[Jiggly]

A book, titled Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation, is facing a potential ban from the curriculum of the Kent State University. Despite the book being in circulation for around 20 years, Dr. Susan Napier has been called by Ohio lawmakers who are describing the book as "pornographic". It turns out, one chapter explores porn in Japanese animation, including all the good to bad parts (such a violence towards females).

Code:

When asked what material in the book could have caused offense, she answered: "It's one chapter. The chapter on pornography in Japanese animation. Some of the stuff is very unpleasant. It does show real violence against women. I thought it was actually important to bring up pornography. It was reasonably widely available and I knew people in the West were looking at it, so I thought some people should explore it. I thought if you wanted to understand anime as a total part of Japanese culture, you have to be aware of this. You don't have to watch it. I never suggested that." The complaints about the book originated from a parent of a high school student who took Kent State's Freshman Composition course. Most of Kent State's student body are adults but the college does allow students from 7th to 12th grade to take courses at the campus. The legal guardian of an underage student must sign an acknowledgment that materials in a course may include mature adult themes before they enroll in a course. Ohio State Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus and Representative Don Jones referred to the book as "pornographic" and sent a letter to Kent State urging the administration to not assign adult material to underage students and review its policies. Rep. Stoltzfus told Fox19 News that the administration disagrees with the representatives about the book's contents. The congressman said he intends to purchase copies of the book for his "friends" in the general assembly to review and the results may affect the school's funding. “We're gonna look through this book, and we're gonna decide if this university is worthy of giving 150 million dollars of taxpayer dollars to it every year,” Rep. Stoltzfus stated.

Source

In my opinion, this is a moment a mountain has been made out of a molehill. I don't believe an institution should face losing 150 million in funding because a parent 1) forgot to read the fine print, and 2) is unable to have a mature conversation with their child about porn.

What are your thoughts?

[Drako]

Only people in the West would ever point out such a thing. If you're an adult and traumatized by depictions of violence towards women, you've most likely got bigger problems. I understand not wanting to read something like that if you've ever experienced abuse or violence as a woman. I think anyone like that should be excempt from that chapter of the book.

As for anyone underage, that's up to the parent. I assume this is a course on art, so if you're a parent you should know right off the bat that art will eventuall contain nudity. And parents do have to read a form signing off on the possibility of mature adult themes. If you can't control your child, that's just bad parenting.

It's absurd for a college to lose 150M in funding because someone didn't read the fine print.

[Oni]

Classic case of helicopter parenting. The average highschooler is exposed to much worse. Can't go around blaming everyone when your kid accesses mature content.

[Jiggly]

I completely agree with both of you. 1) the parent is too involved and way too protective of their child and 2) how has it gone so far as to the university funding being under threat?

It's art. Art has difficult topics. If you don't study them, you will be missing out on half of the art world.

[mmatt2966]

Is it bad if I say that I hear a lot of such things from west. Kinda feels idiotic. They were asking to ban Diary of a Young Girl too. They also outrage about nonsensical issues. I think their system needs reform to better educate their citizens.

[Jiggly]

Is it bad if I say that I hear a lot of such things from west. Kinda feels idiotic. They were asking to ban Diary of a Young Girl too. They also outrage about nonsensical issues. I think their system needs reform to better educate their citizens.

I'm from the "west" and I completely agree xD it's getting more and more ridiculous.

[Skullmeat]

Make no mistake, this is just a symptom of a larger trend regarding anime. It's not politically correct, so there's a subset of people who want to control it. They did the same thing to comics, they want to do it to anime. It's not really about offending people though, Its all about power.

[Jiggly]

Make no mistake, this is just a symptom of a larger trend regarding anime. It's not politically correct, so there's a subset of people who want to control it. They did the same thing to comics, they want to do it to anime. It's not really about offending people though, Its all about power.

Tbh, I'm not sure this was about anime itself at all. There seems to be a wider trend of censoring something just because you don't like it, right? Like with removing statues, censoring and punishing comedians etc. There's a lot of censorship where it doesn't belong, and I think that's a really terrible symptom of people refusing to face and address a problem. Is that what they mean with this "cancel culture" stuff?

[Skullmeat]

Make no mistake, this is just a symptom of a larger trend regarding anime. It's not politically correct, so there's a subset of people who want to control it. They did the same thing to comics, they want to do it to anime. It's not really about offending people though, Its all about power.

Tbh, I'm not sure this was about anime itself at all. There seems to be a wider trend of censoring something just because you don't like it, right? Like with removing statues, censoring and punishing comedians etc. There's a lot of censorship where it doesn't belong, and I think that's a really terrible symptom of people refusing to face and address a problem. Is that what they mean with this "cancel culture" stuff?

Precisely. Anime has been a big target for awhile now.

[Jiggly]

I don't believe in book bans
if anything they make the book more popular, people love reading something goverment are telling them not to

You might be quite right. Though, in this instance, it's a very niche text.