Racebending, or drawing characters as races other than what they were intended as, is not new to fandom; however, this particular iteration was to counter the fact that the person took it upon themself to aggressively white out the existence of canonically Black and brown characters in anime.
There are a lot of assumptions packed into the belief that the best voice actor always gets the role. The statement alone implies that we live in a true meritocracy, which is false. FUNimation, easily the biggest producer of English anime dubs, routinely casts from an extremely small and extremely white pool of voice actors. The idea of “casting the right person for the role” is precluded by insidious biases and practices such as lazy casting, where voice directors will rely on a few go-to voice actors they prefer to work with in lieu of seeking out a wider pool of talent.
