March 19, 2019 • 62 mins
Welcome to another incredible edition of Nerdificent! This week Dani and Ify are joined by Onyi and Obi Udeh of Kolanut Productions to discuss the history and progression of Black representation in comics, animation, and culture as a whole. The two brothers share the successes and failures of some of the most successful works featuring Black characters as a lens to guide their own work with Kolanut Productions. Links to their excellent work are right below in the footnotes but sit back and enjoy another episode of Nerdificent!
FOOTNOTES:
WebToons: 'Red Origins'
YouTube: Kisi the Electron Girl Origin Story
The Nerds of Color: Black Masculinity as Performed in Japanese Visual Media
LATimes: American, Japanese pop culture blend in 'Afro Samurai'
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, how's it going. You are listening to another episode
of nerdive said, I'm your host if you wide away,
and sitting night next to me as always is Danny Fernandez. Yes. Yes,
and today we're talking about afro anime because you know
what it is, what is about, and you know the
things and inspirations and I'm I'm actually really excited about this.
(00:29):
Uh you know, what do you know about afro anime, David?
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind would
be Boondocks. Um and our friend Lashawn Thomas worked on that.
Oh yeah he sure did. Yeah he directed, and uh
it was really interesting. We had him on an episode
of krilling It our Old our old anime podcast, which
(00:50):
was funny because I didn't know that he wasn't a
Dragon ball Z fan. Do you remember that? If so,
we I asked him to come on and right before
we were or it was a live show on hyper RPG,
and he was like, oh, by the way, um, I
don't really like Dragon ball Z. Yeah. I was like,
what why did you agree to be on our show?
(01:10):
Is it? What? What do you what did you think
we're going to talk about? Anyways? My favorite thing about
that though, was that he brought up how so many
we people argue about what's anime what's not anime? And
he was like, no one has this argument in Japan
where he works. He works in Japan, um and he
was like, nobody has this argument there. We're just creating
everybody's creators and we're just trying to create and nobody
(01:33):
is arguing about what's considered anime. I think that's a
really Western thing that that people put on. So I
am also interested in this conversation. Yeah, well, you know,
before I introduced them, uh these are the day brothers
on you and o b U day uh I know
on you. We go back back when I started at BuzzFeed.
I found out he was Nigerian. That was it. That
(01:55):
was it. I was like, bat I. I am like,
it's so funny every time someone asked me about a
Nigerian in a comedy and it's like, yeah, I know them.
If I know you're on Nigerian, I'm gonna connect with you.
I'm trying to create a mafia here, you know, and
so so me. You know, we clicked up and you know,
uh I was wearing a DBZ shirt one day and
then he was like yo, and then we just got
(02:15):
into this whole conversation and he told me about his
production company, calling Up Productions and Afro Anime and what
he was creating. And I was like, you know, we
gotta get you on ther defficent. And so that was
pretty much the story and I kind of I'll let
him take it from here. So yeah, without further Ado,
Obie and Ony day, how you doing? What's hey, how
(02:36):
y'all feeling? Man, it's been a day? But I mean
the energy and here is dope, you know, like I
like what I'm feeling right now. Yeah, it's a nice
I mean, I guess you will just jump right into it.
For anybody who's never heard of it or don't know
what what we're talking about. What is afro anime? Well, um,
(02:57):
it's really based on like the first part of the
word afro. So like when people hear afro enemy, you
don't want to think about a throw like a hair.
Afro is more about that inspired by Africa, taking it
from the African lens. So if you're talking about fighting
with weapons, you're gonna look at African weapons. If you're
talking about martial arts, you're not gonna see uh jiu jitsu.
(03:18):
You're gonna see like lamb or um some sent other
Senegal wrestling techniques. You're gonna see African techniques. And that's
the Afro so basically African inspired in terms of lore techniques,
magic juju in an anime kind of medium, which is
like you know, when someone's angry, you have that not
(03:39):
on the head, you know, powering up some of those things.
It's a you know, we in creating the name, it
was kind of like it's very much African and die sport,
but we we also are going to give you know,
shouts out to the people that kind of you know
brought us to the genre. Like you know, So it
(04:00):
wasn't like we're going to create a name that completely
like disregards the contribution of those who did amazing work
and anime that got us even thinking about creating stories
in this media. Um, we're going to create a name
that okay, shows show some love, but then very much
lets you know, this is Afro anime. This is uh,
we're gonna tell stories through the African lens. Right. So
(04:22):
I used to always say that you know, when you're painting,
you have this like you know, your oils and all
that and so anime is kind of like that you
have always, but what you're drawing is the continent. You're
drawing certain themes in the continent, Pan African specifically, Nigerian specifically,
from Kenya specifically, these different ethnic groups spirits. So when
you're talking about you know, now has the nine tails,
(04:43):
we have a tortoise. You know when we when we
you know, shout out to a Nancy. You know what's
talking about when we talk about Nancy, you know what
we're talking about West African thing. So you know, that's
sort of what Afro anime is. What were some of
the because um, you both grew up watch anime, what
were some of the titles? I guess that really got
you interested in moving into animation. I mean I got
(05:08):
it first and foremost. Give a shout out to whoever
made the decision um On Cartoon Network to create Y.
You don't realize how you've affected an entire culture of people.
I'm talking about from hip hop to like animation to
even comedy. It's so much ingrained into the culture. I
(05:29):
just heard this new artist um Dollion or something like
that or the Stallion, and she had a bar that
was like hair yellow like gog. I was like, see
this is what I'm talking about, Like we know where
this came for us. So shouts out to tonomly like,
I don't know. We used to rush and get our
homework done just so we can get in at that
primetime hour from DBZ Gundam Wing to Cowboy Samurai Jack
(05:55):
like Ronnie Ketchens there, and that was like are like introduction.
And then we were like we started getting on the
internet more and were like, wait a minute, there's some more.
You know, sometimes you got to get it, but that
was the only way we could get it back. That's
(06:17):
what we're saying. These kids will never know. But you
can go to Funimation and crunchy roll and get the
subs and dubs immediately when they were leased. When you
back in the day when you where you felt dope,
like when anime was out. We all remember that summer.
You you got those those subs, and you come to
school and people who were still watching on two now
(06:38):
and you're like, oh, I'm already ahead, that already happened.
Let me tell you already got to the boot. Who's boot?
I don't know? Yeah, And then the thing about it
was that for me especially was that it was a
kind of an opportunity for me to kind of kick
it with my bro. So I had another younger brother
(07:00):
who was growing up and born in two thousand, so
we all kind of found a pastime and watching the
anime together. So like you know, like I seen I've
seen things on TV when something happened to a girl
or whatever and she's eating ice cream or whatever. For me,
it was a bowl of cereal, my brothers and anime.
That was it. Like I would have the worst dead
but yo, anime cereal and we just sit and watch
(07:21):
anime and I feel good after that. And like I
didn't realize that it was ingraining in me something like
the thing about anime and cartoons, American cartoons that was
different was the philosophy. And like no matter where I traveled,
I remember, we wasn't. I wasn't. I spent time in China.
I was studying out there, and there was something going on.
And my bro was like, honestly, we just have a
(07:42):
Dragon ball Z mindset where it's like, yo, we go
through all this BS, if we don't die, we can
power up, get stronger. I just keep going. Like that
was you just said that to each other. It was
like the most important thing was training. So when it
came to language, we went hard in language because it
was like training. So that's what kind of was. Or
(08:03):
we tried to build a hyper time chance and you
know what trad part is he figured it out. Hey
note went to our old coach and I was like, look,
if you support us, I'm gonna come back. You know,
(08:26):
help us build something that could both tracks star I did,
like for real, like I wasn't bs and it probably
training with the weighted cuffs and like Piccolo and I mean, yeah,
I gotta say to have to come back today. I
totally relate to that, like sitting down and watch to
see you're watching an anime if you if you haven't
done it yet, it's always good to go back and
(08:48):
do it, or like to just fully weep out as
I was saying me and it was me, Brodie Reid
and Bide and Bazoon. We went to go see your
name and then from there drove to a little tokyo
and had ramen and I was like, man, this I'm
living my best sports ten year old life right there
and it felt good. So I'd say, you know, take
time out your day to do that. But to get
back on the track, let's talk about how did y'all
(09:11):
end up coming together to to do this, Like were
you already involved in art and it just kind of
happened that way or was it just a kind of
lightbulb moment? No, man, Um, I was in the Bay
Area at the time. I was working for Apple, And
while working for Apple, I just learned so so much.
Like tell people I went to Apple University because those
like four or five years was just like incredible, Like
(09:34):
I got to really understand how certain things and innovation worked. Right.
So one of the things I learned while being there
is how to identify, um basically the whole in the market,
how to identify that X how to identify the X
factor and then go for it before anyone else does. So,
you know, it was what so, and I was like,
(09:57):
I'm not going to go any further here, tired of
working for somebody. This is not working, isn't really meaningful
to me, So let me take what I know and
you know, look at the and just look at the industry.
So I looked, and I happened to look at the
chain industry, and I was like, Okay, let me identify
these trends. Okay. I see they've literally squeezed every European
folklore that they could and retold the story fifteen different times.
(10:20):
It's dead. Okay. I see Japan and the Asian community,
they've they've taken their own stories and told it their
way and now licensed it out. And now people are
hip to that and they're loving it, they're learning it.
They're some billion dollar industry. Great. I see they're starting
to tap into a little bit of the Latina Latino community. Um,
they're starting to do more stories there. Okay, wait m hm. Africa.
(10:46):
No one's telling African stories nobody, And I'm like, this
is it. I know, we grew up with our father
telling us oral folklores and traditions and like I doubt
with our bedtime stories right uh Mazi and by the Tortoise,
and we learned all these African folklores. This is what
we learned. This is our culches, what we grew up with.
(11:07):
And I was like, that's it, that's the next thing.
So two thousand eleven called him he was in China.
I'm like, yeah, I just come back from how I
was in it. I was taking like a course on
Chinese art, art in China. Okay, you just come back
from China? Okay. And I was like, yo, it's gonna
sound crazy, but I want to start a studio and
I wanted to create a show. And I'm like all right,
(11:28):
He's alright, bet And I was like, I was thinking
small scale, right. I was like, we can do like
a you know, flip door of the Explorer type whatever. Whatever.
He was like, nah. I was like what. He had
a very Kanye moment. He was like, nah, I don't
like that. That's not how we grew up. I'm like, okay.
He was like, what do we always watch? What what
do we watch? I was like, watch Animal. He's like,
say again, were watching? He said, we watched anime? All right,
(11:50):
then that's what we're doing. I'm like, all right, but
if we're gonna do anime, just it's it's not gonna
be the same way. It's going to be different. He
was like most definitely. So we're gonna do it. We're
gonna do it the right way. I'm like, okay, so
what do we do next? He said? We read? Like
we read. He's like, we read, so Obi, He's gonna
tell this part of the story. But basically he said,
we will not write Uni until we read the godfathers
(12:15):
and god mothers of African folklore, mysticism and you know,
Juju science fiction. We gotta we gotta know the greats
who's on our mount rushmore until we figured that out,
until we know the stories, until we read their work.
When you're writing, so Obi goes and does massive research.
I mean, luckily for me, I had a job, so
(12:36):
so Obie Obie would be like, here's the book, and
I'll be like, here's the cash, here's the book, here's
the cash. Here's the book, here's the cash, and then
we we blinked in them. Those a huge library, over
five pages written, and we had a solid, solid, solid
story and it's like, okay, let's start putting faces to
these characters. But um, just some of the people Obie
(12:59):
kind of had us go through. Ames Tetola ben O Cree,
Nadio Kodafo, who eventually ended up being our writing consultant
for Mysticism in Juju. She ended up being a just
a dope friend. Now you know, we fam that right,
So um even we got love from um, a man
who wrote the novelization of Star Wars and star Alan
(13:22):
Dean Foster. He gave us love for our work. He's like, yo,
this is it. This, this is it. I'm tired of
all that other stuff. This, this is it. Um. So
from two thousand eleven too, I want to say two
thousand thirteen were developing I P. And then after we
developed the show, our first premier show called Red Origins,
we decided to do an animation right first Kickstarter felt
(13:46):
we didn't know what we're doing. You know, we literally
did not know what we were doing. We were learning
as we're going, and you know, I know we talked
about this saying, now you pay for your ignorance, like
physical cash. Everything you don't know, you will pay for it.
For example, so you did a Kickstarter and it didn't
go through. Okay, okay, we went hard, but then it failed.
(14:09):
That was a hard elf me. I was like, it's
a lesson and I was like, he becluse that chapter.
I was like, no, no, no, no, we gotta how
could you tell what you did wrong? Well, there's many
things that it actually helped. One thing you have to
build that following number one. Number two like only said,
whatever you don't know, you pay for so when artists
are like when you don't know like character turnarounds, front backs, expressions,
(14:35):
all those things, you end up paying for that in
animation phase. So like we were over paying for like
um for creating animation. We didn't know, okay, storyboarded, make animatic.
