going to preface that the last time i edited this it was november 2nd, and im not going to finish this. so basically you get a rundown of the drama, everything that happened. i made this for the school newspaper so i say things like "oh i cant talk abt this bc its innapropriate" so. idk.
Background information
Trashbuns/Twinbuns, who goes by Sunnie on their social medias, is a tiktok and Instagram creator who focusses on anime, manga, and ita bag content. An ita-bag in its simplest form is a bag that has a clear pocket with an insert that you attach pins and other merchandise to. Ita-bags are an entire subculture from Japan, now adopted into western anime fandom culture. These bags are usually themed to either a specific character or show that a person really likes, however the more western interpretation isn’t always themed- they are used to display all kinds of pins a person has.
Ybc
Back in 2023 on a trip to Japan Sunnie bought a manga called Yarichin Bitch Club, this is an explicit boys-love manga that got a lot of controversy in 2020-2021. A boys-love or BL manga is a manga that is centered on a gay relationship, these are usually catered towards straight women and usually fetishize the relationship. Yarichin Bitch Club, usually shortened to YBC, has a lot of controversy surrounding it because it contains scenes of sexual assault and has a teacher student relationship. Unlike other shows that handle these topics, YBC glorifies these things.
Sunnie, when they got back posted a haul of their manga and among others showed their copy of YBC. This got them in a lot of controversy, apparently leading to them getting death threats. Sunnie says that they bought the manga for ‘shock value’ and continues to say that they never actually read it. Despite never reading it however they constantly defend YBC, comparing it to other animes like Berserk or Ouran High School Host Club (shortened to OHSHC). But these comparisons are like comparing apples and oranges- they’re both fruits, but they are far from being similar. I only bring this up as with their current controversy, people started bringing up Sunnie defending YBC, and Sunnie decided to respond to the comments with the defenses I stated previously. This, of course only spawned more hate as the general consensus in the anime community now is that YBC is a deplorable anime and if you like it, you are not a good person.
Ita bag
On the 12th of October Sunnie posted a TikTok showing off their large ita-bag with repeating pins, with the audio of ‘short dick man’ and a caption that said “seeing the ‘ita-bags’ in artist alley that hold exactly 3 1/3 pins and are 90$” with the description saying “yall hate me, I hate how America has watered down what an ita bag is at its core. If I see one more bag with 7 random, horrible positioned enamel pins im gonna loose it.” The video blew up and the publics response was a consensus of ‘hey, let people decorate their ita-bags how they want’. That same day Sunnie responds to a comment that read ‘no because lets talk about it ! Ita bags are a labour of love for your favourite character/franchise, not just random things’ with a video explaining the history and subculture of ita-bags.
Ita-bag literally translates to ‘painful bag’ they explain that this can mean that the bag should be painful to look at, painful to carry (because of all the pins and keychains), painful to make (because pins are expensive), or that you love the character so much it hurts you. They talk down on the smaller ita-bags because of there being less room for the pins and says that the bags are low quality. They also talk down on ita-bags that don’t have a theme or have few pins, saying that its insulting to the history of ita-bags. They really push this idea that ita-bags have rules, and guidelines, that they’re not just bags with clear pockets for pins. This also did not get a positive response, one person commenting ‘like ffs… not everyone can afford to ship out 90 identical pins from Japan to wherever they live, yall are such elitists and its annoying. We’re all fans bruh.’ Likely only an hour or less after, Sunnie responds saying that if you cannot afford to make an ita-bag that you shouldn’t make one; they’re supposed to be hard to make. After that they make a video called ‘what your ita bag says about you’ because there are many different kinds of ita bags, even though Sunnie tends to push repeata bags- bags that have multiple copies of one pin. In this video they are respectful towards the more traditional ita-bags but speak negatively about bags that themselves are themed and made by a small business, saying that you likely got scammed because they’re expensive and small. They’re even nice to the bags you can get off of aliexpress, giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re either a child or new to the scene. They make another video later that night replying to another comment and explain how an ita-bag is not just a bag with a window, it’s about the contents. Despite the fact that, bags with windows for pins, are considered ita-bags. They say that for example, a Genshin impact themed bag with 5 pins is just a Genshin themed bag, and not an ita-bag, despite that it likely has a clear window for the pins and is themed. They are against considering smaller, themed or shaped bags with windows, ita-bags. They try to finish the day with a final video summarizing their thoughts, saying that not every hobby should or is going to be affordable.
