The My Hero Academia Fandom and Its Problems.
All communities and fandoms have their own issues. There’s always a toxic side, and the anime community is no different. One of the both worst and most popular fanbases follows the show My Hero Academia. This fanbase attracts all types of people, good and bad. There is the unproblematic side of the fandom, which I like to think is the side I’m on. The other side though…
Start off with the fans the complications surrounding lewd depictions of minors. As you know, in anime, a lot of the time the characters are minors. The same goes for MHA, yet people like to disregard that when it comes to things like artwork, cosplay, and basic ideas.
On Tik Tok, there is a huge presence of MHA fans. Some of these fans have made inappropriate videos or artwork using these characters, and some could be considered borderline child porn. These videos also consist of adults cosplaying minors and filming videos that should not be put on Tik Tok. They shouldn’t have even been made in the first place.
Now there isn’t anything wrong with adults cosplaying minors, but videos that portray minors inappropriately can be harmful. Fiction affects reality. These videos suggest to younger audiences who may think it’s okay when it’s really not. Recently a fan posted a video of characters involved in explicit activity and put a “13 +” warning on it as if that made it any better.
Another very toxic part of the fandom is the shippers. Shipping, if you don’t know, is when you pair two characters together because you think they look cute together or they are canonically a pair. This is usually fine, but fans like to ship two characters who are total enemies. For example – the character Bakugo is an extremely toxic angry person and continuously bullied the character Midoriya throughout his whole life, even going as far as telling him to kill himself. Even in high school, Bakugou continued to bully and harass Midoriya. Anytime somebody tries to say “hey that’s kind of toxic” or “that would be abusive and not healthy” the shipper immediately attacks the person. I have seen people use racial slurs towards POC and black cosplayers on Tik Tok because these cosplayers said they thought the ship was very toxic.
This has gotten to the point that people have decided to split the bases: the toxic side is the MHA fandom and the non-toxic side is the BNHA (Boku No Hero Academia) fandom. Basically, while the show is great, the fandom is full of racism, borderline pedophilia, and conflict. Unfortunately the positive aspects of the show and its fans are being overshadowed, and no one knows how to change that.
christian hernandez cruz • Jan 19, 2021 at
this article was very interesting and annoying to read at the same time since im very into the show i haven’t finished it but what iv seen so far (just got into season 4) its a very good anime and it deserves respect but then there is people that make it dirty and disgusting its just annoying and its not just this anime almost all anime’s that iv ever seen have weird and dirty stuff made from it by others.
Adam Drengenberg • Jan 11, 2021 at
Unfortunately this happens to very nearly every fandom, and there’s not much rational fans can do about it. There’s just no way to keep certain people from viewing the material, and then stopping them from making whatever content that their creating. The fact is, the taboo nature of these fandoms is the very thing that draws more people to them. It’s lucrative for the artists because of their scarcity within these groups, its freeing for the fanfic writers and viewers who are able to engage in whatever awful trend is available, and its abhorrent to us rational fans, who reaffirm the taboo nature, thus starting the cycle again. It’s a negative feedback loop and we can’t fix it. Such is the nature of free speech. Go us.
Adam Drengenberg • Jan 11, 2021 at
Unfortunately this happens to very nearly every fandom, and there’s not much rational fans can do about it. There’s just no way to keep certain people from viewing the material, and then stopping them from making whatever content that their creating. The fact is, the taboo nature of these fandoms is the very thing that draws more people to them. It’s lucrative for the artists because of their scarcity within these groups, its freeing for the fanfic writers and viewers who are able to engage in whatever awful trend is available, and its abhorrent to us rational fans, who reaffirm the taboo nature, thus starting the cycle again. It’s a negative feedback loop and we can’t fix it. Such is the nature of free speech. Go us.