Then you go to work with you know, just so
people can understand this from the job. I and Obi
had zero animation background, yeah, zero. So yeah, but you
(14:58):
know where we come from the culture of you know,
if you don't know it, figure it out. Rather you manage,
you manage, manages, manages. I was like, I was like,
who's that my uncle? You only you only have three
three wheels in the car again, it can drive, And
that's like African mentality, like just just managed. I think
(15:19):
what a lot of people don't know too, is that
a lot of these if we're talking about anime, a
lot of these studios are in South Korea. Like even
the one Japanese properties still made in South Korea. A
lot of the animation here is still made. It like
the really pretty anime that you see is made there.
So the fact that you're trying to make something here
right unheard of? Right, it goes back to only only
(15:42):
was trying to only came from the Bay with this
like entrepreneur spirit. Baby, so we're gonna do it. I'm
a researcher and my focus is on on the continent
and in politics and Chinese African Chinese major and so
he talked about just pushing all that research and then
trying to make it happen. And so with the Kickstarter,
when we figured out, okay, we had to have this art.
(16:04):
We have to really look at our art, you know,
we have to really look at our characters. And so
when we got a stronger, like we got an art director.
Like the whole concept of having an art director I did.
We had no idea that was an important concept. No
idea like so, you know, building the following online on
Facebook and Instagram, on Twitter or whatever, Twitter being a
big part making sure your platforms are set up, then
(16:25):
coming out with art incrementally. This is before Patreon all
that stuff like slowly, slowly bring out your art, Um,
go to more cons and start talking to more people.
We only went to like one you know what I mean, Um,
telling your story online, telling your story online, keep giving
behind the scenes stuff like when we say we did
everything in house, we did everything in the house, even
from the music standpoint, which is huge, right, um, and
(16:48):
we would even like me just thinking about the concept
of music, I was like a camera better beyond because
this is content, we'll flip it out right, And then
it just gets people more invested in the process, more
invested in the story, more invested in our success because
they've been on the ride with us from the beginning, right.
And then so once you got your art director and
you've got your characters, you got to turn around your
(17:09):
expression sheets, have everything figured out. Then you've got to
sit down with your your writers and break down the stories.
And that's what helped us get to our second kickstarter.
And then of course you know you will succeeded. Let's
let's let's let's get that off the way first, which succeeded.
And then getting your family involved, like that's the funny thing,
that's one thing we made a mistake a little bit.
Then enduring community is huge, huge, huge. I mean the
(17:31):
Black Dice sport community is huge. There they're looking for that.
This is the time before podcast, this era when we
did this kickstarter, this is a time before podcast and
content push. So it was it was just a different
time before the Facebook girls even came out and all that.
So really your community was was critical. Well, if I
can just jump in for the time you're talking about
(17:51):
is very interesting because I feel like now black nerdiness
is very mainstream. But there was a moment not too
long ago where black people on Twitter figured out that
we all liked dB Z for some reason. We all
thought we separately liked it and we didn't. But you
had the same dudes who was jigging, dudes you know,
(18:12):
who were also into d b Z. Yeah, yeah, and
so like it exploded online and right around the time
that now we hear it in music and all that.
But there was a time when we all thought it
was like our little corner and it wasn't as like
in vogueer cool to just flaunt your nerdiness. So now
we I think we are in the era now where
people are super seeking it out too, especially when you
(18:35):
got taste of it like Afro Samurai and Boondocks. I know, people,
there's something you you touched on that I think is
is really important. I want to highlight because it's something
we've talked about in past episodes where Hollywood, especially coming
from this personal spot in Hollywood is there is a
regurgitation of just the same Eurocentric stories. And then I
(19:00):
think you were right. You did see that trend. You
had Coco, you had Book of Life, and even then
we're slowly getting but it's slow. It's afraid because like
because they don't know these stories. So it's either they're
waiting for the Latin xt creator to come and bring
it or still it. You know what I We're saying
like all the way fun but like so that it
(19:21):
was great because you know, I did have that flavor
because I don't know if you know this kickstarter called
Orian Legacy of Kreyo Don it was. It was a
it's a Cameroonian game studio called Yeah. So when that came,
I just immediately supported. I didn't I didn't care, like
(19:43):
people were like, do you well, do you know if
I was like, I don't care. I want this to
be made for reasons of like this, like they were
telling a story, an African story, and those are stories
you don't hear. And you know, even within myself, I
found more success because you know, you're writing pilot, you're
trying to get stuff, and you start with like what
you know, like Okay, what's a friendly ensemble husband and
(20:05):
wife and now I myself and dipping into too, like
all right, well let me go deep inside and you know,
without like you know, lasting too much. But it's just like,
you know, I want to do a story about like
a man who like has you know, uh connection, he's
he's a shaman and he connected with mommy want to
and like that's his connection. But that's like still very general,
(20:29):
like y'all are talking deep cut stuff that aren't even
touched like I'll say mommy wanted, and even some white
people are like, oh yeah, I've heard of that, and
I'm like, oh, not you. And and just so you
don't get surprised if it comes out later on you
have a project like that, but yeah we'll talk, Yeah
we'll talk. No, but yeah, but even just within working
(20:53):
with people, because I've been lucky enough this year to
work on a lot of fantasy stuff. And like my
take is like I was, I I can bring a
whole new look because Nigerian mermaids are different than very different.
And I put people onto that and their mind was blown.
I was like, that's why you need Africans in this room,
because we are our our myths, our folklore so different.
(21:17):
Know what you're saying is crazy, It's like true because
it really bothered me when during the hip hop time
they were talking about there's no black mermaids. There's this
thing that happened on Twitter or something like oh there's
no black mermaid. That was like it blew my mind.
I was like, you know, the most basic like black
mermaid is Mammy Water, Like that's like your Google like
you like what I'm saying, like like basic, that basic
(21:40):
black mermaid. You feel not even not even a black mermaid,
black goddess like you know that on that O P level,
like like she can probably if you do it right,
she can body vegeta yeah, I'm not even I'm not
trying to look I know and I believe it, you know,
so yeah yeah. And that that's when we talked about
(22:01):
the research, like all that deep research to uncover what
Google and wiki couldn't provide. Because that's my problem with
Google wiki, like bump Google and wiki early on two
times you're type in Africa whatever it flies, you know,
all that crap. It was so hard to find stories.
So people were like, oh Google, I was like, no,
it's a popular search engine, they went that direction and
(22:21):
Wiki like they don't really to me, they don't care
about what black people are searching for. We are searching
for our stories. And that's what Colon Productions is about. Yeah,
and that's and and the thing that that that is
the one kind of minor flaw. And the thing like
Wikipedia is it's it's it's built by users and then
there's no if there's no information, like you know, once
(22:45):
y'all start, once all these projects are working on drop,
I promise you, it's gonna start to fill the coffers
because people are gonna be now searching it out, seeking
it out, and that's what you hope to do. And
that's why I like, you know, it is funny to
see like kind of the gate keeping in there. We
always we're actually working on creating our like internal wicki
(23:07):
as we're going just so it's like put it out,
We put it out, you know what I mean, Like, no,
we're not gonna let you write the story. Yeah, we're
not gonna let you write about us writing the story,
which we're gonna give it the truth, yeah, which he said,
Like you said, one of the one of the writing
requirements is you have to read Neddia Korford's which you
can't write like people Jesus, Oh, well, I letna say
(23:30):
this because he's probably gonna skip over this. So as
we as we're building the studio, right, I kind of
was taking over more of the animation side, was taking
over more of the writing side. When people would try
to come and work for the studio, Obi gave them
a writing a reading requirement, and that's how he was
able to deconstruct a lot of these Western ideals from
(23:53):
them before they touched any of the work. And if
they refused to do to do any of the reading,
they didn't get right because basically, like when you said, like,
no matter what, we're naminering Americans, So we have to
deconstruct ourselves. Only know that pigeon that broke, I don't
know that pigeon broken enguring like like that that language,
I don't know. There's a lot of stories even though
(24:13):
our fathers told us we were not there. You feel
me so like there's a lot of deconstruction on our own,
on our own, like really deep program how we see
water spirit or mermaid, how we see what is a
warrior instead of a samurai? I had to erase that,
you know, and even the idea of good and bad,
we had to break that idea because and the African lens,
(24:37):
that's not really a thing. Yeah you know what I mean.
You might have your protagonists, your antagonist, but even uh
quote unquote bad guy, it's someone who literally just has
this different point of view and they and they try
their best to make you understand the point of view,
and it challenges your understanding, you know, and to add
on that essentially like because of the American cartoons good
(25:00):
versus evil, you know, and anime kind of mix it
up a little bit, like Miyazaki when you see um
Princess Mononoke, which is my favorite and favorite anime, and
the dude in the middle of protagonist is like, yo,
she's hot. I really like her, but she's like she's
gonna bother, She's gonna kill me, Like she's all about
this forest. But like, I understand what's going on in
this development, you know, in mining, I understand there are
(25:23):
people who live here. And so it was a very
very nuanced story and so with the African cosmologies and
stories and all that, I was like, there is that
we have um this in between characters these tricksters, like
it's not just this or that. And one of our
our leading stories coming out with this key Electron girl,
there's a there's a part in the show where she's
about to like fight everybody to like make this world
(25:45):
more clean, and her father's like, look, it's more complicated
than that. You can't just go around and just bust
caps like Batman, Like. It's much more nuanced than that.
And so that's what we introduce to make it still
animate and not cartoon. You give me yea yeah, yeah,
and uh, you know it's it's something you said stuck
out to me because it's originally what what kind of
(26:06):
uh made me gravitate towards on you so strongly, And
we'll get into that right after these messages and welcome back.
Hope you enjoy those, Masha Shaws. We are back with
the Day brothers. But yeah, no, something you said to
(26:26):
me is how you know, uh how own you speaks
pigeon and all that, and he kind of put that's
kind of what I felt. You know, as I get older,
get a road in age, you know something uh you
know I see among a lot of my you know
ethno peers, is their relationship with their ethnicity. And you know,
my mom's from Louisiana, my dad from Nigeria, and you know,
my dad gives me what it gives me. But like
(26:48):
you know, the way I grew up, I was never
surrounded by a lot of other Nigerians, like you know,
we went to the association meetings. I don't know, boared
out of your mind. You gotta break it down association.
So then juran Is like to meet in big organizations
men and women. They called associations associations with this so
(27:09):
we're very You could be three years old and you
know how to conduct a meeting because you like in
no corporate meetings, nothing compared to what I have to
sit through, you know. Yeah, and then usually your parents
by the by the time your adults are salty with
the or with the association because it's it's a lot
of stuff go down. My minds are just for any
(27:31):
Nigerians just listening and burning. Oguashi Uku Association and Oceanili
those were the two min as. Was the Hallo Association
and they hal Association Association uh and then also the
then Juring Evil Community San Berndino. Yeah, that's what's up.
You need to find me one of those. Well, I'm
(27:52):
gonna make the l a one. They're probably already this one.
Let me stop um. But yeah, no, my dad was
the president and like buying out like for my birthday.
You know how Facebook has the like you could donate
it to the cause, and like I saw like and
y'all in there, and I was like, yo, Dad, I'm
gonna do He was like, don't do that. Like, yikes,
what happened? Our dad started the Ninjeran community really, yeah,
(28:17):
in Sambordino County. Oh that's so quick question. Did y'all
grow about here? Yeah? Oh shop one time. I very
rarely almost break the cursing room that all the time. Yeah,
So you're hitting on two points. Because I'm a big
I like to have big connections with natives and big
connections with Nigerian's. I grew up in Compton and we're
(28:38):
out there, so we're so close. Yeah, you know, so
as I grow older. You know, that's why I like
the first thing I said when I met you, I
was like, Nigerian Independence date, hit me up, let me go.
He's like, I got you, and he's been keeping me
in the loop. You know, I've been I was in
this room and it was keeping me busy. But now
I'm back, so you see yeah, oh yeah I saw that. Yeah.
(29:00):
So but let's we've been talking about Afro anime and
there are certain things that stuck out to people as
Afro anime. And you know, there's there's something we talked
about during the break that I want to hear you
display for all the listeners, but also why I think
that's a good thing because you almost said it like
it was a negative, But I think it's a good thing.
So we're gonna talk about Afro Samurai and the Boomdocks,
(29:22):
which are like the two I think closest things people
will think of if they're like Afro animate. Yeah, that's
the problem if you google, if you google, But real quick,
I will start by saying the good. Yeah, I'll start
by saying the good. Um. Shout out to Aaron McGruder.
(29:43):
I don't think he realizes what it meant to young
black kids who had a newspaper in their hand and
will go to the comics section and see representation. Can
we just take I'm gonna just take two seconds to
really land on that, because you are so right. I
would because I would run into the Sunday Funny and
you know, first we have that one for better or worse.
