ways we would get Black characters would be through John Stewart (an alternate costume for Hal Jordan), Black Lightning (an alternate costume for Raiden), & Vixen (an alternate costume for Cheetah). Are these alternate costumes with unique voice lines appreciated, oh most certainly. They even went as far as to give them unique dialogue interactions with the other characters. But are they substitutes for Black characters who are the main event with movesets centered around them, hell no. If anything, Black Lightning & Vixen should have been the defaults (John as well, but one could make an argument for Hal). Here, we're basically being given scraps & are expected to be happy with them. Well, they aren't enough, far from it. Alternate costumes are no substitute for characters who are primarily & inarguably Black. And if I may go on a tangent, Sakurai needs to stop beating around the bush & honor the wishes of Aya Kyogoku & Co. at Nintendo EPD Group 5 by bringing the Villager more in line with their modern proportions from New Leaf onwards. New Horizons has a slew of unique hair options that can & should be pulled from, especially afro-centric hair styles.
True, I do appreciate the fact that the last few DLC characters have all brought something new to the table. But not every character has to rock the boat mechanically. And even then, who's to say that a Black character can't be mechanically fun to play? And to be honest, this argument against Black characters is very much rooted in racism with the idea that a Black character is inherently an inferior option mechanically. Marina could bring new weapons from Splatoon 2 as well as flexing her engineering prowess with enemies from the single-player mode. Twintelle could have different ARMS from Min Min while also using her Star Aura to slow down opponents. Barret could carry over mechanics from FFVII Remake in the same way Cloud carried over the Limit Break from FFVII overall. Mr. Sandman could be a full-on realization of Giga Mac's old moveset in Smash 3DS/Wii U before they changed Final Smashes across the board (though modified to better fit Mr. Sandman's character). Nagoriyuki could carry over his blood gauge from Guilty Gear -Strive-, forcing you to not go too wild with the special moves you use. There's quite a bit of potential to be found in the Black characters we have already. Special thanks to Gestault for bringing this topic to my attention, as it was a huge oversight on my part compared to when I first uploaded this thread. But in short, if Sakurai could make Piranha Plant interesting, he can make a cool moveset for a black character. Speaking of Piranha Plant...
This is more of a question I see asked outside of Era, & one I expect to be on the minds of those lurking in this thread. And the answer is quite simple: Because there are still humanoid characters on the roster, a lot of them. The presence of non-humanoid characters doesn't negate the fact the need for diversity amongst the human characters. Representation matters, it always has & it always will. So to use these characters as an excuse to hand-wave the need for representation on the roster is nothing but a whataboutism meant to shift the conversation away from Smash's lack of melanin. And besides, if the roster can have fucking Piranha Plant (to be clear, I don't hate Piranha Plant), it can have a Black character. Before you say anything, yes, I know that Piranha Plant is the obligatory "WTF" pick. But that doesn't change my point, they can very easily justify a Black character if Sakurai & Co. can justify us getting a playable potted plant. A decent point of comparison on this front is Overwatch, a roster that's filled with Omnics (Zenyatta, Bastion, Orisa, & Echo), a gorilla (Winston), & a hamster piloting a ball-shaped mech (Hammond/Wrecking Ball). But all the same, that didn't negate the complaints about the game's lack of Black women. Even if this will eventually be addressed in Overwatch 2 with the introduction of Sojourn, there's no excuse for the Overwatch team at Blizzard waiting so long to include a Black woman. That's not even mentioning a number of missed opportunities for cool Black characters (Ex: the original concept for Mercy). But I'll stop myself there before I get too off-topic. The point is that these characters exist, yes. But they have nothing to do with the current issues of the roster, nor do they negate the problem. Don't listen to any arguments trying to use the likes of Ridley, Pikachu, & Piranha Plant as a means to dismiss Smash's melanin deficiency.
