Honestly some people!

WARNING: RANT

I was talking with my roomate last night about Anime and what it has become over here in North America and we were discussing the utter bastardization of Card Captors Sakura along with many other series and wondering if we will ever get to the point that western audiences will be able to deal with Anime and all its themes.

I remember many, many years ago, going into my local video store and seeing a woman screaming at the poor clerk at the front desk, apparently she had gone and gotten a cool looking cartoon from the children's section and found it was full of blood and violence, the title was Akira. Now there were two glaring problems here that underscore the problem even to this day:

1) Why didn't she look at the rating on the box? I have the video of Akira, and it clearly has an "R" rating on it.


2) Who in their right mind at that store took a look at the whole box and thought that this was a children's flick? Since it has an "R" rating, and just from reading the box it makes it clear that this is no children's story.


For as long as I have been collecting and reviewing Anime I have run into the same things, parents that get upset because little Johnny has come home with porn that he "accidentally" bought at the local comic store, and how could they sell something like that to kids. What I say to that is twofold, first off, know what your children are buying, keep tabs on their orders, secondly, realize that just because it has some bouncing breasts, and some colorful language that it isn't automatically pornographic, its just more mature.

As fans we have been dealing with this for years, we have had to watch the media hammer at the stereotypes of Anime, then when we do get stuff released here on TV its totally bastardized. It would be nice if the TV execs over here would give US teens and adults credit for a bit of intelligence and let them watch what they want to watch.

Thankfully the DVD market is excellent with a wonderful selection of works available and an even more detailed ratings system than the MPAA crap. Still though we shy away from series on this side of the ocean with themes that we aren't sure we understand or approve of. One of my favourite shows is Please! Teacher which deals with some very adult subject matter and unique relationships, its not pornographic or anything close but people are uncomfortable with it because of the emotions involved between a student and his older teacher.

There is so much out there to love and enjoy that I wish people would not get hooked on the really strange and bizarre [Cool Devices, Legend of the Oerfiend] and have the guts to try something new.