(30:04):
I think it was the other Black family and shout
out to him too. I'm not gonna talk, but when
I saw Boondocks, that changed my life because not only
was it this this black family, but it also had
an anime style to it. So I was like, I'm
in because you know, really truly like too, because before
that like animate to me was just you know, your
dbcs or Youku show Tinchi muo. So to see like
(30:28):
an Afro done in an anime style, it just opened
my eyes to a new world. So yes, you're I
totally know, like that is the good of being like,
oh you change my world. That's the best thing I'm
gonna say. And then that can start off. So here
you go. So first of all, to start with Boondocks, now,
I mean, and I do this with African futurism. Now,
(30:51):
if you represent just the continent, you actually represent the
largest amount of Black people in the world period, So
that representation is actually small by Boondocks actually does not
represent the Dia spore, like if you would actually start
from a continental perspective, just by numbers, game. Yeah, that's
(31:11):
number one. Number two is like Boondocks had this thing
where like like what's that? What's that? One? Um dude
with the like like like why would I create a
character give life to an imaginary character that hates on
his own people? I can't do it? Like no, this
is very important, Like you gotta understand the power of media.
(31:32):
You gotta understand the power of media. This already is
in our community. It's already there. Now we have a
name for them. And like, my my take on that
is that because you it would do a disservice for
what Boondocks was doing, because yeah, we created Uncle Rucks,
but we still have Sheriff Clark out there. We still
(31:53):
got what what about the Ben Carson? I know this,
this just hurts to say because he's my man. But
like right now in this plan, yeah, you know we
have those. So like I think that put like a
word because there is this idea of like you know,
(32:15):
there's this idea that like, you know, I feel like
it is something to like he was speaking to like
this type of person that we always see. And I
think it's because like Boondocks is like specific, but I
think that still drives home your point that it's only
covering this small aspect of it. I'm the biggest, biggest, biggest.
I don't know what I want to say say, I
(32:36):
don't want to say I guess proponent, but I guess,
like I say this a lot where there's truth to
let that media you're controlling. And there was a point where, like,
you know, you did have certain folks you know, Um,
I don't think I need to say which folks who
would take that character and really like him for the
wrong reasons. Yeah, yeah, it's that Dave Chappelle off camera left. Yeah, yeah,
(32:59):
I know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm
talking about. Yeah, So, so, like I that is extremely valid,
and that was the main thing, like you said, like
you have characters that can easily become these like caricatures.
It got really hyper and like that's what I'm saying,
Like you know, you had your Hui, but he was
dipped in Japanese philosophy, you know, Like it was like
I couldn't like those things, like like we're again having
(33:22):
this one individual of African descent fully involved in Japan
full like as if we ebles your boss uh about something?
How some Messaia you can keep going who don't have
traditions that are really powerful that can help you navigate
the streets of whatever. And then so a lot of
those things, like the kind of showed this kind of
depiction that to me was very much, very close to
(33:45):
what's that dude media type individual? Yeah, I put that
in and I put in the same class because that's
the thing is like like the fro like like that's it,
and and the corn Rows like there's some there's like
literally with African futureism and all these like what we're
trying to do and independent creators are trying to do.
It's like even hair. Hair is the most political thing
that literally we have so many different styles now whenever
(34:08):
we try to have a character draw draw one of
our characters, they draw Huey. Remember that. Yeah, there was
just to kind of take you back when earlier when
I talked about how everyone had to go through Obie's
regiment of reading African literature. We had to deconstruct a
lot of our artists. A lot of our artists who
we worked with, you know, they were taught Western styles,
maybe Japanese styles, So when we brought them to an
(34:30):
African story, they would bring that with them, and we
had to literally break that because there would be a
situation where there's a full description of how this character
is supposed to look, and the artists would come back
with this random, uh stock African mask, not even African masks,
like a ticking mask on the arm, and then some
(34:52):
Hughey type hair and we're like and no shirt, Like wait,
that's where did you get this from? And they're like, oh,
this is like it's an African character, Like did you
read the description? No? And then with one of our
other characters, we have to actually stop one of our
artists because we realized every scene the character was getting
lighter and lighter and lighter, to the point where I
(35:15):
was like, whoa, bro, what is what is going on?
And he was like, oh, um, I don't don't. He
couldn't even answer me. He didn't he didn't even realize
what was just and like what was internal? Well, yeah,
that's totally systematic and you see it all the docks
is part of that system. And even depiction of black women.
(35:37):
Let's talk about that. Boondogs like like boondogs is not
it's not it in terms of like I'm being real, like, like,
is there any depictions of black women that y'all that
y'all could like vibe with in budogs have exactly exactly exactly,
you ain't gonna get me before I look at I
(35:57):
do want to say we. I mean, if he and
I have these conversations that unfortunately also a lot of
times when you are the first, you bear the weight
of your entire community. And that happens a lot in
my community as well. And I think, like I totally
understand that. Well, here's the thing is is that and
here's one where I'm going to come in for aaron
just for a bit. We are blessed that we we
(36:21):
we and we have to admit that the three Nigerian
sitting at the table, knowing like our culture where we
from all those things, we have to remember that a
lot of African Americans aren't blessed with that information and
so they have to go off of what they grew
up doing. And I think that's why it's Afros and
uh and I think it's corn Rows and I think
(36:41):
like the the the caricature nous of it, that whole
show is talking very specific and I think you're right
in due time, especially now, if you look at that
compared to what we see in Black Panther, the the
diversity in not only clothing, Like I almost wept when
I saw for the first time the big screen the
clothes we see growing up display that being said, Riley
(37:05):
is a specific black person. Huey is a very specific
black verson even whose cedric yarbrowers character uh the like
whitewash black Tea. It is a show of yeah, I
mean and right there in the name, it is a
show of caricatures. And I think that was and I
think the I think it wasn't for us in the
(37:30):
sense of like like a black creator gets a show
and it's not for black people. That's what I'm saying.
See what I'm saying, That's what And it goes to
Afro Samurai. We can jump, we can literally jump from
animate enemy. If you look at Afro Samurai, this is
an opportunity. Afro Afro even though you don't I don't
like the name Afro Samurai is a blank slate that
(37:50):
you could have put the most. It's a dope character.
It's a cool character, not even really a blank slate.
If you know anything about history, what do you mean
just the black Samurai who was no, but not right
right whatever, right right right? Everyone was. Some of these creators,
I think, have had to buck up against people, tell
(38:11):
people telling them that they can't make what they want
to make, and sometimes they have to give in. I'm
not saying anything about I don't know Aaron's story. I
don't know that. I'm just saying I know that a
lot of creators of color. I'm not trying to make
an excuse for it. I'm just saying, this is what
they have heard. The generations before us. I know because
we have had them on the show and we've talked
to them about it, have had to go at the
(38:33):
whims I guess of studios. And let me go back
to what you said. What was our lessons from our
first Kickstarter? When you're creative, the most important thing is
to be fearless. Period. I don't after the first the
first Kickstarter, the second Kickstarter, it was like, you want
to talk about powering up, you want talk about living
(38:54):
under dragon ball z over nine thousand. It takes an
incredible fearlessness and self confidence. The positive things that our
parents are, communities associations put into us times nine thousand
to come up with a work that depicts something as
true as you possibly can make it, even when you
know it's not popular, like how can you watch DBZ
(39:17):
and then you try to water down your stuff. It's
not gonna work. And that goes with Afro Samurai. And
that's why we came out with our work. We knew
it wasn't popular. Then we still we still powered up
and did it. Then Black Panther hit and now everyone's like, yeah,
but kinda forever, what are you talking about? We was
on that already. There's a lot of African futurists, African
(39:38):
futurisms like um authors doing it. Now everyone's jumping on it.
Like That's why I want to make very very clear
part of what African futurism and calling the production is
is that fearlessness, that desire to fight for a story
and and and that's what that's what I want to
I wanna know, yeah, and that and that's true, and
(40:00):
I think that's like definitely what we need now. But
I think that that is where it's standard, where it's
like you just didn't we gotta remember we're talking about
gate keeping, who holds the key. Luckily, we live in
an era now where we don't have to go through
the same door. You can. You can kick started. I
know that when I when I make the thing we're
(40:23):
gonna talk about when I make my joint, people gonna
be like what because And this is because studios their
job is to make sure they keep their job and
prepare for the worst. And what the people with the
money are gonna say. Uh, this definitely is gonna make it.
But I'm gonna just say it anyway. The show I
took out was about a gym, but had nothing to
(40:45):
do with with anybody being buff. It had nothing, not
a single thing to do. I I said it in
the pitch. I wrote it in the dock. I said
that no one has to be dubbed. The message that
this is sending is that anybody could be in the gym.
It's just a workplace comedy that happens to take place
in the gym. I don't know how many people passed
on it because they were like, how are we gonna
find buff funny people. It's like I told you all
(41:06):
a million times, but but like that's just the that's
that's so that's but like that being said, it um
like it's just like like for me, I think they're like,
there's some things boondogs got right. I think there's some
things that got wrong. I really do agree. People really
(41:27):
took the the ruckiest thing and ran with it. There
was I mean, but I mean we see this every
day on Twitter where some people he was like, you're
going real wild on that joke. You just so like
y'all get Dr Tona all the way back that I
went over to Black Panther R. What do you mean? So? Uh?
Watching Black Panther um first of all the world creating
(41:50):
was kind of the way. I don't I don't even
think people can truly appreciate Black Panther unless you've done
research on African architects, sure one, and and African clothing
and that you can't truly appreciate Black Panther unless you've
done some of this basic of research. Yeah, let's I mean,
(42:12):
let's just take this quick side boll What did y'all
think as soon as you heard my man? Uh? Yeah,
well what did you say? I was like, what it was?
I know, I was the only one who was like, uncle,
that sounds very familiar. That dialect seems very familar. He
said it, He said it, Yeah, he said he he
didn't the Ebo Solucu, his accent, his whole demeanor, demeanor
(42:36):
was very much a Niningerian specifically Ebo culture. Ebo, So
there's multiple ethnicities in Ningeria, so they have a caricature.
Our guests are Riley of sewords of an uncle type
who's very stubborn when he when he speaks, he speaks
the attention. Yeah, yeah, we saw it. But I think
(42:58):
with Black Panthers, and I know we talked about this. Um,
I don't want to really destroy people's love for this,
but we want you to try to think deeply, Okay,
just really think deeply. Everything starts at the root. Yeah,
when we create stories, it has to come from something
real that's happened on the continent or folklore or mysticism
(43:21):
or whatever the case may be. Period. That's African futurism.
That's called our production. That's how we wrote Black Panther
was not written by someone of African descent. Start there
like the comics. The comics start there. So when you
start there, you can just start to understand how if
you keep moving and don't address what's happened in the past,
(43:44):
something's gonna go horribly wrong. You have a wealthy society
right of black people, of black people right in Africa,
who's removed from the continent, who has all these resources, right,
all this technology and all this stuff, and they do
(44:04):
nothing for the continent. Number one, they have they literally
have the power to create hegemony, unity within all within
the continent. Do nothing. Okay, at the end, after everything happens,
they're gonna open up our boarders and start helping out people.
Where do they go because technically what kind of supposed
(44:25):
to be in East Africa? So the logical thing is,
if you're gonna start helping people out, you probably start
to the person right next to you. Nope, you skip
all Africa and Land and Ethiopia, Degeria, skip all that,
and we end up in Oakland. Wait a minute, Homie,
charity begins at home. If you're gonna build this out,
(44:47):
like you said, you're gonna build it out, you know
saying you might don't want to start from the continent,
and even the even with kill Marker's character, right, if
you're really thinking from a strategic standpoint and you're trying
to take over and do some clandestine stuff and you
need an army, might make sense to start with the
(45:09):
people that you can actually touch that are on the
continent that you're already currently on, because if you can
rally them again around the message, you have a real army,
right instead of kind of sprinkling out to diaspora where
you know, I can I can go deep, I can
go deep. But you know what I mean, I think
with especially like a property like Black Panther and what
(45:32):
we're finding for all the Marvel properties or these are
these are properties that were written back in the seventies
said by you know some Jewish white dudes in New
York who you know. So that's why I think even
in that movie, I mean, at this point we're gonna
get into it. You should have saw it by now,
they tried to tackle one of the biggest I think
(45:54):
plot holes in Black Panther, which is why the heck
if you have this African continent with all this power money,
you didn't stop slavery, and I think they're trying to
do that, and it just kind of just it's just
it's so please please, thank you so much, fine for
bringing that up. Let me because you know what's crazy, No,
(46:16):
it's not crazy. After this movie, I know black people
who genuinely had that sensement like, why didn't you guys
come for us? Oh? Really, why didn't we come for you? It?
Oh do you want to see it? He I mean,
you may have a different perspective ahead. I mean, we
were kind of dealing with our own colonization, kind of
(46:38):
occupied with Britain, Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy. You can't, I mean,
what do you what do you like? Get lay? Wait? Wait, wait,
hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I do.
I do like the way they went about that because
the reason I said that is because just like everything
starts at the roots, the responsibilities can start at the roots.
(47:01):
I love the things I experienced as a black man
traveling around the world. I begin to understand that if
those leaders in the continent, from Gohnna to South Africa
to Mozambique to if they spoke up to some of
the chocities that happened to our people in the diaspora,
it would have a huge impact. This is really important.
