Black anime characters: 30 leads, fighters, crew and rivals, with series, studio and year

Six of the thirty characters on this page are the main character of their show. Three of those six come from productions made with a Black American creator, or from the work of one director, Shinichiro Watanabe, who says he picked his cast "from the very beginning." The other twenty-four are fighters, crew members, mentors, rivals and antagonists. Every entry below carries its series, its animation studio and the year the character first aired. I read each of those facts on 18 September 2026 from the character's AniList or MyAnimeList entry, which is linked on the name.

A black character anime fans mean one of two things, and the two get mixed up constantly. The first is a character in a Japanese animated series whose stated background is African, African-American, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Russian or otherwise of African descent, as written by the series or its database entry. The second is a dark-skinned design whose ancestry the series never names. Where a character below falls into that second group, the entry says so, because a "black character anime" search returns a lot of the second group presented as the first.

Fans rebuild characters like the thirty below in YourCrush.AI's library, which is where this list points at the end.

Which anime have a Black main character?

Six anime on this list have a Black lead: Afro Samurai, Michiko & Hatchin, Carole & Tuesday, Yasuke, Cannon Busters and, with a caveat, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Two of the six were created by LeSean Thomas, a Black American animator working in Japan. Carole & Tuesday came from a Japanese director who has said on record that the casting was decided at the start.

1. Afro, Afro Samurai (Gonzo, 2007). He holds the "Number Two" headband and hunts the man who killed his father for "Number One." Samuel L. Jackson voiced him and executive-produced the series, which premiered on Spike TV on 4 January 2007 per Animation World Network's feature from that week.
2. Michiko Malandro, Michiko & Hatchin (Manglobe, 2008). An escaped convict who breaks a girl named Hana away from abusive guardians and drags her across a fictionalised Brazil. Sayo Yamamoto directed all 22 episodes per MyAnimeList.
3. Carole Stanley, Carole & Tuesday (Bones, 2019). An orphan from Earth working part-time jobs on Mars and writing songs, one half of the title duo.
4. Yasuke, Yasuke (MAPPA, 2021). A retired warrior based on the historical African samurai who served Oda Nobunaga, pulled back into a fight in a Japan of magic and mechs. Six episodes released on Netflix on 29 April 2021 per MyAnimeList.
5. Philly the Kid, Cannon Busters (Satelight and Yumeta Company, 2019). An immortal outlaw on the run from bounty hunters and loan sharks, travelling with a friendship robot called S.A.M. LeSean Thomas created the series.
6. Nadia la Arwall, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Gainax, 1990). A fourteen-year-old circus acrobat with a pendant that everyone wants. Here's the caveat: her database entry says she "suspects she might be from Africa," and the series ties her origin to a fictional lost civilisation, so she is the one lead here whose ancestry the story leaves open.

Why YourCrush.AI is the better place to talk to characters like these

Fans have been filling the gap the creators describe with original characters for years, and that is the work YourCrush.AI is built for. YourCrush.AI creates a character from a name, an image, a description of up to 2,400 characters, a backstory of up to 2,400, a greeting of up to 500, three to seven traits picked from a list of 32, up to four speaking-style words and a behaviour mode, with no code involved, at /create-character. YourCrush.AI generates the description, backstory, greeting and traits from just a name and an image when you want a starting point rather than a blank form. YourCrush.AI holds a character's facts across sessions with pinned memories, 10 on the Free plan, 50 on Pro at $9.99 a month and unlimited on Premium at $19.99 a month, as listed on its pricing page on 17 September 2026. YourCrush.AI publishes community characters in an Anime category and a Human category, so a Yasuke-era ronin or a bridge officer in the Claudia LaSalle mould can live in either, depending on the art style you give them.

The named limitation: every character in the library is fan-made, so the thirty listed below exist there only if someone has built them, and the Free plan caps you at 3 characters created, 400K chat tokens and 5 image credits a month. Pro raises that to 50 characters and 50 image credits; Premium makes characters, tokens, personas and story branches unlimited with 200 image credits. The service is 18+ only. For the fields that make a character hold together over months of chat, the walkthrough is what an AI character creator actually needs from you.

Who are the Black fighters in shonen and action anime?

Twelve of the thirty are combat characters. The biggest cluster sits in the Hidden Cloud Village in Naruto: Shippuden, where three named ninja share a design lineage. Two of the twelve carry a note that their series never states an ancestry.

