China has recently enjoyed a rocky relationship with foreign television programmes, removing fan favorites like The Big Bang Theory from streaming sites and airing a heavily edited version of international hit Game of Thrones.
Advertisement
Events last week showed that animated fare is at no less risk of facing the chopping block. According to reports from The Japan Times, 38 Japanese cartoons have been blacklisted from Chinese streaming sites in an effort to, in the words of Ministry of Culture official Liu Qiang, “protect the healthy development of youth”.
Mainland China’s grudge against anime, which is rampantly streamed via easily
accessible websites all over the Chinese internet, is nothing new.
A series of regulations that hit the mainland in late March and early April blasted sites for hosting anime that featured “scenes of violence, pornography, terrorism and crimes against public morality”, and this new list of prohibited series, fully viewable on the Anime News Network, seems have to been selected based on this criteria.
Admittedly, the list does include several series with themes inappropriate for pre-teen audiences - Highschool of the Dead, for example, features copious scenes of skimpily dressed schoolgirls shooting zombies in the head, something I’m sure the Ministry of Culture isn’t too keen on.
Advertisement
Death Note is about a boy with a God complex who uses a magical notebook to kill people, and the show caused a ruckus in 2005 when Chinese officials in western Gansu province tried to get it banned on account of being a “bad influence”.