(47:24):
So that's so I kind of side with that idea
that if you're the parent diaspora or whatever, act like it.
And so that's my thing with leaders. I studied politics
like you could have said something when when um Trey
Von got hit. You know what I mean, when that happened,
when all these individuals was dying. I was in China
when it was happening, and I was like the most
(47:46):
embarrassing thing. So I mean, we're getting really really deep
because I mean there's I mean, there's so we can
get we would we there from this, We're able to
get so deep that we will everyone will not know
what we talk about it because I got some takes,
because there are some some Nigerian takes on American politics
(48:06):
that leave me. But can I say this one thing
about Afraid I mean Afro Samurai. The main thing by
Affro Samurai that we could at least guy and was
at least an African sword as some African like Afro Samurai.
The thing is Afro Samur's a really cool character. But
his name is Afro. He has a father, don't know
his name, don't know where the mom is again black
woman disappearing and no, he's like the best, Like where
(48:28):
does that come from? Why do we have a ultra
dope swordsman? Can we say where the techniques are coming from?
The swords And then he had a person who's like
kind of had this joint in his mouth the whole time,
which is like, like my thing was like Samuel Jackson
for real, No, no, no, Like I put Samuel Jackson
Aarma Guder in this box. So you said before the
Jewish people were depicting sort of our stories or whatever,
(48:51):
and it's not right. Then we have Aarona Gruder and
Samuel Jackson and it's like, yo, your your characature a
certain caricature. So then when are we gonna get it right?
So that's what I'm talking about with CLA Productions, Red Origins,
but we're coming out with these will all be in
the footnotes for y'all to click the link. And here's
the thing I was gonna I was I was going
(49:12):
to throw to you because I because everything you're saying
is valid. Everything is great, And even if people don't
agree with you who are listening, it's good to have
these discussions because it will get your mind thinking about
it and it'll get you think in a different way.
That's what I why I like these discussions. I think
right now we're in this era where we feel like
there's only a right or wrong answer, or you can't
have hard discussions. This is how you think, This is
how you see another perspective. But all I can think
(49:35):
about more than anything, is that the reason these stories
haven't been told is because no one knew them. And
right now I'm sitting across from two people who talked
who who are you know? Who know this story? And
I'm excited to see what's gonna happen when these stories come,
because if you look at just what happened, because I
(49:55):
was it was so funny, because I had that same
smirt y'all have when we talked about black panthers. Because
when people were talking about like this like so cool,
I was like, man, you don't even know the type
of stories that was coming. But it's because all this
time and this is this is the type of stuff
people get salty and leave one one star reviews about.
But if you haven't figured out right now, we don't care,
(50:19):
So we can. I just say, Iffy that I'm able
to sit here and listen, like I'm able to sit
here and listen and learn, And you have been able
to sit and listen and learn as we have had
different conversations with different people that don't look like us.
I don't understand why people that listen aren't able to
do that. I think they because they don't want to,
But like, why wouldn't Like you're saying why wouldn't you?
(50:40):
I just wanted to say that, because yes, we do
get one star reviews from people, like you know, they won.
I think one was like they hate white people, and
like we've had so many white people on this that
doesn't make sense. But also like I can sit here
and learn about something from a culture that isn't mine,
and that is that is helpful to me. Like I
like that. That's the whole point of this podcast is
not just nerds stuff, but how each of us as
(51:03):
nerds have been affected differently based on our culture representation
that we've gotten to have in the nerd community. I mean,
just based on people who have who have been talking
to us in the discord and tweeting at us. All
those books y'all mentioned. I'm gonna need y'all to say
I'm slow and quick because people are gonna want to read.
We'll put we'll put them in there, we'll put them
in the footnotes. But but the thing is is we
(51:25):
have a unique opportunity, all three of us, because all
three of us are storytellers, creators sitting in this room, right,
Danny's a storyteller, but I'm talking about African stories. Danny's
gonna be telling these bomb ass Latin X stories. I'm
so excited, but like it truly is like the closest
thing I have. This isn't this is an African this
is an African American thing. But I was in I
(51:47):
was I was in a situation where I was in
a room full of white people and I mentioned Tales
from the Hood. I was like, oh man, that was
so crazy that end when he transforms into demon, nobody
saw it. And when you think of nobody seeing tales
from the Hood, and then if you think back even further,
these are the people who are telling stories, and you
think that every black person has to ingest the story.
(52:08):
Now run me back how you all said, y'all hurt
these African stories where they not traditionally from the mouth
of our parents traditions. Yeah, it's up to us to
present them to inspire the next generation so that we
can get these new afrocentric versions, and and the onus
is on us to also respect. That's why the one
(52:30):
thing that got me so hyped is how you said,
the first thing y'all had to do was to read
and research, because if y'all want to do it, y'all
want to get it right. There's so many people who's
just so quick to just tell a story. They don't
want to get it right. No, but look enemy, these
Japanese creators, they sit there and do my Kashi Naruto
(52:51):
like some of these. I studied the grades, and jay
Co said, I studied the grades. That's what we did.
I went back to eighties enemy, study the grades. What's
the best enemy? One piece? Narrowto you too, most highest
gross sing I went back studied it looked at um
um like Toto the mass Layer, Moroni Kenchen one of
the most best historical animies. They told you so much
about the Major era, like they went into their history.
(53:14):
How come I know more about Japanese history and some
of the stuff I like my own, like like you
know history, you know what I mean? That's the part
of meeting this part of like anime they really respected.
I don't know about Yakuza us Like, how do I know?
I don't want to know about Yakuza. How do I
know about the Edo period? Yeah, well, we're gonna We're
gonna get some final thoughts, uh and wrap this thing up.
(53:37):
This has been great, It's good, it's such a this
is I'm having the most fun I've had in a while.
I mean, I've had fun on every episode we just
did Captain Marvel. I love my job. Uh So, but
when we get back, we're just gonna wrap up. I'm
gonna I'm gonna give one thing I like to do
when I have Creators on is to hit us with
that elevator pitch to get everyone on that and uh,
(54:00):
and then we'll just say where people can find you
and then close it out. So thanks for listening. I
hope everyone's having as much of a good time as
we are. We'll see you in a second, all right,
and welcome back to Nerd Efficent. This is the afro
Anime episode. I mean one thing before we go in
(54:20):
the closing thoughts that I think like if if people
you know, because you know how people being, if people
came in was like afro Anime, the names you just
dropped before that break you you can't help but be
salved that y'all know what you'all talking about. But you know,
I guess, like, what are you what are some closing
thoughts that you want people leaving this episode, you know,
(54:43):
thinking about and knowing, Uh yeah, no doubt. Um so one,
I just know there's a lot of people that want
to tell stories. Please, you owe to yourself and you
old to the people that are going to be consuming
your media to do your research. Like, media is powerful.
It's so powerful, and you have to understand and respect
that power and that responsibility to tell the right story. Right.
(55:07):
You don't have to draw from the Western lens when
there's an African lens. Go to a library like, it's
there for you. It might not be on Google, might
not be on Wikipedia, but it's there. And if you,
if you do yourself the honor of researching it, you'll
find out how fascinating our culture is because we have
(55:27):
some of the most craziest folklore, secret societies, mysticism that
you will ever ever experience. And it's your birthright, it's
your culture. So again, Oh that was that was deep
and I like it. Okay, then let's go. Let's go
(55:49):
to the fun part. Give everyone who's listening now an
elevator pitch why they need to check out colon Ut productions.
And you know you dropped, You dropped some some some
of the projects you're working on, So hit us with
some of those two no doubt so Colna Productions. We
are a studio that tells stories to the African lens.
We dabble in mysticism, African futurism, um juju, which is
(56:12):
African magic. We really go deep and explore the content
in the way that you've never seen before, and it's
all rooted and just amazing storytelling. Our first project Read
origins amazing story about this young boy and it's two
friends that mystically get transported to Neo Africa and they
have to save the continent because there's a power struggle
(56:33):
between the ancestral gods and the new age tech. So
that's one of our projects which is amazing and dope.
We have Kissi the electron Girl, this little girl who
has an affinity for technology and one day she goes
to an e way site and she finds something that
changes her life completely. She's able to fuse with technology
in a crazy way and she develops this amazing relationship
(56:55):
with this robot and we take it from there. We
explore how African rock with technology, right. So that's also dope. Man.
We have so many projects. But we also got to
give a shout out to Neddio kodaf Or. She has
a lot of projects that are out there now. Uh
Kata which an amazing series, BNTI series, amazing series. One
of her books, Who Fears Death, just got picked up
(57:18):
by HBO and it's going to be executive produced by
George R. Martin. There's some other projects going on that
we can't even talk about. But you know, it's it's mixing,
it's working. We're on web tunes. You can find Red
Origins on web tunes. You post the comics there. You
see the Electron Girls about to drop us on web tunes.
You can follow us on Conda Productions uh dot com.
Actually no, you can follow us on YouTube. Go to
(57:41):
Colner Productions. You'll see a lot of our animations like that.
Ko l A n U t Production just indeed and
ConA Productions. We we do a lot of our own
original music. So we do Afro hip hop. So what
does that sound like? All of our scores are original.
We get traditional, real African instruments. We take you on
a journey. It's it's wild stuff, man, I'm telling you right, now,
um yeah, Facebook, follow us, Instagram follow us. Then Neptune
(58:05):
is Blue. So Natur's Blue is also one of my
favorite projects about to come out this year. Um. And
it's a musical space odyssey. We're taking Black people into
space and we're exploring how that is. And these are
musicians that go into space and we explore what it
means to have a relationship with money, and also we
explore what it means to feel and have feelings and
(58:27):
how us as a culture and Black people in the diaspora,
how we deal with pain. And we do this through
these musicians and these amazing characters. And I literally we
we take you on a journey through music from the
continent through the diaspora. Even the spaceships are different, and
the spaceships are different as well, man, even the space
(58:48):
outfits are different. It's it's wild, it's aliens, all of that. Man,
We we dive in. We are in the future. It's
afro futurism. Um, with African futurism ConA productions. We just
tell them in stories and we do dope. So basically, yeah,
like as he described, like you know, musicians, everyone can
vide with that. And an African musicians, like, let's bring
them up, you know. And I saw on the wall
(59:10):
something called they said they had the Cotton Club, and
I was like, that's Harlem, That's that's that's that's the
African Americans. So like we do all all these cool stuff,
but from the root is African. So you're not going
to just see people with spears and it's you know,
we're gonna take it to the anime level, that like
extreme dope level. You know, you're Kabo Bebop, you know
what I mean. We're gonna you see these dope anime,
(59:30):
we take it to the next level. We're gonna educate you.
It's gonna be the Really when you dive into Afro anime.
It's almost like a lot of people ain't feeling him
right now, but hear me. I'll just hold on for
a seconds, almost like listening to a tract from Ya Kanye. Right.
One of the reasons why I really loved Kanye was
it was like listening to his music was a history,
a history, you know, tests from museum, Right. I got
(59:53):
to dive into his samples and learn more about Nina Simone,
you know, Curtis may faild uh you know, uh kids Charlemagne, like,
I got to really learn, you know, Alan Parson projects,
I got to really learn more about music. And that's
how we approached this. After anime, we we we give
you the front, and the front beautiful is dope. But
then if you start diving in, really get into the culture,
(01:00:16):
you know what I mean. So that's what it is. Oh,
that's great, Okay, And now that that's out of the way,
and everyone's already trying to download everything you all made,
where can people find you online? Online? So, like I said,
you can find us on YouTube calling up Productions. You'll
find a lot of our animated shorts were thrown on
their um a lot of our projects YouTube. Facebook, you
(01:00:37):
can find us Instagram. You can find us calling up
Underscore Studios. Um. Yeah, we'll put all of this in
the show. Web tunes on web tunes yea, So web
tunes is Patreona. We need that support. Let if be fearless,
the part of a saying, the part of a saying,
you know, it's tough. So we need that Patreon, need
(01:01:00):
that page ain't cheap creating. We need that Patreon shows support.
You know, we talk back. You know what I'm saying.
I'm not afraid to talk to anybody. I know. We
will talk to you, will engage with you, and we
take feedback. Man fearless feedback culture. That's how we rock
because we're African and our fathers just you know, would
say crazy things to us. When you have to eat
(01:01:20):
it something, you don't say that little feedback and I've
hurt nobody, and you know me. I'm always if y
W A D i w E on Twitter and Instagram,
if d S on Twitch if you want to see
me play video games and have discussion about movies or
episodes or why I'm dying so much in Apex Legends,
and don't forget the discord Discord dot g G slash
(01:01:43):
Salt Squad and that's where we talk about all types
of stuff and it'll keep you up to date. When
I'm streaming, I'm at Miss Danny Fernandez. I am at
Wonder Con. I will be there on Friday, four pm.
