Forum - View topicDoes anybody remember the moral panic against anime back in the 90s and 2000s?
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the_shinster
 Posts: 5 |
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Not sure about 'panic' but I get a feeling you might be referring to the de-Japanization process that was common back in the 80's, 70's and prior, and remnants of it that are still alive like headless roaches, depending on who you ask, of course, and how deep their understanding of historical contexts might be. 
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Jikkle
Posts: 7 |
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There really wasn't a moral panic against anime that caused American companies to censor anime.
You have to keep in mind that anime market as we know it today is still a relatively new thing in most countries outside of Japan. In the 90s animation was still almost exclusively seen as Saturday morning cartoon stuff for kids in elementary school. So when anime was brought over most companies were bringing it over for kids ages 5-10 and so they had to make sure the material fell in line with what was considered acceptable for that age range. In the early 90s you did have Nicktoons start to push the target age range of animation to more of a middle school kids range. Later 90s Toonami came around and that's when the modern anime market we know today began its infancy mainly centered around Dragon Ball Z but other shows like Gundam Wing and Yu Yu Hakusho were pretty popular as well. But even Toonami was geared more to a middle school and teenager age range and being in an afternoon timeslot there were still some things that had to be altered. I don't think nudity in Tenchi Muyo would've flown over very well. If you watched anime on one of the Starz channels at like midnight the anime they showed was pretty much uncensored as far as I can remember. Adult Swim came along and because of that timeslot they could get away with showing more and it was less censored but it still couldn't get away with showing everything. Now that anime is more acceptable to being viewed by adults along with adults having a better understanding of Japanese culture and because most of it has moved off of network TV and into streaming we pretty much enjoy the same content as Japan gets. But ultimately anime was always just altered to its intended audience in the West and to fit the acceptable standard for media at the time. |
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guildmaster
 Posts: 364 Location: Hot & Humid FL |
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Pokemon or Yugioh = moral panic ??? Not to me, but I never watched ythem anyway.
Now when either the Funimation channel or Toonami ran Seki Rei - that was a bit of a shock, but they never ran it before 11pm or so. |
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RupanSansei
 Posts: 168 |
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Doesn't Brazil have the largest population of Japanese people in the world excluding Japan itself? I remember reading that somewhere many years ago but i have never been able to confirm it with any proof as the info on the English side is dubious to say it nicely while there is much more info online however my knowledge of Portuguese is horrendous as i can understand 1 in 30 sentences on average. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 4012 |
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If you’re willing to accept Wikipedia as reliable, then that is correct. They list Brazil as first with 2 million and the US as second with 1.5 million.
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RupanSansei
Posts: 168 |
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I'd be curious to see wikipedia's sources are. However earlier i saw this interesting video about the history of Japanese people in Brazil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jTcVpQ-gow
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mdo7
 Posts: 6750 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Uh, what moral panic in the 90's and 2000's against anime/manga? I only know about Jack Thompson, the disbarred lawyer/activist going after video game like GTA in 2000's, and Manhunt (another Rockstar video game). I don't see any backlash toward anime/manga although at that time, I was worried that anime and manga could face the same backlash like video game but turns out that didn't happen, thank goodness.
But if you're talking about the 1980's where there was a panic and a anti-Japanese sentiment (which has led to a bit of anti-Asian sentiment) as the_shinster was referring to because Japan was buying up American companies and making significant investment into the US then you're correct, there was a panic over that which led to what I assume was a trade war between Japan and the US. Did this panic in the 80's affected anime? Strangely nope, but the anti-Japanese sentiment led to the murder of Vincent Chin (if you want to know, I think a documentary film would really help). But yes the murder of Vincent Chin that was related to the anti-Japanese sentiment of the 80's was a horrible time and also it jump-started Asian-American activism and you may see parallel between Vincent Chin's murder to the hate crime and anti-Asian American sentiment during COVID 19 pandemic. Despite Vincent Chin's murder and the anti-Japanese sentiment in the US at the time, no anime was being targeted or called for a ban. Not even Robotech, and Voltron faced any anti-Japanese scrutiny in that time period. |
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Fluwm
 Posts: 1102 |
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I vaguely remember this from when I was a kid.
Mostly in the context of folks clowning on the old DBZ dubs (the various ways they'd censor violence in a series oriented entirely around violence). Or the "localizations" of Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura going out of their way to avoid even the implication of homosexual relationships (with the latter not only failing to do so, but infamously adding a dimension of incest to one particular couple). But I also recall there being a bit more of a moral panic oriented around Pokemon, with there being some (mostly Evangelical) concerns that it was some evil foreign thing indoctrinating the youth, which sometimes went in hand with more (equally racist) economic concerns about Japan dominating American children's media. Something that the mainstream media occasionally bought into with stories like that whole "Pokemon causes seizures" thing. I'm not sure I'd really characterize it as a "panic," so much as the usual fear-and-outrage from the usual people that seems to crop up the moment anything even remotely challenges their deeply conservative beliefs, though. Once, while I was on a road trip with my family, we stopped at some random mall off the highway, god knows where (might've been Iowa), and I took the opportunity to escape into a nearby bookstore... where I found the poor, lone employee being verbally assaulted by an old woman incensed that they stocked the Harry Potter books, because they were the work of Satan and were about teaching children witchcraft. I don't think the folks lathering themselves up into a rage over anime back in the day were any different. |
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DangeresqueIII
 Posts: 9 Location: Bay Area |
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The closest thing I experienced like that was when my Christian Jr High banned Pokemon cards because it promoted evolution
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Tavren
Posts: 1 |
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I remember the times when I was ashamed to say I watched anime
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5174 |
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The closest that I can think of relating to a moral panic would have been the U.S. culture wars in the '80s; but Japanese cartoons (I don't think the term anime was even in use at the time) were on the periphery.
That's what I recall, anyway, as I was a child at the time. |
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