Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

This journal is no longer satoshi's but instead i his younger sister Aika will be taking over and using it mostly for rants and occasionally humor if you have any questions about why he did this, ask him Nipaa!




I had all but abandoned this blog but today I am really fuming after I heard about Toukai TV’s decision to cancel the airing of the twelfth episode of Higurashi. For those of you who haven’t heard it yet - in a nutshell the story goes like this: girl kills father, girl says she has wanted to become mangaka, media fuels anti-anime hysteria, TV station gets scared and refuses to air the episodes of Higurashi and School Days for “various reasons”, fans of Higurashi and School Days are enraged.

Anyone sees the big problem in this story? I know, you will say the problem is that we can’t be certain whether the girl even watched these series, let alone got inspired by them in order to do her terrible crime. That’s part of the problem, yes. But the bigger problem is the sensaniolist, blood-hungry, disinforming, biased, full of hypocrites media. The fact that the more violent and sick the crime is, the more attention it receives in the news is sickening enough but the witch hunt that starts almsot every bloody time a shocking crime occurs is even worse. For crying out loud, there were gruesome murders in abundance long before there was anime or video games (or whatever modern influence the journalists choose to blame for the decay of youth depending on the case), yet if you listen to some “experts” you might get the impression that these harmless leisure activities are virtually the most likely source of making someone commit a murder (I am talking in general as I have no first impression of the media outrage that is currently going on in Japan but the results of it seem pretty indicative).

But I am going to go one step further and say boldly - I don’t care if the girl got inspired by Higurashi, Lord of the Rings, Grand Theft Auto or Mozart’s Requiem. The fact that millions of others did not is more than enough proof that the problem lies somewhere else, not with the hyphotetical influence. Moreover those who cannot make a difference between fiction and reality are already virtually insane anyway, no use blaming the straw that might have broken the camel’s back rather than think what might have made them dellusional in the first place. And if you going to blame the anime industry - fine, but be fair. Why start with this small fish and not with the big fish? You know what work of fiction has inspired and continues to inspire (on a smaller scale, thankfully) millions of people to massacre others? That’s right - The Bible. Or if one happens to be a Christian - The Quran. No one believes in them both, so at least one of them must be (mostly) fiction, right? So if the media watchdogs want to blame something - deal with the big issue first.

Or why don’t the media start a campaign against, say, Agatha Christie? In each of her mystery novels, someone gets murdered, usually in a very cunning fashion. The modus operandi of the murderer is described in detail. Using the same retarded logic that makes the journalists blame anime or video games or death metal lyrics for all knid of crimes, one can say that Christie’s books practically teach people how to murder and not get caught (since most detectives are nowhere near Poirot’s skills, after all). So what are you waiting for, media watchdogs? Start the campaign now!

Oh, but Christie does not glorify or justify violence, I hear you say. And Higurashi does? Without spoiling much, I can say that whenever a character in Higurashi goes on killing rampage, they are not portrayed in a symphatetic light and really regret their actions in the end, an end which is usually anything but happy for them. As for Christie, let’s just say that in one fo her most famous books, Poirot lets the culprits get away free after they have taken justice in their own hands and murdered a certain criminal. Do you think it’s likely the media will call for a ban of this book next time someone is lynched? Of course not, and that’s how it should be. But this shows the disgusting double standards of mainstream media.

OK, I had to get that off my chest, thank you for reading this rant and I hope I haven’t offended any religious people, it’s not religion which is the problem, it’s the double standards.