It's room two c D. I'm on LGBT and Minority
host How to Break Through to and then Saturday Most
Dangerous Women. Uh, it's at eleven am, same room to
(01:02:06):
thirteen c D. Both have stacked panelists and so excited
and many people that have appeared on here. We have
a uh Wandser is coming on. We have Chris Lamb
who's coming up in a future episode. Markie McCarty. Yeah,
a lot of a lot of dope guests that are
going to be on the Pan Dope Dope, so definitely
show up, hang out and where your nertives and shirts
(01:02:26):
to wander go so we know where you are and
as always, stay nerdy.
Hey, how's it going. You are listening to another episode
of nerdive said, I'm your host if you wide away,
and sitting night next to me as always is Danny Fernandez. Yes. Yes,
and today we're talking about afro anime because you know
what it is, what is about, and you know the
things and inspirations and I'm I'm actually really excited about this.
(00:29):
Uh you know, what do you know about afro anime, David?
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind would
be Boondocks. Um and our friend Lashawn Thomas worked on that.
Oh yeah he sure did. Yeah he directed, and uh
it was really interesting. We had him on an episode
of krilling It our Old our old anime podcast, which
(00:50):
was funny because I didn't know that he wasn't a
Dragon ball Z fan. Do you remember that? If so,
we I asked him to come on and right before
we were or it was a live show on hyper RPG,
and he was like, oh, by the way, um, I
don't really like Dragon ball Z. Yeah. I was like,
what why did you agree to be on our show?
(01:10):
Is it? What? What do you what did you think
we're going to talk about? Anyways? My favorite thing about
that though, was that he brought up how so many
we people argue about what's anime what's not anime? And
he was like, no one has this argument in Japan
where he works. He works in Japan, um and he
was like, nobody has this argument there. We're just creating
everybody's creators and we're just trying to create and nobody
(01:33):
is arguing about what's considered anime. I think that's a
really Western thing that that people put on. So I
am also interested in this conversation. Yeah, well, you know,
before I introduced them, uh these are the day brothers
on you and o b U day uh I know
on you. We go back back when I started at BuzzFeed.
I found out he was Nigerian. That was it. That
(01:55):
was it. I was like, bat I. I am like,
it's so funny every time someone asked me about a
Nigerian in a comedy and it's like, yeah, I know them.
If I know you're on Nigerian, I'm gonna connect with you.
I'm trying to create a mafia here, you know, and
so so me. You know, we clicked up and you know,
uh I was wearing a DBZ shirt one day and
then he was like yo, and then we just got
(02:15):
into this whole conversation and he told me about his
production company, calling Up Productions and Afro Anime and what
he was creating. And I was like, you know, we
gotta get you on ther defficent. And so that was
pretty much the story and I kind of I'll let
him take it from here. So yeah, without further Ado,
Obie and Ony day, how you doing? What's hey, how
(02:36):
y'all feeling? Man, it's been a day? But I mean
the energy and here is dope, you know, like I
like what I'm feeling right now. Yeah, it's a nice
I mean, I guess you will just jump right into it.
For anybody who's never heard of it or don't know
what what we're talking about. What is afro anime? Well, um,
(02:57):
it's really based on like the first part of the
word afro. So like when people hear afro enemy, you
don't want to think about a throw like a hair.
Afro is more about that inspired by Africa, taking it
from the African lens. So if you're talking about fighting
with weapons, you're gonna look at African weapons. If you're
talking about martial arts, you're not gonna see uh jiu jitsu.
(03:18):
You're gonna see like lamb or um some sent other
Senegal wrestling techniques. You're gonna see African techniques. And that's
the Afro so basically African inspired in terms of lore techniques,
magic juju in an anime kind of medium, which is
like you know, when someone's angry, you have that not
(03:39):
on the head, you know, powering up some of those things.
It's a you know, we in creating the name, it
was kind of like it's very much African and die sport,
but we we also are going to give you know,
shouts out to the people that kind of you know
brought us to the genre. Like you know, So it
(04:00):
wasn't like we're going to create a name that completely
like disregards the contribution of those who did amazing work
and anime that got us even thinking about creating stories
in this media. Um, we're going to create a name
that okay, shows show some love, but then very much
lets you know, this is Afro anime. This is uh,
we're gonna tell stories through the African lens. Right. So
(04:22):
I used to always say that you know, when you're painting,
you have this like you know, your oils and all
that and so anime is kind of like that you
have always, but what you're drawing is the continent. You're
drawing certain themes in the continent, Pan African specifically, Nigerian specifically,
from Kenya specifically, these different ethnic groups spirits. So when
you're talking about you know, now has the nine tails,
(04:43):
we have a tortoise. You know when we when we
you know, shout out to a Nancy. You know what's
talking about when we talk about Nancy, you know what
we're talking about West African thing. So you know, that's
sort of what Afro anime is. What were some of
the because um, you both grew up watch anime, what
were some of the titles? I guess that really got
you interested in moving into animation. I mean I got
(05:08):
it first and foremost. Give a shout out to whoever
made the decision um On Cartoon Network to create Y.
You don't realize how you've affected an entire culture of people.
I'm talking about from hip hop to like animation to
even comedy. It's so much ingrained into the culture. I
(05:29):
just heard this new artist um Dollion or something like
that or the Stallion, and she had a bar that
was like hair yellow like gog. I was like, see
this is what I'm talking about, Like we know where
this came for us. So shouts out to tonomly like,
I don't know. We used to rush and get our
homework done just so we can get in at that
primetime hour from DBZ Gundam Wing to Cowboy Samurai Jack
(05:55):
like Ronnie Ketchens there, and that was like are like introduction.
And then we were like we started getting on the
internet more and were like, wait a minute, there's some more.
You know, sometimes you got to get it, but that
was the only way we could get it back. That's
(06:17):
what we're saying. These kids will never know. But you
can go to Funimation and crunchy roll and get the
subs and dubs immediately when they were leased. When you
back in the day when you where you felt dope,
like when anime was out. We all remember that summer.
You you got those those subs, and you come to
school and people who were still watching on two now
(06:38):
and you're like, oh, I'm already ahead, that already happened.
Let me tell you already got to the boot. Who's boot?
I don't know? Yeah, And then the thing about it
was that for me especially was that it was a
kind of an opportunity for me to kind of kick
it with my bro. So I had another younger brother
(07:00):
who was growing up and born in two thousand, so
we all kind of found a pastime and watching the
anime together. So like you know, like I seen I've
seen things on TV when something happened to a girl
or whatever and she's eating ice cream or whatever. For me,
it was a bowl of cereal, my brothers and anime.
That was it. Like I would have the worst dead
but yo, anime cereal and we just sit and watch
(07:21):
anime and I feel good after that. And like I
didn't realize that it was ingraining in me something like
the thing about anime and cartoons, American cartoons that was
different was the philosophy. And like no matter where I traveled,
I remember, we wasn't. I wasn't. I spent time in China.
I was studying out there, and there was something going on.
And my bro was like, honestly, we just have a
(07:42):
Dragon ball Z mindset where it's like, yo, we go
through all this BS, if we don't die, we can
power up, get stronger. I just keep going. Like that
was you just said that to each other. It was
like the most important thing was training. So when it
came to language, we went hard in language because it
was like training. So that's what kind of was. Or
(08:03):
we tried to build a hyper time chance and you
know what trad part is he figured it out. Hey
note went to our old coach and I was like, look,
if you support us, I'm gonna come back. You know,
(08:26):
help us build something that could both tracks star I did,
like for real, like I wasn't bs and it probably
training with the weighted cuffs and like Piccolo and I mean, yeah,
I gotta say to have to come back today. I
totally relate to that, like sitting down and watch to
see you're watching an anime if you if you haven't
done it yet, it's always good to go back and
(08:48):
do it, or like to just fully weep out as
I was saying me and it was me, Brodie Reid
and Bide and Bazoon. We went to go see your
name and then from there drove to a little tokyo
and had ramen and I was like, man, this I'm
living my best sports ten year old life right there
and it felt good. So I'd say, you know, take
time out your day to do that. But to get
back on the track, let's talk about how did y'all
(09:11):
end up coming together to to do this, Like were
you already involved in art and it just kind of
happened that way or was it just a kind of
lightbulb moment? No, man, Um, I was in the Bay
Area at the time. I was working for Apple, And
while working for Apple, I just learned so so much.
Like tell people I went to Apple University because those
like four or five years was just like incredible, Like
(09:34):
I got to really understand how certain things and innovation worked. Right.
So one of the things I learned while being there
is how to identify, um basically the whole in the market,
how to identify that X how to identify the X
factor and then go for it before anyone else does. So,
you know, it was what so, and I was like,
(09:57):
I'm not going to go any further here, tired of
working for somebody. This is not working, isn't really meaningful
to me, So let me take what I know and
you know, look at the and just look at the industry.
So I looked, and I happened to look at the
chain industry, and I was like, Okay, let me identify
these trends. Okay. I see they've literally squeezed every European
folklore that they could and retold the story fifteen different times.
(10:20):
It's dead. Okay. I see Japan and the Asian community,
they've they've taken their own stories and told it their
way and now licensed it out. And now people are
hip to that and they're loving it, they're learning it.
They're some billion dollar industry. Great. I see they're starting
to tap into a little bit of the Latina Latino community. Um,
they're starting to do more stories there. Okay, wait m hm. Africa.
(10:46):
No one's telling African stories nobody, And I'm like, this
is it. I know, we grew up with our father
telling us oral folklores and traditions and like I doubt
with our bedtime stories right uh Mazi and by the Tortoise,
and we learned all these African folklores. This is what
we learned. This is our culches, what we grew up with.
(11:07):
And I was like, that's it, that's the next thing.
So two thousand eleven called him he was in China.
I'm like, yeah, I just come back from how I
was in it. I was taking like a course on
Chinese art, art in China. Okay, you just come back
from China? Okay. And I was like, yo, it's gonna
sound crazy, but I want to start a studio and
I wanted to create a show. And I'm like all right,
(11:28):
He's alright, bet And I was like, I was thinking
small scale, right. I was like, we can do like
a you know, flip door of the Explorer type whatever. Whatever.
He was like, nah. I was like what. He had
a very Kanye moment. He was like, nah, I don't
like that. That's not how we grew up. I'm like, okay.
He was like, what do we always watch? What what
do we watch? I was like, watch Animal. He's like,
say again, were watching? He said, we watched anime? All right,
(11:50):
then that's what we're doing. I'm like, all right, but
if we're gonna do anime, just it's it's not gonna
be the same way. It's going to be different. He
was like most definitely. So we're gonna do it. We're
gonna do it the right way. I'm like, okay, so
what do we do next? He said? We read? Like
we read. He's like, we read, so Obi, He's gonna
tell this part of the story. But basically he said,
we will not write Uni until we read the godfathers
(12:15):
and god mothers of African folklore, mysticism and you know,
Juju science fiction. We gotta we gotta know the greats
who's on our mount rushmore until we figured that out,
until we know the stories, until we read their work.
When you're writing, so Obi goes and does massive research.
I mean, luckily for me, I had a job, so
(12:36):
so Obie Obie would be like, here's the book, and
I'll be like, here's the cash, here's the book, here's
the cash. Here's the book, here's the cash, and then
we we blinked in them. Those a huge library, over
five pages written, and we had a solid, solid, solid
story and it's like, okay, let's start putting faces to
these characters. But um, just some of the people Obie
(12:59):
kind of had us go through. Ames Tetola ben O Cree,
Nadio Kodafo, who eventually ended up being our writing consultant
for Mysticism in Juju. She ended up being a just
a dope friend. Now you know, we fam that right,
So um even we got love from um, a man
who wrote the novelization of Star Wars and star Alan
(13:22):
Dean Foster. He gave us love for our work. He's like, yo,
this is it. This, this is it. I'm tired of
all that other stuff. This, this is it. Um. So
from two thousand eleven too, I want to say two
thousand thirteen were developing I P. And then after we
developed the show, our first premier show called Red Origins,
we decided to do an animation right first Kickstarter felt
(13:46):
we didn't know what we're doing. You know, we literally
did not know what we were doing. We were learning
as we're going, and you know, I know we talked
about this saying, now you pay for your ignorance, like
physical cash. Everything you don't know, you will pay for it.
For example, so you did a Kickstarter and it didn't
go through. Okay, okay, we went hard, but then it failed.
(14:09):
That was a hard elf me. I was like, it's
a lesson and I was like, he becluse that chapter.
I was like, no, no, no, no, we gotta how
could you tell what you did wrong? Well, there's many
things that it actually helped. One thing you have to
build that following number one. Number two like only said,
whatever you don't know, you pay for so when artists
are like when you don't know like character turnarounds, front backs, expressions,
(14:35):
all those things, you end up paying for that in
animation phase. So like we were over paying for like
um for creating animation. We didn't know, okay, storyboarded, make animatic.
Then you go to work with you know, just so
people can understand this from the job. I and Obi
had zero animation background, yeah, zero. So yeah, but you
(14:58):
know where we come from the culture of you know,
if you don't know it, figure it out. Rather you manage,
you manage, manages, manages. I was like, I was like,
who's that my uncle? You only you only have three
three wheels in the car again, it can drive, And
that's like African mentality, like just just managed. I think
(15:19):
what a lot of people don't know too, is that
a lot of these if we're talking about anime, a
lot of these studios are in South Korea. Like even
the one Japanese properties still made in South Korea. A
lot of the animation here is still made. It like
the really pretty anime that you see is made there.
