Pop Team Epic mangaka Bkub Okawa has been driven to apologize after an outraged group of Western social media users harassed him over their belief that a piece of fan art he had drawn the character of Marina from Nintendo’s Splatoon “too white” compared to her official depiction.
Known by her full name of Marina Ida (or Iida Marine in Japan), the Octoling in question serves one of the ‘hosts’ of Nintendo’s Splatoon 2, appearing alongside her partner Pearl – both of whom together make-up the fictional in-universe pop music act ‘Off the Hook‘ – to both introduce each of the game’s multiplayer matches as well as provide overall commentary regarding the goings on around the game’s setting of Inkopolis (and, in the Octo Expansion and Side Order DLC packs for Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3, respectively, as one of the player’s main allies).
As readers may have already been able to surmise, thanks to her darker skin tone (which rather than being based on a specific ‘race’ was instead inspired by the Japanese ‘Gyaru’ fashion trend, which itself involves the excessive bronzing of one’s skin through the use of make-up), many Western fans – or more accurately activists – have taken to believing that Marina is a racially black character.
These activist mobs, seeking to crack down on artists that produce art whose skin color differs slightly from the darkest interpretation of a character’s appearance possible, usually originate from Western social media users and have infected numerous fandoms, including Genshin Impact, Pokémon, Steven Universe, and even Sonic the Hedgehog.
And it was under the influence of their own headcanons that many of them recently decided to self-appoint themselves as the ‘Nintendo Art Police’ and set their sights on Okawa.
On October 10th, the popular mangaka shared an original illustration depicting Marina simply standing in a cute standing pose while using one of her hands to slightly hold up one of her ‘hair tentacles’.
And as soon as he did, he would find himself absolutely inundated with harassment over the fact that, in his critics’ opinion, he did not draw Marina acceptably dark enough.
According to numerous Japanese Twitter users, one of, if not the first individuals to kick off this storm was @nutmegknight – who at the time of this article’s writing has since locked their account – who shared a comparison between Okawa’s art and the darkest part of Marina’s official Splatoon 3 render and tweeted “??? why did you lighten her skin colour? The eye dropper tool exists.”
“this is genuinely so pathetic lol,” @ENGRAVE_LIVES stated. “You have so much art to color pick/reference from and you still do this sh*t? embarrassing.”
“Why is she white,” said @Blu3b3rr1___. “This shows that people dont know how to use the eyedropper tool OR just uses it but makes her skin lighter.”
“‘Shes just an octopus” ok idgaf if u don’t think she’s black,” @tmoneydamaster3 declared. “That’s still not her damn skin color. colorpicking is so fucking easy. If you cant get skin colors right in 2024 ur a sh*t artist”
“Why is she fifteen shades TOO light?,” @wonyunis proclaimed. “Y’all have this annoying, irritating, and toxic habit of lightening dark skin characters for your art and I’ve had it. You’ve Edward Cullened my baby!”
Several ‘anti-racist’ activists even went so far as to use Okawa’s fan art as an excuse to make condescending generalizations about Japan, its people, and its culture.
“JP artists draw poc normally challenge IMPOSSIBLE,” yelloed @such_mag.
“Japanese people stop whitewashing darkskinned characters challenge,” @nikguh__tweeted.
“I hate how normalized whitewashing is in japanese culture,” @osasamosas stated.
@thebugular went so far as to post a hand-drawn parody of the Steven Universe-inspired ‘We’re gonna have to kill this guy, Steven‘ meme, as originally created by webcomic artist Haus of Decline, wherein both Pearl and Marina herself are shown thinking this thought toward Okawa.
As a result of this harassment, Okawa eventually apologized for their ‘transgression’ of not using the appropriate color palette to illustrate Marina.
“I’ve received criticism that the art is racist because it depicts [Marina] with a lighter skin than the original work,” they stated, as machine translated via DeepL. “If [Marina] were human, I too believe that she would be black. Due to my poor coloring, it was not accurate, sorry.”
