Japanese Light Novel Book Club discussion
General Discussion
>
What to do when Creators Behave Badly?
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
I actually started a similar topic on J-Novel Club (and I saw it originally on ResetEra). We got some good conversation going on it.Some try to shrug it off "it's just words / I don't care what his politics are", but you gotta remember that these things aren't merely words when their target audiences are young minds with these Shounen manga / anime. Stuff like Holocaust denial is extremely dangerous rhetoric.
I'm hoping the MMO Junkie manga comes stateside because I personally don't want to touch the anime again. I regret voting for it and Mori-Mori-chan as best gal in the Crunchyroll awards.
I never read Ruroni Kenshin, but I doubt I ever will now.
Honestly, I don't really think about the creator when consuming media, I judge the media for what it is. That and the idea of screening every piece of media I consume is honestly a tiring thought. How deep does this scrub go as well. If we are talking a show like MMO Junkie. It's the director with this view and is high visibility. Are we checking all the voice actors? The animators? The janitor? They are all folks that are involved in producing the show. Take a song. Do we judge just the artist or do we look at his agent? The sound engineers? So forth and so on. We all consume media in one form or another that contains some form of questionable content whether it's murder, rape, sexual assault, assault, racism, drugs, etc but no one questions it. Alright lets be honest some people question it but that has been happening since the beginning of time. Everything will offend someone at some point. That and the idea of screening all of our media to protect yourself or the children or whatever seriously limits what you are taking in. How many classical books/movies/songs/paintings etc do we now need to pack up and hide away because the creator doesn't share the same modern standards that we are screening them with. Right now we are willing to throw a perfectly fine show like MMO Junkie to the sharks not because of what is in the show but because of one man working on the show.
I'm not saying that I don't care about the views of the creator of piece of medium it's just not something I factor into my enjoyment of that medium. Do I think that Holocaust denial or pedophilia is a vile thing? Of course I do. I think that any one that tries denying the Holocaust or promoting antisemitism is an idiot. The world is full of all sorts of vile opinions and acts though.
Gord wrote: ". ..."But you consuming some old dead guy's media isn't going to cause any harm, especially if you educate yourself on his hangups. In fact, that's kind of a major part of literary criticism, to look at an author and how they express their views in their story. But personally, I think we should evaluate if we should pack away some of that "classic" literature. Maybe it isn't so classic anymore, it's just old and dated views that don't have any value, unless you're teaching people what not to do. And we get enough of "don't do this" in our lives, especially at school.
But you gotta think about where your money is going when you consume Ruroni Kenshin manga. At least a portion has gone to a dude who used that money to fund some sick creep's operation.
In regards to MMO Junkie, yes, I'm going to shove this perfectly fine anime aside and make a buzz about doing so so the animation studios don't hire him again and his Twitter follows go down / he has less of a platform for his Nazi posting antics. The world is full of vile opinions, opinions that can sway people to join vile organizations, but the best we can do is lessen these people's influence in social media.
One additional difficult thing is the fact that the MMO Junkie guy did work minor roles on other series:
Some of his credits:
- animator on Akira (1988)
- storyboard / direction / animation of yama no susume s2 #13
- pokémon generations, storyboard / direction of episodes 2, 4 and 5
- storyboard of episode 3 of flip flappers
- storyboard and direction of shin sekai yori #8
His hands aren't all over these productions clearly, but it still could make you feel uncomfortable. Someone said that you don't get royalties on this stuff in Japan, that there's a contract signed and that's it, so that part is at least lessened. I'd assume Kenshin guy still gets some form of money from the manga, and from any sequels / OVAs of his property though.
I haven't finished Flip Flappers, but I am passed episode 3 by now.
Update: http://www.signal-md.co.jp/news/test/
"It has come to our attention that a series of Tweets under the handle, @yaginuma_san, apparently made by Mr. Kazuyoshi Yaginuma have included anti-Semitic comments. SIGNAL MD wishes to make it clear that it is strongly opposed to and deprecates anti-Semitism and all forms of racism or discrimination.
Mr. Yaginuma was director of the anime “Recovery of an MMO Junkie” produced by SIGNAL MD, has never been our company member and is no longer employed by us.
Assuming the comments which appear under the Twitter handle @yaginuma_san, were indeed made by Mr. Yaginuma, they are not linked to his role as director of “Recovery of an MMO Junkie” and are not supported by SIGNAL MD.
We will continue to create works that are moving and enjoyable, with the philosophy of giving excitement to many viewers and working to create works that satisfy our clients.
