Forum - View topicDoes anybody remember the moral panic against anime back in the 90s and 2000s?
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mgree0032
Posts: 293 |
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Back in the 90s and early 2000s, the moral panic against anime in America had cause companies to censor the material (Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Yugioh, and Pokemon) in order to make the anime appeal to American audiences. I think the moral panic against anime was a waste of time and money blaming anime back in the 90s and 2000s. Do you agree that the moral panic was an unnecessary waste of time and money?
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24153 |
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I actually don't remember any moral panic because I didn't become an anime fan until 2009. To be honest, considering some of the content of anime, I was often surprised there wasn't MORE of a backlash against it, especially in the U.S. Bible Belt. Take something like Dance in the Vampire Bund where you had a character who looked like a 10-year-old girl presented in a pretty sexualized way. I always assumed the reason why there wasn't more of a backlash was that shows like DitVB flew under the radar and the type of people that would make a stink about them just didn't know that they even existed.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10022 Location: Virginia |
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I got into anime beginning in 1997. I also don't remember any "moral panic". The companies that licensed the listed shows intended them for a young audience. I assume what ever censoring was done was based on what the intended market would accept. By intended market I mean the networks and stations they were trying to sell to. Each potential outlet had its own standards and practices.
Like Blood- said, most anime intended for a more adult audience (late teens and older) has been remarkably free of censorship. It happens but is not the norm. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3971 |
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I'd hardly call it a panic since that's how anime was handled even in the early days of anme on US television in the 1960s. All of the censorship in anime was done to bring the TV shows to the same standards that US shows had to adhere to.
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Spawn29
Posts: 556 |
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The closet thing that I remember is when Legend of the Overfiend was check out at Blockbuster from a parent who thought it was a kids movie, and they got super upset about it.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24153 |
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 Oi vey. Yeah, I could see a parent being a bit P.O.'d by that. "Hey, I'll get this nice movie for little Suzy and Johnny..."
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16963 |
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I would also add that the dvd's and vhs tapes for the vast majority were not edited as the tv versions were. Hell, back in the day you could get the "fancy" uncut or edited DBZ vhs tapes that formed those panoramas for examples. I mean there was some shouting and "hur hur this is trash" just because anime was/is different and more adult than US cartoons. Especially back then. Even considering that I'd hardly say a moral panic. That was left for D&D and European death metal. |
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lumenotaku
Posts: 19 |
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my folks didn't pay much attention I used to even rent the violent nudity filled OAV on vhs from blockbuster as a preteen haha but I do remember other kids having issues with far less shocking shows like pokemon and I recall people judging me for liking anime
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
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In Brazil, newspapers talked about anime as "some weird Asian media that our kids are hooked on." They had no idea that there existed adult fans of anime (although it is true that in the 90s, adult anime fans were quite rare).
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gsilver
Posts: 650 |
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If anything, I recall reading about how *less* anime was stigmatized in the 2000s vs earlier.
The phrase "Pokemon or porn" got thrown about, but you have to remember that before Pokemon, the stigma was that anime was 'just porn' Even then, it was a very small part of the media landscape, and probably wouldn't have even gotten that much attention without the infamous Legend of the Overfiend review, when they ran it in theaters and a journalist who had no idea what they were in for went to review it. Anime just wasn't popular enough to get the kind of backlash that things like videogames, Dungeons & Dragons, comic books, or heavy metal music got. |
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RGaspar
 Posts: 245 |
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I remember reading something similar in some magazine in the late 90s. It was like "These extremely dubious japanese things kids are watching today" and it featured Dragon Ball, of all things, and that's how I discovered Dragon Ball wasn't a latin american production... Hey, don't look at me like that, I was a kid, the show was dubbed in my language and I thought it was, of course, something made in my country. Why would they speak in spanish if it wasn't? |
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FishLion
 Posts: 233 |
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I remember watching an interesting video on the Pokemon moral panic. Anime did have a bit of infamy because people commonly bought explicit anime thinking all animation is targeted at children (my Mom actually did that), I don't know much about a moral panic around anime in general.
There was then some moral panic around Pokemon in the 90's especially, because children became so obsessed and enthralled that it featured everywhere from South Park to pulpits obsessing over the "Monsters." Quotes added because if I remember correctly they did like to make a big stink that monsters are demonic beings in the bible and therefore Pokemon was convincing children to dabble in demonology. These caused moral panics because they were seen as obsessions taking time and energy from things churches wanted children to pay attention to, which is why very popular children's franchises that are innocent but also pop culture phenomenons seemed to have a bigger panic than content that was actually explicit |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
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When I was a kid I though Dragonball was Chinese, because of the artstyle. I though Japanese shows had a more elaborate artstyle: as a kid I already knew anime shows like Shurato, Saint Seya, Yu Yu Hakusho, Lensman, and Cardcaptor Sakura. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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Besides the paranoia about Pokemon, the only real moral panic around anime was more in the UK where Legend of the Overfiend got an edited broadcast on TV which still was enough to cause a scandal that I recall hearing set anime back several years in the UK after that. The biggest backlash towards anime I remember was that one infamous article complaining about the violence in DBZ but anime always seemed like it flew under the radar in the US from the moral panic people who were more focused on Harry Potter back then.
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Vee-Tee
 Posts: 140 |
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er… I got into anime circa 2002. I don’t remember a moral panic other than some religious zealots insisting that Pokémon and YGO cards were evil. Or how terrible it was that these shows were so commercial and hypnotising kids into wanting the merchandise, even though that was a product of Reagan (whom those pastors saying Pokémon was satanic tended to idolise) deregulating children’s television back in the ‘80s, thereby flooding the 80s and 90s kids TV landscape with glorified toy ads.
I mean I’m sure there were churches and religious parents and such who forbade their kids watching anime and reading manga. But not to the extent of moral panic. It’s getting to scary moral panic levels nowadays now. Especially with those PTA moms in Florida who apparently used the flimsy pretext of not wanting a book that features students shooting their teacher… to ban the Assassination Classroom manga from school libraries. (Never mind that if you turn the page, their teacher is completely unharmed.) [quote=“Cardcaptor Takato”] Besides the paranoia about Pokemon, the only real moral panic around anime was more in the UK where Legend of the Overfiend got an edited broadcast on TV which still was enough to cause a scandal that I recall hearing set anime back several years in the UK after that.[/quote] Yep. And bizarrely there was a 100 Greatest Cartoons special on TV back in the 2000s. LOTO was featured at like #98. Cue Jonathan Clements having to give a more academic explanation of it in 10 seconds while all the other talking heads on the program joked about how you’d only nominate this if you were extremely lonely and weird. |
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