This question has been posed time and time again, and yet – it’s now my turn to add to the long-standing debate. Is gatekeeping in anime fandoms actually a bad thing?
The Fandom Divide: Is Gatekeeping Necessary to Preserve Anime Identity?
Gatekeeping is often looked down on and frowned upon in the anime community. But what if it were necessary to maintain an anime fandoms integrity?
First, let’s start off with a simple explanation of what exactly we’re talking about today. So, what exactly is gatekeeping?
In simple terms, gatekeeping is considered the ‘shunning’ of newer fans to a series, established franchise, or brand as not “true fans” due to an existing knowledge gap between those in the established community and newcomers to an entity.
The Avatar Case Study: Where Did Legend of Korra Go Wrong?
For example, I would personally consider myself a long-time fan of Nickelodeon’s Avatar: the Last Airbender cartoon series.
Although I did not start watching until Book 2 was airing, I was big in the ATLA community almost a decade ago. I made AMV videos on YouTube (that went ‘viral’ before that word existed in our pop culture lexicon), reported news to the community during East Coast ATLA and Korra Fandom events such as when the creators showed up or premiered things at NYCC, and I was a co-captain (more like lance corporal) of the S.S. Zutara during the great shipping war of 2008.
I am someone who knows the graphic novels exist, and not only reads but owns both soft and hardcover copies of them. (With the premiere of the Netflix series, I have noticed more people talking about those, and the Yang Chen/Kiyoshi light novels – which is nice.)
Quality Control: The Cost of Omitting Key Writers and Embracing Shipping
And like a proper fangirl, I absolutely despise the drop in quality of storytelling we received in The Legend of Korra. Which myself (and other long-standing members of the ATLA community) can all agree was due to the omission of Elizabeth Welch Ehasz and Aaron Ehasz from the writer’s room.
As the production of Book 3 revealed resurfaced posts from staff who spoke of unquelled riffs over character arcs, story progression, and thematic world building that led to the hollow, Bryke-sponsored affair filled with pointless shipping for the sake of shipping that LOK was.
Even now as I write this, I am reminded of the ongoing joke of how voice actors Dante Basco (voice of Zuko in ATLA and General Iroh in LOK) and Mae Whitman (voice of Katara) expressed a growing despair about their characters never ending up together.
In the TV series American Dragon: Jake Long their two characters of Jake and Rose ultimately remained friends despite the clear romantic feelings they harbored for one another.
I think of the memes before the proper word ‘meme’ even existed of Katara “hopebending” the gaang’s problems away. Which then made it into the Book 3 Ember Island Players episode, which served as a series recap.
Recalling even the rather unsavory bits of the fandom, including the movie which shall not be named that bombed M. Night Shyamalan’s career for a while, race bending and the whole “Aang ain’t white” campaign that vaguely resurfaced at news of a Netflix live-action ATLA remake.
You’re probably asking yourself – so why are you writing about Avatar the Last Airbender, an American cartoon, when the title of this post talks about anime?
Well, because I am a living part of Avatar: the Last Airbender‘s history.
As a fandom, we O.G.’s collectively remember the posts now deleted and scrubbed from the internet. We remember Nickelodeon’s attempts to actively kill the series in favor of other projects (like the billionth season of SpongeBob Squarepants).
We remember the lack of merch, officially sanctioned events, the bleaching of Korra’s skin on official posters, and the guerrilla warfare production notes and disturbances that leaked from that era.
From the mastery of that knowledge alone, we can see where the series may go in the future.
Although the live-action Netflix adaptation of ATLA is rumored to give us Zutara in later seasons, it will also give us a more overtly mature, somewhat gruesome version of the series that sparked Bryke to create Avatar Studios in retaliation.
And in a similar vein to George Lucas and the now Disney Star Wars atrocities, and Tolkien (and his society) alongside Amazon’s “reimagined” world created based on his universe, or even Netflix’s The Witcher series past season 2, Avatar’s co-creators Bryan and Mike were shut out of the Netflix production.
(I won’t even mention the train wrecks that have become Star Trek and Doctor Who, respectively. )
Like other ventures in the past and as mentioned above, this ripple effect gave birth to Avatar Studios, which fans like myself speculate will finally animate Zuko’s search for his mother Ursa, which, in a now deleted blog post, co-creator Michael wrote was proposed as a TV movie to Nickelodeon and ultimately turned down.
Maybe after the upcoming The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender film with a projected release for 2026 that I feel like keeps getting pushed back?
It is things like this, newer fans have no knowledge of – and who could blame them? Accessibility, or the lack of access to certain forums that no longer exist or social media accounts and fansites that unfortunately fell off, is not their fault.
The Corporate Monolith: Analyzing Monopolies and Branding in the Industry
You don’t need to know a fandom’s history to enjoy a series or an anime, however – you shouldn’t shun, or silence those who were around since a particular community began.
Those O.G. fans, who gave their time and creativity, should not be called ‘toxic’ by the media and outsiders when they can spot misgivings a mile away due to repeated past transgressions from writers, production studios, and now mega-corporations that have been added into the mix.
So yes, it’s cool new fans enjoy Avatar: the Last Airbender or anime series, but at what cost to the fandom’s identity that developed for years before newer fans knew of its existence?
With the rise in anime’s sudden international popularity: Taco Bell has anime commercials now, Nissan has a lofi anime-ish commercial, and even Star Wars has a Japanese dub for an anime.
Then there is the new McDonalds anime that is supposed to be a “humorous take” on WcDonalds from anime that I secretly believe is a 4D play by the mega corporation to try and copyright Japanese intellectual property that features their (now claimed through anime) variation of the classic golden arches logo.
While these things are all great and bring new fans in – why do we ignore the thoughts and opinions of older fans who have been through it all since the beginning?
The Localization Wars: Political Agendas and Altered Context
Anime companies come and go, or get swallowed up by growing corporate monopolies ( like Sony devouring Funimation and Rightstuf) all the time. Or Disney, who singlehandedly killed the hype for Summertime Rendering and countless other anime since due to a lack of promotion and covetous greed over their acquired IP.
These corporate monopolies and even the choices of anime committees in Japan bring changes in how we watch things, and the quality that fans will now tolerate.
The stylistic “you should be watching” will be a thing of the past, along with the highly sexualized and inappropriate “joke” recordings of American Funimation VA’s during the infamous Dragon Ball Z dubs that have been phased out of existence.
If the Dragon Ball Z fandom had been better at gatekeeping, would such perverted voice recordings exist? Would such voice actors feel comfortable enough to pervert beloved characters in that way?
Would the epidemic of social justice warriors and feminists blatantly changing the context of translated media from Japanese to English to include themes and discussions never intended by the authors, writers, and/or mangaka in anime and gaming localization be so rampant if these individuals were not let into the American anime industry in the first place?
(I know the Japanese anime industry in general has A LOT of issues, but since I’m focusing on gatekeeping in American anime fandoms and our industry, I will not mention those here.)
I could even mention Anime News Network’s sudden turn to propaganda and becoming a simple mouthpiece for certain anime studios and corporations rather than simply reporting on anime news as it used to.
So I leave you with this question: Is gatekeeping in anime a good thing to preserve the fandom’s core history and identity?
Or, should newer fans be given free rein to completely change (decades old) fandoms with their modern beliefs, ideals, and be allowed to correct “problematic media” for the (“popular”) politics of today?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below, I’d love to hear from you! Also be sure to follow us for more Anime News and Discussions.
☆ In Asian Spaces ☆ Ephesians 6:12 ☆
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