In defense of those annoying “fans of the source material”

It’s one of those issues that can be applied to pretty much any media fandom, but I saw it a lot among anime fans recently, and hey, I have an anime blog, so for the time being, let’s discuss it in this context.

When was the last time you heard this rant?

I’m an anime fan, so I don’t care about what happened in your LN/manga/VN! This is an anime, so it should be judged as one. It’s obvious that due to the differences of the mediums, the adaptation is going to be a bit different, so shut up about how “inaccurate” it is.

Strangely, as much as I see them, I didn’t ever see a  defense against them. No one ever comes up and explains why some people keep talking about the source material. They just keep sagely nodding at the universal wisdom that was just uttered. Apparently, the entire Internet believes that such rants accurately describe fandom etiquette.

Except, of course, the people who proceed to talk about the source material anyways. Including some of those who were just sagely nodding, right until the arrival of another series, that’s source material they are the fan of, in which case, they proceed to do the same. I guess I could write it off as people being hypocrites, and intentionally offensive rabid fanboys,  but following Hanlon’s razor, it’s much more likely that the source of the conflict is poor communication between two different groups with different interests, than that one group of fan is being malicious.

Visual Novels, and how much their public perception sucks

Visual Novels, are the only otaku media that I really got into,  other than anime itself. I rarely enjoy manga, Light Novels are too rare in english, and I’m a PC gamer, so most Japanese video games are also unavailable for me.

But ever since I looked into Fate/Stay Night almost two years ago, I would consider myself a Visual Novel fan almost as much as an anime fan.

I didn’t even read that many VNs, and I have a horrible track record with finishing the ones that I started, even if I liked them, but there is something so fascinating about the potential of that medium, that I just keep obsessing over it as a fan. It reached the extent that if I see an article on a random website about any subject, with one throwaway line in it about a VN identified as a “dating sim”, I keep posting corrections about it in the comment section as long as that section is active with discussion.