Well, yes & no. It is true that the industry is heavily skewed towards white men (or Japanese men in the case of the Japanese gaming industry, which does somewhat complicate the discussion regarding Japan-made games), with us only getting a prominent Black character every once-in-a-blue-moon (though said blue moon has been coming around a bit more in recent years). And because of this, light-skinned male protagonists tend to be the norm in the industry. Even regarding gender-choice characters, the male version of the character tends to be the default (another problem Smash has, one that I've talked about plenty). In the odd chance that we do get a female protagonist (which we have started to get more of in recent years, far more than we've gotten Black characters), they also tend to be pale. The anti-Blackness of the gaming industry at large is a whole other discussion that honestly deserves its own thread, one that I may get around to at some point. But for the sake of this thread, it can be summed up with the fact that the industry in general is heavily skewed towards white people (or, again, Japanese people in Japan-based companies like Nintendo & Capcom). Because of this, there aren't exactly a whole lot of options for Smash to pull from with regards to Black characters. With that being said...
I spent an entire month talking about Black characters in gaming (check it out if you haven't already), so I'm well aware of the options Nintendo & Sakurai have to work with. Granted, some of them may already be assist trophies (Rodin), Mii costumes (Barret), exist in the game in other capacities (Twintelle & Doc Louis), or just aren't front-runners for their respective franchises due to Smash's general focus on poster children (Marina & Shinobu), but there are options. But these are more imposed hurdles by Sakurai & Nintendo for focusing on poster children. And even then, Sakurai has been shown to be willing to forego the main character or main poster child when it suits the situation (see Min Min & Pyra/Mythra). The fact that he has he hasn't once considered "Hey, this roster is looking pretty pale. Maybe we should add a Black character." is a disappointment in & of itself. And no, we shouldn't have to wait for a magical Black main character from a new Nintendo EPD franchise for us to get a Black character (but by all means, Nintendo EPD, get on that). Even if we go by that logic, Twintelle already fills that qualification as per Yabuki's own "Everyone in ARMS is a protagonist" explainer & Lifeline is basically the poster child for Apex Legends on her own, with both of them being among the most popular characters in their franchises. Barret & Doc Louis are among the most prolific Black characters in gaming. Not to mention Marina, Shinobu, & Rodin being popular in their own rights. Hell, the fact that Sakurai didn't even consider the character who the ARMS team themselves considered one of the top 2 most popular characters in the franchise (but rather Ninjara, a character who's primarily popular in Japan, being #2 over there behind only Min Min) is disappointing in & of itself, with him putting his love of ninjas & edgelords (as well as general favorites in Japan specifically) over the need for more melanin in the roster (who happens to be #2 worldwide, albeit despite Twintelle's lack of popularity in Japan). To be clear, I have nothing against Min Min. She's the #1 most popular ARMS character, Yabuki's favorite, & Smash's first Chinese character (so I better not catch any of you being sinophobic in the replies). To be clear, Sakurai has cited that Nintendo picks the characters. However, going by his own accounts of Nintendo only really asking for characters from ARMS, Xenoblade 2, & Dragon Quest, it seems like Sakurai does have instances of being able to be more specific with Nintendo's general broad strokes. And in the case of ARMS, he had a golden opportunity to add a Black character that he didn't even remotely consider. Not to mention him throwing out potential Black character after potential Black character both before & after Twintelle. As someone who otherwise respects Sakurai as a director, it's saddening to see him continue to not take diversity seriously in the biggest fighting game ever. And it sucks that Min Min, a character who is a great pick by all accounts & easily the 2nd best choice they could have gone with for ARMS, came at the cost of our best chance at a Black character (a character who, as far as we know, Sakurai didn't remotely consider). In general, various other Japanese companies are slowly-but-surely starting to get the memo regarding the need for Black characters. From Capcom to Bandai Namco to SNK to Arc System Works to even (potentially, going by leaks for Project Athia) Square Enix, they're all starting to include more Black characters in their games. Hell, even Nintendo is making more Black characters in-house (hence me mentioning Twintelle & Marina, but there's also Abdonis in Ring Fit Adventure). Sure, you could say that the aforementioned companies can actually make original characters. But what's stopping Sakurai from pulling from these games? Sakurai may not have the responsibility to change all the bad parts of the industry with regards to its anti-Blackness, but he's still in a position where he can highlight the melanin that exists. In short, Smash's options for Black characters are growing, it's high time to capitalize on that fact.
