How bad at your job do you have to be in order to turn Japan’s fans against Sailor Moon?!
With the Olympics only a few weeks away, the Japan Olympic Committee (JOC) is doing its best to get the host country enthused about the event but a growing number of residents don’t want to see the event take place in the interest of public health and safety. Despite this, the JOC is acting as though things are going to go on and have started to roll out tweets of support for a certain segment of the athletes (namely those from Japan) using one of the official ambassadors for the games, Sailor Moon herself… and as you might have already surmised, fans were less than happy about seeing the magical guardian of love and justice used in this way.
Starting at the beginning, this is the tweet in question which caused fans to revolt online en masse.
満月のように美しいメダルが、みんなの胸に輝きますように。 #がんばれニッポン
⏬日本代表選手団へのエールはこちらから https://t.co/6ddms3HPLq
#キャラクター応援団 #スーパーセーラームーン #オリンピック #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/oMn6jEI1Cq— TEAM JAPAN (@TeamJapan) June 26, 2021
Now, the message of support on this tweet reads “I hope to see medals shining beautifully like the full moon on everyone’s chest,” along with a hashtag of support for the Japanese athletes. So far so good, right? Not so fast. Fans in Japan, who as mentioned are already not happy with the idea of Japan hosting a potential super-spreader event, saw this message and tore it to shreds on Twitter.
The complaints ranged anywhere from Sailor Moon shouldn’t be used in this way (to promote/endorse a potential major health risk despite being used before to promote good sexual health) to the less obvious bias of Sailor Moon only wishing good luck to the Japanese athletes and not to any of the others from around the world who will be competing.
While it’s not my place to comment on if Japan should or should not hold the Olympics this year (I do have my own opinions on the matter but will not express them in this article), instead I’m going to focus squarely on the JOC social media team and admit openly that I feel kind of bad for them. This whole fiasco will probably go down as one of the biggest PR blunders within recent history. I’m certain that when Tokyo was originally announced as the host city for the games, the PR team thought they had an easy layup into the basket for the victory. Then 2020 hit and we all know how it’s gone since then for them.
This is another reminder for those of you out there that being a social media manager isn’t always fun and sometimes can be rather harsh to deal with. Think carefully about what you say to official accounts online because they are real people too who are doing the best they can in sometimes impossibly hard situations.
Source: SoraNews24
