I’m making my list, I’m checking it twice, I’m gonna find out who’s naughty and nice, Santa Snooze is cumming in town. Wait, uh, okay look my album is still a work in progress alright. I love doing holiday specials for articles and this year I wanted to take a step back and look at some of the players and pieces of 2021 to recall who was on their best behavior and what naughty parties deserve a spanking. Sounds simple enough, right? Then put on your Santa suit and let's get to work.
NICE
1. Porn Creators
Man these people put their blood, sweat, tears, and sometimes even their reputation at stake to make us quality sex content. Being involved in the sex industry is no easy task, especially ones where you have to deal with people online a lot. Whether it’s doujin creation, hentai production, live action movies, audio content, 3D animations, lewd writing, or some other form of porn, that shit can be a stressful order. This year I’m thankful that I live in a time where the amount of porn in the world is incredibly vast and varied and that wouldn’t be possible without the creators behind it. For that reason, porn creators definitely earned a spot on the nice list this year… and probably every year in the foreseeable future.
This is the shit I'm talking about man, puts me in the Christmas spirit.
2. Arc System Works
Few companies are doing more for the reputation of anime games right now, and NO company is doing better for the reputation of anime fighting games. Arc Sys has taken over the mainstream ever since their release of Dragon Ball FighterZ and has now continued to dominate the fighting game community. This year they won the best fighting game award for Guilty Gear Strive, and personally speaking I wholeheartedly agree with the decision. Nothing else even came close in that category. Recently they earned community praise once more for announcing that rollback (a style of netcode that’s been praised for its implementation in competitive fighting games) will be added to two of their former games: Blazblue: Central Fiction and Blazblue Cross Tag Battle. And if you thought you could breathe for a moment, DNF Duel is already on the horizon and has the community hyped up for that shit. God damn, good stuff.
Not to mention their game led to one of the biggest sexy anime trends of the year.
3. Vtubers
This year has been insane for Vtubers. The English team debuted toward the end of 2020 and saw immense growth over the course of this past year with all English channels now possessing over 1 million subs. Hell they were even integrated into some conventions. That’s the power of virtual existence, baby. The Japanese Vtubers saw great success too with collaborations with other companies, tons of music releases, and announcements that promise to expand the world of Hololive even further to other mediums. This amount of growth was staggering and I don’t think it’ll be quite the same next year so I wanted to go ahead and officially put them on the nice list this year. All the girls can expect a present under the tree this year.
Now this is one stream I wouldn't mind tuning into.
NAUGHTY
1. Banking Partners
In case you missed it, the banking partners of porn-involved sites have been quite the pieces of shit lately. The PornHub purge was famously caused by investors having questions regarding the dangers of letting users upload whatever they want with little moderation, and the downfall of Tumblr after removing its porn…well, we all know how great of an idea that was. Just recently OnlyFans claimed to be moving away from porn but the huge uproar from the users shut that idea back down. What caused the attempt in the first place? Why pressures from banking partners and investors of course. Even Fakku, a site known for damn doujinshi and hentai, had a shaky period with their partners where their online store was completely unusable. I’m all for some moderation to remove the truly heinous stuff from sites to keep partners happy, but some of these changes were definitely too much in that direction.
Keep your grubby paws off my porn please gentlemen, thank you.
2. Shadman
Once a symbol for porn without boundaries, Shadman landed himself a felony charge for assault with a deadly weapon earlier this year. Talk about a fall from grace. While I don’t know the guy personally, I have to say that this ordeal does no favors for the stigma around porn creators, especially porn creators in the anime/cartoon scene... Sorry bud, but it’s going to be coal in the stocking for the Shadman.
I'D POST A SHADMAN IMAGE HERE BUT... BETTER PLAY IT SAFE
3. Animation Studios
Alright boys, it was funny when we all made jokes about MAPPA owning slaves in the basement, but now it’s no so funny with the onslaught of animators leaving Japan to go find better pay… in China of all places. Hell, it's gotten bad enough that even politicians in Japan are talking about the need to raise wages for animators to provide proper incentive. I target MAPPA specifically because their animation is some of the best in the business, especially for fights, and not only do they have quality, but quantity too. A lot of quantity. Like enough quantity to go hey this kinda seems like someone somewhere is being overworked or underpaid or both. I love anime as much as the next guy, probably more than him, but I don’t want the people who make my favorite shows to be suffering behind the scenes. Raise some wages ya greedy fucks.
Nah Jujutsu Kaisen was way too well animated in too many scenes to be ethically created.
Alright I’ll be honest, there’s a lot more naughty and nice entities that could be on this list, but this is already a longer article than normal and I ain’t tryna to ask people to read a book on Christmas Eve. What I will ask is for you all to drop your own naughty and nice picks. What people or things did well this year and you think deserve a shoutout? What about things that were absolutely shit and need a roasting? Pour some hot chocolate, leave cookies out for Santa, and write your own list in the comments below!
