The sad part is they were and are so used to getting their way that seemed genuinely confused it went over badly. Then again given how the majority of the posters close their eyes on the site for fear of being banned. While going along with the mods decisions why would the mods behave any differently really. Still nice to see even the sheep have some form of minimal standards and what they will tolerate.
It must have surprised them to get 9 pages of mostly pushback from so many different members in such a short time frame. As it is they’ve closed the thread to stop the pushback, and give themselves time to come up with some sort of framework to re-assert themselves as the righteous after closing the anime went over so poorly.
Another long time user recently asked for a perman for himself (mods didn’t really like him arguing that people have a right to determine what to call themselves…Americans calling themselves Americans is bad, don’t you know.) and the mods tried to talk him out of it. The user saw the dumpster fire going on with the anime thread and said he was even more sure he wanted the permaban for himself. The mods might worry that their users interested in anime might decide to go to an actual anime forum for their discussions. Rpg.net is getting more like a closed religious organization, and less of a place for wide-ranging nerdy discussions.
The last post in the thread a mod/admin seems to be taking on the White Man’s Burden to reform Japanese culture.
It’s amazing that if part of a discussion didn’t generate any reports, the mods reaction isn’t that the users are taking the discussion in stride as mature people might do, but that their users are deficient and worthy of getting their thread taken away. If it didn’t bother any of a large number of participants enough for any to report, maybe the issue is with you, the mod.
I find some of what they were talking about in the anime threads bothersome, but I also realize not every thread has to be there for me, and that I’m no longer current with the anime fandom. They’re not (for the most part) looking to discuss Ghosts in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop or Studio Ghibli films, and I realize that’s ok.