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Anime with Disaster Scenes Face Changes After Quake

Several anime with disaster scenes or themes face changes after the March 11 earthquake (Tōhoku Chihō Taiheiyō-oki Jishin) and tsunami.

• Precure All-Stars DX3 Mirai ni Todoke! Sekai o Tsunagu Niji-Iro no Hana, Takashi Otsuka's third film to combine the casts of all the Pretty Cure (Precure) magical girl television series to date, is still slated to open in Japan this Saturday, March 19. However, part of the film is being edited out since a tsunami scene or scenes "are reminiscent of the disaster."

• The anime television channel AT-X announced on Monday that it is cancelling its re-runs of the 10th episode of the Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne—!! anime "at the request of the rights holder." However, AT-X will still run the rest of the series, from the 11th episode onward, as planned starting on March 25. The 10th episode already aired on broadcast television on March 12 with a scene of characters being swept away by a giant wave — during the time that television stations were superimposing a graphic of tsunami warnings over all programming.

• Another anime television channel, Animax, is replacing the rest of its re-run of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 with other programming "due to circumstances." For example, instead of running the seventh episode of this anime (which recounts a hypothetical quake in Tokyo) on March 15 and 16, Animax will run selected episodes from the best of Lupin III and Kiteretsu Daihyakka.

Other media are affected in Japan as well. The game maker Yeti announced that it will refrain from publicizing Root Double, the latest adventure game from Never7 -the end of infinity- director Takumi Nakazawa, due to the earthquake. The story of the game deals with the meltdown of a nuclear reactor.

The Japanese release of Feng Xiaogang's live-action Aftershock film about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake is being delayed from March 26 to an unspecified date. The release was already delayed from March 7 due to the February 22 earthquake in New Zealand.

Manga creator Tomonori Inoue did report on Twitter on early Monday morning that he would be meeting with his publisher about what to do with the future of his post-apocalyptic action manga Coppelion. However, he assured his readers later that day that the meeting would be about the way that the manga will be published and distributed in the future — and not about the ending of the series of some had feared.

Source: Asahi via Moe Ota-News Sokuhō (link 2), AT-X via Hahima Kikō (link 2), Animax, Tadashi Sudo