Anime and Spoiler Culture: A complicated relationship

The term "spoiler culture" gained prominence in online communities around the early to mid-2010s, and anime and manga fans cannot escape it now. A simple Google search runs the risk of spoiling an entire series and going on social media all but guarantees fans will encounter spoilers.

While spoilers aren't bad in and of themselves, social media and the internet have made looking up various shows or manga an absolute nightmare. It's difficult not to be spoiled on a highly anticipated piece of media like an anime or movie owing to the seemingly ceaseless barrage of news articles, fan opinions, and leakers.

This has been commented on from many sides of the pop culture sphere. It's worth examining what spoiler culture is, what harm it does, and how it can affect discussion.

Disclaimer: This article will contain many anime, manga, and other media spoilers. All opinions are exclusive to the author.

Spoiler culture and its effects on anime and manga fandom

Spoiler culture is defined as the widespread obsession with spoilers to a ludicrous degree. If a new movie, television episode, or book comes out, the audience wants to be as spoiler-free as possible and will make life hard for anyone who spoils anything. No matter how insignificant, people do not want to be spoiled.

In the age of social media, binge-watching, whole-season releases on streaming services, and the 24-hour news cycle, it's become hard to avoid the constant barrage of leaks, trailers that spoil plot twists, and people who watch first and immediately take to social media to spout their opinions.

It's become commonplace to lash out against spoilers, even within openings and endings. Some anime fans will recommend that prospective viewers skip the opening altogether because of too many spoilers. Though most fans have gotten used to it, others aren't as forgiving.

Attack on Titan's second OP from the final season was a good example, which spoiled The Rumbling before it happened. Other spoilers in anime can include episode titles spoiling a character's fate like Dragon Ball Z's spoiling Frieza's fate on Namek, opening visuals spoiling a character's true appearance like Toru Hagakure's in My Hero Academia season 7, and people who keep up with the manga not being considerate to anime-only watchers.

Why are spoilers a problem?

Is spoiler culture a problem? Kaguya-Sama says yes. (Image via A-1 Pictures)

Spoilers can ruin a plot twist, a major reveal, or the ending of a series. Since the internet came into common usage, fans have had plenty of avenues to find information about their favorite series that can increase the volume of spoilers they can stumble onto.

This can cause people to drop the series if the spoiler is major and considered disappointing, like a bad ending. It's also extremely inconsiderate for fans to spoil an event or twist mere hours after the thing happened, no matter their discontent. Likewise, the volume of leaks and spoilers from manga leakers on X or just manga readers spoiling anime fans get ludicrous enough to warrant backlash in the form of spoiler culture.

Several older Manga leaks courtesy of X (Images via X users MangakaSelim, 7SLASHLightning, and Saitamagoated)

The problem with avoiding spoilers is that it has been rendered almost impossible. Searching for an ongoing series like My Hero Academia or Demon Slayer reveals various news articles, opinion pieces, and video essays analyzing their series from the first chapter and the inevitable fan tweets and comments that spoil many plot twists or character fates.

The fact that algorithms push spoilers, and some content creators refuse to tag for spoilers makes navigating all the more difficult. Another factor is if the adaptation follows the manga accurately, then spoilers will be posted by people anxiously awaiting the adaption. Fans go to great lengths to avoid being spoiled.

Are spoilers the problem?

Examples of anime critique from different people (Image via Youtubers BobSamurai Anime Reviews, Young Shogun, Think Story, and Shadow Critias)

There is another side of the discussion that gets lost amidst the endless complaints about spoiler culture: discussion and review. Critics and reviewers have deadlines and don't have time to sit with the material they've viewed until everyone has seen whatever it is.

When writing reviews for print or scripting for video, most critics and reviewers will give spoiler warnings. Most modern video reviews will have "spoiler-free" videos that upload before the full spoiler video, having the full spoilers sometime later. Most written reviews will have disclaimers as a warning before launching into the topic, to avoid spoiler culture people tearing the article to shreds.

