Once considered the Vanguard of the anime community, this once stronghold of a practice has become almost non-existent, and completely different.

In September 2011, I remember finishing Angel Beats! The reception was positive, and I was filled with such joy, happiness, and that fuzzy post-anime depression feeling. During my time on MyAnimeList, I added it to my completed list, and when I did, I was met with a very rude awakening by somebody I didn’t even know at all…

He went onto my profile, left a comment, and said these exact words to me:

Seeing your icon and your favorites list while finishing a shit anime reminds me of everything wrong with modern anime and the anime community as a whole. All I have got to say is, go fuck yourself. – Random Anime Elitist in 2011

These words, said in such a hilarious fashion, left me in a confused state. Like, what did I do to deserve to be insulted? I don’t even know the guy at all, and he just insulted me out of nowhere just because I like an anime show and he doesn’t? How immature can he be?

The thing is, my interaction with him wasn’t my first. Later on, I began to encounter more of these toxic fans, and every time I did, there was something I noticed: Their favorites, and their type of anime, are 99% the same. These artistic, underground anime titles that are vastly different from the typical mainstream anime titles that many of us—including myself—watch. I thought, “Who are these people?”

That’s when I discovered the term “anime elitist”… A group of self-proclaimed vanguards whose goal was to gatekeep anime as a whole, and to express some sort of superiority complex against others who liked a different taste in anime, while trying to change the way anime should be watched and viewed—and expressing hostility toward anyone who said otherwise.

Once an instrumental part of the anime community, if you’re someone like me who’s been around the anime community for a while now and has noticed that anime elitists don’t hold the iron grip on the community like they used to in the past—well, you’re not wrong. Anime elitism, as a whole, no longer exists strongly in the anime community. And in this article, I will be talking about the anime elitist and its role—from its dominant rise to its ungraceful fall.