(Once again, this is all my personal opinion as a human being.)
There are a lot of problems with condemning the entirety of the feminist movement just because some people invoke its name to make statements which are patently exclusive and anti-equality. For one thing, it allows the enemies of equality to derail the much-needed conversations about bringing that equality about by smearing the messenger; I don't honestly give a hoot what TERFs and other radicals have to say, especially when many of those people are either articulate-but-inexperienced kids or deliberate trolls masquerading as feminists in order to discredit arguments they don't have any genuine way to address. There has been absolutely none of that taking place here and as I said above, one of the main issues originally being debated is Funimation's choice to incorporate divisive language in its translations - which is being slammed by feminists too, because the word choices are creating an exclusionary atmosphere. Feminist fans are not the enemy here unless people go out looking for a convenient, soft target to scapegoat. If it seems as though they are, it's probably important to look back and work out where this impression came from. It may be enlightening. And this is why casual dismissive remarks about feminist-leaning fans in the context of a discussion of how politics are destroying anime comes across as gatekeeping. As fans, we need to avoid discrediting other viewpoints if we want to send a clear message. Especially when those other viewpoints are literally on the same side of the debate in the first place.
(I was very disappointed when I caught up on the thread over on UKA and saw some of the later comments which set up a 'them and us' narrative about things as simple as skin colour and representation; we know a bunch of AUKN users are not white, we know a bunch of AUKN users are not heterosexual. It's simply common sense to assume that rather than seeing representation as an optional trend. But that thread is what it is, and nobody here is saying such things. So I won't press the point further.)
I read the first page of that linked tinfoil-hat-wearing blog about 'animegate' back when Google's cache kindly provided me with the reference when the thread first appeared, and for the sake of debate I have gone back and suffered through the rest of it. Here are my impressions.
R
There are a lot of problems with condemning the entirety of the feminist movement just because some people invoke its name to make statements which are patently exclusive and anti-equality. For one thing, it allows the enemies of equality to derail the much-needed conversations about bringing that equality about by smearing the messenger; I don't honestly give a hoot what TERFs and other radicals have to say, especially when many of those people are either articulate-but-inexperienced kids or deliberate trolls masquerading as feminists in order to discredit arguments they don't have any genuine way to address. There has been absolutely none of that taking place here and as I said above, one of the main issues originally being debated is Funimation's choice to incorporate divisive language in its translations - which is being slammed by feminists too, because the word choices are creating an exclusionary atmosphere. Feminist fans are not the enemy here unless people go out looking for a convenient, soft target to scapegoat. If it seems as though they are, it's probably important to look back and work out where this impression came from. It may be enlightening. And this is why casual dismissive remarks about feminist-leaning fans in the context of a discussion of how politics are destroying anime comes across as gatekeeping. As fans, we need to avoid discrediting other viewpoints if we want to send a clear message. Especially when those other viewpoints are literally on the same side of the debate in the first place.
(I was very disappointed when I caught up on the thread over on UKA and saw some of the later comments which set up a 'them and us' narrative about things as simple as skin colour and representation; we know a bunch of AUKN users are not white, we know a bunch of AUKN users are not heterosexual. It's simply common sense to assume that rather than seeing representation as an optional trend. But that thread is what it is, and nobody here is saying such things. So I won't press the point further.)
I read the first page of that linked tinfoil-hat-wearing blog about 'animegate' back when Google's cache kindly provided me with the reference when the thread first appeared, and for the sake of debate I have gone back and suffered through the rest of it. Here are my impressions.
- Nobody is 'infiltrating' 'our' hobby. Celebrities are saying they like it. That's amazing. A whole generation of kids out there are going to be able to openly talk about the latest episodes of My Hero Academia at school without being painted as disgusting nerds like a lot of us were when growing up. In a broader sense, being a nerd in general is no longer a problem now that Netflix is making geek content cool and prominent. I note that the blogger thought that Kim Kardashian declaring that she enjoyed watching Darling in the FranXX was the trigger for anime armageddon. I'm not a fan of her either, but let's be real. She was used because she's a softer target; nobody is genuinely decrying cooler celebrities like Michael B Jordan making comical anime fan shout-outs on Twitter. You can see it in action in the responses to both celebrities' tweets; one of them is teased, the other is attacked. By people who claim to be anime fans. If anime is going down (it's not), it's going to be because its fans act this way. Not because of celebrities liking FranXX.
- The reason a bunch of news sites started running articles on anime in the mainstream right after the celebrities mentioned it is because the celebrities mentioned it. This is the only rational way to interpret the timeline; it's what news platforms do. There have been insinuations that the timing is all a media conspiracy but I prefer to assume the common sense interpretation. No western media outlet logically has any vested interest in starting a fandom war right now.
- The blog seems to assume that 'we' built anime fandom up in recent years all on our own and the media has just appeared at the last minute to destroy everyone's hard work by making this cool geek hobby into a mainstream genre. That is silly. The media has had our backs for years now; we've gone from getting no coverage at all which wasn't about edgy 18-rated dubs and ultraviolence to getting cinema reviews and Netflix articles in respectable printed newspapers. I'm under no illusions that the media will try to destroy us too as soon as it's convenient to run stories with that leaning, but we've been through that a bunch of times before. It's never been an issue. Even in Japan, the media often questions some of the more dubious content. And frankly, the Japanese media has a lot more power to censor and change anime than foreign newspapers scapegoating anime for the latest geek-related incident.
