The Trump administration has been using anime (and particularly Dragon Ball) to propagate the White House’s most controversial policies for years now.
From employing Pokémon’s “gotta catch em all” slogan to promote ICE raids, to turning Dragon Ball Super’s God of Destruction Beerus into the face of the US’ bombing of Iran, anime has become a key tool in the White House’s attempt to sway the opinions of younger voters online.
While those anime-themed campaigns have always gone viral and caught the attention of the anime fandom they sought, they’ve often been received more with anger than acceptance. The White House recently posted an AI image of Trump as Naruto which caused such widespread backlash that 20,000 Japanese fans signed a petition urging the US to stop using anime without permission.
The White House’s response: a new anime-themed video two days later that appropriates material from Cowboy Bebop, My Hero Academia and DBZ, to name a few.
But this time, more than ever, the blatantly negative reception from anime fans indicates a whole new low for the Trump administration’s reception among its targeted audience.
Dragon Ball Fans Unite Against US White House’s Latest Anime Video
The new video, posted late on June 12 by the White House’s official X account, utilizes anime sounds and imagery to tout a message of “mission accomplished” in Trump’s long-standing goal to “make America great again.” The video’s anime grift is made apparent immediately when the main theme song to Cowboy Bebop starts playing in the background, accompanied by carefully selected video clips of Trump at various moments in his presidency.
The scene then switches to a shot of Vegito in Dragon Ball Z, who says aloud in the video “I’m setting records,” as though acting as the mouthpiece for Trump himself.
Throughout the remainder of the video, various anime characters appear, including Yu-Gi-Oh’s Yugi Mutou, My Hero Academia’s All Might, and even Vegeta during DBZ’s iconic “it’s over 9000” scene.
Long before the video concludes with the phrase “make America great again” accompanied by the words “mission accomplished” on the screen, the purpose of the video is clear: convince millennial and Gen Z voters that the Trump administration has actually done a good job despite his approval ratings recently hitting new lows for his second term.
But it’s clear that this video is only causing further harm to Trump’s image among the anime fandom, especially where Dragon Ball fans are concerned. Fans have become particularly fixated on Vegito’s inclusion in this new video, with one post that has over 250k views stating: “Gogeta fans couldn’t have even fathomed a way to slander Vegito this badly in a thousand years of discourse.”
No matter the opinion on Vegito as a character, it’s clear the Dragon Ball fandom is completely united in the sentiment that the White House’s video is a bad look.
Dragon Ball Fans Don’t Always Dislike Politicians
The Dragon Ball fandom’s reaction to this video is particularly notable, especially considering how fans can sometimes react more positively to seeing their favorite series referenced by politicians.
In early April, Dragon Ball fans were over the moon to see French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Samar Takaichi unite in a joint Kamehameha on stage during a press conference.
Whereas French President Macron has made his love and appreciation for anime and Dragon Ball clear for years, Trump almost certainly does not care at all about anime, and probably never even watched DBZ himself.
Anime fans can sense when someone is disingenuous. The problem for the Trump administration with this latest video is that the entire anime fandom seems to have accepted it as an objective fact that having your favorite anime character included in one of the White House’s videos is bad.
There are fans on X literally saying “you like Vegito so you like Trump,” because liking Trump has now become the ultimate insult in anime fandom discourse.
And it’s not just Dragon Ball fans reacting. The White House video also utilizes imagery from the Persona franchise, turning the members of Trump’s cabinet into members of Persona 5’s Phantom Thieves.
Needless to say, fans of Persona have been less than enthusiastic. “Its so funny when you consider the phantom thieves would hate his ass,” one commenter posted. Another added, “If Trump was in Persona 5, he’d be exactly the kind of target the phantom thieves would go after.”
There’s no denying at this point that the pop culture grifting of Donald Trump’s White House has gone too far at this point, because it’s achieving the exact opposite of its intended effect.
On the other hand, if the Trump White House’s actual goal with these videos was to completely alienate the anime fandom and its entire potential voting base, then mission accomplished.
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Sean Schemmel, Laura Bailey, Brian Drummond, Christopher Sabat, Scott McNeil
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Akira Toriyama
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