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Why I canceled my Crunchyroll membership

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I still remember the first time I heard about Crunchyroll. I was at Anime Boston 2010, and this up-and-coming anime streaming service was one of the con’s biggest sponsors. I need to see if I can dig up the promotional postcard they gave us with the program guide, showing the original logo: all cartoonish black font and orange sushi roll. I used the promotion on the back of that postcard to open up my account with them. Today, I closed that account.

Over the past 12 years, I’ve been more than a Crunchyroll subscriber; I’ve also had a working relationship with the company. More recently, I’ve written scripts for Crunchyroll videos like The Evolution of Anime Figures. I’ve been thrilled to serve as a judge for the Crunchyroll Anime Awards for the past three years (prrrrobably not getting invited back to do that)! I have friends who have worked for Crunchyroll, and friends who still do. This is not about them, by the way. 

It’s about this: As Crunchyroll is increasingly controlled by its corporate overlords, I no longer think that supporting Crunchyroll is synonymous with supporting the anime community. 

My relationship with Crunchyroll began when it was a comparably tiny company. In 2013, after Sankaku Complex published the unsourced claim (some things never change) that piracy is preferable to creators over using Crunchyroll, I reached out to then-CEO Kun Gao and he made room on his calendar, the same day, to chat on Skype about how Crunchyroll actually compensates creators. I happened to be in San Francisco for business that same month, and Gao invited me to tour Crunchyroll HQ. From the “Seele” conference room to the geeky furnishings, it felt like a place where people who genuinely love anime work.

But as Crunchyroll grew, things started to change. I first noticed how different the company was after it was acquired by Ellation. I was covering Crunchyroll fairly regularly for my Forbes blog, but I always had to use a PR person as a go-between. Kun was still CEO, but his schedule was much busier and even though I was now working for a far more prestigious site, I couldn’t get an interview with him the way I could when I was just a personal blogger. I saw this as a positive change though, a sign that this company that got its start publishing illegal fansubs was worth taking seriously. As a geek of a certain age, who remembers when being an anime fan labeled you a certified weirdo, I wanted anime to go legit. 

But I didn’t think about what the side effects of bigger and bigger companies acquiring Crunchyroll would be. I guess I thought it meant the people who worked there would get rich. I didn’t think that it would mean a less than living wage for the people who sub and dub the actual product. Ninety dollars to sub 450 lines of Japanese? Getting paid $150 to dub a movie that earned $30 million at the box office? All of this and not even being open to meeting the dub actors’ union at the table, instead preferring to recast Mob? It used to be that supporting Crunchyroll was a part of how I expressed my fan identity. Now it feels like I can’t call myself an anime fan in good faith while supporting a company that does so little for them. 

I believe that there are lots of people at Crunchyroll who genuinely love anime and are as frustrated at the direction the company is taking as I am. I don’t think Crunchyroll’s fannish heart and soul have been completely crushed under the thumb of corporate overlord Sony. That’s why I’m trying to make a statement with my cancellation. Crunchyroll is counting on the buzz of the incredible upcoming fall season to drown out any fan discontent. But I’ll be staying mad.

And no, I’m not pirating shows instead. I’m seriously hurting myself more than I’m hurting Crunchyroll. I have no misconceptions that anything will change before fall, or that the “anitwitter” bubble we have is as big or influential as it sometimes feels. And I completely understand that opting out of this season is mostly not realistic for my peers, especially those who review anime, because Crunchyroll is nearly a monopoly now. But I hope the symbolic message of even one longtime subscriber taking action makes a statement.

Come to my Otakon panel! Or don’t. (Edited)

Edited 8/3/21: I have made the difficult decision not to attend Otakon 2021 or give my panel there. I apologize for breaking this commitment after being fortunate enough to have my panel accepted. But as cases continue to rise, I can no longer put my own enjoyment over the health of my unvaccinated child.

Personally speaking, I believe the Otakon convention center, which earned sanitation accreditation in 2020 after it was set up as an (unused) Covid-19 field hospital, is one of the safer large indoor spaces for vaccinated people. But my risk assessment isn’t just about me anymore. I hope I can present this panel in the future after Eva gets vaccinated, too. 

The thing about the internet is it encourages us to brand ourselves, the more specific the better. There are a lot of parts of my life that I don’t share here. For example: I bake a lot, I’m a prolific sock knitter, I’m currently involved in some incredibly dull drama with the homeowner’s association. The longer I’ve been online, the more I’ve associated myself with increasingly specific topics. Much of my most prominent work isn’t about fandom in general, but cosplay. And at anime conventions, I usually present panels about mecha anime in particular. 

