(Rant) Why the hate against High Guardian Spice isn't deserved

 This is a bit more of a rant, so be warned!

So, earlier this week, an animated series came out that I really ended up liking. It was light, fluffy, and it was like it was embracing you the entire time, telling you that you're valid. However, people were not too kind to the show, because it was western animation on an anime streaming service. 

The show in question, of course, is High Guardian Spice. When it was first announced, I was part of a different crowd, and people were raising pitchforks at it, and most of their arguments, when you come down to it, fall flat. They have this idea where they think all anime is inherently better than western animation, which proves that either they have no actual taste, because believe me, there are plenty of bad anime out there (Chargeman Ken, anyone? What about the original version of Ghost Stories?), and there's plenty of good western animation out there. I think HGS falls into the "good western animation" group I'm talking about here.

You see, part of this notion of theirs is due to the oversaturation of bad western animation. There are good western animated series, but they are often overlooked and a lot just get cancelled because either the viewers or the corporations don't like it. This doesn't means the series are bad, this means that people think that because other series are bad, those series must therefore be bad too, which is a terrible way to view things, if I'm quite honest.

Plus, there's the other side of the coin. For some reason, fans of anime seem to show more misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and sometimes even racist views. They don't like when minorities are properly represented in animation, because it breaks their strange illusion that those things are just tropes, when they're very much not, and only are because of the way the way the companies making said animation view said minorities, which are often in a negative light, which is a whole issue in itself.

It should be noted that the western animation industry often is even worse about trans or LGBTQIA+ representation than their eastern counterparts, as a lot of the times, if a cartoon shows positive representation of these, the company will shorten or outright cancel the run of said show. As such, only a few cartoons ever do it, and High Guardian Spice is one of them. From what I've seen, it's not fans of western animation that typically are against them being shown, it's the big corporations, the rich white men behind the scenes. As such, shows that do things like HGS does are usually seen in a positive light by fans of western animation. They're not the ones trashing the show, after all.

What is my point of talking about any of this? I think it's because shows like this from any country only come about so often, and very few have done quite as much as HGS has. I don't think the vast mob of hate against it is at all justified. It's not even the first western cartoon that managed to get on an anime streaming service, but nobody complained about the other few.

Overall, you should definitely watch High Guardian Spice. Maybe it will open up your cold, cold hearts.

Sincerely,

Zoey, a trans woman sick of people's nonsense.