As mentioned before, Dragon Ball FighterZ & Granblue Fantasy: Versus are the only other modern fighting games right now with zero primarily & inarguably Black characters in their rosters. In the case of GBVS, it has four ambiguously dark-skinned characters (as of when this thread was posted) via Vaseraga, Beelzebub, Zooey, & Eustace (with Beelzebub enforcing the "dark skin = evil" colorist stereotype, more on that in celes' colorism thread). These two games are actually solid points of comparison considering that both are based on pre-existing franchises with little-to-no original characters. Now I say "little" because DBFZ does have one original character, Android 21. This does present an opportunity for Dragon Ball FighterZ 2 to create a Black character of their own. It's no secret that Dragon Ball is kinda starved for melanin in general (there's Uub, but he seems to be Indian-coded based on my research on him). Though given that it's a classic shonen battle manga/anime, that's to be expected. This unfortunate flaw also extends to the lack of women, something that DBFZ has been criticized by plenty (myself included) about. As for Granblue, there's only really two primarily & inarguably Black characters I could find in the form of Spinnah & J.J. (both of whom should certainly get in GBVS). Everyone else I was able to look up regarding Granblue are mainly ambiguously dark-skinned characters (another issue with Japan-made games, though it's slowly gotten better in recent years.....albeit not fast enough). Better than DBFZ's general lack of options, mind you, but not by much. Still, even if Smash has fewer options than fighting games like Street Fighter, ARMS, & Tekken that do create original characters, it still has more to pull from than the aforementioned 2 other melanin-starved fighting games. That, in addition to the fact that Smash's roster is several times larger than either DBFZ or GBVS, only makes matters worse for Smash. And while they aren't super-recent, there's also BlazBlue: Central Fiction & Under Night In-Birth that don't have any primarily & inarguably Black characters (though, like GBVS, they do have ambiguously dark-skinned characters). At least with the former, Arc System Works seems to have learned their lesson for Guilty Gear -Strive- (or at least Team Red did, not so much Team Blue.....yet). But French Bread should be called out on their lack of Black characters & they need to do better going forward (since they can very easily make original Black characters). Though as with the others, Smash's roster is still larger & is the bigger fighting game overall, so it should still be held to a high standard. Special thanks to Raftina for bringing this to my attention. With that said, if you think the lack of Black characters in Smash was bad enough on its own...
This was a problem mentioned not long after the game's launch (& was actually pointed out here on Era), but there are a number of racist stereotypes found in some of the spirit battles. These are primarily the "Black people = monkeys" & "all Black people are thieves/criminals/etc." stereotypes, invoked by the Tac = Villager spirit battle as well as the Dee Jay = Diddy Kong & Mr. Sandman = Donkey Kong spirit battles. That said, there seem to be other explanations for the Villager & DK situations. For the former, Villager's last two colors didn't get dark skin until after E3 2018, which can be considered a relatively last-minute change in development given that the game came out December of that year. As for DK's spirit battle acting as Mr. Sandman, the two of them are late-game bosses for Punch-Out!! (Wii), with Mr. Sandman being the final boss & DK being the secret boss of the game. However, there's no such excuse for Diddy acting as Dee Jay. You could say it's because of their kicks (hence the use of Side B) & their love of music, but it's not like Diddy Kong displays the latter for any of his taunts. All the same, regardless of the justification, there's no excuse for these to be in the game over 2 years later. This also applies to Villager, as the "alt changed late in development" excuse only really applied for the circumstances that brought about that unfortunate scenario. If nothing is done to change it, said justification loses weight. And we know thanks to the Pyra/Mythra update that Sakurai & Bandai Namco are fully capable of changing base game spirit battles, so that isn't an excuse either. These simply shouldn't be in the game at all (the racist stereotypes, the actual spirits can stay with new representatives for their battles), especially considering the roster's continued lack of melanin. And it's not like this is the first time a Sakurai-made game that features racist stereotypes, as the original design of the Wham Bam Rock boss fight in Kirby Super Star invoked the infamous blackface racist stereotype. Of course, this was eventually fixed in Kirby Super Star Ultra, but it happened after Sakurai already left HAL. So it's a shame that Sakurai didn't learn from his past mistakes regarding such harmful stereotypes.
