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This Week in Anime - Does Social Media Ruin Everything?

In regards to the reason why she was dogpiled, I swear I've heard already five different reasons why: some say it's bc they were calling the author a pedophile, a friend that it's just plain homophobia, other friend that is because of anime censorship, some japanese comments that because there are sexual mentions (in general, not about problematic stuff or something) that westerners can't handle, and now this column about 1:1 adaptations, and in most cases we haven't seen any quote of those rage posts, so who knows what's true and what's made up to fit one's narrative. The only thing I can sort of trust is the japanese source linked in the ANN news article http://yaraon-blog.com/archives/297337 which mainly puts snapshots of the first one and maybe the fourth one (since one comment talks about not wanting to see one author's fetishes, maybe some japanese comments interpreted it that way). I feel we need to establish whether the other ones exist or else we keep feeding the misinformation of what was the cause of this (just for verifying the source of this current problem, not to keep being morbid about the awful scandal; I know the conversation is more than just this author, so I don't want to nullify how valid those topics are for other types of harassment that have happened).

In regards to the social media necessity: it is necessary for many of them to survive, a lot of times a viral tweet about their series or image may be the difference between continuing or be cancelled. For example, Miyazaki Asuka (author of 人としてつき合えたら, 'if we could speak like people') often relies on their series's snapshots posted on X and the discussion that surges that allows many people to discover it and have the sales bump they need to continue the series. Another author, Mitsunori Zaki (author of ナースの取扱説明書, 'Nurse report'), was lucky that before the first volume went to sale he posted the third chapter on X (about sexual harassment to nurses) which went viral and had a newfound attention that gave the series a huge initial bump that now it's settled. There are series that win or fall regardless of that, but it's a huge tool in the current panorama, which is also why it's hard for them to move out of X since it's where most people are and in others like bsky there are very few. They have it tough.

Very dusappointed that you guys wrote all these paragraphs & yet had basically nothing to say about how the actual harassment that drove Syundei off the internet was over non-con & age gap depictions in the manga, not a demand for the anime to 1:1 her work. Please do better. If you want to protect artists, tell the whole story please.

Agreed. What a weak sauce response, doesn't even address how Syundei's statement directly cited the antis who harassed her over the content of her art. Literally nothing to do with the people complaining about the anime adaptation. Doesn't surprise me though, since ANN writers have a storied history of agreeing with anti takes. Specifically all the TERF-originated rhetoric about BL and how allegedly "fetishistic" and "harmful" it is.

<snip>since ANN writers have a storied history of agreeing with anti takes. Specifically all the TERF-originated rhetoric about BL and how allegedly "fetishistic" and "harmful" it is.

I saw a couple posts that complained about the anime adaption censoring the octopus scene and attempt to try to frame it as homophobic/sexist because there's lots of fanservice anime for men in anime but when it came to a fanservice scene of a male character aimed at women it was removed but that attempted callout got shut down pretty quick when people pointed out that plenty of fanservice scenes for men also get toned down and censored all the time in anime adaptions with Bocchi being a popular example of how much fanservice was removed in the anime from the manga. That could encompasses all the "homophobia/1:1 adaption/censorship" reasons together but most of the screenshots and examples I saw were purely about anti-shippers complaining that the author drew content they saw as problematic like student/teacher stuff and underage stuff.

I saw a Japanese poster post a compilation of all the OP/EDs from this season alone that feature the characters dancing in them and it turned out to be quite a lot. One of the replies that stuck out to me was how dancing in OP/ED used to feel unique and rare but now it's all over the place and the primary reason is probably to bait Tiktokers into doing viral videos of it for promotion and yeah that does make a lot of sense how social media has become such a thing. I've seen quite a few official Tiktok accounts for Japanese media and the actors promoting their work on there although it's mostly live-action stuff more than anime but there is anime stuff there too.

Auto-translate has nothing to do with this I think you guys just want any excuse you can find to complain about Twitter and prop up Bluesky since you guys post there. The people who harassed Syundei have been doing so for over a year now long before that feature was implemented and even still nothing about this situation was mistranslated or misconstrued by a language barrier. People who harassed Syundei did so because she made content they dislike and that is not allowed to some people. They were quite clear on they felt she was a bad person because she drew problematic content.

Very dusappointed that you guys wrote all these paragraphs & yet had basically nothing to say about how the actual harassment that drove Syundei off the internet was over non-con & age gap depictions in the manga, not a demand for the anime to 1:1 her work. Please do better. If you want to protect artists, tell the whole story please.