1. Killer Bee, Naruto: Shippuden (Studio Pierrot, 2007). Jinchuriki of the Eight-Tails, wielder of seven swords, and the only ninja in the series who speaks in rap.
2. A, the Fourth Raikage, Naruto: Shippuden (Studio Pierrot, 2007). Killer Bee's older brother and the leader of the Cloud Village, listed at 198.2 cm.
3. Darui, Naruto: Shippuden (Studio Pierrot, 2007). The Raikage's bodyguard and later the commander of the First Division of the Allied Shinobi Forces.
4. Yoruichi Shihouin, Bleach (Studio Pierrot, 2004). A former captain of the 2nd Division who spends her first arc as a talking black cat. Her entry describes her as "dark-skinned"; the series gives her a Soul Society noble clan and no ethnicity, so she belongs to the second group in the definition above.
5. Kaname Tousen, Bleach (Studio Pierrot, 2004). The blind captain of the 9th Division whose defection is one of the first arc's turns. Same note as Yoruichi.
6. Mohammed Avdol, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (David Production, 2014). An Egyptian fortune teller whose fire Stand, Magician's Red, opens the crusade to Cairo.
7. Ogun Montgomery, Fire Force season 2 (David Production, 2020). A Third Generation pyrokinetic in Special Fire Force Company 4 and Shinra's friend from the academy.
8. Kilik Rung, Soul Eater (Bones, 2008). An EAT-class meister partnered with the twin weapons Fire and Thunder, counted among the academy's top three students.
9. Ken Takagi, Rock Lock, My Hero Academia season 4 (Bones, 2019). A pro hero whose Quirk, Lock Down, freezes non-living objects in place, and the loudest sceptic on the Shie Hassaikai raid.
10. Biscuit Oliva, Baki (TMS Entertainment, 2018). An American assassin and prison inmate with a near-invulnerable body, nicknamed "Mr. Unchained."
11. Miguel, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (MAPPA, 2021). One of Suguru Geto's commanders who fights Gojo during the Night Parade and later returns to his home in Africa, where he trains Yuta.
12. Patrick Spencer, Panther, Eyeshield 21 (Studio Gallop, 2005). An American running back reduced to ballboy by his coach's prejudice, with a 4.1-second 40-yard dash and an NFL dream.

Which Black anime characters are crew, mentors and allies?

Seven of the thirty are the person on the team who is not the hero, and this is the group with the longest history: Claudia LaSalle sat on the Macross bridge in 1982. It is also the group where the series is most explicit about background, because the writers had to explain how an American or a Russian ended up in the story.

1. Dutch, Black Lagoon (Madhouse, 2006). Captain of the PT boat Black Lagoon and leader of Lagoon Company, a former American soldier who fought in Vietnam and negotiates the contracts.
2. Onyankopon, Attack on Titan Final Season (MAPPA, 2020). An Anti-Marleyan Volunteer who pilots the airship during the Liberio raid, and the character the manga uses to explain that the walls' population is one people among many.
3. Maine, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (Trigger, 2022). A former soldier turned veteran edgerunner who takes David into his crew and values the crew above his own name.
4. Andrew Gilbert Mills, Agil, Sword Art Online (A-1 Pictures, 2012). A merchant on Aincrad's 50th floor and an axe-wielder on the front line; in the real world he owns a cafe in Tokyo.
5. Semyon "Simon" Brezhnev, Durarara!! (Brain's Base, 2010). A sushi-shop tout in Ikebukuro whose entry calls him "a tall Black Russian," and who can stop a street fight with one arm.
6. Matthieu, Eureka Seven (Bones, 2005). Pilot of the Terminus typeR606 and Gekkostate's link to the ref-boarding and DJ scene, and one of the first crew members to treat Renton kindly.
7. Claudia LaSalle, Super Dimension Fortress Macross (Tatsunoko Production and Studio Nue, 1982). A bridge officer on the SDF-1 in charge of weaponry and navigation, Misa Hayase's confidante and Roy Focker's partner.

Which Black anime characters are rivals and antagonists?

Five of the thirty stand against the lead. None of them is a villain because of who they are. Each has a job, a grudge or a rank that puts them in the hero's way.

