Why I canceled my Crunchyroll membership

Anime, Fandom

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.

Otaku Journalist is 12 years old!

Journalism, Writing

Twelve years ago today, I began posting on this blog. One of my professors at American University’s School of Communication encouraged us each to secure our name as a dot com for portfolio purposes. So when I started this site on November 14, 2009, it was initially a generalized showcase of my writing on topics related to journalism. It was the middle of the  Great Recession, so anything to get hired right?

I got disillusioned when I graduated and found myself working minimum wage retail… with a master’s degree. I changed the name to Otaku Journalist, began posting exclusively about fandom reporting, and the rest is history. It’s safe to say the opportunities I’ve gotten through this blog have determined the course of my career in internet culture and fandom journalism. 

Now I have mainly put my career aside for various reasons, most obviously that I’ve become a stay-at-home-mom to my toddler daughter and I’m expecting a baby boy in spring. And thus, this blog has been a bit lost at sea for the last couple of years. But twelve is my lucky number and I couldn’t let this milestone pass without celebrating the year’s highlights. Though I haven’t been posting much, I HAVE been keeping track of work stuff I do just to remind myself that even if I spend most of my time at the playground, I haven’t completely left the game. In a different year, these would all have been separate blog posts! Here’s a list of every Otaku Journalist-worthy thing I’ve done this year, with commentary:

Started a Gunpla 101 Instagram

Beginning this list on a low note, since I definitely haven’t updated this in months. But it felt good to try a new direction for my most profitable blog. While this didn’t stick, what did work for me this year was expanding my monthly shopping update into a semi-news post. 

Was on AnimeCons TV

Doug invited me and my slightly offscreen husband John to talk about Otakon’s future, which was tenuous at the time. But it just turned into an informal discussion between three friends who really miss going to cons together. 

Guest on The Bebop Beat

I had huge imposter syndrome about being a guest on this podcast. Other episodes had guests like legendary voice actor Wendee Lee and graphic novelist E.K. Weaver. I did my research in advance and was able to share at least two fun facts about the mecha of Cowboy Bebop.

Reviewed Fruits Basket the Final for ANN

This was the only anime I reviewed weekly in 2021. I’m not sure how well my reviews were received because I never read the comments. I felt generally positive about the series though; it was wild to finally see these last chapters of the manga get animated for the first time. 

Expert source for Rolling Stone Brony article

EJ and I were colleagues ages ago and I’m touched that when she wrote about bronies she thought “Lauren would know something about this.” A long time ago I dedicated thousands of words in the Daily Dot to my brony coverage, and I outline some of the fandom’s history here.

Began curating the ANN newsletter, ANNouncements

Out of everything on this list, the newsletter has altered my year the most. I’ve built my weekly routine around curating articles and choosing, with much indecision, each week’s featured post. Even though it’s not a ton of work, it ensures that I remain uncommonly informed about anime news. At a time when I worry about losing my identity to parenthood, the newsletter makes me feel like I’m still very much part of this community. I already told Lynzee I don’t want to take a break after my new baby is here; that’s how much I credit this gig with keeping my brain from turning into mush. 

Appeared on PBS Flyover Culture’s Gunpla episode

I think this is the only time all year I did a full face of makeup. I don’t consider myself a Gunpla expert (my site is called Gunpla 101, not Gunpla 400), but I’m glad Payton asked me to be on the show anyway so I could demonstrate that you don’t have to be good at Gunpla to enjoy it. Watch it to see me share the ONLY Gunpla model I built this year (an HG Momokapool).

Washington Post article

My name, in print, in a major newspaper! This was above and beyond the most impressive accomplishment of the year. I wrote a blog post about the details and what it means to me. 

Wrote a talk for Otakon and didn’t go

This talk is completely finished and really good, I DEFINITELY need to share it! But I was too panicked to go to Otakon, even though it was not only not a superspreader even, but not one of the 20+ people I know who attended contracted covid after (and yes they got tested). Good job, fans. 

Ladybeard interview for Crunchyroll

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to interview Ladybeard both on video and in person, and it’s always a fun conversation. Speaking as a reporter, naturally charismatic people like him can be difficult to interview because you get swept into feeling you’re just chatting with a friend. I don’t mean that he’s doing this in a manipulative way; I mean that Ladybeard has never met a stranger. Usually my interviews with people in Japanese media are fairly dry (like this email interview with Fruits Basket director Yoshihide Ibata) but Ladybeard was willing to talk on the record about all kinds of interesting things, particularly his genderbent stage identity. 

Reviewed Reconguista in G the Movie for ANN

This movie wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good either, and for me that’s the most challenging type of review to write—much easier to praise something or really lay into it. 

Wrote Yoshiyuki Tomino Doesn’t Want You To Read This Article for ANN

Usually, when I write an article, I don’t get to write the title, too. But with both this feature and my Washington Post article, I wrote my own title! I used to have my editors write my titles and then go on Twitter saying “No, I didn’t write that clickbait title, who do you take me for?” but in this case the title I came up with is absolutely clickbait, and I absolutely did write it myself.

