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INTEREST: Two Ohio Lawmakers Put Dr. Susan Napier's Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle On the


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Brent Allison



Joined: 01 Jan 2011
Posts: 2444
Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 2:34 pm Reply with quote
@AmpersandsUnited I too have found censorious gestures motivated by the spirit of A Critique of Pure Tolerance less than ideal. It's one of the reasons why I draw more from the traditions of Giddensian structuration and Bourdieusian praxeology and less from the Frankfurt School in my analysis of power and meaning in anime fan culture.
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TexZero



Joined: 25 Oct 2017
Posts: 586
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 2:53 pm Reply with quote
Doesn't Ohio still have bigger fish to fry when it comes to Universities actual abuse ?
spoiler[Jim Jordan and OSU]

Do they really think this informative book is more damaging than that ....cause yikes if so.
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 06 Jul 2015
Posts: 627
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 4:51 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:


It's especially ironic to read these posts on an anime forum, a medium where progressive voices are often the loudest ones to complain about certain issues that are common in anime and manga. Do I need to link to any of the dozens of talkback threads for series like Cross Ange, Darling in the Franxx, or Rising of the Shield Hero? Or the numerous professional translations that have purposely changed or omitted things in the official American translations to make them less problematic?


Why is it so difficult to understand that criticizing something is not the same as a call to ban it?
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor


Joined: 02 May 2011
Posts: 2993
Location: Email for assistance only
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 4:57 pm Reply with quote
Gilles Poitras wrote:
Guys you can go ahead and change my cowpunk handle to my real name.

For those of you who may be interested int he book this is it:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781403970527


Will do, and thank you for the tip Gilles!
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mdo7



Joined: 23 May 2007
Posts: 6352
Location: Katy, Texas, USA
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:10 pm Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:

Anti-intellectualism has always been a trademark of the Republican right, seen most recently in the furor over the Wall Street Journal article denigrating Jill Biden, who holds two masters and a Ph.D., from referring to herself as "Dr. Jill Biden." I guess maybe these two Ohio yahoos jumped on board the train.

And I hate to add to the irony, aren't there anime fans that are "alt-right" or openly supporting white supremacy, like for example this one and this one. How do they react to this news that the same right-winger want to label anime as obscene?

Disclaimer: I'm a democrat-leaning independent progressive, and I'm going to put this scenario in relating to the paragraph I wrote above...

I mean if I was a hard right-wing anime fan and I saw my people who share the same political belief/alignment as me attacking anime and manga and calling it obscene and naughty. I don't know what kind of political belief would I align with anymore. How would I react if right-winger who I hypothetically aligned with attack my favorite anime and manga? You see the problem for anime fans that are right-wingers, how do they justify these right-wing politicians attacking anime and manga when the right-wing anime fan themselves align with these politician belief. I mean how do they justify this?
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Brent Allison



Joined: 01 Jan 2011
Posts: 2444
Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:21 pm Reply with quote
@mdo7 The alt-right is better understood as a major political endgame of chan cultures (with /leftypol/ being another variant). The Venn diagram overlap with trad conservatives like these two lawmakers doesn't and couldn't include censorship (at least of the official variety) because their aesthetics are rooted in provocation. Angela Nagle's Kill All Normies has its issues and is kind of dated at this point, but her telling of the chans' foray into political activism is pretty decent.

Last edited by Brent Allison on Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:26 pm; edited 1 time in total
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:26 pm Reply with quote
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:
Why is it so difficult to understand that criticizing something is not the same as a call to ban it?


I mean, criticism can definitely be used in a way to put pressure on people or companies to make certain decisions. People do it all the time. In less overt examples, criticism of LGBT portrayals in anime are why certain releases ike the re-release of Tokyo Godfathers alter their translations. And personally, I find the altering/censoring translations and releases more harmful than outright banning a series from being licensed, since it attempts to present itself as the author's original intent.

At the very least, it sounds like this call to ban is motivated by there being screenshots of hentai sex scenes in said book, rather than any kind of political ideology like the usual school book bans are about. Although given some of the material I was assigned in college that seems pretty pearl clutchy.
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KitKat1721



Joined: 03 Feb 2015
Posts: 964
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:18 pm Reply with quote
Oh this brings back memories of when Fun Home (a coming-of-age graphic novel turned stage musical) was assigned reading my freshman year of college in Charleston, and people were up in arms about that and state reps cut funding for the school.

One representative said it "graphically shows lesbian acts," & "promoted the gay and lesbian lifestyle." Pretty much all the complaints were from parents who didn't want their children reading lgbt material due to their religious convictions.

Ended with the NY cast visiting and performing at our school, which was pretty neat.
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gloverrandal



Joined: 20 May 2014
Posts: 406
Location: Oita
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:19 pm Reply with quote
mdo7 wrote:
I mean if I was a hard right-wing anime fan and I saw my people who share the same political belief/alignment as me attacking anime and manga and calling it obscene and naughty. I don't know what kind of political belief would I align with anymore. How would I react if right-winger who I hypothetically aligned with attack my favorite anime and manga? You see the problem for anime fans that are right-wingers, how do they justify these right-wing politicians attacking anime and manga when the right-wing anime fan themselves align with these politician belief. I mean how do they justify this?