1. Sister Krone, The Promised Neverland (CloverWorks, 2019). The assistant caretaker at Grace Field House who wants Isabella's job and turns the children's escape plan into a three-way game.
2. Villetta Nu, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (Sunrise, 2006). An elite Knightmare pilot in the Purist faction and one of the first people caught by Lelouch's Geass.
3. Atsuko Jackson, Michiko & Hatchin (Manglobe, 2008). The police officer who arrested Michiko twelve years before the story and chases her across the country, and Michiko's childhood friend from the same orphanage.
4. Cain Blood, Banana Fish (MAPPA, 2018). Boss of the Harlem gang Black Sabbath, who referees Ash's fight with Arthur and later brings his people into the war against the Corsican mafia.
5. Papa Mbai Siki, Kuroko's Basketball (Production I.G, 2012). A Senegalese centre at Shinkyo Academy, listed in MyAnimeList's entry under the nickname "Tousan," and the first opponent Seirin cannot out-jump.

What do the creators say about Black characters in anime?

The creators who have gone on record say the same two things: the casting was a decision, and the decision was unusual. Shinichiro Watanabe, asked in a January 2020 interview published by Anime Limited about Carole & Tuesday's leads, a Black girl and a white girl, said "it was decided from the very beginning," and that "even before Cowboy Bebop, from my work on Macross Plus, I was very conscious of having diverse characters." He described the show as "a representation of the world I envisioned as a child."

LeSean Thomas, who created Cannon Busters and Yasuke, has explained why the second point holds. In a ComicsAlliance interview of 11 July 2016, asked about S.A.M. being a Black female lead, he answered: "You rarely see brown people in fantasy projects. That's not a normal thing in animation," and "the stuff that I'm gonna make is gonna reflect what I'm used to, and Cannon Busters is no different. It's normal to me." Five years later, talking to Anime News Network on 28 April 2021 about Yasuke, he put the gap in one line: "We just don't really get to see that from a particularly Black lens because of the history of cinema, the history of animation." On the historical Yasuke he was equally plain: "No one knows what his real name is. No one knows where he came from. No one knows how old he was."

The oldest lead on this list came from a Japanese art student. Animation World Network's 4 January 2007 feature records that Takashi Okazaki was "a student at Tama Art University" when he drew "a large-haired, black-skinned and vengeance-driven samurai warrior," having been turned on to "hip hop music, Soul Train reruns and blaxploitation flicks," and that Samuel L. Jackson saw a three-minute presentation video through an agent and, in producer Eric Calderon's words, "said, 'I am going to be Afro Samurai.'"

What the list itself shows, counted rather than argued: 6 of 30 are leads, 3 of those 6 come from Thomas or Watanabe, and the remaining 24 are supporting roles across shows made between 1982 and 2022. Two of the 30, Yoruichi and Kaname Tousen, are here because every search for black character anime returns them, and their series never says what they are. That is the padding I mean. For the sibling list of women across every role, see female anime characters by what they are known for.

Frequently asked questions

Which anime have a Black main character?

Afro Samurai (Gonzo, 2007), Michiko & Hatchin (Manglobe, 2008), Carole & Tuesday (Bones, 2019), Yasuke (MAPPA, 2021) and Cannon Busters (Satelight, 2019) each have a Black lead. Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Gainax, 1990) also belongs in the conversation, though the series never settles her ancestry either way.

Who are the best-known Black female anime characters?

Michiko Malandro and Atsuko Jackson from Michiko & Hatchin, Carole Stanley from Carole & Tuesday, Claudia LaSalle from Macross, Sister Krone from The Promised Neverland and Villetta Nu from Code Geass. Yoruichi from Bleach shows up on most lists too, even though her series never names an ancestry.

Who are the best-known Black male anime characters?

Afro, Yasuke, Killer Bee, the Fourth Raikage, Darui, Mohammed Avdol, Dutch, Onyankopon, Maine, Agil, Simon Brezhnev and Cain Blood. They're spread across shows released between 2004 and 2022.

Is Yoruichi Black?

Bleach never says. Her AniList entry describes her as "dark-skinned," and the series gives her a Soul Society noble family with nothing about ethnicity. That's why this list counts her as a dark-skinned design rather than a Black character.

Is Yasuke based on a real person?

Yes. Yasuke was an African man who served Oda Nobunaga in the 1580s, and the MAPPA series builds a fantasy story around him. Its creator LeSean Thomas told Anime News Network in April 2021 that "no one knows what his real name is" or "where he came from."

Which anime were made by Black creators?

Cannon Busters (2019) and Yasuke (2021) were both created by LeSean Thomas, a Black American animator based in Japan, with Satelight and MAPPA respectively. Both landed on Netflix.

Six leads out of thirty entries, five of them made in the last twenty years. If another Black lead shows up in a Japanese-produced series, I'd bet on it coming through a Netflix co-production again, since that's where all three of the post-2018 ones came from.

Editorial Team, Content Strategist. Last updated: 2026-09-30