Like I said earlier, I don't think Masahiro Sakurai is racist. I do however believe that there's another more fitting word to describe him: complicit. Sakurai is complicit about maintaining his view of the gaming industry, not thinking for a moment that there should be more diversity in his works. This also extends to educating himself on harmful racist stereotypes, as this has been something he's struggled with in a few of his works. Even with the Mr. Game & Watch forward smash that invoked a racist Indigenous stereotype (which was eventually fixed), you would think that he would have looked up the GBA remake of the mini game that said reference came from to see that Nintendo changed it for the very reason that eventually led to the change happening in Smash. There's nothing wrong with celebrating the gaming industry, but that also means being able to point out the flaws of said industry & push for the powers that be to do better. And that's the issue with Sakurai: As far as we know, he is content with the industry as it is now, & said gaming landscape is still very much flawed. He sees Smash as a celebration of the industry, & that's very much true. But someone else on Era described it best: Sakurai is very much behind the times in terms of progressive points like diversity & respectful representation for women & people of color. Even if the gaming industry at large is very much skewed against Black people, Sakurai is in a position where he could at least throw in a few Black characters to combat this, to show what the gaming industry can be. But he doesn't, sticking with the status quo until a magical leading Black character in a Nintendo EPD franchise comes along. And that's what makes Sakurai complicit. My hope is that someone in charge (be it Sakurai himself or one of the decision-makers at Nintendo) realizes the flaws of Smash's roster & begins to make strides towards correcting this. And while correcting the aforementioned racist spirits is a necessary step towards this, another one that must be taken is to start including Black characters on the roster. I don't have much hope for this happening in Ultimate at this point, but I hope we can make enough noise about this topic to make sure that a primarily & inarguably Black character is included in the next Smash game after Ultimate. So if you're still wondering "Why is Smash Ultimate anti-Black?", the gaming industry being anti-Black does play a major role in it. But it's also the fact that Sakurai & the other decision-makers behind Smash's roster continue to uphold this status quo, not seeing any problem with said anti-Blackness. Well, it is a problem, one that has to be fixed as soon as possible. We shouldn't have to wait for the younger blood at Nintendo to finally bring about said change (though they are making strides on that front between Splatoon/Animal Crossing & Mario Kart/ARMS teams). The rest of Nintendo, as well as Sakurai, need to do the same.
As many of you know already, I'm a huge fighting game fan who loves the Super Smash Bros. series to pieces (fighting game, party game, whatever you want to call Smash). I've been playing it since its inception on the Nintendo 64. And while I still stand by the opinion that Melee is the best entry in the series, Ultimate is very easily a close 2nd for me. From its massive roster to the plethora of stages to the great music, there's a lot to love about Smash Ultimate. But the game has three glaring problems that I've been very vocal about: Lack of Women, Lack of Melanin, & Terrible Netcode. Of the three, only the first one has been addressed in some capacity, though the success of their attempts to rectify the problem are up for debate. Min Min is great (more on her later), but Pyra/Mythra are basically the poster girls for objectification in modern Nintendo games (& that's coming from someone who enjoyed Xenoblade 2), with Sakurai & Co. not doing nearly enough to fix Pyra's design (Mythra's design is actually tolerable now). But that's a discussion for another time, one that I may circle back around to at a later date. But this topic has been boiling to the surface of my mind for the last month as I was writing the Celebration of Black Characters in Games thread last month, hence why I made the thread you're reading now. Before we start, let me preface my write-up with one thing: I do not think that Masahiro Sakurai is racist. As I've said in the past, there's a difference between ignorance & malice. However, said ignorance towards the need for diversity on the roster as well as his ignorance towards some of the racist stereotypes found in his games is legitimately concerning & bad in their own right (I'll elaborate on this later). I understand how important Smash Ultimate is, but that makes it all the more important to criticize the game on its mistakes so Sakurai, Bandai Namco, & Nintendo can do better going forward. We should be expecting more from the best-selling fighting game of all time, not less. With that being said, let's get to the meat & potatoes of this thread.