The truth is most anime fans don't care about American politics and actively want politics kept out of their hobby. It's just most of the attacks on anime come from the American left so all the pushback against it gets misinterpreted as right-wing behavior. If a conservative tried to make Japanese creators promote Jesus like liberals try to get them to adopt their values they'd see the same amount of pushback. People don't want any of that stuff in the hobby.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 943
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:36 pm Reply with quote
SrkSano wrote:
There's a section that does a deep dive into a Ranma 1/2 episode where Ranma hit his head or something and thought that he actually was a female in his female form. This was a filler episode that was not part of the manga. You shouldn't really do deep dives into filler eps IMHO. Especially when there was so much more content in the source material that you can go into to discuss gender roles.

I dunno - it's a book on anime, and filler or not that is an episode of an anime, and it was written by someone who had some ideas in their head about gender roles. It seems reasonable to me to do a deep dive on it if you're talking about portrayal of gender roles in media.
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor


Joined: 19 Jan 2012
Posts: 671
PostPosted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:38 pm Reply with quote
gloverrandal wrote:
mdo7 wrote:
I mean if I was a hard right-wing anime fan and I saw my people who share the same political belief/alignment as me attacking anime and manga and calling it obscene and naughty. I don't know what kind of political belief would I align with anymore. How would I react if right-winger who I hypothetically aligned with attack my favorite anime and manga? You see the problem for anime fans that are right-wingers, how do they justify these right-wing politicians attacking anime and manga when the right-wing anime fan themselves align with these politician belief. I mean how do they justify this?


The truth is most anime fans don't care about American politics and actively want politics kept out of their hobby. It's just most of the attacks on anime come from the American left so all the pushback against it gets misinterpreted as right-wing behavior. If a conservative tried to make Japanese creators promote Jesus like liberals try to get them to adopt their values they'd see the same amount of pushback. People don't want any of that stuff in the hobby.

Odd swing for a thread about that very thing happening and a lot of defending it going on, including your post. Weird.
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Swissman



Joined: 11 May 2006
Posts: 786
Location: Switzerland
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 3:43 am Reply with quote
Man, this is stupid. Susan Napier's book "Anime, from..." is, in my opinion, by far the best academic book about anime written from the perspective of comparative literature I've come across yet. I hope this baseless attack won't affect the content nor the future publication of her book.

SS723 wrote:
I also read this book as a teen and it sucks. The author basically claims that all anime, including Ghibli films, are sexual metaphors. The section on hentai is also very outdated and doesn't really belong in a book about anime in my opinion. Can't believe they are still using it as an academic resource.

I highly suggest that you re-read the book now that you're an adult (?) because what you claim about the book's content tells us more about your inabilitiy to fullly comprehend academic discourse than the book itself. There is not a single page where the author claims that Ghibli films are sexual metaphors, nor is there such a narrative thread or chapters in general, unless you misunderstood the concept of shoujo as a sexual metaphor.
If you think I'm wrong, then please point out specific pages. I have the first edition of May 2001 at my place.
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revolutionotaku



Joined: 19 May 2011
Posts: 893
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 4:54 am Reply with quote
Blanchimont wrote:
Hopefully they don't yield to such nonsense.

I am curious though about what exactly they found 'racy' in it?


I clearly remember reading this book & seeing a screenshot of a sex scene from "Urotsukidouji: Legend of the Overfiend".


Last edited by revolutionotaku on Thu Dec 17, 2020 1:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9928
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 7:56 am Reply with quote
If it hadn't been for the pictures they (the lawmakers) wouldn't have noticed the book. It is not likely that they would have read it. Screamers of either persuasion are usually "too busy" for that.
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Lazdo



Joined: 17 Dec 2020
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 2:08 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:
Anti-intellectualism and book burning is not a partisan issue, but politics are certainly pretending that every bad is done by only one side.


I don't think anyone was saying that book burning or censorship is only done by one side. What you're referring to isn't anti-intellectualism, but political correctness. Those two things aren't the same thing. Anti-intellectualism tends to be a much bigger problem among right-wing circles nowadays than it is with the left, the same with how political correctness is a much bigger problem among the left than it is with the right.

But... now we are getting totally off-topic. I think at the end of the day this comes down to a mom seeing a dirty drawing of a cartoon character in a book her teenager is studying out of at college, and getting so personally offended by it that she felt she had to contact politicians. And with right-wing politicians being so anti-univeristy nowadays, it's the perfect opportunity to try to defund them, which they are always trying to do for teaching people true things about science and history and religion. Ergo: teh anime is bad!!!1

(edit: I had to fix a word that got left over while writing this post and didn't make sense, my bad)
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