People continued to respond negatively to these videos, and they made another video for the anime fans that “have a bunch of random merch laying around that they shove into an ita-bag that they grossly overpaid for” saying that you don’t need to put stuff in an ita-bag, you can just decorate your room with these things. Despite having praised collage ita-bags (ita-bags that have things other than pins, like cut outs of the character) in their ‘what your ita-bag says about you’ video. In another video that looks like it was posted the same night they call differently shaped ita-bags, bags that are shaped like a coffin or a bit more famously, like a cow, a scam. They call them scams because they’re not ‘the most efficiently shaped’ to be an ita bag, or because they’re small. They accuse these small businesses bags cheap and poor quality because “they’re going for looks over functionality”. They make another video the actual next day saying that if your show or anime is too obscure, that it had almost no official merch of it, that you “do not get to make an ita-bag of it.” However, people in the comments mentioned how that is exactly why you would get fan merch of the show, something that Sunnie had been talking around, focussing on official merch instead. They make another video responding to someone’s video talking about the discourse, saying that they’re not actually gatekeeping ita-bags, just that the small, expensive, shaped ita-bags, that hold small amounts of pins, are not ita-bags, at all. they claim they are not elitist, while putting people down for both making, and buying small, expensive, shaped ita-bags.
A day later they post a video critiquing peoples ita-bags that they had posted in response to the discourse- bags that they likely did not want any advice on how to make ‘better.’ But Sunnie decides to anyways, and while they’re not out-right hating on their bags, and they are giving advice on how to make them ‘better’ this advice was not asked for. It has the same vibes as people who unprompted ‘improve’ other peoples art. Then when people pointed out that this was not normal, this was not an okay thing to really do, especially because they showed the peoples faces and display names, one person asking if any of the people featured had asked for the critiques. Only for Sunnie to respond saying they did not have to ask because these people posted their bags publicly on the internet. One of their last posts before their final video is a response to a comment that said ‘ur acting like ur the president of itabag culture when in reality u are just some white weeb… pack it up Christopher Columbus’ explaining how actually the western versions of ita-bags are the actual Christopher Columbus’ appropriating the culture and making something entirely new out of this community and culture. They say that the western ita bag community has washed the idea of an ita-bag down to a bag with stuff in it, passive aggressively saying that its fine, that we have whitewashed so many other things its what we do. And that they’re only trying to follow the traditional ita-bag concept. Their second to last video on the drama was a post telling people to put their ita-bags away and called the people criticizing her the actual elitists, pushing her out of the community. Some time in-between this and her apology she must have posted and then deleted a video talking about a suicide attempt as there are two videos of her responding to people who commented saying that she should have tried harder or asking her to try again. These comments are of course appalling and no deserves this. (even if they support ybc)
Her last video on the topic was not an apology but an announcement that she was going to be stepping away from social media and that her following posts were prerecorded. In this announcement she explains a drama that happened back in 2023 and has followed her ever since that I cannot speak on in detail because it would be inappropriate. People sent her death threats, rape threats and got her doxed over it. This is deplorable behaviour, but because of the ita-bag discourse she created, this drama got brought up again and she couldn’t help but keep replying to comments and trying to defend herself, which never worked and just brought the controversy to the forefront again.
Other responses/what can we learn?
Responses to the drama from what ive seen on my For You Page has been generally carefree to educational. People have taken this opportunity to show off their own ita-bags that Sunnie probably wouldn’t like, one person showed off their Vinsmoke Sanji ita-bag saying ‘ik about you guys I love having a “fake” ita bag’. Another showed off their Mahito ita-bag with ‘“ita bags are supposed to be a labour of love” ok well mine is a labour of mental illness’ responding to the situation with humour while showing off their bag. One person in particular- user @punkydie showed off their Beach Bear ita-bag, I point this out because Sunnie said that if your character or show is super unknown and little to no merch made of it that you don’t get to make an ita-bag of them, Punkydie actively counters this. Beach Bear was an animatronic that played at Showbiz Pizza in the 80’s, who I’m assuming the majority reading do not know. They also show off their official Beach Bear animatronic that they’re fixing up, which is really cool.
A response in particular that struck a chord with me was from @nebzox on tiktok. They made this video because the felt like they had to comment on it because they’ve made a few ita-bags themselves. They show these off, two bags and what looks like a pencil case- their statement was “ultimately this is about anime and video games, who cares, you cannot take this seriously (…) if people are doing this casually or even if there’s no theme to their bags it doesn’t matter.”