sorry but what do you mean irt anglicizing Japanese names/nicknames? I don't participate in many animanga fandoms (but I do browse through fanart) and I'm just a little confused- mostly bc I want to make sure that I don't do that. (I think I don't but if you could elaborate then that would be helpful for me. if you can't though thats alright too!)

sure i don’t mind elaborating, i’ve talked a bit before in tags-only posts that i don’t like seeing names like “sakaeguchi” shortened to something like “gucci” or nicknaming “izumi” as “zoom zoom” or shortening “hamada” to “the ham”. these are terms that i have seen people use and popularize in the oofuri fandom which i am active in, and i am uncomfortable with that kind of behaviour because those nicknames do not reflect any part of who that character is portrayed to be in canon. it is literally always exclusively done by westerners who just think it’s fun to shorten or “spice up” the original names without any consideration of how anglicization of names is a common practice among poc in real life, not always because they want to but mostly because it helps them fit in better with the mainstream white-dominant society. there are also many, many instances of poc who choose to retain their non-anglicized romanized names (such as pinyin spelling of chinese names) having trouble getting westerners to pronounce their names correctly or at least make an earnest attempt to pronounce them right. in some cases, they may be peer pressured to accept nicknames that make light of the “difficult” pronunciation of their names at the expense of, well, erasing the heritage and culture that their parents and families bestowed upon them since birth.

obviously in a real life setting this is not always necessarily a racial or cultural issue since real people can give consent to allow alterations being made to their names as they see fit, but the same cannot be said for fictional characters. i’d much rather see animanga fandoms acknowledge the connotations of culture erasure associated with nicknaming japanese characters and refrain from doing so. and of course, this applies to not just animanga but characters with non-western names originating from non-western cultures in general