- The article then goes into its real meat, claiming that accusations of gatekeeping only exist because true fans are fighting for their hobby by pushing back against the media's recent (and so-far entirely positive) promotion of anime as a valid and interesting hobby. It's difficult to interpret an article written to decry casual fans coming into the hobby as anything other than gatekeeping. It is, quite literally, gatekeeping. Conflating it with a bunch of other issues as distractions doesn't take that away.
- Anime isn't going to be forced to conform to mainstream culture. It's very much mainstream in Japan already, yet childhood darlings such as Doraemon manage to happily coexist alongside subversive late night shows about death, abuse and perversion. This is because anime is a medium which implicitly appeals to a diverse audience. It's very unusual in Japan for a fan to watch every different genre the way some people do in the west; this season a wife might be tuning in for Wotakoi, her husband for Magical Girl Site and their kids for One Piece (I'm stereotyping for convenience here). If Wotakoi gets called out in the Japanese press for being subversive (again, I deliberately picked the silly example), it's not going to tarnish One Piece. Not least because One Piece is so culturally ingrained at this point that it's pretty much untouchable. A lot of the anger western fans seem to have at times like this comes from the belief that all anime is aimed at them; the nerdy, unsuccessful 20-something male geek archetype. It's not. It never has been. All that improved accessibility has done is forced them to confront that fact for the first time, and while many celebrate the access to a wider variety of shows, others balk at the idea that they're suddenly being oppressed by a changing industry. I'm confident they'll get over it.
- The article doubles down on its attempts to scare fans by claiming that now that anime has become popular it will be censored and torn apart by radical 'mainstream' groups (it quickly makes it clear that the writer's beef is mostly with feminism at this point, with some occasional lip service given to other groups to try to hide the fact that its sole purpose is attacking just one). I don't understand why this is being misrepresented as a new and horrifying thing; in Japan censorship of anime been happening for years and years. Artists have gone to prison for drawing manga which breached the rules of society, companies have been publishing apologies and recalling manga/anime content when mistakes have been made for decades. Grabbing examples from recent news to make it sound as though this is a brand new trend wrongly sets up a link between anime and/or feminism going 'mainstream' in the west and censorship taking place in the east. And they conflate ultra-liberal and hard-line conservative views freely in order to make it appear that they're arguing from a neutral standpoint against one extreme bogeyman, which is patently false. It's very irresponsible, disingenuous reporting.
- Incidentally, I don't doubt that there are producers in the anime industry who occasionally say 'hey, this scene is going to be poorly received in the simulcast overseas, let's make some changes'. It's been insinuated numerous times by actual industry sources over there. Producers have been doing things like that since the very first anime productions, only back then they didn't think that their work was ever going to be seen outside Japan so the groups they were trying not to offend were domestic rather than international. Producers are still making changes from the source material to fit their own preferences and political agendas, and this will never change in an industry where multiple people are holding the reins to create a relatively mainstream product; an anime is an expensive undertaking and toning down source material is always part and parcel of the process. If you want to be truly edgy, an expensive mass-market product isn't the right thing to latch onto in the first place. Independent manga titles (especially those which are self-published) have a much more relaxed approach to freedom of expression. Whereas even the most niche anime titles hope to break into the mainstream and become successes; if they didn't, no production committee would ever support them in the first place. That's why they make Blu-rays and sell them in mainstream channels in the first place. This is common sense.
- People respectfully challenging opinions is generally a good thing. I liked After The Rain and thought it was a rare case of anime actually treating a sensitive issue realistically instead of using it as pure fetish-bait; I watched every episode and would gladly buy it on BD. However, I don't think it's a problem for an Anime Feminist writer to say they didn't like it and support that view with examples from a different anime. I also don't think that Anime Feminist is going to singlehandedly bring about the cancellation of all age-gap romance stories by allowing one writer to express a perfectly valid opinion. If anything, the article could have encouraged people who did like the age-gap issues to seek out the other series they used as comparison, which allows fans to draw their own conclusions and watch more anime. Win:win.
- I don't like the claims that mainstream feminist movements are the reason that people are uncomfortable with things which make them uncomfortable. People were uncomfortable with the things already. The fact that they feel emboldened to actually say so rather than hiding it to avoid being trolled into oblivion is a good thing - unless, of course, the 'establishment' knows that the things they want to defend are inherently indefensible. In which case, attacking people for questioning those things is silly. It's ok to accept that some of the things you like aren't 'good' things. It doesn't make it wrong to like them, and nobody is forcing you to think too deeply about the issues unless you choose to engage. I will freely admit that a lot of the things I like are not pleasant, just as I'll admit that a lot of the anime I watch isn't stuff I'd recommend to others.
- The corporate examples were just as daft as the rest of the article. Newsflash, anime costs money and people want to work out how to exploit the market to make money from it. "Anime Japan is holding a seminar focused on how to expand the anime industry in North America" is presented as a new revolution when in fact, Japanese producers and decision-makers have been openly wondering about this around meeting tables ever since the first foreign anime money started flowing back towards Japan decades ago. Of course they want to expand the anime industry globally. You don't have to drill into the Anime Japan schedule to work this out; it's obvious from looking at all of the coproductions and legal streaming developments over the past decade. Heck, just watch an episode of Anisong Station and look for how many times the hosts casually mention how the series is now being broadcast worldwide or how the guests that week are popular in Europe; it's a badge of honour which is actively used to market to the Japanese audience.
- The last page was mostly about gaming rather than anime so I sort of tuned out (despite being a very active gamer who likes stuff like DoA). It openly admits there are no good examples actually using anime, but it doesn't matter because it's no longer hiding its divisive rabble-rousing agenda by this point. The only two comments on the article itself are both making fun of it, which makes me question why people outside of the blog's readership are expected to take it any more seriously. No thanks.
R
