While looking into the questionable rise of Sigma Light, I noticed a lot of people criticizing the idea of idolizing a character like Light and many accusations were thrown around about anime fans’ character literacy. Essentially that just refers to their ability to view a written character to understand their attributes, morality, etc. both in context of the show they are from and the reality we live in. All too often you see people, especially teens just learning about anime, saying shit to the effect of “God damn Sasuke is so cool. He has a DARKNESS in him and he’s SEXY! I wish I was Sasuke” when in reality Sasuke is a deeply flawed character who has several negative qualities. In this world, very few people would actually enjoy being in Sasuke’s presence and he would be canceled on Twitter seconds after he manipulated Sakura the first time. He’s an easy example, but other famously idolized characters with questionable morals include Lelouch, Light, Vegeta, Guts, and Eren. 

Let’s spend today cleaning up some misconceptions. First, I want to argue that this issue is not an anime-fan only problem, but rather a widespread inability to judge characters in media without bias. Many were quick to point out how many people loved Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Gus from Breaking Bad despite all of these men committing atrocities at one point or another during the series. Walter often receives the same “BE YOUR OWN WOLF LIKE WALTER WITH THESE 5 TIPS” sigma grindset videos floating around. As long as there are people who have to take remedial English Literature due to either a lack of ability or interest, there will be those who falsely prop up their favorite badass characters while ignoring their complex faults. And let me be clear, I’m not saying that any of these characters are poorly written because they have flaws, them having said flaws is one of the vital elements that make them interesting in the first place. However, if your take on Lelouch is “he’s fucking sick cause he can make people do anything with Geass!” then you’re probably not extracting everything out of the character or anime that you were meant to by the creators. 

See, this is what acting like an anime villian would get you in real life.

So to summarize, glorifying characters because they’re badass while ignoring flaws essential to their overall character is a problem that many younger or otherwise inexperienced literature fans fall into, and I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue that anime fans alone have. Anime just tends to attract a younger audience in the West since it used to have that stigma of being “for kids” like Saturday morning cartoons. But we can remedy this by performing more analytical observations on the choices of our favorite husbandos and waifus rather than mindlessly spouting how awesome they are (as the character proceeds to commit a small mass murder in the name of justice). Do you think anime fans struggle with character literacy? Do you love a character who is often misjudged or praised beyond what is reasonable? Is using famous antiheroes in anime to get views from lonely teenage sigma males on YouTube a bad idea?  Stick a poster of your favorite MC on your wall, worship their accomplishments, and forget about that one time they sacrificed some people with a bit of selective memory in the comments below!