Anime Fan-Oriented Works: Encountering Fan Narratives in Anime Crimes Division and Its North American Contexts

In Neo Otaku City, there are two kinds of people: the kind of people who can recite the Sailor Moon theme song from memory in the original Japanese, and the kind who don’t belong here. When someone commits a crime against anime, they don’t call the police. They call the Anime Crimes Division.

—Freddie Wong and Darnell Murphy, Anime Crimes Division, season 1, episode 1, “Subs vs. Dubs”

I was browsing the popular anime streaming service Crunchyroll one day in 2018, when I stumbled upon Anime Crimes Division,¹ a web series created by Freddie Wong and Darnell Murphy. Produced under indie production studio RocketJump, and backed by Crunchyroll, the series stood out to me for several reasons: first, within an entire catalog dedicated to anime, this series was unique in being English-language and live action. Second, the protagonist of the series was portrayed by YouTube sketch comedian and voice actor Sung-Won Cho, known online as ProZD. And third, that RocketJump as a studio is known for integrating fan or niche subcultures into professionally produced projects (most notably Video Game High School, which ran on their YouTube channel from 2012–14).

Upon watching Anime Crimes Division, I discovered that it was entirely comprising in-jokes directed at anime fans, from characters eating Pocky as though chain smoking, to placing floating English subtitles above Japanese-speaking characters, to using clever turns of phrase calling back to anime series that viewers might recognize (e.g., the Maiden Abyss where the protagonists discover hostages references Made in Abyss, a 2017 anime that received Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year award during their Anime Awards show, meant to mirror the Academy Awards). In short, the series offered a staggering number of crossovers between franchises, fan sentiments, and fan practices that I was personally familiar with. The connections that began to play out as soon as I saw internet personalities within anime contexts struck me as entirely unique. This series not only marketed itself toward anime fans but integrated anime fan experiences into how characters behaved, and how plot points were introduced and resolved. Even more importantly, it was produced in North American contexts, using North American perspectives, and the fan experiences that come with investing in overseas media—in particular, anime.

Arguing for the Anime Fan-Oriented Work

Anime Crimes Division contributes to a subgenre that I term “anime fan-oriented works.” These can be either live action or animated. The crucial element of these works lies in their dependence on bodies of knowledge gleaned from watching anime, and thus presumes the anime fan as its main viewership. As the term suggests, media bearing these traits are necessarily oriented toward anime fans, meaning they exhibit characteristics which are designed to appeal to those with frames of reference that interact with, or are directly connected to, anime fan culture and its contents. They interpolate the viewer as an anime fan; they use filming or animation techniques that replicate particular anime shots or sequences; they refer to character names and tropes common in anime or common knowledge within anime fandom. In developing this generic conceptual frame of the anime fan-oriented work, I refer to North American fandom in general—though this genre’s purview can be much wider than that, depending on what the object of fandom is, or where that fandom might exist. They are what Ōtsuka Eiji would call “secondary production,” production of media objects by fans—this time using an ironic positioning that makes them about fandom itself.

Since the anime fan-oriented work is constructed around the fan, the inclusion of anime and its accompanying styles, themes, or familiar scenes must always contribute to how the viewer can incorporate their fan knowledge into the legibility of the series. Anime fan-oriented works are media in which anime fan knowledge becomes an active part of the viewing experience, where characters are as much fans and enact fan behaviors as those watching. They cater to those who enjoy the text by providing entertainment via context; not concerned...