Anime. A beloved work of art widely known in pop culture as animation hailing from Japan. The collective love and support for the medium includes a large community of people who consume it on a daily basis. For me, anime is an art form that I’ve loved since my childhood, filled with days watching Pokémon, Naruto, Sailor Moon, and many more. I proudly still consume it to this day. While I consider myself to be a part of the anime community, there are some negative aspects that I’ve witnessed and experienced myself. This isn’t an attempt to trash talk about it. Rather, such aspects should be called in and discussed.
Anime is not just for Children
Anime is an increasingly growing accepted piece of art in the mainstream media. However, it wasn’t always like this. Years ago, it was deemed weird, ‘made for kids,’ or worse of all, it was just seen as ‘hentai.’ Anime is a diverse art form that, just like many other movies and TV shows, targets many different audiences with various genres and topics. And, yes, some are geared for children; younger generations watch these shows and popularize them. But at the same time, there are also some geared for much older people.
That all changed in 2013-2014. As I was becoming more confident in myself, I advised myself to enjoy things without any fear of judgment. That was the moment I began my journey of getting back into it again. I was watching anime constantly to reclaim the years I lost and to ultimately feel more like myself again. Some I watched during this time were Fairy Tail, Blue Spring Ride, Soul Eater, Seraph of the End, Wolf Girl and Black Prince, Kaichou wa Maid Sama, Hyouka, Free!!, Tokyo Ghoul, Attack on Titan, and a lot more. I felt more at ease the more anime I watched. Manga too! I can’t forget that with reading Tsubaki Chou Lonely Planet, Daytime Shooting Star, catching up on Fairy Tail & Attack on Titan, finishing the rest of Blue Spring Ride & Wolf Girl and Black Prince, and reading manga in general. Now, I’m not so afraid of expressing my love for anime as it is an art form that will always stick with me. I will never get tired of it and I won’t let anyone persuade me otherwise.
The Trendy Double Standard
Although nowadays with anime blowing up and becoming more accepted, fake consumption of it is also visible. There are people who are only consuming anime because it is a trend and not because they have genuine interest in it. I highly advise you, if you’ve ever done something like this with anime or anything in general, to refrain from doing so. It will only create a drain in your life as you are forcing yourself to like something — similar to how I forced myself to disavow my love for anime. Furthermore, you’ll distance yourself from your identity; in other words, the more you consume things just because it’s a trend the more difficult it will be in figuring out who you are as a person. You won’t be able to know yourself enough if you continue. If you started liking anime because it genuinely interests you, that’s great! If it turns out to be a phase and you slowly stop consuming it, that’s okay too! You were able to get a taste of what anime is with truly good intentions and were able to figure out if you liked it or not. But please don’t like ONLY because it’s a trend.
Pokémon or Digimon are targeted for children to watch (If you’re an adult and still watch Pokémon, don’t be ashamed! It is an anime a lot of us grew up watching). On the contrary, anime like Corpse Party, Mirai Nikki (Future Diary), and 91 Days, to name a few, include rated M content such as gore, blood, or violence that were never made for children to watch. It’s this type of broad variety that was often ignored by close-minded people who thought otherwise about anime. Hearing ignorant comments being made about anime did affect how I and many anime lovers would express our love for it publicly. As a child, I was absolutely obsessed with Pokémon, Bakugan, and Naruto. When I found out that anime wasn’t acceptable, I thoroughly believed that suppressing my interest in it was best. At the time, anime was seen as lame and I was in fear of getting bullied. Looking back, it’s understandable why people would make fun of the so-called ‘anime nerds’ often because they would make a ruckus such as Naruto running through the school hallways. Not all anime fans would dare to do something like that, but there are a few who would. It does seem fun, but it could bother some people and could result in physically hurting someone — accident or not. This kind of stereotypical expectation, and many more issues, further convinced me to cut off anime altogether. During those times, I didn’t consume much anime so I could try to fit in and be accepted into society. I still liked anime, but I forced myself to like it a lot less compared to before. I was afraid of being judged for it, and it was painful.
Seeing how people consume anime as a trend is irritating and cringy for true anime lovers to see, especially long time ones. While there are people who have been loving anime for a long time, there are also people who bullied them for it. As a result, it’s caused A LOT of trauma and harm. So to see people who made fun of others who like anime and then later on down the line they start liking it themselves, it can be seen as an unnecessary slap to the face. Like what was the point of the bullying then? In no means am I trying to gatekeep anime; however, I personally find it SO frustrating with how drastic the switch is. Those people may have matured and grown to see their mistakes, thus now regret them. Unless those people started to truly be interested in anime, that doesn’t change the fact that they caused trauma for those who liked it before it became a so-called trend.
Dubbed vs. Subbed Discourse
In my personal opinion, I do not mind dubbed anime at all. In fact, I usually watch dubbed and dubbed anime depending on the context of the anime. For example, I am currently trying to catch up on SK8 the Infinity. The story takes place in Japan so it would make sense to watch it in sub with hearing the Japanese language. Soul Eater, on the other hand, takes place in Death City, a fictional city supposedly located in Nevada in the United States. The country’s most popular language spoken is English, so it would make sense to watch it in the English language.
This is simply my personal preference when watching anime to receive a more accurate feel of the story based on the context provided. On the other hand, there are anime watchers who prefer to watch in all dub or all sub. That is completely fine — because people have preferences. Yet, it’s common to see sub watchers mistreat dub watchers simply because they watch in dub. A lot of them always believe they are the most superior and are at the top of the hierarchy in the anime community. It’s elitist behavior! Don’t be like this. Just because you prefer subbed doesn’t make you special or better than anyone else. If it’s your preference, that’s totally fine. But if you go further into bullying, disrespecting, and looking down on those who watch dubbed anime and those who watch it, that is going too far. There’s no justification for the mistreatment. It’s sickening. I absolutely HATE seeing it.
I personally do agree that subbed does express emotion better than dubbed. Yet, there are dubbed anime that are amazing too! Fullmetal Alchemist provided talented voice actors, especially for Edward Elric who was voiced by Vic Mignogna. J. Michael Tatum does an excellent job voicing Sebastian in Black Butler. There are also a lot of amazing voice actors who dub anime in other languages too. I’m not trying to say that Japanese voice actors are bad when stating all of this; they are just as amazing as well! Yuki Kaji was a perfect pick to voice Eren in Attack on Titan and the same can go for Junko Takeuchi who voices Naruto in the Naruto series. If you prefer to hear the raw Japanese voices, then okay. If you don’t like how dubbed voices are executed, that’s also okay because that is your opinion. However, if you are going to disrespect those voice actors or mistreat dubbed watchers, that’s inconsiderate and going too far. Some viewers out there might prefer the dub for personal reasons like because they have dyslexia or are blind. Or, they simply want to be doing other things while watching anime and watching it in dub will be easier for them. Having anime be dubbed in other languages allows for more accessibility for all anime fans. Either way, people have preferences and there needs to be respect towards them. This type of conflict of sub vs. dub needs to stop. Let people enjoy anime however they want. Stop attacking them.
I have plenty more things to state about the anime community; these are my top ones I would like to point out. Because I love it, I feel the urge to criticize and point out its faults. As a long time anime fan, I’ve seen almost all of the beauty and the ugliness. Since the anime community is large, there are bound to be toxic people within it. No matter what, I still love being a part of it nonetheless… and I will continue to do so.