So the fact that you're trying to make something here
right unheard of? Right, it goes back to only only
(15:42):
was trying to only came from the Bay with this
like entrepreneur spirit. Baby, so we're gonna do it. I'm
a researcher and my focus is on on the continent
and in politics and Chinese African Chinese major and so
he talked about just pushing all that research and then
trying to make it happen. And so with the Kickstarter,
when we figured out, okay, we had to have this art.
(16:04):
We have to really look at our art, you know,
we have to really look at our characters. And so
when we got a stronger, like we got an art director.
Like the whole concept of having an art director I did.
We had no idea that was an important concept. No
idea like so, you know, building the following online on
Facebook and Instagram, on Twitter or whatever, Twitter being a
big part making sure your platforms are set up, then
(16:25):
coming out with art incrementally. This is before Patreon all
that stuff like slowly, slowly bring out your art, Um,
go to more cons and start talking to more people.
We only went to like one you know what I mean, Um,
telling your story online, telling your story online, keep giving
behind the scenes stuff like when we say we did
everything in house, we did everything in the house, even
from the music standpoint, which is huge, right, um, and
(16:48):
we would even like me just thinking about the concept
of music, I was like a camera better beyond because
this is content, we'll flip it out right, And then
it just gets people more invested in the process, more
invested in the story, more invested in our success because
they've been on the ride with us from the beginning, right.
And then so once you got your art director and
you've got your characters, you got to turn around your
(17:09):
expression sheets, have everything figured out. Then you've got to
sit down with your your writers and break down the stories.
And that's what helped us get to our second kickstarter.
And then of course you know you will succeeded. Let's
let's let's let's get that off the way first, which succeeded.
And then getting your family involved, like that's the funny thing,
that's one thing we made a mistake a little bit.
Then enduring community is huge, huge, huge. I mean the
(17:31):
Black Dice sport community is huge. There they're looking for that.
This is the time before podcast, this era when we
did this kickstarter, this is a time before podcast and
content push. So it was it was just a different
time before the Facebook girls even came out and all that.
So really your community was was critical. Well, if I
can just jump in for the time you're talking about
(17:51):
is very interesting because I feel like now black nerdiness
is very mainstream. But there was a moment not too
long ago where black people on Twitter figured out that
we all liked dB Z for some reason. We all
thought we separately liked it and we didn't. But you
had the same dudes who was jigging, dudes you know,
(18:12):
who were also into d b Z. Yeah, yeah, and
so like it exploded online and right around the time
that now we hear it in music and all that.
But there was a time when we all thought it
was like our little corner and it wasn't as like
in vogueer cool to just flaunt your nerdiness. So now
we I think we are in the era now where
people are super seeking it out too, especially when you
(18:35):
got taste of it like Afro Samurai and Boondocks. I know, people,
there's something you you touched on that I think is
is really important. I want to highlight because it's something
we've talked about in past episodes where Hollywood, especially coming
from this personal spot in Hollywood is there is a
regurgitation of just the same Eurocentric stories. And then I
(19:00):
think you were right. You did see that trend. You
had Coco, you had Book of Life, and even then
we're slowly getting but it's slow. It's afraid because like
because they don't know these stories. So it's either they're
waiting for the Latin xt creator to come and bring
it or still it. You know what I We're saying
like all the way fun but like so that it
(19:21):
was great because you know, I did have that flavor
because I don't know if you know this kickstarter called
Orian Legacy of Kreyo Don it was. It was a
it's a Cameroonian game studio called Yeah. So when that came,
I just immediately supported. I didn't I didn't care, like
(19:43):
people were like, do you well, do you know if
I was like, I don't care. I want this to
be made for reasons of like this, like they were
telling a story, an African story, and those are stories
you don't hear. And you know, even within myself, I
found more success because you know, you're writing pilot, you're
trying to get stuff, and you start with like what
you know, like Okay, what's a friendly ensemble husband and
(20:05):
wife and now I myself and dipping into too, like
all right, well let me go deep inside and you know,
without like you know, lasting too much. But it's just like,
you know, I want to do a story about like
a man who like has you know, uh connection, he's
he's a shaman and he connected with mommy want to
and like that's his connection. But that's like still very general,
(20:29):
like y'all are talking deep cut stuff that aren't even
touched like I'll say mommy wanted, and even some white
people are like, oh yeah, I've heard of that, and
I'm like, oh, not you. And and just so you
don't get surprised if it comes out later on you
have a project like that, but yeah we'll talk, Yeah
we'll talk. No, but yeah, but even just within working
(20:53):
with people, because I've been lucky enough this year to
work on a lot of fantasy stuff. And like my
take is like I was, I I can bring a
whole new look because Nigerian mermaids are different than very different.
And I put people onto that and their mind was blown.
I was like, that's why you need Africans in this room,
because we are our our myths, our folklore so different.
(21:17):
Know what you're saying is crazy, It's like true because
it really bothered me when during the hip hop time
they were talking about there's no black mermaids. There's this
thing that happened on Twitter or something like oh there's
no black mermaid. That was like it blew my mind.
I was like, you know, the most basic like black
mermaid is Mammy Water, Like that's like your Google like
you like what I'm saying, like like basic, that basic
(21:40):
black mermaid. You feel not even not even a black mermaid,
black goddess like you know that on that O P level,
like like she can probably if you do it right,
she can body vegeta yeah, I'm not even I'm not
trying to look I know and I believe it, you know,
so yeah yeah. And that that's when we talked about
(22:01):
the research, like all that deep research to uncover what
Google and wiki couldn't provide. Because that's my problem with
Google wiki, like bump Google and wiki early on two
times you're type in Africa whatever it flies, you know,
all that crap. It was so hard to find stories.
So people were like, oh Google, I was like, no,
it's a popular search engine, they went that direction and
(22:21):
Wiki like they don't really to me, they don't care
about what black people are searching for. We are searching
for our stories. And that's what Colon Productions is about. Yeah,
and that's and and the thing that that that is
the one kind of minor flaw. And the thing like
Wikipedia is it's it's it's built by users and then
there's no if there's no information, like you know, once
(22:45):
y'all start, once all these projects are working on drop,
I promise you, it's gonna start to fill the coffers
because people are gonna be now searching it out, seeking
it out, and that's what you hope to do. And
that's why I like, you know, it is funny to
see like kind of the gate keeping in there. We
always we're actually working on creating our like internal wicki
(23:07):
as we're going just so it's like put it out,
We put it out, you know what I mean, Like, no,
we're not gonna let you write the story. Yeah, we're
not gonna let you write about us writing the story,
which we're gonna give it the truth, yeah, which he said,
Like you said, one of the one of the writing
requirements is you have to read Neddia Korford's which you
can't write like people Jesus, Oh, well, I letna say
(23:30):
this because he's probably gonna skip over this. So as
we as we're building the studio, right, I kind of
was taking over more of the animation side, was taking
over more of the writing side. When people would try
to come and work for the studio, Obi gave them
a writing a reading requirement, and that's how he was
able to deconstruct a lot of these Western ideals from
(23:53):
them before they touched any of the work. And if
they refused to do to do any of the reading,
they didn't get right because basically, like when you said, like,
no matter what, we're naminering Americans, So we have to
deconstruct ourselves. Only know that pigeon that broke, I don't
know that pigeon broken enguring like like that that language,
I don't know. There's a lot of stories even though
(24:13):
our fathers told us we were not there. You feel
me so like there's a lot of deconstruction on our own,
on our own, like really deep program how we see
water spirit or mermaid, how we see what is a
warrior instead of a samurai? I had to erase that,
you know, and even the idea of good and bad,
we had to break that idea because and the African lens,
(24:37):
that's not really a thing. Yeah you know what I mean.
You might have your protagonists, your antagonist, but even uh
quote unquote bad guy, it's someone who literally just has
this different point of view and they and they try
their best to make you understand the point of view,
and it challenges your understanding, you know, and to add
on that essentially like because of the American cartoons good
(25:00):
versus evil, you know, and anime kind of mix it
up a little bit, like Miyazaki when you see um
Princess Mononoke, which is my favorite and favorite anime, and
the dude in the middle of protagonist is like, yo,
she's hot. I really like her, but she's like she's
gonna bother, She's gonna kill me, Like she's all about
this forest. But like, I understand what's going on in
this development, you know, in mining, I understand there are
(25:23):
people who live here. And so it was a very
very nuanced story and so with the African cosmologies and
stories and all that, I was like, there is that
we have um this in between characters these tricksters, like
it's not just this or that. And one of our
our leading stories coming out with this key Electron girl,
there's a there's a part in the show where she's
about to like fight everybody to like make this world
(25:45):
more clean, and her father's like, look, it's more complicated
than that. You can't just go around and just bust
caps like Batman, Like. It's much more nuanced than that.
And so that's what we introduce to make it still
animate and not cartoon. You give me yea yeah, yeah,
and uh, you know it's it's something you said stuck
out to me because it's originally what what kind of
(26:06):
uh made me gravitate towards on you so strongly, And
we'll get into that right after these messages and welcome back.
Hope you enjoy those, Masha Shaws. We are back with
the Day brothers. But yeah, no, something you said to
(26:26):
me is how you know, uh how own you speaks
pigeon and all that, and he kind of put that's
kind of what I felt. You know, as I get older,
get a road in age, you know something uh you
know I see among a lot of my you know
ethno peers, is their relationship with their ethnicity. And you know,
my mom's from Louisiana, my dad from Nigeria, and you know,
my dad gives me what it gives me. But like
(26:48):
you know, the way I grew up, I was never
surrounded by a lot of other Nigerians, like you know,
we went to the association meetings. I don't know, boared
out of your mind. You gotta break it down association.
So then juran Is like to meet in big organizations
men and women. They called associations associations with this so
(27:09):
we're very You could be three years old and you
know how to conduct a meeting because you like in
no corporate meetings, nothing compared to what I have to
sit through, you know. Yeah, and then usually your parents
by the by the time your adults are salty with
the or with the association because it's it's a lot
of stuff go down. My minds are just for any
(27:31):
Nigerians just listening and burning. Oguashi Uku Association and Oceanili
those were the two min as. Was the Hallo Association
and they hal Association Association uh and then also the
then Juring Evil Community San Berndino. Yeah, that's what's up.
You need to find me one of those. Well, I'm
(27:52):
gonna make the l a one. They're probably already this one.
Let me stop um. But yeah, no, my dad was
the president and like buying out like for my birthday.
You know how Facebook has the like you could donate
it to the cause, and like I saw like and
y'all in there, and I was like, yo, Dad, I'm
gonna do He was like, don't do that. Like, yikes,
what happened? Our dad started the Ninjeran community really, yeah,
(28:17):
in Sambordino County. Oh that's so quick question. Did y'all
grow about here? Yeah? Oh shop one time. I very
rarely almost break the cursing room that all the time. Yeah,
So you're hitting on two points. Because I'm a big
I like to have big connections with natives and big
connections with Nigerian's. I grew up in Compton and we're
(28:38):
out there, so we're so close. Yeah, you know, so
as I grow older. You know, that's why I like
the first thing I said when I met you, I
was like, Nigerian Independence date, hit me up, let me go.
He's like, I got you, and he's been keeping me
in the loop. You know, I've been I was in
this room and it was keeping me busy. But now
I'm back, so you see yeah, oh yeah I saw that. Yeah.
(29:00):
So but let's we've been talking about Afro anime and
there are certain things that stuck out to people as
Afro anime. And you know, there's there's something we talked
about during the break that I want to hear you
display for all the listeners, but also why I think
that's a good thing because you almost said it like
it was a negative, But I think it's a good thing.
So we're gonna talk about Afro Samurai and the Boomdocks,
(29:22):
which are like the two I think closest things people
will think of if they're like Afro animate. Yeah, that's
the problem if you google, if you google, But real quick,
I will start by saying the good. Yeah, I'll start
by saying the good. Um. Shout out to Aaron McGruder.
(29:43):
I don't think he realizes what it meant to young
black kids who had a newspaper in their hand and
will go to the comics section and see representation. Can
we just take I'm gonna just take two seconds to
really land on that, because you are so right. I
would because I would run into the Sunday Funny and
you know, first we have that one for better or worse.
(30:04):
I think it was the other Black family and shout
out to him too. I'm not gonna talk, but when
I saw Boondocks, that changed my life because not only
was it this this black family, but it also had
an anime style to it. So I was like, I'm
in because you know, really truly like too, because before
that like animate to me was just you know, your
dbcs or Youku show Tinchi muo. So to see like
(30:28):
an Afro done in an anime style, it just opened
my eyes to a new world. So yes, you're I
totally know, like that is the good of being like,
oh you change my world. That's the best thing I'm
gonna say. And then that can start off. So here
you go. So first of all, to start with Boondocks, now,
I mean, and I do this with African futurism. Now,
(30:51):
if you represent just the continent, you actually represent the
largest amount of Black people in the world period, So
that representation is actually small by Boondocks actually does not
represent the Dia spore, like if you would actually start
from a continental perspective, just by numbers, game. Yeah, that's
(31:11):
number one. Number two is like Boondocks had this thing
where like like what's that? What's that? One? Um dude
with the like like like why would I create a
character give life to an imaginary character that hates on
his own people? I can't do it? Like no, this
is very important, Like you gotta understand the power of media.
