White Knight For Funimation and Crunchyroll Deflects Fan Criticism With Highly Embarrassing Hot-Take

The anime community has leveled an abundance of criticism at companies involved with the anime industry, here in the west, for a number of years now.

The criticism only increasing more recently as companies like Funimation have been exposed by various news outlets, personalities, forums, and people all over the internet – for what many would call “hypocritical business practices”.

For example, there was the Funimation leaks a number of months back where, allegedly, prominent members of the Dragonball cast from Funition spent their time doing “private dubs” of the show, including blatant themes of homophobia, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.

Of course, the hypocritical part of the argument comes in because Funimation VA’s have spoken against such things in the past and here some are, allegedly, engaging in such.

That is just 1 example of the numerous blunders of Funimation over the years.

Crunchyroll has also recieved critisim from the anime community, albeit, less than Funimation. For reasons such as the abonation that is High Guardian Spice, and hypocrisy where CR may imply they help the anime industry, yet you have CR exec’s bragging about their brand “new office”, while seemingly doing nothing to actually help the struggling animation studios and mangaka’s in Japan.

Crunchyroll Executive Brags About “New Office” and the Responses are Probably NOT What He Expected…

The point is, there are numerous reasons why fans have leveled very reasonable criticism towards companies like Funimation and Crunchyroll.

Now, let’s take a look at this mockery of post from an ardent White Knight… Some are calling this bait, however, a good rule of thumb is “If you see something stupid on Twitter, chances are someone posted it with serious intentions”. Twitter is just that kind of place.

Hello friendos!! Over the past couple of weeks, there's been a lot of hostility towards the great folx at both @FUNimation and @Crunchyroll on anitwitter (anime twitter, closely associated with the alt-right) – in this thread, I'll be doing a bit of digging to find out why. pic.twitter.com/F3lwKdbB2f

— 𝘬𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯 ✿ (@kammypRequiem) March 10, 2020

https://archive.fo/M8zWW

As terrible of a hot take this is, I have to give them credit. I can’t imagine how much time they spent on this thread considering it’s all from “Twitter for Android”. That’s dedication.

“Over the past couple of weeks, there’s been a lot of hostility towards the great folx at both @FUNimation and @Crunchyroll on anitwitter (anime twitter, closely associated with the alt-right)”

They label the reasonable criticism from the anime community as “hostility” and claim all the fans are “alt-right”. This tactic has been used many times before from individuals and companies ( especially in the media ) to try and smear their opposition – since they’ll label people such regardless if they are actually in the “alt-right” or not, and often times in this case, they aren’t.

“For the uninformed, funimation and crunchyroll specialise in both the licensing and localisation of Japanese cartoons”

“They also “localise” said anime, which means they not only add translated subtitles to the shows, but they also completely re-dub the voice overs, AND re-fit the language and references to make more sense to a western audience!!”

“For example, in this classic episode of the “Pokèmon” anime, the character “Brock” is seen eating Jelly Donuts – however, in the original Japanese release, he’s eating “Onigiri”, an obscure rice-based snack found only in Japan!!”

4kids memes aside, another point that indicates potential bait, calling Onigiri “an obscure snack”…

Anyways, The problem many people have with “localisation” is that over the years, there has been blatant censorship towards Japanese themes as companies like Funimation change the context for their licensed release in the west. Nobody has an issue with localisation when it is needed, for example there are inherit language differences between Japanese and English which would require change to structurally make sense.

The issue is over the years, localisation has become an excuse to censor material that companies like Funimation deem “problematic”. Often, these are things as simple as jokes that employees at Funimation, etc, deem “inappropriate” or “offensive”

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“Not only do these companies help smaller Japanese studios promote and share their works with a larger audience, they also selflessly give back to the creators by paying them royalties, which helps them to grow and create more content both they and we love – so what’s the problem?”

If there was any indication that these posts were “bait” it would certainly be this terrible point in their disaster of a hot-take.

Deeming business and contractual obligations as “selflessly giving back” is so unbelievably stupid, that for this person’s own good, I sincerely hope this is all bait. 

“Well, alt-right anime “fans” don’t like the way the anime is localised. Really. Because localisers are making anime more accessible, they’re afraid their “niche” hobby will be taken over by “the SJWs” and will stop at nothing to gatekeep it, including promoting *piracy*.”

As explained above, this isn’t the argument that many who are against localisation stand by. The main arguement, put simply, is that localization is being used as a guise for blatant censorship. We can take it further and get into the ironic stuff, because the censorship employed often times is bigotry in of itself as westerners believe that Japan “needs to change its ways”.

Even more ironic is that as this person defends Funimation, VA’s from Funimation like Monica Rial have attempted to gatekeep by labeling fan criticism as being from “people who don’t even care about anime”.

“Rather than have the medium become more inclusive, accessible, and diverse, these trumpian poopy butts”

This speaks for itself, this person can’t make an actual argument to save their life. Honestly, if it wasn’t my job to report on nonsense like this, I wouldn’t even give this credulous post the time.

“Not only do they want less anime in the west, they also demand it caters to their own whims – calling localisation “censorship” as it doesn’t align with their own twisted, outdated morals!!”

More irony. People want the context to remain as true to the original intellectual property as possible, which correlates more towards not wanting it to cater to our own whims, because we actually respect the original material even if we don’t agree with all of it or certain things may be offensive. We’re okay with that, we don’t demand it be changed like some bigot would.

“To demand that an anime be completely retooled in its message just to suit your agenda better is the very height of selfishness and western-centric attitudes, and shows a complete and utter lack of respect for the original vision of the creators.”

Alright, if there was any part of this hot-take that would give the previously mentioned “this must be bait” segment a run for its money, it would be this part.

“im so based”

To end this hilarious mess of a post by calling yourself based actually makes me less inclined to believe this is bait, I’m on the fence right now, but I’ll say this much;

I’ve seen numerous hot-takes on Twitter. A recurring theme is after the hot-take fails and they get backlash, the poster will make a statement similar to this where they try to act unphased by the criticism. Often times, they go protected mode shortly after.

Alternatively, they pull the “It was just a joke” card.

Bait or not, let’s wrap this one up.

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