THE BIGGEST (& PALEST) FIGHTING GAME ROSTER
Before we address the main problem, I should certainly give credit where it's due. What Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing. Counting Pokémon Trainer & Pyra/Mythra each as one character, we're at 84 characters with two more on the way before Sakurai & Bandai Namco close up shop. However, the is also the palest fighting game roster in recent memory. Of the aforementioned 84 characters & counting, Smash Ultimate has literally zero characters who are primarily & inarguably Black. The game instead relies more on alternate costumes (more on that later) & an ambiguously dark-skinned character in Steve. In fact, Smash Ultimate is one of only three modern fighting games (alongside Dragon Ball FighterZ & Granblue Fantasy: Versus, more on them later) to not have a single Black character in its ranks. And considering that Smash Ultimate is now at 84 characters (as of when this thread was initially posted), it's even more disappointing that we've gone this far without a single primarily & inarguably Black character. We do have a character from a group based on various Middle Eastern cultures in the form of Ganondorf. But considering that he's the literal King of Evil (an offensive stereotype in & of itself), he may not be the best point of reference in terms of diversity in Smash. And even then, we're mainly talking about Black characters here. Anyway, I know there will be a ton of excuses & justifications as to why Smash continues to lack Black characters, & I'll get to many of those throughout this thread. But the fact of the matter is that even if there are few options, they do exist. And in a roster that's supposed to be a celebration of gaming, I find it hard to believe that there's not one Black character worth celebrating.
BUT THERE ARE DARK-SKINNED ALTERNATE COSTUMES FOR INKLING & VILLAGER
Yes, they do have dark-skinned alts, & those are most certainly appreciated (especially Villager's, who got theirs at the last minute......resulting in an unfortunate scenario that I'll talk about later). But they're nothing but a band-aid for a gushing wound within the context of Smash's current situation, basically table-scraps. To better describe what I mean, I'd like you to imagine a scenario where Injustice 2 didn't have any characters who were Black by default. In said scenario, the only ways we would get Black characters would be through John Stewart (an alternate costume for Hal Jordan), Black Lightning (an alternate costume for Raiden), & Vixen (an alternate costume for Cheetah). Are these alternate costumes with unique voice lines appreciated, oh most certainly. They even went as far as to give them unique dialogue interactions with the other characters. But are they substitutes for Black characters who are the main event with movesets centered around them, hell no. If anything, Black Lightning & Vixen should have been the defaults (John as well, but one could make an argument for Hal). Here, we're basically being given scraps & are expected to be happy with them. Well, they aren't enough, far from it. Alternate costumes are no substitute for characters who are primarily & inarguably Black. And if I may go on a tangent, Sakurai needs to stop beating around the bush & honor the wishes of Aya Kyogoku & Co. at Nintendo EPD Group 5 by bringing the Villager more in line with their modern proportions from New Leaf onwards. New Horizons has a slew of unique hair options that can & should be pulled from, especially afro-centric hair styles.
SHOULDN'T UNIQUE GAMEPLAY BE MORE IMPORTANT?
True, I do appreciate the fact that the last few DLC characters have all brought something new to the table. But not every character has to rock the boat mechanically. And even then, who's to say that a Black character can't be mechanically fun to play? And to be honest, this argument against Black characters is very much rooted in racism with the idea that a Black character is inherently an inferior option mechanically. Marina could bring new weapons from Splatoon 2 as well as flexing her engineering prowess with enemies from the single-player mode. Twintelle could have different ARMS from Min Min while also using her Star Aura to slow down opponents. Barret could carry over mechanics from FFVII Remake in the same way Cloud carried over the Limit Break from FFVII overall. Mr. Sandman could be a full-on realization of Giga Mac's old moveset in Smash 3DS/Wii U before they changed Final Smashes across the board (though modified to better fit Mr. Sandman's character). Nagoriyuki could carry over his blood gauge from Guilty Gear -Strive-, forcing you to not go too wild with the special moves you use. There's quite a bit of potential to be found in the Black characters we have already. Special thanks to Gestault for bringing this topic to my attention, as it was a huge oversight on my part compared to when I first uploaded this thread. But in short, if Sakurai could make Piranha Plant interesting, he can make a cool moveset for a black character. Speaking of Piranha Plant...
BUT SMASH IS A ROSTER FILLED WITH ANIMALS, ROBOTS, ALIENS, & OTHER UNIQUE CREATURES. WHY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE LACK OF BLACK CHARACTERS?