But coming out of a long, horrible pandemic lockdown, I was thinking about what to present at Otakon, my first convention in nearly two years. Being stuck at home with a baby and then a toddler, I was completely burnt out. I hadn’t been building much Gunpla or even watching as much anime as usual except for review purposes. I thought, “I just want to talk about something intrinsically relaxing and fun,” and the hot springs panel started to form in my brain.

At the same time that I submitted my panel to Otakon, I was planning an onsen trip for July—and since the panel was approved, that vacation doubled as research! I stayed at Pembroke Springs, which used to be a ryokan-style bed-and-breakfast on the Virginia border before the pandemic. But the owners pivoted to a vacation rental during the lockdown. When I visited in 2017, John and I stayed in one of the five bedrooms along with four other couples we didn’t know. This time, we rented the entire property with 7 of our closest friends (and daughter). I ended up taking two baths a day each day we were there! Like I said, research.  

Here is the description of the panel I’ll be giving with John at Otakon. If you’ll be there, it’s on Saturday, August 7 from 4-5 PM in Panel Room 6:

Hot Springs Episode: An Introduction To Japanese Onsen 

Ever been curious about those inviting outdoor baths seen in anime and manga? They’re part of a centuries-old tradition. We’ll introduce you to the history of onsen, bathing etiquette, and what it’s like to stay at a hot springs inn. We’ll also be looking back at some of the most iconic anime hot springs scenes. You’ll leave feeling ready to create your own hot springs episode!

This is going to be a low-key panel, and I hope everyone finds it as chill to listen to as I did to research it. I can’t say I’ll be too relaxed while I’m giving it though, since I am way more concerned about being indoors in a big group now than I was a month ago. Even though I’m vaccinated, I have an unvaccinated child at home. For that reason, I’ll be wearing an N95 mask and I won’t be at Otakon for more than a couple of hours. This isn’t how I envisioned my return to cons, but here we are. 

I can’t exactly fault you for not coming to my panel because if I weren’t giving this panel, I wouldn’t be going at all. So come to my panel or stay home, whatever feels right to you!

On logging onto TikTok and immediately crumbling into dust

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time on TikTok. I started using the app regularly while researching my Washington Post article since all of the cosplayers I spoke to said they had started or increased their usage on TikTok during the pandemic. But there’s no work excuse for why I continue to spend an hour a day scrolling through funny cosplay videos. 

It’s uncanny how quickly the TikTok algorithm figured out what I wanted on my feed. My corner of TikTok is like an anime con masquerade that continues for 24 hours a day. I love this in-character Sk8 the Infinity barbeque, which turns a hangout into performance art. I’m in awe of this cosplayer who adjusts their look and body language to recreate a dozen Danganronpa characters in one video. I’m hooked on cosplay transformation videos that distill the sheer amount of time it takes to get into costume to a second or two, timed effortlessly to music. 

But every time I use TikTok, I’m also barraged with reminders of my age. “Minor, DNI [Do Not Interact]” is a common user profile descriptor. There’s a meme where young teenagers search a relative’s home for “vintage” manga, and based on my own manga collection, I might as well be that relative. More overtly, here’s a woman born the same year as me pretending to die of old age, though her presence on the app conversely shows that there are still older users! Goth Dad is one of my favorites. But I’m not seeing things: according to Statista, 50% of TikTok users worldwide are 34 or younger, and over 25% are 19 or younger. (Still, I wouldn’t put too much stock in these statistics dividing male and female users, since so many of the videos recommended to me are produced by nonbinary creators.) 

This is what categorizes my enjoyment of TikTok into a decidedly guilty pleasure. It’s time to admit that I am old and out of touch. This is a huge reason I have not been blogging anymore: my current life is so removed from my presumed audience that nothing that I feel like writing about feels like something my current readers would care about. 

When I launched Otaku Journalist, I was 22. My graduate school professor said we each needed to reserve a domain name in order to launch our careers as journalists. I initially started this blog under my real name and kept it general in order to appeal to more potential employers. After a few months, I leaned into my niche, limiting the number of jobs I could get, but also choosing to specialize in my preferred subject. You know the rest: this choice has led to bigger and bigger opportunities to cover fandom, including TV interviews and a book deal. 

