Racism in Epithet Erased

Hey, this is something that needs to be addressed. While we would have liked to just send an ask to Jello’s tumblr blog to discuss this, the askbox is closed and we would like to keep ourselves anonymous so that we can avoid any hate that this may get. To preface this: we are going to be talking about the racism in both Epithet Erased and Anime Campaign. Any EE spoilers will be kept under the read more. Before anyone jumps the gun: we are NOT telling anyone to stop watching/liking/making fan content for Epithet Erased. We ourselves are big fans of the series! Our goal is to bring awareness to these issues and hopefully nip any further instances in the bud. Being aware is better than being ignorant. Also, these issues were brought up by a person of color, I (a white person) am writing this out as a proxy. Our first order of business will be the villains in EE. Every villain that needs to be defeated but ONE in the series is a character of color.  Mera being southeast asian, Zora being latina/native, Indus unspecified but clearly brown and Arnold being black. The only white villain is Bugsy. This is not to say villains cannot be poc, but when all protagonists but one are White, it becomes an issue. Speaking of, the one protagonist of EE who is not white falls into the harmful angry black lady stereotype. Now while Molly in the show is a very nice person, Jello himself implied that if Giovanni had not intervened she would have become a rage-filled destructive person. To make her not act like that she needed a White Person (Giovanni) to “save” her. Which falls into the white savior trope. This is not to say Molly herself is a bad character, but is implied that unless someone who was white stepped into her life, she would’ve turned out ‘worse’. The last thing we will add on is that systemic racism was used as a ‘worldbuilding’ tool for the Ocean Country. Which is in bad taste and is being mentioned so those who are unaware, now are aware.

This is where it branches into AC territory. 

First of all: we understand AC is a few years old and Jello doesn’t condone the distribution of it. However this needs to be talked about because tropes that were harmful and in AC involving race have also occurred in epithet erased, like we said above. There is a big problem in Anime Campaign where the villains are poc and violent, especially those within Bliss Ocean. Zora and Moot are portrayed as wild loose cannons that cannot be reigned in or controlled, while the other (white) members, Charles and Naven, are considerably nicer and more polite in comparison. This is especially the case with Bliss Ocean's leader Naven, who is portrayed as a good guy who doesn't want to fight and is only doing so because he was forced to, clearly reluctant and trying to reason with the party and talk them down.

(Charles)

(Moot)

(Zora)

(Naven)

As Moot is Indus’ sibling, we can assume that she will be a woman of color. Now, Bliss Ocean is a terrorist organization. Half of its officers are people of color. The only ‘nice’ officer is white. In the political climate the world is in right now, and the stereotype that terrorists are all poc, it is in extremely poor taste to continue this. It pushes a very harmful stereotype. Moving on to more instances; Anime Campaign was full of racist caricatures and stereotypes, especially of asian and black people: yellow backgrounds, buck teeth and yellow skin, the title 'anime' for all of them.

Arnold’s icon also falls into minstrel show stereotypes.

Echo, one of the only black characters having to "constantly fight her primal wolf instincts" and considered "undignified and rabid," was constantly howling, and was, raised in the wild and by wolves.

And killing another one of the only black characters within the tabletop, Crackerjack, off for a simple joke.

Banzai Baron is poc-coded with locs as well and is another such case of being a villain, as he was the one that killed Zora's parents and in general was a terrible man.

That is all we have to discuss for now, and a reminder that this is NOT some callout post or trying to say cancel Jello/Epithet Erased ect. It is to show the fans (many of whom are white) the issues and bring awareness to them, so that they are not repeated in the future. It’s very easy to be ignorant on these topics- so it’s even more important to know and be aware that this is something harmful. To Jello, if you are reading this: This isn’t digging up dirt by any means, 2016 is not that long ago and unlearning things that are not outright racist is not done in a few years. This is not an attack on you. We simply put this out there so that you are aware of the issues and can learn from the past. Thank you all for reading.