This is more of a question I see asked outside of Era, & one I expect to be on the minds of those lurking in this thread. And the answer is quite simple: Because there are still humanoid characters on the roster, a lot of them. The presence of non-humanoid characters doesn't negate the fact the need for diversity amongst the human characters. Representation matters, it always has & it always will. So to use these characters as an excuse to hand-wave the need for representation on the roster is nothing but a whataboutism meant to shift the conversation away from Smash's lack of melanin. And besides, if the roster can have fucking Piranha Plant (to be clear, I don't hate Piranha Plant), it can have a Black character. Before you say anything, yes, I know that Piranha Plant is the obligatory "WTF" pick. But that doesn't change my point, they can very easily justify a Black character if Sakurai & Co. can justify us getting a playable potted plant. A decent point of comparison on this front is Overwatch, a roster that's filled with Omnics (Zenyatta, Bastion, Orisa, & Echo), a gorilla (Winston), & a hamster piloting a ball-shaped mech (Hammond/Wrecking Ball). But all the same, that didn't negate the complaints about the game's lack of Black women. Even if this will eventually be addressed in Overwatch 2 with the introduction of Sojourn, there's no excuse for the Overwatch team at Blizzard waiting so long to include a Black woman. That's not even mentioning a number of missed opportunities for cool Black characters (Ex: the original concept for Mercy). But I'll stop myself there before I get too off-topic. The point is that these characters exist, yes. But they have nothing to do with the current issues of the roster, nor do they negate the problem. Don't listen to any arguments trying to use the likes of Ridley, Pikachu, & Piranha Plant as a means to dismiss Smash's melanin deficiency.
ISN'T SMASH'S LACK OF MELANIN THE INDUSTRY'S FAULT?
Well, yes & no. It is true that the industry is heavily skewed towards white men (or Japanese men in the case of the Japanese gaming industry, which does somewhat complicate the discussion regarding Japan-made games), with us only getting a prominent Black character every once-in-a-blue-moon (though said blue moon has been coming around a bit more in recent years). And because of this, light-skinned male protagonists tend to be the norm in the industry. Even regarding gender-choice characters, the male version of the character tends to be the default (another problem Smash has, one that I've talked about plenty). In the odd chance that we do get a female protagonist (which we have started to get more of in recent years, far more than we've gotten Black characters), they also tend to be pale. The anti-Blackness of the gaming industry at large is a whole other discussion that honestly deserves its own thread, one that I may get around to at some point. But for the sake of this thread, it can be summed up with the fact that the industry in general is heavily skewed towards white people (or, again, Japanese people in Japan-based companies like Nintendo & Capcom). Because of this, there aren't exactly a whole lot of options for Smash to pull from with regards to Black characters. With that being said...
OPTIONS EXIST FOR POTENTIAL BLACK CHARACTERS
I spent an entire month talking about Black characters in gaming (check it out if you haven't already), so I'm well aware of the options Nintendo & Sakurai have to work with. Granted, some of them may already be assist trophies (Rodin), Mii costumes (Barret), exist in the game in other capacities (Twintelle & Doc Louis), or just aren't front-runners for their respective franchises due to Smash's general focus on poster children (Marina & Shinobu), but there are options. But these are more imposed hurdles by Sakurai & Nintendo for focusing on poster children. And even then, Sakurai has been shown to be willing to forego the main character or main poster child when it suits the situation (see Min Min & Pyra/Mythra). The fact that he has he hasn't once considered "Hey, this roster is looking pretty pale. Maybe we should add a Black character." is a disappointment in & of itself. And no, we shouldn't have to wait for a magical Black main character from a new Nintendo EPD franchise for us to get a Black character (but by all means, Nintendo EPD, get on that). Even if we go by that logic, Twintelle already fills that qualification as per Yabuki's own "Everyone in ARMS is a protagonist" explainer & Lifeline is basically the poster child for Apex Legends on her own, with both of them being among the most popular characters in their franchises. Barret & Doc Louis are among the most prolific Black characters in gaming. Not to mention Marina, Shinobu, & Rodin being popular in their own rights. Hell, the fact that Sakurai didn't even consider the character who the ARMS team themselves considered one of the top 2 most popular characters in the franchise (but rather Ninjara, a character who's primarily popular in Japan, being #2 over there behind only Min Min) is disappointing in & of itself, with him putting his love of ninjas & edgelords (as well as general