All the while, I’ve written this blog with my 22-year-old self in mind. Some parts of my early career are still relatable, like my job at the Daily Dot churning out 16-20 articles a week. Other parts, like my relatively harassment-free internship for video game site Kotaku, are less so. Believe it or not, my reporting jobs in the ‘10s required me to interact in the comments section or on social media. In today’s environment of organized online abuse against journalists, that’s wildly unrealistic! There are distinct modern challenges that I never faced back then. 

But to add another barrier between me and this expected audience, I am not even working right now! I lost many of my freelance positions during the early days of the pandemic, as well as any interest I had in putting my daughter in daycare. That was a valid excuse for a while, but now that daycares are back open and my county is 70% vaccinated, I have to face the truth: I don’t want to go back to work yet. Of course, I do work: I don’t want to erase my around-the-clock labor to care for a toddler and manage a household, but it’s definitely a divergence from the career path I used to blog about. Writing and blogging used to be what I did during work hours, and now I do them in my free time, when Eva is asleep. In a way I’ve come full circle back to when I was 23, working in an office 9 to 5 and writing Otaku Journalist posts at night. 

When I was 23, jobs in fandom barely existed. Now, opportunities to turn fandom into your job are abundant, but the environment in which they exist is increasingly hostile. The internet is bigger, more public, and less forgiving than it used to be. I understand what it’s like to exist online now as an adult, but not what it would have been like to grow up this way. Rather than try to talk to young people about what I think they’re going through, I’m trying to listen to them.  

At the bottom of this epiphany is probably that I need to make a much-needed update to this website. I haven’t really made updates since 2017, and it’s incredible how much the web has changed in 4 years. If you’re doing one of my free courses or reading one of my ebooks in 2021, remember that this advice is coming from a different time. I’m not planning on deleting stuff (yet); I don’t think realizing that I’m old and out of touch means I have to fade into obscurity. But it certainly means I could stand to acquaint myself with fresh perspectives before I create something again.

Photo via Pexels.

This is fandom reporting in 2020

Recently a brand I mentioned in an article praised my coverage and asked if they could send me some of their products as a thank you. I replied by asking if instead, I could have an opportunity to interview the founder, and attached some of my most burning questions about the company. They probably won’t reply, but it felt like progress.

For me, this was one small step toward a bigger goal. Lately, I’ve been itching to sink my teeth into long-form reporting again, to tell a true story about fandom that feels relatable to fans within the community and teaches those without it something new. In short, I’d like to get back to the kind of work I started writing for this blog ten years ago.

I’ve got some leads, but I’m not there yet. My current work/life balance scale is still tipped dramatically onto the mom side of things. But in the meantime, I’ve been making a renewed effort to read the kind of writers whose work I consider to be at the very top of this field.

Long after I carved my niche into “otaku journalism,” the oeuvre of fandom reporting has grown more creative and clever with each passing year. I used to have a list of around ten obscure publications to pitch about fandom topics. Now you can read about even the most obscure internet communities in the New York Times. 

To me, good fandom reporting is about empathy. It’s easy to be a goggle-eyed fandom tourist, posting tweets and nasty observations with zero interest in a deeper dive. I particularly like to read about fandom from self-identified fans: they’re better equipped to serve as tour guides into subculture communities that often have their own lexicons. 

This is by no means exhaustive, but here are some of the fandom reporters whose work I have read and admired lately. 

Lynzee Loveridge. I have previously interviewed Lynzee back when her name was Lynzee Lamb. Since then she has moved up to Managing Editor at Anime News Network and has differentiated herself by not giving a fuck. She covers difficult, messy stories in anime fandom that other people are afraid to touch. Her explosive investigations on Vic Mignogna and Eric Torgersen brought to light abuses of power that had previously lived only in whisper networks. Her nuanced, careful research helps to bring justice to their victims. 

EJ Dickson. EJ is not only a fellow Daily Dot alumnus but a fellow mom, so her current prolific coverage for Rolling Stone gives me hope that I, too, can get back in the game. As the recent founder of a podcast about Cats, a movie I’ve heard is endearingly awful, she knows what it’s like to be way too into a niche interest. She brings this empathy to her fandom reporting, particularly this kind, tolerant treatise on furries that I genuinely wish I had written.

Gita Jackson. Gita recently left Kotaku, the site where I did my first internship, to move to Motherboard, where I am sure she will continue producing the searing hot video game takes she is known for. Her story about abuse claims at EA could be a tutorial on investigative reporting. Meanwhile, her recent personal essay reviewing Fire Emblem: Three Houses through the lens of abuse feels especially vulnerable and brave. 

