>>40557268The real answer is fansub drama.
Pocket-Monsters subs stopped subbing the SM anime, with the excuse that the translator was sick. But he wasn't sick, he was just lazy and preferred to shitpost in the /padt/ instead, while his autistic weeaboo staff hated the SM anime from prerelease and refused to work on it.
Until the starfish picked up the anime, the lack of subs, tradition of genwars on this board and (justified) conspiracy theories lay the groundwork for the tribalism you see today.
It didn't help that the PM translator was surprised and jealous that another translator would pick up the show, so he samefagged a smear campaign for a few months before laziness set in.
You can review the /padt/ threads in the archive and see exactly where the XYfag drama first exploded. It didn't become a thing until the subs stopped coming.
