I myself do not really view “What is to be Done?” as a great beginner work for Marxists, since it mentions a lot of obscure philosophers or groups that a modern audience (with their cursory knowledge of Russian history being from the lips of liberals, or worse, conservatives) would hardly know the context of, and I am reading a version that has notes on these people!
That is not to say that it is not an influential or essential work of Lenin (I think it might be up there with “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” and “The State and Revolution” in terms of either factor), but one has to be willing to trudge through Russian names that you will likely never hear again.
Gatekeeping is absolutely a problem. I would go even further - even extremely flawed bourgeois media have their dialectic. As a trash anime enjoyer, I can say that development of the modern tropes is itself an opportunity for a dialectical analysis.
Isekai, harems, getting kicked out from hero’s party… – popularity of all of these tropes have reasons in material conditions of the main audience (which is Japanese youth rather than American/European youth but mostly applies to capitalist society in general too). They are nothing but fantasies addressing concrete problems of society - people’s material conditions stagnating, romantic bonds being commodified, competent workers getting laid off by companies that can’t notice their importance…
People who enjoy these tropes should be encouraged to analyze the material reasons they are so appealing for them rather than judged for liking them. And diamat is a tool we should share with people, not just in direct confrontation with capitalism. There is plenty little things that can be used as distraction by the capital but can also be used by us to help people link dots to the source of their problems.
Also, I think that there should be more left-wing creators in the anime space in general since anime culture seems currently dominated by right wingers. Lately they have been harassing a VTuber named Camila over the death of her family in Lebanon by Israeli bombings.