Aja Romano. Like many Extremely Online people, Aja has gotten mixed up in their share of chaos, and I’ve always applauded the grace with which they acknowledge and grow from their past mistakes. Currently, they’re at Vox providing some of the most informative news you can use on fandom controversies, like the recent Romance Writers of America implosion that I’m not ashamed to admit, I couldn’t begin to understand before Aja’s explanation. 

Elizabeth Minkel. It’s so hard to write well about fanfiction, a secretive, Othered space that’s always evolving and evading a mainstream definition, but I’d consider Elizabeth an expert. Her coverage last summer of San Diego Comic-Con gave voice to the creeping commercialization of what it means to be a fan. I’m also a huge fan of Elizabeth’s Fansplaining podcast, co-hosted with Flourish Klink, and weekly newsletter The Rec Center, co-written with Gav. 

This is a really short list, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some very deserving writers who should be on it, probably including writers I know personally (sorry in advance). Please tell me about YOUR favorite subculture reporters in the comments so I can read their work, too. 

Lead photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

What happens when your feelings get in the way of your reporting

I want to start by saying there’s no reason for me to get nervous about being on the radio.

I started making semi-regular radio appearances when I worked at tech blog ReadWrite. If they thought an article I’d written recently was timely, I’d show up on WBEZ 91.5 Chicago and talk about stuff like the Apollo 11 spaceflight. After I moved on to Forbes, I got to talk about topics closer to my heart, like Isao Takahata’s legacy as a Studio Ghibli cofounder for BBC radio, or this extended interview on cosplay for CBC radio’s q show.

I’ve also been on TV—a local Fox News channel interviewed about my book and then again about cosplay in general. I still haven’t watched either video, so there’s probably something emotional to unpack there but that’s not the point of this blog post. 

The point is that last Thursday morning, I found myself processing my feelings about the horrific Kyoto Animation fire in front of a live international audience in my worst radio interview ever. 

Here’s the episode, though I’m not sure how you listen outside of Canada. Host Tom Power covered the basic facts and then asked me for details about why the studio had made such a big impact on the anime industry. As usual, I’d been prepared in advance with the questions and even did a rehearsal. But about halfway through, I think it was after Tom asked me something like, “What’s the fan reaction to the news of the fire?” I froze. Mentally, after years of public speaking, I knew logically that I only stopped talking for about two seconds. But two seconds feels like forever on the air, for both you and your listeners. I had been simply repeating my prepared notes when suddenly the impact of the question hit me. I’m one of those fans, too. 

I found out about the fire around 3 AM. I’m pregnant and uncomfortable enough that I wake up at 3 AM pretty consistently most nights, check Twitter, and go back to bed. Our world is such a hellscape nothing I saw on Twitter interrupted my sleep, until Thursday night. As more details unfolded, I couldn’t look away. I ended up giving up on sleep at around 4:30 and started work for the day. Around 8, I heard from my contact at CBC, who asked if I could provide some background on Kyoto Animation’s legacy and appeal. I didn’t think twice about accepting, because I’ve been on the radio so much in the past. 

What I didn’t think about was how, in my sleep-deprived state, I had mostly been considering the situation as a journalist—just gathering the facts. I was upset, to be sure, but more in a numb way. It wasn’t until halfway through that interview that the full reality of the situation hit me. After I got off the radio, I finally cried for the lives lost, for the senselessness of this attack. Talented creatives whose only crime was bringing entertainment to millions—gone. 

Since 2011, I’ve spelled out my personal credo in what I call the Otaku Journalist Manifesto. The news landscape at large has changed immensely since then, but I still love this part where I champion authentic, not objective, reporting: “I’m not saying to take sides. But don’t be a cold observer. Bring yourself, your experiences and intuition, to the article.” It’s a great sentiment, but not one I’d ever examined this deeply. How do you report on a story so close to your heart that you’re barely holding it together during the process? 

I have immense respect for the reporters like Crystalyn Hodgkins who kept covering the tragedy all day. I couldn’t do it. I took time off until evening, when I wrote a piece for Forbes including all the things I wanted to say on the radio but couldn’t. This is not one of my blog posts that wraps up with a neat solution: nothing can undo the KyoAni attack, and it’s not something I or anyone will stop grieving overnight. But I wanted to share what it felt like when something I care about personally came crashing into the work I do. Please take time for yourself to grieve. Send a message of support to KyoAni through Crunchyroll (I’m told they’ll be translating as many of these notes as possible). And be kind to your fellow fans—including the professionals still working despite this—who are just as frustrated and wrecked by this news as you are.

Photo credit: Matt Botsford on Unsplash.