favorites in Japan specifically) over the need for more melanin in the roster (who happens to be #2 worldwide, albeit despite Twintelle's lack of popularity in Japan). To be clear, I have nothing against Min Min. She's the #1 most popular ARMS character, Yabuki's favorite, & Smash's first Chinese character (so I better not catch any of you being sinophobic in the replies). To be clear, Sakurai has cited that Nintendo picks the characters. However, going by his own accounts of Nintendo only really asking for characters from ARMS, Xenoblade 2, & Dragon Quest, it seems like Sakurai does have instances of being able to be more specific with Nintendo's general broad strokes. And in the case of ARMS, he had a golden opportunity to add a Black character that he didn't even remotely consider. Not to mention him throwing out potential Black character after potential Black character both before & after Twintelle. As someone who otherwise respects Sakurai as a director, it's saddening to see him continue to not take diversity seriously in the biggest fighting game ever. And it sucks that Min Min, a character who is a great pick by all accounts & easily the 2nd best choice they could have gone with for ARMS, came at the cost of our best chance at a Black character (a character who, as far as we know, Sakurai didn't remotely consider). In general, various other Japanese companies are slowly-but-surely starting to get the memo regarding the need for Black characters. From Capcom to Bandai Namco to SNK to Arc System Works to even (potentially, going by leaks for Project Athia) Square Enix, they're all starting to include more Black characters in their games. Hell, even Nintendo is making more Black characters in-house (hence me mentioning Twintelle & Marina, but there's also Abdonis in Ring Fit Adventure). Sure, you could say that the aforementioned companies can actually make original characters. But what's stopping Sakurai from pulling from these games? Sakurai may not have the responsibility to change all the bad parts of the industry with regards to its anti-Blackness, but he's still in a position where he can highlight the melanin that exists. In short, Smash's options for Black characters are growing, it's high time to capitalize on that fact.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER RECENT MELANIN-DEFICIENT FIGHTING GAME ROSTERS?
As mentioned before, Dragon Ball FighterZ & Granblue Fantasy: Versus are the only other modern fighting games right now with zero primarily & inarguably Black characters in their rosters. In the case of GBVS, it has four ambiguously dark-skinned characters (as of when this thread was posted) via Vaseraga, Beelzebub, Zooey, & Eustace (with Beelzebub enforcing the "dark skin = evil" colorist stereotype, more on that in celes' colorism thread). These two games are actually solid points of comparison considering that both are based on pre-existing franchises with little-to-no original characters. Now I say "little" because DBFZ does have one original character, Android 21. This does present an opportunity for Dragon Ball FighterZ 2 to create a Black character of their own. It's no secret that Dragon Ball is kinda starved for melanin in general (there's Uub, but he seems to be Indian-coded based on my research on him). Though given that it's a classic shonen battle manga/anime, that's to be expected. This unfortunate flaw also extends to the lack of women, something that DBFZ has been criticized by plenty (myself included) about. As for Granblue, there's only really two primarily & inarguably Black characters I could find in the form of Spinnah & J.J. (both of whom should certainly get in GBVS). Everyone else I was able to look up regarding Granblue are mainly ambiguously dark-skinned characters (another issue with Japan-made games, though it's slowly gotten better in recent years.....albeit not fast enough). Better than DBFZ's general lack of options, mind you, but not by much. Still, even if Smash has fewer options than fighting games like Street Fighter, ARMS, & Tekken that do create original characters, it still has more to pull from than the aforementioned 2 other melanin-starved fighting games. That, in addition to the fact that Smash's roster is several times larger than either DBFZ or GBVS, only makes matters worse for Smash. And while they aren't super-recent, there's also BlazBlue: Central Fiction & Under Night In-Birth that don't have any primarily & inarguably Black characters (though, like GBVS, they do have ambiguously dark-skinned characters). At least with the former, Arc System Works seems to have learned their lesson for Guilty Gear -Strive- (or at least Team Red did, not so much Team Blue.....yet). But French Bread should be called out on their lack of Black characters & they need to do better going forward (since they can very easily make original Black characters). Though as with the others, Smash's roster is still larger & is the bigger fighting game overall, so it should still be held to a high standard. Special thanks to Raftina for bringing this to my attention. With that said, if you think the lack of Black characters in Smash was bad enough on its own...
