Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is There Still So Much Smoking In Anime?
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Wandering Samurai
 Posts: 875 Location: USA |
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Keep in mind that the major restrictions/bans that have been implemented are enforced a lot more in the Tokyo/Kanto area than they are in rural areas or West of Tokyo. I live down in Nagasaki and people will be walking around smoking cigarettes or smoking in public places such as parks with no designated areas at all.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6275 |
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While I don't disagree with this notion by and large most people smoke it because of the high (which varies by type and potency) it can give them and because it doesn't have the disastrous and horrifying side effects some other drugs have.
Raising the drinking age to 21 never really made sense especially since underage drinking while driving was never a really big issue nationally compared to the simple practice of driving while drunk or simply buzzed which is still a problem. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Wed Feb 24, 2016 11:18 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2034 |
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I can proudly say I have never lit a cigarette, but I don't mind seeing it on TV. Certain characters can look appropriate (and even cool and sexy) doing it, and it fits some shows/environments well, but that would never make me want to light up. I don't think the media holds much of an influence. I think it's ridiculous Walt Disney (a notorious chain-smoker in real life) couldn't be shown lighting up in Saving Mr. Banks, and Cruella DeVill's trademark long cigarette holder is gone in Once Upon A Time. Like others have said, there is far worse stuff being shown, even on broadcast TV.
I don't mind smoking bans in public places though. I enjoy not having lung and throat cancer. |
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Clyde_Cash
Posts: 376 |
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I'd rather smell weed than tobacco. Pot's median lethal dose (LD50) is far, far lower than that of tobacco or alcohol. It's just not toxic enough to kill you like booze or smokes. That said, I love blazing up some weed as much as the next guy but am sick of the cranks preaching that it cures cancer. Next time someone says it does, ask them what disease killed Bob Marley and Carl Sagan. There are legitimate reasons to legalize pot but it is not the cure-all these wacko-birds claim it is and it damn well doesn't cure cancer. Can smoking pot help ease the side effect of chemo? Yes. Cure cancer? No. For one, the whole canard is a massive oversimplification of what cancer is. It's not one monolithic disease. It's an umbrella term for hundreds of different ones and their cures are rarely easy. Even if pot did cure all cancers, who in any pharmaceutical company would benefit by suppressing it? They'd sooner make bank! If the CCC cranks seriously believe that hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons, pharmacologists, and other healthcare professionals are so easily bribed to keep quiet while they and theirs suffer and die, then that says more about THEIR morals than those of the very professionals they vilify. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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pneumonia (probably a complication of his myelodysplasia). |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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Wizard Barristers was the most recent show that I watched that featured a smoking character.
While I have never smoked in my entire life, I once been at a community center where smoking was a frequent activity. Not a fun place to visit if smoking isn't your forte. |
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Randamo
 Posts: 23 Location: Central Coast, Australia |
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I found it interesting to come from Australia, which has plain packaging on cigarette boxes and very high taxes that are set to rise in the future, to places like Germany and Japan, where I see the cigarette vending machines and tobacco shops, not to mention the advertising for cigarettes. I was a bit annoyed to go into a restaurant in Japan and endure someone smoking in the corner while I eat my eel donbouri.
Smoking has always seemed like something unintelligent and wasteful to do. It was always a few disadvantaged youths who smoked at school and were certainly not seen as cool for doing it. If I imagine someone who does smoke, it's some old crone, withered and yellowed, puffing between sips of cheap beer and pulling the slots on the pokies at the local pub. It just seems sad. And that's how I was raised to view it. When an anime character smokes, I don't think they're cool. I see it as a weakness. Maybe I'll see it as a human frailty that gives a character an adult, tired aspect. |
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Desslok
Posts: 181 |
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Of course in some instances, smoking is so ingrained in the character, you cant separate them. I cant imagine seeing Jigen without a bent cigarette in his mouth, and that one card from Cagilostro with Jigen by the Fiat and Lupin on top, sharing a middle of night smoke is one of my favorite shots of the pair.
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NeoStrayCat
 Posts: 632 |
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Well, something similar happens in Cromartie High School, in the manga, the characters that smoke, actually smoked cigarettes, but in the anime, they use sticks with whatever weird stuff is on the tip. Also, besides that One Piece comment with Sanji, I doubt people will still remember him with a lolipop, lol. And also Smoker...I mean Chaser's...smoke...I mean fog mouth, lol. |
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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I have Cystic Fibrosis and am currently a Status 0 on the transplant list (They've got my info but are not actively looking for lungs for me).
