I’m not gonna lie. I got pretty angry last night. A friend of mine who I also work with on events released, with good intentions, the controversial “Robama” ad that has been picked up on nearly every major anime and comic book website.

There are a lot of angry anime and manga fans because they feel the ad is threatening to themselves and their favorite Japanese comics. Some of the concerns they have are pretty valid too.

I’m not going to speak for Aaron; he is going to do that himself soon. We just spent almost a whole hour talking about the situation, most importantly understanding the intended demographic of the ad. It’s pretty rough predicament but at the same time intriguing how wide spread it became.

One of my sources of anger was from Daryl Surat on the twitter space. As told last night, we’ve interacted with each other quite a bit. He made some comments I did not like and I had thoughts about that to share.

Before I had a talk with Aaron tonight, I gave Daryl a call.

I don’t hate Daryl and thankfully he didn’t take what I said personally. I apologized to him and explained how I felt about last night as I wrote that post and he understood and gave his side. So nobody has to be concerned about violent, heinous acts coming out of this! At least not from me.

While I was angry last night, I woke up this morning cool-headed about the backlash to the ad. I wish I had slept on the issue before writing my post to defend and explain what Aaron was hoping to accomplish with the ad.

In retrospect, it would have been better to have discussed the ad with Daryl before I even started writing. The post would have been a lot less hostile for sure and more to the point. Mistakes happen.

I’m going to join Aaron on a podcast tomorrow to give thoughts on the situation. I’ll post a link when it is up so you can hear it and know that not only is Aaron not a bad guy, but he genuinely wants to reach out to anime and manga fans to come to A Comic Shop.

That’s it from me. You all have a good night!

You can follow Kent Ward on Google+ or on Twitter @FistoftheMFK.