(31:32):
You gotta understand the power of media. This already is
in our community. It's already there. Now we have a
name for them. And like, my my take on that
is that because you it would do a disservice for
what Boondocks was doing, because yeah, we created Uncle Rucks,
but we still have Sheriff Clark out there. We still
(31:53):
got what what about the Ben Carson? I know this,
this just hurts to say because he's my man. But
like right now in this plan, yeah, you know we
have those. So like I think that put like a
word because there is this idea of like you know,
(32:15):
there's this idea that like, you know, I feel like
it is something to like he was speaking to like
this type of person that we always see. And I
think it's because like Boondocks is like specific, but I
think that still drives home your point that it's only
covering this small aspect of it. I'm the biggest, biggest, biggest.
I don't know what I want to say say, I
(32:36):
don't want to say I guess proponent, but I guess,
like I say this a lot where there's truth to
let that media you're controlling. And there was a point where, like,
you know, you did have certain folks you know, Um,
I don't think I need to say which folks who
would take that character and really like him for the
wrong reasons. Yeah, yeah, it's that Dave Chappelle off camera left. Yeah, yeah,
(32:59):
I know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm
talking about. Yeah, So, so, like I that is extremely valid,
and that was the main thing, like you said, like
you have characters that can easily become these like caricatures.
It got really hyper and like that's what I'm saying,
Like you know, you had your Hui, but he was
dipped in Japanese philosophy, you know, Like it was like
I couldn't like those things, like like we're again having
(33:22):
this one individual of African descent fully involved in Japan
full like as if we ebles your boss uh about something?
How some Messaia you can keep going who don't have
traditions that are really powerful that can help you navigate
the streets of whatever. And then so a lot of
those things, like the kind of showed this kind of
depiction that to me was very much, very close to
(33:45):
what's that dude media type individual? Yeah, I put that
in and I put in the same class because that's
the thing is like like the fro like like that's it,
and and the corn Rows like there's some there's like
literally with African futureism and all these like what we're
trying to do and independent creators are trying to do.
It's like even hair. Hair is the most political thing
that literally we have so many different styles now whenever
(34:08):
we try to have a character draw draw one of
our characters, they draw Huey. Remember that. Yeah, there was
just to kind of take you back when earlier when
I talked about how everyone had to go through Obie's
regiment of reading African literature. We had to deconstruct a
lot of our artists. A lot of our artists who
we worked with, you know, they were taught Western styles,
maybe Japanese styles, So when we brought them to an
(34:30):
African story, they would bring that with them, and we
had to literally break that because there would be a
situation where there's a full description of how this character
is supposed to look, and the artists would come back
with this random, uh stock African mask, not even African masks,
like a ticking mask on the arm, and then some
(34:52):
Hughey type hair and we're like and no shirt, Like wait,
that's where did you get this from? And they're like, oh,
this is like it's an African character, Like did you
read the description? No? And then with one of our
other characters, we have to actually stop one of our
artists because we realized every scene the character was getting
lighter and lighter and lighter, to the point where I
(35:15):
was like, whoa, bro, what is what is going on?
And he was like, oh, um, I don't don't. He
couldn't even answer me. He didn't he didn't even realize
what was just and like what was internal? Well, yeah,
that's totally systematic and you see it all the docks
is part of that system. And even depiction of black women.
(35:37):
Let's talk about that. Boondogs like like boondogs is not
it's not it in terms of like I'm being real, like, like,
is there any depictions of black women that y'all that
y'all could like vibe with in budogs have exactly exactly exactly,
you ain't gonna get me before I look at I
(35:57):
do want to say we. I mean, if he and
I have these conversations that unfortunately also a lot of
times when you are the first, you bear the weight
of your entire community. And that happens a lot in
my community as well. And I think, like I totally
understand that. Well, here's the thing is is that and
here's one where I'm going to come in for aaron
just for a bit. We are blessed that we we
(36:21):
we and we have to admit that the three Nigerian
sitting at the table, knowing like our culture where we
from all those things, we have to remember that a
lot of African Americans aren't blessed with that information and
so they have to go off of what they grew
up doing. And I think that's why it's Afros and
uh and I think it's corn Rows and I think
(36:41):
like the the the caricature nous of it, that whole
show is talking very specific and I think you're right
in due time, especially now, if you look at that
compared to what we see in Black Panther, the the
diversity in not only clothing, Like I almost wept when
I saw for the first time the big screen the
clothes we see growing up display that being said, Riley
(37:05):
is a specific black person. Huey is a very specific
black verson even whose cedric yarbrowers character uh the like
whitewash black Tea. It is a show of yeah, I
mean and right there in the name, it is a
show of caricatures. And I think that was and I
think the I think it wasn't for us in the
(37:30):
sense of like like a black creator gets a show
and it's not for black people. That's what I'm saying.
See what I'm saying, That's what And it goes to
Afro Samurai. We can jump, we can literally jump from
animate enemy. If you look at Afro Samurai, this is
an opportunity. Afro Afro even though you don't I don't
like the name Afro Samurai is a blank slate that
(37:50):
you could have put the most. It's a dope character.
It's a cool character, not even really a blank slate.
If you know anything about history, what do you mean
just the black Samurai who was no, but not right
right whatever, right right right? Everyone was. Some of these creators,
I think, have had to buck up against people, tell
(38:11):
people telling them that they can't make what they want
to make, and sometimes they have to give in. I'm
not saying anything about I don't know Aaron's story. I
don't know that. I'm just saying I know that a
lot of creators of color. I'm not trying to make
an excuse for it. I'm just saying, this is what
they have heard. The generations before us. I know because
we have had them on the show and we've talked
to them about it, have had to go at the
(38:33):
whims I guess of studios. And let me go back
to what you said. What was our lessons from our
first Kickstarter? When you're creative, the most important thing is
to be fearless. Period. I don't after the first the
first Kickstarter, the second Kickstarter, it was like, you want
to talk about powering up, you want talk about living
(38:54):
under dragon ball z over nine thousand. It takes an
incredible fearlessness and self confidence. The positive things that our
parents are, communities associations put into us times nine thousand
to come up with a work that depicts something as
true as you possibly can make it, even when you
know it's not popular, like how can you watch DBZ
(39:17):
and then you try to water down your stuff. It's
not gonna work. And that goes with Afro Samurai. And
that's why we came out with our work. We knew
it wasn't popular. Then we still we still powered up
and did it. Then Black Panther hit and now everyone's like, yeah,
but kinda forever, what are you talking about? We was
on that already. There's a lot of African futurists, African
(39:38):
futurisms like um authors doing it. Now everyone's jumping on it.
Like That's why I want to make very very clear
part of what African futurism and calling the production is
is that fearlessness, that desire to fight for a story
and and and that's what that's what I want to
I wanna know, yeah, and that and that's true, and
(40:00):
I think that's like definitely what we need now. But
I think that that is where it's standard, where it's
like you just didn't we gotta remember we're talking about
gate keeping, who holds the key. Luckily, we live in
an era now where we don't have to go through
the same door. You can. You can kick started. I
know that when I when I make the thing we're
(40:23):
gonna talk about when I make my joint, people gonna
be like what because And this is because studios their
job is to make sure they keep their job and
prepare for the worst. And what the people with the
money are gonna say. Uh, this definitely is gonna make it.
But I'm gonna just say it anyway. The show I
took out was about a gym, but had nothing to
(40:45):
do with with anybody being buff. It had nothing, not
a single thing to do. I I said it in
the pitch. I wrote it in the dock. I said
that no one has to be dubbed. The message that
this is sending is that anybody could be in the gym.
It's just a workplace comedy that happens to take place
in the gym. I don't know how many people passed
on it because they were like, how are we gonna
find buff funny people. It's like I told you all
(41:06):
a million times, but but like that's just the that's
that's so that's but like that being said, it um
like it's just like like for me, I think they're like,
there's some things boondogs got right. I think there's some
things that got wrong. I really do agree. People really
(41:27):
took the the ruckiest thing and ran with it. There
was I mean, but I mean we see this every
day on Twitter where some people he was like, you're
going real wild on that joke. You just so like
y'all get Dr Tona all the way back that I
went over to Black Panther R. What do you mean? So? Uh?
Watching Black Panther um first of all the world creating
(41:50):
was kind of the way. I don't I don't even
think people can truly appreciate Black Panther unless you've done
research on African architects, sure one, and and African clothing
and that you can't truly appreciate Black Panther unless you've
done some of this basic of research. Yeah, let's I mean,
(42:12):
let's just take this quick side boll What did y'all
think as soon as you heard my man? Uh? Yeah,
well what did you say? I was like, what it was?
I know, I was the only one who was like, uncle,
that sounds very familiar. That dialect seems very familar. He
said it, He said it, Yeah, he said he he
didn't the Ebo Solucu, his accent, his whole demeanor, demeanor
(42:36):
was very much a Niningerian specifically Ebo culture. Ebo, So
there's multiple ethnicities in Ningeria, so they have a caricature.
Our guests are Riley of sewords of an uncle type
who's very stubborn when he when he speaks, he speaks
the attention. Yeah, yeah, we saw it. But I think
(42:58):
with Black Panthers, and I know we talked about this. Um,
I don't want to really destroy people's love for this,
but we want you to try to think deeply, Okay,
just really think deeply. Everything starts at the root. Yeah,
when we create stories, it has to come from something
real that's happened on the continent or folklore or mysticism
(43:21):
or whatever the case may be. Period. That's African futurism.
That's called our production. That's how we wrote Black Panther
was not written by someone of African descent. Start there
like the comics. The comics start there. So when you
start there, you can just start to understand how if
you keep moving and don't address what's happened in the past,
(43:44):
something's gonna go horribly wrong. You have a wealthy society
right of black people, of black people right in Africa,
who's removed from the continent, who has all these resources, right,
all this technology and all this stuff, and they do
(44:04):
nothing for the continent. Number one, they have they literally
have the power to create hegemony, unity within all within
the continent. Do nothing. Okay, at the end, after everything happens,
they're gonna open up our boarders and start helping out people.
Where do they go because technically what kind of supposed
(44:25):
to be in East Africa? So the logical thing is,
if you're gonna start helping people out, you probably start
to the person right next to you. Nope, you skip
all Africa and Land and Ethiopia, Degeria, skip all that,
and we end up in Oakland. Wait a minute, Homie,
charity begins at home. If you're gonna build this out,
(44:47):
like you said, you're gonna build it out, you know
saying you might don't want to start from the continent,
and even the even with kill Marker's character, right, if
you're really thinking from a strategic standpoint and you're trying
to take over and do some clandestine stuff and you
need an army, might make sense to start with the
(45:09):
people that you can actually touch that are on the
continent that you're already currently on, because if you can
rally them again around the message, you have a real army,
right instead of kind of sprinkling out to diaspora where
you know, I can I can go deep, I can
go deep. But you know what I mean, I think
with especially like a property like Black Panther and what
(45:32):
we're finding for all the Marvel properties or these are
these are properties that were written back in the seventies
said by you know some Jewish white dudes in New
York who you know. So that's why I think even
in that movie, I mean, at this point we're gonna
get into it. You should have saw it by now,
they tried to tackle one of the biggest I think
(45:54):
plot holes in Black Panther, which is why the heck
if you have this African continent with all this power money,
you didn't stop slavery, and I think they're trying to
do that, and it just kind of just it's just
it's so please please, thank you so much, fine for
bringing that up. Let me because you know what's crazy, No,
(46:16):
it's not crazy. After this movie, I know black people
who genuinely had that sensement like, why didn't you guys
come for us? Oh? Really, why didn't we come for you? It?
Oh do you want to see it? He I mean,
you may have a different perspective ahead. I mean, we
were kind of dealing with our own colonization, kind of
(46:38):
occupied with Britain, Portugal, Belgium, France, Italy. You can't, I mean,
what do you what do you like? Get lay? Wait? Wait, wait,
hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I do.
I do like the way they went about that because
the reason I said that is because just like everything
starts at the roots, the responsibilities can start at the roots.
(47:01):
I love the things I experienced as a black man
traveling around the world. I begin to understand that if
those leaders in the continent, from Gohnna to South Africa
to Mozambique to if they spoke up to some of
the chocities that happened to our people in the diaspora,
it would have a huge impact. This is really important.
(47:24):
So that's so I kind of side with that idea
that if you're the parent diaspora or whatever, act like it.