Older anime spoilers (Image via Toei Animation, Studio Pierrot, Studio Madhouse)

Time is also a factor. Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father in Star Wars was a huge spoiler when Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, but is a well-known plot point now. The Fourth Hokage being Naruto's father in Naruto, Goku's Super Saiyan transformation in Dragon Ball Z, Ace's death in One Piece, and L's death in Death Note are all unavoidable spoilers when discussing these series and are all over a decade old.

While not spoiling a major twist or story beat is considerate toward others, spoilers are required for analysis. If someone analyzes an entire series, a character's arc, or a plot point that affects a series, logic follows that review involves spoilers. Even when the spoilers are up to certain points in the story, they must be discussed.

The Fear of Missing Out and lack of ownership

What FOMO feels like, and looks like (Image via Ordet, X User trinimmortal, Toei Animation, Madhouse)

There are two other reasons why spoiler culture is damaging when it comes to discussions of any form of media, anime very much included: the exploitation of FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out, and the increasing corporate gatekeeping of media ownership had a noticeable uptick in the era of streaming.

FOMO is exploited in many industries, including social media, video games, and investing. It refers to the anxiety and apprehension of missing out on social interaction, usually associated with and followed by regret. An example is trying to see the latest show if a whole season is dropped on Netflix, before everyone else.

Pokemon series diagram (Image via The Pokemon Company)

This is combined with major ownership issues of anime and media that have cropped up in recent years. While many anime fans can view anime on streaming services, the most prominent being Netflix and Crunchyroll, the problems that arise are that those streaming services are subscription-based and even digital purchases are proprietary.

FOMO and lack of ownership present an issue of access that spoiler culture thrives on. Companies get to dictate when, where, and how fans can access their content. This is a bad thing, given that programming unique to streaming services has been deleted without alternatives to ensure preservation in recent years.

One prominent example is that to see the full Pokemon anime, without spending a veritable fortune, a fan would need to have access to flowcharts explaining where certain seasons are on what service. Piracy has risen because fans are understandably distraught over this.

Solutions to the spoiler culture problem

Relaxing anime as solution to the spoiler culture problem (Image via Kyoto Animation, Studio MAPPA, Studio Ghibli)

This leaves a fundamental question: what's the solution to the problem of spoiler culture? There have been several suggestions on a customer level, such as the desperate need to join the conversation on the latest trends could be dialed back. It doesn't just involve stopping social media usage for a while, though that helps.

Every anime fan does not have the time to watch every one of the best anime ever or every new one that comes out. Taking a year off of an anime to wait for all of it to come out to binge-watch is one way to avoid spoilers, but then so is waiting until they have time to stream an entire season. Slowing down and filling life with other hobbies greatly helps in this regard.

On a corporate level, the problems with spoiler culture are harder to fix. Critics and reviewers have deadlines that could mess things up if the writer isn't given enough time to view a series in its entirety or catch up, so relaxation on hard deadlines when it comes to whole series reviews could be a solution.

Overall, the problem is one of capitalistic standards of infinite growth and work cultures that demand so much from their workers that they die of stress. Efforts for labor rights in the anime and manga industries have been ongoing, with examples such as Seven Seas Entertainment's unionizing being one success.

Final Thoughts

Anya and Loid relaxing, another anitdote to spoiler culture (Image via CloverWorks)

The issue of spoiler culture isn't just on the individuals or groups that don't take care to tag spoilers or warn about them when discussing various series: it's an endemic problem in the anime industry at large. Plenty of shows come out every year, especially on a seasonal basis, leading to an overload of work like how Studio MAPPA took on too many projects.

In short, it's common courtesy to not spoil anything beforehand and to consider if the person hasn't seen that series even if it's old. On the other hand, it's impossible and unreasonable to hold critics and reviewers to that standard since they need a full grasp of a series to understand it.