The backlash against Crunchyroll and Ellation Studios’ High Guardian Spice has been paramount. The company was forced to disable the likes/dislike counter as well as the comments on the announcement trailer due to the backlash, as well as make a public statement trying to affirm that the money they receive from subscribers goes into supporting the Japanese anime industry. However, Crunchyroll’s efforts have not quelled the voices of the many, and the subscriber base made it known that they greatly dislike High Guardian Spice and the sociopolitical agenda that Crunchyroll is supporting. In fact, the dissent became so apparent that the moderators even shut down the forum thread discussing the show because they claim it became too “political”.

Despite all of this negativity aimed at Crunchyroll for what subscribers believe to be the company’s push to indoctrinate viewers with SJW propaganda, Comicbook.com decided to take a different route, claiming that the people who dislike the show are in the minority, and that the majority support the show. On August 27th, 2018 Nick Valdez wrote…

“Crunchyroll announced that its new studio would be producing a new animated, anime-inspired series with a diverse cast and crew involved. The first trailer sparked many negative reviews online for this very reason as several wondered if this new series meant that Crunchyroll was not spending the proper money to license more anime series instead. “This isn’t the case as demonstrated by Crunchyroll’s previous efforts for original content, and many fans have come to Crunchyroll’s support as a response to this backlash. Fans see the series as a cute initial effort for the new Crunchyroll Originals’ label and see it as an extension of the widening of the company’s efforts over the last few years.”

Valdez uses a select number of tweets from Twitter to state that fans are supporting Crunchyroll, linking to a number of Social Justice Warrior accounts who indeed do like High Guardian Spice. They also oddly link to a tweet from Mombot, an anti-SJW, in order to help prove the point.

Valdez also writes…

“Whether it was due to the content of High Guardian Spice, or the initial trailer boasting its diverse cast, something about the initial announcement rubbed a minority the wrong way. But thankfully, the majority is supportive.”

Actually, there was no content on display of High Guardian Spice, since the entire trailer was about Ellation Studios’ “diverse” staff. This is what led to the forum thread being shut down because the only thing the trailer contained was talk about the studio’s sociopolitical endeavors.

The like/dislike ratio was disabled along with the comments, so it’s impossible to see what the majority thought of the show on YouTube. Typically this is done to prevent the public from seeing that the majority of viewers dislike the content in the trailer.

[Update: Before Crunchyroll disabled the like/dislike ratio an archive of the video was captured, and as you can see, there were a lot more dislikes than likes.]

Comicbook.com claiming that a majority supported the show also flies against what Crunchyroll’s own poll had to show on the forums regarding High Guardian Spice, where a large majority of users voted that they “don’t like it”.

ComicBook.com basically tried to cherry pick a handful of tweets from users showing support for the upcoming show, even though users like Julius Caesar contacted ComicBook.com via Twitter and linked them to plenty of evidence showing that an absolute majority of fans are not supportive of Crunchyroll’s antics. This includes the very comment section on Crunchyroll’s own website, which is majority negative when discussing High Guardian Spice. Heck, here are the first handful of comments at the top of the comment thread on the site right now:

One of the top upvoted threads on Crunchyroll’s Reddit page is titled “Dear Crunchyroll: Stop”.

The thread is one of the most upvoted on the sub, sitting at 463 upvotes as of the writing of this article. It links to a video from YouTuber Digibro, who fulminates the company about their latest original content.

The near four minute video has garnered close to 870,000 views as of the writing of this article. Digibro critically digging into Crunchyroll also has a like/dislike ratio that’s visible to the public, and the numbers certainly don’t lie.

If Comicbook.com is claiming that “majority” of the fans are supporting Crunchyroll in their endeavors to bring a CalArts-style show to the service with what subscribers are calling as “SJW propaganda”, then where are they?

So far, majority of the chatter from Crunchyroll’s community about High Guardian Spice has been negative. Majority of the community also appears to agree with Digibro, who is against Crunchyroll’s agenda.

Heck, even those who would normally support a company like Ellation Studios have turned on them. In one case an up-and-coming artist who is a paid member of the Women In Gaming initiative, was shunned by head of Ellation Studios, Margaret Dean, who also heads up the Women In Animation organization.

Email exchange between myself and Marge when I joined Women in Animation to the end where shit just went all out.@animeoutsiders pic.twitter.com/J8uyKXoT0w — 🦑🍫🦑🍫A CHOCO-SQUID BLAST FROM THE PAST🦑🍫🦑🍫 (@RainbowSquidInk) August 24, 2018

Additionally, if you check the Women In Animation link that takes you to the 50/50 by 2025 page, you’ll see that Crunchyroll has basically partnered with a feminist group looking to displace male workers in the animation industry by 2025. The site states…

<blockquote.

“More than 60% of animation and art school students are women, and yet only 20% of the creative jobs are held by women. WIA wants to make it 50/50 by 2025. Who’s with us?”

It’s identical to Facebook’s Women In Gaming initiative, which is aiming to also displace male game developers in the gaming industry. Only, the Women In Animation organization doesn’t seem too interested in actually bringing in “diverse” staff.

Even still, Crunchyroll’s latest studio is basically headed up by someone who runs an organization designed to socially re-engineer the animation industry and displace 30% of the male staff within the next seven years.

What’s worse is that this not-so-veiled attempt at pushing propaganda through Crunchyroll’s service is being heralded and defended by outlets like ComicBook.com.

(Thanks for the news tip Julius Caesar and RainbowSquidInk)