There are quite a few cultural things about Japan which, as a person with CF, make me shudder [no central heating, face masks, no blowing noses in public (What do they think of coughing up mucus-something that people with CF NEED to do?)] and that's even ignoring the bureaucratic hell that has kept everyday and lifesaving medication, available for decades in other wealthy industrialized countries, out of the hands of Japanese people with CF; Japan's average age of survival is 15 ( That information's a decade old and, someone, PLEASE, tell me it has drastically improved since then). Smoking, and the behind-the-times attitude towards it that is, apparently, still strong in Japan, helps no one but, especially, hurts people with lung issues. As a 30-year-old Canadian, I remember the days of indoor smoking, and my parents having to do the dance of keeping me away from public smokers (The smokers I've known privately have never smoked around me) but not restricting my life, and being told over and over that when I got older there was no way I would ever be able to go to places like bars because of the "fog": God bless the blanket ban on indoor smoking that Canada now has. I'm glad that things in Japan are improving and that bans are starting to seriously come into play but there is still room to grow. I would suggest a massive, concentrated, education campaign, and a nationwide ban on indoor smoking with restrictions on outdoor smoking (must be X metres from doors; can't smoke in parks). This will be good for everyone: No one should have to deal with secondhand smoke, regardless of their physical condition; People, overall, would lead better, stronger, longer lives, thus putting less strain on the healthcare system, and making people better able to participate in society. It won't kill smoking overnight, even in public (Canadian puffers have willfully proved that point- Hey, did you know that almost half of my province's cancer cases are preventable- Way to go, guys!) but it will improve quality of life, and society, overall. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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This reminds me of that South Park episode Butt Out! when the boys see "uncool" people at school teaching them that smoking is bad for you and when they say "if you don't smoke you can grow up to be just like us" the boys take up smoking and set the school on fire. The episode teaches you that anti smoking advertising can be counter intuitive and that if someone wants to smoke it's their life so let them make their own decisions.
I however don't smoke and prefer that people who choose to smoke do so in the privacy of their own home and not in public. 
Last edited by AnimeLordLuis on Thu Feb 25, 2016 5:11 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 792 |
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There are a few children that smoke in some older series based on Western books, like Jimsy in Future Boy Conan. The character is generally a ruffian sort of boy (like Lampwick the ill-mannered boy who turns into a donkey from Disney's Pinnochio). They usually do it in the book, so if it gets a World Masterpiece Theater sort of adaptation they don't usually change it. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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In Planetes, Fee Carmichael has to smoke in a special chamber on board the space station. I always saw that as a subtle anti-smoking message. As for the 21-year-old drinking age, that is the result of a Federal law that requires states to adopt that age if they want to receive Federal highway funds. The same strategy was used to impose, first, the 55-mph speed limit, and nowadays a mix of slightly higher speed limits. |
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Color2413
Posts: 49 |
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Walt Disney died of lung cancer. |
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Paiprince
 Posts: 593 |
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Heh, Japan's mortality rate being among the ranks of African countries, even during pre-smoking laws. That's funny. 
Smoking only ever looks good, if the smoker is already cool and elegant to begin with. Anything else makes it look like you're either trying too hard or coping for something. In fiction, they rarely touch on the latter for fear of incurring the wrath of the tobacco companies which still hold a lot of political clout. The Simpsons' have made several episodes concerning smoking and its influence and all are relevant to this day. In regards to the main question, no there isn't much of it in anime anymore. When about 3/4's of a season features casts of teens and younger, either the guy who asked this cherrypicks his anime or somehow makes this disconnect that Anime = IRL Japan. Manga, on the other hand, with its wider variety, remains relatively unaffected from the smoking stigma. Maybe because tobacco smoke doesn't come off as much as a bother when in print form or that it's less likely for kids to gain access when they have to buy manga from the store as opposed to just turning on the tube at 1AM to feel "bad." Romanticizing taboo acts has always been an MO ever since art was a thing so the US' nearly fanatic stance against smoking is just laughable just as much as their attitude towards sex in the media. It's a shame Japan is trying to take cues from them instead of Europe which has its priorities straight when it comes to mature content. |
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