LET'S NOT FORGET THE RACIST STEREOTYPES AMONGST THE SPIRITS
This was a problem mentioned not long after the game's launch (& was actually pointed out here on Era), but there are a number of racist stereotypes found in some of the spirit battles. These are primarily the "Black people = monkeys" & "all Black people are thieves/criminals/etc." stereotypes, invoked by the Tac = Villager spirit battle as well as the Dee Jay = Diddy Kong & Mr. Sandman = Donkey Kong spirit battles. That said, there seem to be other explanations for the Villager & DK situations. For the former, Villager's last two colors didn't get dark skin until after E3 2018, which can be considered a relatively last-minute change in development given that the game came out December of that year. As for DK's spirit battle acting as Mr. Sandman, the two of them are late-game bosses for Punch-Out!! (Wii), with Mr. Sandman being the final boss & DK being the secret boss of the game. However, there's no such excuse for Diddy acting as Dee Jay. You could say it's because of their kicks (hence the use of Side B) & their love of music, but it's not like Diddy Kong displays the latter for any of his taunts. All the same, regardless of the justification, there's no excuse for these to be in the game over 2 years later. This also applies to Villager, as the "alt changed late in development" excuse only really applied for the circumstances that brought about that unfortunate scenario. If nothing is done to change it, said justification loses weight. And we know thanks to the Pyra/Mythra update that Sakurai & Bandai Namco are fully capable of changing base game spirit battles, so that isn't an excuse either. These simply shouldn't be in the game at all (the racist stereotypes, the actual spirits can stay with new representatives for their battles), especially considering the roster's continued lack of melanin. And it's not like this is the first time a Sakurai-made game that features racist stereotypes, as the original design of the Wham Bam Rock boss fight in Kirby Super Star invoked the infamous blackface racist stereotype. Of course, this was eventually fixed in Kirby Super Star Ultra, but it happened after Sakurai already left HAL. So it's a shame that Sakurai didn't learn from his past mistakes regarding such harmful stereotypes.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS SAY ABOUT MASAHIRO SAKURAI?
Like I said earlier, I don't think Masahiro Sakurai is racist. I do however believe that there's another more fitting word to describe him: complicit. Sakurai is complicit about maintaining his view of the gaming industry, not thinking for a moment that there should be more diversity in his works. This also extends to educating himself on harmful racist stereotypes, as this has been something he's struggled with in a few of his works. Even with the Mr. Game & Watch forward smash that invoked a racist Indigenous stereotype (which was eventually fixed), you would think that he would have looked up the GBA remake of the mini game that said reference came from to see that Nintendo changed it for the very reason that eventually led to the change happening in Smash. There's nothing wrong with celebrating the gaming industry, but that also means being able to point out the flaws of said industry & push for the powers that be to do better. And that's the issue with Sakurai: As far as we know, he is content with the industry as it is now, & said gaming landscape is still very much flawed. He sees Smash as a celebration of the industry, & that's very much true. But someone else on Era described it best: Sakurai is very much behind the times in terms of progressive points like diversity & respectful representation for women & people of color. Even if the gaming industry at large is very much skewed against Black people, Sakurai is in a position where he could at least throw in a few Black characters to combat this, to show what the gaming industry can be. But he doesn't, sticking with the status quo until a magical leading Black character in a Nintendo EPD franchise comes along. And that's what makes Sakurai complicit. My hope is that someone in charge (be it Sakurai himself or one of the decision-makers at Nintendo) realizes the flaws of Smash's roster & begins to make strides towards correcting this. And while correcting the aforementioned racist spirits is a necessary step towards this, another one that must be taken is to start including Black characters on the roster. I don't have much hope for this happening in Ultimate at this point, but I hope we can make enough noise about this topic to make sure that a primarily & inarguably Black character is included in the next Smash game after Ultimate. So if you're still wondering "Why is Smash Ultimate anti-Black?", the gaming industry being anti-Black does play a major role in it. But it's also the fact that Sakurai & the other decision-makers behind Smash's roster continue to uphold this status quo, not seeing any problem with said anti-Blackness. Well, it is a problem, one that has to be fixed as soon as possible. We shouldn't have to wait for the younger blood at Nintendo to finally bring about said change (though they are making strides on that front between Splatoon/Animal Crossing & Mario Kart/ARMS teams). The rest of Nintendo, as well as Sakurai, need to do the same.
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