We all have different levels of spoiler sensitivity.
Fans who only watch anime adaptations of their favorite series have always had this grievance with manga readers: spoilers. It’s hard to keep the two groups of fans separate in online fan communities. Whenever a shocking plot twist happens in a big manga like Jujutsu Kaisen or My Hero Academia, spoilers become pretty much unavoidable as fans immediately rush to scream about it on their public social media accounts.
When it comes to spoilers, there are fans on both sides of the spectrum, from those who like to know everything about a series in advance to those who get put off from watching a spoiled show altogether. Both teams have a point.
In a famous study by the University of California, researchers discovered that not only does spoiling a story not ruin people’s enjoyment of it, it makes it better. It does make sense: after all, many of us have our go-to comfort shows we come back to again and again, despite knowing all the dialogue by heart. Predictability isn’t always a bad thing.
Then there are manga readers who always hype up anime adaptations, often eagerly anticipating the day they’ll get to see their favorite characters in motion. Of course, it’s one thing to know how everything ends because you’re already familiar with the source material, but it’s another thing to have a rando on the Internet spill the beans on who the final villain is in the thriller you’ve been binging on. Sometimes, the mystery element is the glue that holds the story together.
But is a series that can easily be ruined by a spoiler just a poorly written series? Shouldn’t the journey be just as great as, if not better, than a destination? Many in the pro-spoiler crowd are firm believers that if the only thing an anime relies on to keep the viewer engaged is the shock factor, it wasn’t that good in the first place.
Besides, spoilers can add context to the overarching story and reveal something about the relationship dynamics between the cast or the ideas explored in the work. For example, you know that a character dies. You still don’t know how they die, for what purpose, what led to their death, and how the other characters are affected by it. In some cases, these details might be a bigger spoiler than the death itself.
Still, all fans should have an equal opportunity to discover the story along with the characters, not before, through some throwaway comment on Reddit. While very few shows can be ruined by a spoiler or two, especially if they’re as long as One Piece or Case Closed (Detective Conan), but knowing some things ahead of time can sure ruin the impact of one particular moment.
It’s nice to see that the netiquette is moving in the right direction in this regard, with spoiler buttons and tags slowly but surely becoming the new norm. No need to spoil the fun for anime-only fans. After all, we all have the same goal: to enjoy our favorite anime in our own preferred way.
We all have different levels of spoiler sensitivity.
Fans who only watch anime adaptations of their favorite series have always had this grievance with manga readers: spoilers. It’s hard to keep the two groups of fans separate in online fan communities. Whenever a shocking plot twist happens in a big manga like Jujutsu Kaisen or My Hero Academia, spoilers become pretty much unavoidable as fans immediately rush to scream about it on their public social media accounts.
When it comes to spoilers, there are fans on both sides of the spectrum, from those who like to know everything about a series in advance to those who get put off from watching a spoiled show altogether. Both teams have a point.
In a famous study by the University of California, researchers discovered that not only does spoiling a story not ruin people’s enjoyment of it, it makes it better. It does make sense: after all, many of us have our go-to comfort shows we come back to again and again, despite knowing all the dialogue by heart. Predictability isn’t always a bad thing.
Then there are manga readers who always hype up anime adaptations, often eagerly anticipating the day they’ll get to see their favorite characters in motion. Of course, it’s one thing to know how everything ends because you’re already familiar with the source material, but it’s another thing to have a rando on the Internet spill the beans on who the final villain is in the thriller you’ve been binging on. Sometimes, the mystery element is the glue that holds the story together.
But is a series that can easily be ruined by a spoiler just a poorly written series? Shouldn’t the journey be just as great as, if not better, than a destination? Many in the pro-spoiler crowd are firm believers that if the only thing an anime relies on to keep the viewer engaged is the shock factor, it wasn’t that good in the first place.
Besides, spoilers can add context to the overarching story and reveal something about the relationship dynamics between the cast or the ideas explored in the work. For example, you know that a character dies. You still don’t know how they die, for what purpose, what led to their death, and how the other characters are affected by it. In some cases, these details might be a bigger spoiler than the death itself.
Still, all fans should have an equal opportunity to discover the story along with the characters, not before, through some throwaway comment on Reddit. While very few shows can be ruined by a spoiler or two, especially if they’re as long as One Piece or Case Closed (Detective Conan), but knowing some things ahead of time can sure ruin the impact of one particular moment.
It’s nice to see that the netiquette is moving in the right direction in this regard, with spoiler buttons and tags slowly but surely becoming the new norm. No need to spoil the fun for anime-only fans. After all, we all have the same goal: to enjoy our favorite anime in our own preferred way.