Expert source for Rolling Stone cosplay killing article

I helped with some details about Danganronpa and what yandere means, but I obviously didn’t know the details of EJ’s reporting until the article came out. When I read it and realized it was a touching emotional tribute to the deceased, I cried. A lot of coverage of this incident focused on the sensational “costumed killer” angle, and this is definitely not that. 

Appeared on Baka Banter podcast to talk about journalism 

This invitation sat in my inbox for nearly two weeks, which makes me seem super ungrateful, but I was feeling so overwhelmed when I got it! I was thinking, “Why do you want to interview me, a person who has barely worked this past year?” It’s hard for me to remember sometimes that I have 10 years of experience in reporting before that! But this conversation actually turned out really well and I think I had some decent advice for aspiring reporters.

Appeared on Keepsakes podcast to talk about my book

I wrote Otaku Journalism 7 years ago, and started writing it 10 years ago. Jay gave me the perfect reason to reread my own book: such a weird experience to revisit the person I was nearly a decade ago. I am often hard on myself about this book because I wrote it before the internet morphed into the horrible form it has today, but amidst some outdated references to the “new Homestuck fandom,” a lot of the advice still stands up. After the podcast went live, 20 new readers downloaded the book, which feels like a lot to me. 

My theme of 2021 has been an inability to see beyond what I did over the past 24 hours. But listing it all out like this reminds me that I haven’t been quite as dormant as I think. As I’m writing this, I realize the 2021 list isn’t finished yet; I’m working on two article assignments for ANN now. I hope that if you have a similar tendency to mine, you’ll consider writing it all down. My brain may not be able to comprehend time anymore, but at least my records don’t lie. 

Whether you’ve been reading Otaku Journalist for 12 years or this is your first time visiting—thank you. I’m not finished with this blog yet. 

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

Fandom, Japan

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

Fandom, Tech, Writing

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.

How I wrote my first article for the Washington Post

Journalism, Writing

As my friend Samantha of Anime Herald said, “Strange times breed strange opportunities.” Anyway, today I’m sharing my first article in the Washington Post. 

All dressed up with nowhere to go: Cosplaying in the pandemic ran today in Launcher, the Post’s video game vertical. I even wrote the headline! As is par for the course with a major news outlet, I had to begin on the ground level for a general audience, so Otaku Journalist readers may encounter details in it that seem obvious to fans. I’m glad, at least, that the social media team didn’t do me dirty the way the New Yorker made Matt Alt’s life difficult earlier this week. (That tweet, about how anime is “finally mainstream,” was deleted after major criticism, but you can get the gist of what happened from Mike Toole’s QRT.)

I found out about this opportunity on Twitter, which is the same place I have found out about basically every other gig in my career, which is why I still show up there every day and allow randos to yell at me. It’s been years since I reached out to the Post with one of my own pitches, but this time my area of expertise—cosplay, in this case—matched up with what editor Mikhail Klimentov wanted to feature. 

I worked on it for the better part of two weeks at the end of May and beginning of June. With four interviews and more than 1500 words, it contains my most serious reporting since Eva was born. I do most of my work during her nap and after bedtime, and that’s when I conducted the interviews for this article. But I needed help finding time to cobble the narrative together, so I’m grateful to John and my parents for watching Eva during several consecutive mornings. In my experience, mid-mornings are naturally my most productive hours, when I used to get my best writing done, but as a stay-at-home mom, I usually don’t have access to them anymore. 

Once I did have time to work, I found that my writing stamina was shot. I simply was no longer used to sitting down and writing 500 words at a time anymore! (My weekly Fruits Basket review, which is almost stream-of-consciousness, doesn’t count.) I broke through that wall with a free site called Pomofocus.io, which is based on the Pomodoro Technique. I would work for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, and repeat one or two or three more times, depending on how much time I had. I also found out that it can also be motivating to know that you only have a limited window of childcare. When you know your time is that limited, you are less likely to waste time writing and rewriting the perfect sentence. Just stick in a placeholder and revise later. 

I don’t want to burn any bridges so I don’t want to tell you what they paid me (though you can Google their freelancer pay rates pretty easily), but I spent enough time on this that my pay-per-hour rate is laughable. The real benefit was writing for a major paper of record about our fandom in a way that I hope does it justice. It was also incredible to have access to the Post’s photo team for what turned out to be a very visual story. Most of the story revolves around three cosplayers in the Bay Area (Tatted Poodle), the NYC Metro area (Maweezy), and Atlanta, Georgia (Yaya Han), and the Post sent photographers to all three locations! 

Growing up as an aspiring journalist in the DC area, it’s always been a goal of mine to write for the Washington Post. I didn’t expect this to happen at a time when I’ve all but abandoned my career to hang out on playgrounds all the time, but here we are! It feels great to be writing again, and I hope you’ll see more bylines from me soon. 

Lead image: Maweezy in her incredible “Boba” Fett cosplay, photographed by Melanie Landsman for The Washington Post