For Black Boys Who Considered Anime When The Nightly News Was Way Too Much

As an aesthetic, anime is not in my wheelhouse. I am enamored with efficient and concise storytelling, development that doesn’t over-explain, but trusts its viewers to put two and two together and doesn’t feel the need to devote 40% of its time recapping itself. So, me watching anime is by design an exercise of patience I did not know I possessed. I’m the same guy who praises the fact that Breaking Bad told an incredible and self-contained story in a mere 60 episodes, so when it takes me 4 hours of Naruto to watch one fight scene on a bridge, you can sense my frustration. The summer of 2014 changed everything. Except it didn’t. Already coming off of the very public trial of George Zimmerman and being prepped for the trial of Michael Dunn, two men that fatally shot and killed young and unarmed Black boys claiming self-defense, the shooting death of Michael lit the spark that would burn from city to city. Protests became more visible and more frequent. And with protests come closet racists waiting for their moment to shine. With every new Black person killed for nothing came a legion of folks on everybody’s Facebook fan page giving their very honed and expert definition of what a thug was. Suddenly, the most self-professed Godly folks were telling us what the death penalty should be or who deserved death for existing. I was finding myself in daily arguments with people I had known for over a decade, defending the lives of people who no longer were alive to defend themselves. I …