Gatekeeping In Anime
Do unto others as you would like done unto you. A simple quote from a simple time but the message passes along with the same weight they did millennia ago. I want to apologize for anyone who hates my non-review posts but this is something I feel needs to be said even though it should be inherit. If you are on this blog and you’ve read any of our content, you’ll notice two things. One being I don’t normally do this sort of post and Two being that we really don’t care who you are as long as you are a like minded Otaku Gamer, BAYOG will accept ye unwashed masses. As you may or may not have seen in my article on Black Panther I discussed how that movie offered a great gateway for a demographic of people typically depicted as being against or mocking the Otaku Gamer culture. I cited a few individuals such as our own Blackatron, Michael B. Jordan, Childish Gambino, and Kanye West as individuals of the black community who are Otaku through and through. A terrible even that occurs however, is the Gatekeeping effect, which serves as “the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.”
While many in this particular community of AniBloggers is probably THE most accepting and chill environment I’ve ever found on the internet, the rest of the world is not the same. With the mainstream world beginning to become more and more aware and accepting of our community, we find people beginning to eschew and ostracize individuals for being “fake fans.” The most common example of this is the “Gamer Girl” trope, where you either have a hot hipster girl doing something stupid like eating an unplugged controller, or as a fat feminist who acts triggered all the time. Just a few weeks ago however, Kim Kardashian recently posted a picture of Best Girl 02 from DARLING In The FRANXX with the caption “My hair inspo” and frankly, I was skeptical of the fact. CmdrCluckCluck did his due diligence and found it was in fact a real post on her Instagram, linked through her Twitter where she mentioned her obsession with anime. We then discussed Kanye West being an anime fan and also having a human sized Zaku, something all of us could respect as a sign of a solid Otaku.
The feedback on her post was a mix on the instagram itself, ranging from people being cool with it, to actually appreciating her open inspiration for her pink hair, to denial. Unfortunately more people were just kind of being internet people on the internet and had a more negative response ranging from outright disparaging comments about her past, to her ruining the fandom of anime or DARLING in the FRANXX. While I don’t approve of Kim Kardashian, there’s no way in hell I’d think to mock her fandom of anime or anything of the like. I feel it shouldn’t need to be said but with all the negativity I felt it was something that should be put out there, if anything to remind people that you should cut that shit out. The fact that comic book nerds and video game fans were mocked and ostracized was something that made comics like X-Men famous, because EVERYONE at some point can sympathize with being odd or an outsider. Even if they are a scumbag celebrity or an arbitrary female, or someone in general you hate, hate them for the things they did, not because they have something in common with you. Our community is something that transcends race, religion, sex, and politics and allows me to have something in common with a Muslim woman from India and a homosexual Russian in Brazil. Regardless of what god you may or may not believe in or what political ideology you have, if you are here and you are an Anime or Gaming fan, that should be enough for you to at least break bread and make peace with someone and I’m fairly certain if we could focus more on interesting fiction, reality would be a damn better place to live. So next time you want to haze that female in Overwatch because she sucks as anything besides support, or bash some YouTuber because they are “ruining your fandom” of TRIGGER! shows, remember that they like what you like, and maybe (just maybe) we can all just try to get along?
6 Replies to “Gatekeeping In Anime”
I completely agree. Even though I like to ignore that Kim Kardashian even exists, and I hate Kanye, they can like what they like. Coming down on someone, famous, popular or otherwise, for something they like is basically, for lack of a better term, the abused becoming the abusers. We got made fun of for liking what we like and made tight-knit communities about it, and now some of us feel the need to harass famous and popular people for liking the same thing.
Some of them do it to ‘protect’ the fandom from fake people who seem to like it just to be unique, (I like this weird thing that you just wouldn’t understand. I’m so quirky) while others just don’t want people that they don’t think ‘belong’ in the community, which is the opposite of what fandoms were built on.
Even though the anime community has been extremely accepting and welcome to damn near everyone I’ve ever seen, when it comes to fandoms, we like to treat them as our own little hideaways. Safe places for us to express enjoyment of things that seem weird to others without worry of judgement. Ironically, this drives us to keep people out, especially people who are famous or popular. It’s hard to have a hideaway from the world when the world’s in your hideaway.
We should all want a wider understanding of fandoms because the stigmas are still strong, and they suck. We should all understand that it’s great to express love and enjoyment of something. The world would be a better place if we all felt more comfortable to just openly be ourselves.
You’ve hit the nail on the head and I’m glad you agree. It was just something that I thought would mostly blow over in a week or two but 3 weeks later I still hear comments like the one’s posted to her IG about how she’s just faking it or something…like honestly it just bothered me so much because instead of showing a great and welcoming community that anime can foster, we show another terrible side of humanity you could find anywhere else. Appreciate the insight! Makes me feel better about writing things more from the heart and less from reviews!
Took the words right from my mouth. Well done man. Love to see more content like this!
What you said.
I totally agree. Labeling people casuals or the elitist ties into this too. Just because people only casually watch the more popular series doesn’t make them less of a fan. Really appreciated your thoughts on this!
I’m glad you agree with this, its terrible when people really do just start to beat on folk as fake fans when they are legit fans, just because its one of a few shows they watch.