new anime fans are cool and not cool

(Sorry this is long)

I have some many conflicting feelings about newer anime fans man, like it’s cool that there are more people to share the interest with, but I miss the community of back then…

One of the things I like about more fans is that more shows sre being made because people like the genre of animation and there’s a huge gap in the market, there is so much more variety more readily available to people, not to mention there is so much discourse on shows now.

The cosplay community got a influx of people as well thanks to the big boom that anime got, and it’s cool to see so many types of cosplayers and how they interpret the characters on themselves!!!

I love all the new art of my favorite animes, all of head cannons people have, just seeing people enjoy something I like is such a great feeling! But I have one big pet peeve, just one pet peeve, but it really bothers me right now.

I don’t like how some newer fans alienate the community of before the big blow up.

And it bothers me that these specific people coming in, and it’s specific people because not every new fan is like this, try to shame others for having “bad” cosplays, or ships that they think “Don’t make sense”, or the damn power scaling that a lot of them do for some reason?

And originally, I didn’t notice at first, because I wasn’t engaging in the anime community for a but up until this point, but it’s getting pretty obvious who’s new and who’s not.

And I personally have seen this first hand in the one piece fandom.

One piece is popular, so it’s easy to see divide of the fandom right now, it’s so obvious that they literally made the meme ‘Agenda piece’ because some people have had the most narrow minded opinions of the story. And as for power scaling, it has gotten so bad, the love putting the characters against each other for who’s most powerful, and I know it’s starting to get bad because it’s affecting the anime itself. And how you may ask? Just look at how they treat Zoro and Sanji.

Some of the action scenes for Zoro are insane, they are done all amazingly, even if his role in egghead wasn’t huge. But Sanji? they are actively destroying his character, they even took one of his moves in the manga and gave it to Zoro, and it’s not even the first time they do this. In the fight in Onigishima, Marco says “Here comes the star” and Zoro starts flying in, but in the Manga, Marco says “Here comes the stars of the show!” and Sanji and Zoro come out AT THE SAME TIME, because they are both supposed to be equally strong competitors. But Sanji only comes after Zoro and isn’t even considered the star of the show (I know it feels like i’m straying away but i’m making a point, bare with me). Toei Animations (the company that makes the one piece anime) knows that the new gen’s prefer Zoro, because some of these fans don’t even care about the nuance to these characters, they only care about anime at a surface level, none of these people who are comparing characters actually care about the story, they only want to see the cool shots, and that’s why they started to show up after Luffy’s Gear 5 reveal.

Look, you all are very pretty today, it’s not wrong to want to watch a show for how cool the characters look, but you can’t just turn around and tell the people who watch the shows because they like the story that Nami is useless or Ussop is the weakest member. People who say that only tells me that they don’t watch the show for the love of the characters or to analyze or interpret the story.

It’s like saying you like Mr. Beast for his philanthropy, you’re completely ignoring that he totally scamming his fans with that theme park he opened, the lunchly brand that lies about being better than lunchables, his, frankly, mid chocolate brand, and that fucking toy brand that I can’t even be bothered to look up the name of. He isn’t the guy that counted to 100k anymore, he’s just another CEO with better branding guys.

One of the things I enjoy about the new fans was that a lot of them liked to do cosplays, but now that it’s popular, you can buy pre-made costumes, and that’s great! It’s great that cosplay is more accessible now, but due to this, a new standard was created, one that isn’t very inclusive. A big sentiment I hear from older cosplayers is that you can’t be as creative with you costumes anymore, people complain that it isnt ‘accurate’ to the character, and that’s not a sentiment people should have. The point of cosplay is to be creative! People used to try and match a character based on what they could get their hands on, and that’s cool! Of course i’m not saying that it doesn’t make sense to be accurate, but it doesn’t hurt to add the things that could elevate your cosplay. Make Monkey D. Luffy a monkey-sona, we have free will guys!! (totally not because I want to see that[can you tell I like one piece?]).

Now, you might be wondering what triggered me to essentially yap about these issues, and it was this last thing, it was this that pushed me over the edge, the straw that broke the camels back…

Ships.

These fans that i’ve been talking about, they just can’t handle an unconventional ship. Most of these people stick to safe ships, or ones that are canon to the show, and there’s nothing wrong with that of course, I like a canon ship as much as any fan, especially one that i’ve been hoping to happen. It becomes a problem with you start calling people weird for a ship that isn’t popular. I get if it’s like criminal, like a minor and adult, teacher x student, incest, etc. But if it’s just a ship between two characters that aren’t any of that disgusting shit, it’s just mean. Let people ship characters man, some of the funnest ships for me are ones that have crossovers, and all of this extends to just media in general, as this issue in the community isn’t just for anime, it’s happening online in general.

Let me consume my Zoro x Luffy platonic lovers fanfic and fanart in peace man, i’m always seeing these fucking people in the comment of damn pinterest calling the ship weird or cringe, I DON’T CARE. I AM FREE!!!!!!!!! AND I THINK ITS CUTE!!

TL;DR: What im saying is some of these fans aren’t actually trying to be a part of these communities, they just want to create their own, while pushing out the ones who created the space for it in the first place.

Also share your opinion, i’m always open to learn more, and if I got something wrong, oopsie daisy :)