Top 10 Times Companies Pissed Off Anime Fans

Ah, the Tokyo Olympics. A time for Japan to show off what they’re all about. One of its most notable and beloved (at least in terms of geekdom) being that its life-size replica of the Unicorn Gundam could occasionally be seen in the background of the various events. Someone should have given the person working the BBC Sport Twitter account a quick lesson on the Universal Century, on account that they posted about said Gundam…and called it a Transformer. The Newtype reckoning followed swiftly after.

The announcement that Netflix was bringing this downer of a sci-fi masterpiece to the masses via streaming was met with grand acclaim. After all, it was ideal for those who had yet to sink their teeth into the ballad of Shinji’s inability to get in the robot. And then came the announcement that the original English cast, as well as the signature ending track of Fly Me to the Moon, would not be making a return. Spike Spencer and the rest are practically synonymous with Evangelion by this point, and yet their pleas and petitions were shot down. On a happier note, turns out that Amazon has re-hired them for the dub of 3.0 + 1.0!

The Land of the Lustrous certainly turned a few heads, both to the fondness fans had for the source material as well as how its anime adaptation did wonders with CGI. Obviously, being a publisher first, Kodansha wanted to sell as many volumes of the manga as possible, and one avenue they took was by printing on the back that Land of the Lustrous was a great new manga that fans of Steven Universe could enjoy. Because, you know, female characters named after gemstones. This came off as a tad desperate, especially with how the manga was published a whole year before Steven Universe’s release!

You know you’re stepping in it when you deny cosplayers the chance to dress up however they like and as whoever they want. In this case, Anime NYC forbade anyone from cosplaying as characters from Saga of Tanya the Evil, due to their policy on attendants dressing up as anyone from fictional hate groups. There’s plenty of debate to be had there, but what really rubbed people the wrong way was how, while putting the ban on Tanya costumes, they were also promoting the upcoming Tanya movie at the exact same time!

Nowadays, should you so choose, there is a perfectly serviceable dub of One Piece over on Funimation, one that lives up to the beloved source material, that is still rocking on to this day and spitting out animated gold. But that wasn’t always the case. There was a time, a dark, dark time where 4Kids Entertainment had their claws all over it. And what was the result? Censorship galore. Weapons were swapped out, character deaths were re-written, whole arcs were dropped, they made Sanji sound like this!

Again with the Olympics, though this topic of contention is a tad murkier. Announced back in 2017, several anime characters were selected by the Japanese Olympic Committee to serve as Tokyo Olympic Ambassadors. You can kind of see where they’re coming from. After all, the likes of Goku, Naruto, Astro Boy and Sailor Moon are all iconic in their own way. And yet, some fans weren’t having it. On one side you had “don’t you dare use my beloved anime character for such crooked means”, and on the other “Astro Boy was made by a doctor, don’t you dare him encourage large gatherings in the midst of a pandemic”.

Well, this was a crap volcano. Detested from its inception, the reveal of High Spice Guardian, which was marketed as an original magical girl anime, caused a lot of pushback. The majority of this was due to complaints from fans who saw it as a sign that Crunchyroll was using their money to fund American-based projects, instead of the subbed Japanese content everyone had signed up for. Maybe it would have been better received if they hadn’t pushed their shallow behind the scenes video, and if the whole thing didn’t look like Little Witch Academia’s sparkly, sugar-high, less-successful cousin.

We all grew up watching the original adventures of Ash and company. Travelling the land, catching Pokémon, beating Gym Leaders, blowing up Team Rocket’s budget, failing at every league he entered. Those were the glory days. And all of it was helmed by a great dub cast that continues to endear us to this day. Unfortunately, when 4Kids lost the rights, the cast was swapped out, and before we knew it, we were greeted with a bunch of unknowns. Not throwing shade at the new cast who have continued to carry the torch, it’s just that we really miss Veronica Taylor…

Plenty of fans grew up with this dub, and without its influence it's fair to say a lot of great anime wouldn’t have made it over to the west. While the situation has apparently been resolved as of this year, for the longest time Harmony Gold held the name Robotech in a vice, and they weren’t afraid to lash out with the legal whip if anyone tried to infringe on it. Kind of tricky when your series is based on a mesh of three anime under the Macross banner, which in itself has dozens of other spin-offs. As you can imagine, it made distribution over in the States a living nightmare, and fans of the alien-busting-idol-romp were none too pleased.

Live-action anime are a gamble and a half. Some turn out decent. Others are botched up wastes of time. And that’s including all the ones made over in Japan, so what chance did Hollywood have? Alas, even with all the money in the world, nothing could stop this version of the beloved occult detective thriller from turning out dead on arrival. The stand in for Light was terrible, the story was so up itself it was constipating, and somehow managed to offend both fans and newcomers alike. Yet somehow this travesty is getting a sequel.