And so that's my thing with leaders. I studied politics
like you could have said something when when um Trey
Von got hit. You know what I mean, when that happened,
when all these individuals was dying. I was in China
when it was happening, and I was like the most
(47:46):
embarrassing thing. So I mean, we're getting really really deep
because I mean there's I mean, there's so we can
get we would we there from this, We're able to
get so deep that we will everyone will not know
what we talk about it because I got some takes,
because there are some some Nigerian takes on American politics
(48:06):
that leave me. But can I say this one thing
about Afraid I mean Afro Samurai. The main thing by
Affro Samurai that we could at least guy and was
at least an African sword as some African like Afro Samurai.
The thing is Afro Samur's a really cool character. But
his name is Afro. He has a father, don't know
his name, don't know where the mom is again black
woman disappearing and no, he's like the best, Like where
(48:28):
does that come from? Why do we have a ultra
dope swordsman? Can we say where the techniques are coming from?
The swords And then he had a person who's like
kind of had this joint in his mouth the whole time,
which is like, like my thing was like Samuel Jackson
for real, No, no, no, Like I put Samuel Jackson
Aarma Guder in this box. So you said before the
Jewish people were depicting sort of our stories or whatever,
(48:51):
and it's not right. Then we have Aarona Gruder and
Samuel Jackson and it's like, yo, your your characature a
certain caricature. So then when are we gonna get it right?
So that's what I'm talking about with CLA Productions, Red Origins,
but we're coming out with these will all be in
the footnotes for y'all to click the link. And here's
the thing I was gonna I was I was going
(49:12):
to throw to you because I because everything you're saying
is valid. Everything is great, And even if people don't
agree with you who are listening, it's good to have
these discussions because it will get your mind thinking about
it and it'll get you think in a different way.
That's what I why I like these discussions. I think
right now we're in this era where we feel like
there's only a right or wrong answer, or you can't
have hard discussions. This is how you think, This is
how you see another perspective. But all I can think
(49:35):
about more than anything, is that the reason these stories
haven't been told is because no one knew them. And
right now I'm sitting across from two people who talked
who who are you know? Who know this story? And
I'm excited to see what's gonna happen when these stories come,
because if you look at just what happened, because I
(49:55):
was it was so funny, because I had that same
smirt y'all have when we talked about black panthers. Because
when people were talking about like this like so cool,
I was like, man, you don't even know the type
of stories that was coming. But it's because all this
time and this is this is the type of stuff
people get salty and leave one one star reviews about.
But if you haven't figured out right now, we don't care,
(50:19):
So we can. I just say, Iffy that I'm able
to sit here and listen, like I'm able to sit
here and listen and learn, And you have been able
to sit and listen and learn as we have had
different conversations with different people that don't look like us.
I don't understand why people that listen aren't able to
do that. I think they because they don't want to,
But like, why wouldn't Like you're saying why wouldn't you?
(50:40):
I just wanted to say that, because yes, we do
get one star reviews from people, like you know, they won.
I think one was like they hate white people, and
like we've had so many white people on this that
doesn't make sense. But also like I can sit here
and learn about something from a culture that isn't mine,
and that is that is helpful to me. Like I
like that. That's the whole point of this podcast is
not just nerds stuff, but how each of us as
(51:03):
nerds have been affected differently based on our culture representation
that we've gotten to have in the nerd community. I mean,
just based on people who have who have been talking
to us in the discord and tweeting at us. All
those books y'all mentioned. I'm gonna need y'all to say
I'm slow and quick because people are gonna want to read.
We'll put we'll put them in there, we'll put them
in the footnotes. But but the thing is is we
(51:25):
have a unique opportunity, all three of us, because all
three of us are storytellers, creators sitting in this room, right,
Danny's a storyteller, but I'm talking about African stories. Danny's
gonna be telling these bomb ass Latin X stories. I'm
so excited, but like it truly is like the closest
thing I have. This isn't this is an African this
is an African American thing. But I was in I
(51:47):
was I was in a situation where I was in
a room full of white people and I mentioned Tales
from the Hood. I was like, oh man, that was
so crazy that end when he transforms into demon, nobody
saw it. And when you think of nobody seeing tales
from the Hood, and then if you think back even further,
these are the people who are telling stories, and you
think that every black person has to ingest the story.
(52:08):
Now run me back how you all said, y'all hurt
these African stories where they not traditionally from the mouth
of our parents traditions. Yeah, it's up to us to
present them to inspire the next generation so that we
can get these new afrocentric versions, and and the onus
is on us to also respect. That's why the one
(52:30):
thing that got me so hyped is how you said,
the first thing y'all had to do was to read
and research, because if y'all want to do it, y'all
want to get it right. There's so many people who's
just so quick to just tell a story. They don't
want to get it right. No, but look enemy, these
Japanese creators, they sit there and do my Kashi Naruto
(52:51):
like some of these. I studied the grades, and jay
Co said, I studied the grades. That's what we did.
I went back to eighties enemy, study the grades. What's
the best enemy? One piece? Narrowto you too, most highest
gross sing I went back studied it looked at um
um like Toto the mass Layer, Moroni Kenchen one of
the most best historical animies. They told you so much
about the Major era, like they went into their history.
(53:14):
How come I know more about Japanese history and some
of the stuff I like my own, like like you
know history, you know what I mean? That's the part
of meeting this part of like anime they really respected.
I don't know about Yakuza us Like, how do I know?
I don't want to know about Yakuza. How do I
know about the Edo period? Yeah, well, we're gonna We're
gonna get some final thoughts, uh and wrap this thing up.
(53:37):
This has been great, It's good, it's such a this
is I'm having the most fun I've had in a while.
I mean, I've had fun on every episode we just
did Captain Marvel. I love my job. Uh So, but
when we get back, we're just gonna wrap up. I'm
gonna I'm gonna give one thing I like to do
when I have Creators on is to hit us with
that elevator pitch to get everyone on that and uh,
(54:00):
and then we'll just say where people can find you
and then close it out. So thanks for listening. I
hope everyone's having as much of a good time as
we are. We'll see you in a second, all right,
and welcome back to Nerd Efficent. This is the afro
Anime episode. I mean one thing before we go in
(54:20):
the closing thoughts that I think like if if people
you know, because you know how people being, if people
came in was like afro Anime, the names you just
dropped before that break you you can't help but be
salved that y'all know what you'all talking about. But you know,
I guess, like, what are you what are some closing
thoughts that you want people leaving this episode, you know,
(54:43):
thinking about and knowing, Uh yeah, no doubt. Um so one,
I just know there's a lot of people that want
to tell stories. Please, you owe to yourself and you
old to the people that are going to be consuming
your media to do your research. Like, media is powerful.
It's so powerful, and you have to understand and respect
that power and that responsibility to tell the right story. Right.
(55:07):
You don't have to draw from the Western lens when
there's an African lens. Go to a library like, it's
there for you. It might not be on Google, might
not be on Wikipedia, but it's there. And if you,
if you do yourself the honor of researching it, you'll
find out how fascinating our culture is because we have
(55:27):
some of the most craziest folklore, secret societies, mysticism that
you will ever ever experience. And it's your birthright, it's
your culture. So again, Oh that was that was deep
and I like it. Okay, then let's go. Let's go
(55:49):
to the fun part. Give everyone who's listening now an
elevator pitch why they need to check out colon Ut productions.
And you know you dropped, You dropped some some some
of the projects you're working on, So hit us with
some of those two no doubt so Colna Productions. We
are a studio that tells stories to the African lens.
We dabble in mysticism, African futurism, um juju, which is
(56:12):
African magic. We really go deep and explore the content
in the way that you've never seen before, and it's
all rooted and just amazing storytelling. Our first project Read
origins amazing story about this young boy and it's two
friends that mystically get transported to Neo Africa and they
have to save the continent because there's a power struggle
(56:33):
between the ancestral gods and the new age tech. So
that's one of our projects which is amazing and dope.
We have Kissi the electron Girl, this little girl who
has an affinity for technology and one day she goes
to an e way site and she finds something that
changes her life completely. She's able to fuse with technology
in a crazy way and she develops this amazing relationship
(56:55):
with this robot and we take it from there. We
explore how African rock with technology, right. So that's also dope. Man.
We have so many projects. But we also got to
give a shout out to Neddio kodaf Or. She has
a lot of projects that are out there now. Uh
Kata which an amazing series, BNTI series, amazing series. One
of her books, Who Fears Death, just got picked up
(57:18):
by HBO and it's going to be executive produced by
George R. Martin. There's some other projects going on that
we can't even talk about. But you know, it's it's mixing,
it's working. We're on web tunes. You can find Red
Origins on web tunes. You post the comics there. You
see the Electron Girls about to drop us on web tunes.
You can follow us on Conda Productions uh dot com.
Actually no, you can follow us on YouTube. Go to
(57:41):
Colner Productions. You'll see a lot of our animations like that.
Ko l A n U t Production just indeed and
ConA Productions. We we do a lot of our own
original music. So we do Afro hip hop. So what
does that sound like? All of our scores are original.
We get traditional, real African instruments. We take you on
a journey. It's it's wild stuff, man, I'm telling you right, now,
um yeah, Facebook, follow us, Instagram follow us. Then Neptune
(58:05):
is Blue. So Natur's Blue is also one of my
favorite projects about to come out this year. Um. And
it's a musical space odyssey. We're taking Black people into
space and we're exploring how that is. And these are
musicians that go into space and we explore what it
means to have a relationship with money, and also we
explore what it means to feel and have feelings and
(58:27):
how us as a culture and Black people in the diaspora,
how we deal with pain. And we do this through
these musicians and these amazing characters. And I literally we
we take you on a journey through music from the
continent through the diaspora. Even the spaceships are different, and
the spaceships are different as well, man, even the space
(58:48):
outfits are different. It's it's wild, it's aliens, all of that. Man,
We we dive in. We are in the future. It's
afro futurism. Um, with African futurism ConA productions. We just
tell them in stories and we do dope. So basically, yeah,
like as he described, like you know, musicians, everyone can
vide with that. And an African musicians, like, let's bring
them up, you know. And I saw on the wall
(59:10):
something called they said they had the Cotton Club, and
I was like, that's Harlem, That's that's that's that's the
African Americans. So like we do all all these cool stuff,
but from the root is African. So you're not going
to just see people with spears and it's you know,
we're gonna take it to the anime level, that like
extreme dope level. You know, you're Kabo Bebop, you know
what I mean. We're gonna you see these dope anime,
(59:30):
we take it to the next level. We're gonna educate you.
It's gonna be the Really when you dive into Afro anime.
It's almost like a lot of people ain't feeling him
right now, but hear me. I'll just hold on for
a seconds, almost like listening to a tract from Ya Kanye. Right.
One of the reasons why I really loved Kanye was
it was like listening to his music was a history,
a history, you know, tests from museum, Right. I got
(59:53):
to dive into his samples and learn more about Nina Simone,
you know, Curtis may faild uh you know, uh kids Charlemagne, like,
I got to really learn, you know, Alan Parson projects,
I got to really learn more about music. And that's
how we approached this. After anime, we we we give
you the front, and the front beautiful is dope. But
then if you start diving in, really get into the culture,
(01:00:16):
you know what I mean. So that's what it is. Oh,
that's great, Okay, And now that that's out of the way,
and everyone's already trying to download everything you all made,
where can people find you online? Online? So, like I said,
you can find us on YouTube calling up Productions. You'll
find a lot of our animated shorts were thrown on
their um a lot of our projects YouTube. Facebook, you
(01:00:37):
can find us Instagram. You can find us calling up
Underscore Studios. Um. Yeah, we'll put all of this in
the show. Web tunes on web tunes yea, So web
tunes is Patreona. We need that support. Let if be fearless,
the part of a saying, the part of a saying,
you know, it's tough. So we need that Patreon, need
(01:01:00):
that page ain't cheap creating. We need that Patreon shows support.
You know, we talk back. You know what I'm saying.
I'm not afraid to talk to anybody. I know. We
will talk to you, will engage with you, and we
take feedback. Man fearless feedback culture. That's how we rock
because we're African and our fathers just you know, would
say crazy things to us. When you have to eat
(01:01:20):
it something, you don't say that little feedback and I've
hurt nobody, and you know me. I'm always if y
W A D i w E on Twitter and Instagram,
if d S on Twitch if you want to see
me play video games and have discussion about movies or
episodes or why I'm dying so much in Apex Legends,
and don't forget the discord Discord dot g G slash
(01:01:43):
Salt Squad and that's where we talk about all types
of stuff and it'll keep you up to date. When
I'm streaming, I'm at Miss Danny Fernandez. I am at
Wonder Con. I will be there on Friday, four pm.
It's room two c D. I'm on LGBT and Minority
host How to Break Through to and then Saturday Most
Dangerous Women. Uh, it's at eleven am, same room to
(01:02:06):
thirteen c D. Both have stacked panelists and so excited
and many people that have appeared on here. We have
a uh Wandser is coming on. We have Chris Lamb
who's coming up in a future episode. Markie McCarty. Yeah,
a lot of a lot of dope guests that are
going to be on the Pan Dope Dope, so definitely
show up, hang out and where your nertives and shirts
(01:02:26):
to wander go so we know where you are and
as always, stay nerdy.
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Ify Nwadiwe
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