Thank you for your support and understanding."
Mod
It definitely could drive a person crazy trying to keep track of which directors, actors, etc. to boycott, especially with Japanese media. They kind of have a habit of sweeping things under the rug to save face, but I don't want to fund creepy or downright awful people by buying their works.
I don't think MMO Junkie won any Crunchyroll Awards last night. I wonder if this director thing had any impact on voters?I hope MMO Junkie's manga comes stateside.
Mod
I hope MMO Junkie's manga comes stateside."
I'm not sure if it would or not. While I think the average western anime fan frowns upon Nazi behavior, I also don't think the average anime fan is all that informed about the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on with anime. I could be wrong though, especially in this day and age of anime news online.
Have you guys been following all the New Life + controversy. 
This whole saga is crazy. I'll add a few links in a bit (are Reddit and ANN ok to link to?), but to catch you up to speed:
1. New Life + gets an anime adaptation announced. To be released in Fall of 2018.
2. People online dig through the author's Twitter account to find racist posts by the book's author about the Koreas and China.
3. People stateside dig into some of the details from the story, especially the web novel, that paint the hero's backstory as connected to the Nanking Massacre, one of the deadliest and most horrific atrocities over a short period of time in war crime history.
a) The hero in the story kills over 3712 people in the massacre (the 12 representing December, the 37 representing the year Nanking massacre took place, 1937).
b) 912 body count post war with the Chinese mafia. December 9th was the day the city of Nanking was surrounded by the Japanese in '37, hostilities starting the next day.
c) The hero lives to 94, and never faces any jail time for his actions. The real life culprit he may be based on is the man who was responsible for the Nanking Massacre, Asaka, a man who never faced punishment for the event and continued to hold important positions in government and business up until his death at the age of 94.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princ...
4. The author apologizes for everything related to his book and offensive tweets. Talks about looking into editing both web novel and published novel versions of his work.
5. Voice Actors pull out of the anime production. Anime is soon after cancelled.
6. Hobby Japan pulls the copies of the New Life + light novel from store shelves.
7. J-Novel Club pulls the preorder of volume 3 from Amazon as a precautionary measure. Head of the English publishing company for the light novel, they will speak with Hobby Japan this week to decide on the future of the series in America (there are 18 volumes out in Japan).
This story man. It's just insane. And the implications this could have on the future of localization, vetting of series for anime adaptation, usage of social media + background checks... I mean, if I were an American localizer, I'd be very scared to take on anything unfinished and lengthy like this again at the risk of angering readers with cancellations. I definitely wouldn't touch something like JSDF Gate where the Japanese Nationalism and denialist nature of past Japanese wartime aggression is prevalent.
The whole thing is just... yikes!
Mod
Honestly, I think New Life + is toast. I don't know too much about the controversy, but since foreign markets are a big deal for Japanese media companies, they're going to keep foreign reactions in mind. Especially after the MMO Junkie controversy.
I also think that as time goes on, this'll be less of an issue as Japanese creators learn to not be racists on twitter. Kind of like #MeToo shined a lot of light on sexual harassment and will hopefully change future behavior now that people know they can't get away with it, I'm hoping that foreign pressure will change the status quo in Japan too. It'll probably take a long time, though, and has to start with the media companies vetting their people.
Selena wrote: "So I want to know your thoughts on this topic because I'm facing this dilemma myself.What should you do if the creator or someone else heavily involved in a project is a Nazi or a pedophile or is..."
Personally, I feel that you should vote with your wallet. If something has happened that you don't agree with, stop buying their product. I tend not to get too heavy with judgement from tweets because, often times things are taken out of context, but if they get arrested for doing something immoral/illegal, I don't support them anymore. e.g. R. Kelley and his pedo @$$. I deleted all his songs off my spodify and refuse to go to any event that he's in.
That is one of my concerns when people say "they dug through so and so's Twitter to find something". If it was made in the last year then alright it's something that can be looked at with the full context. A lot of times though these things are one thing that was said 10 years ago with no context to why it was said and now that want that persons life destroyed for it.
Gord wrote: "That is one of my concerns when people say "they dug through so and so's Twitter to find something". If it was made in the last year then alright it's something that can be looked at with the full ..."I wholeheartedly agree with this. People grow over the years. I'm sure that people said things all the time when they were younger that if it were brought up now would be embarrassing or damaging to them now.
In this particular case, this guy had a history of racist Tweets from 12-15. It was a repeated pattern with similar name calling practices and demeaning / dehumanizing of Chinese and Korean nations.News was well detailed here if anyone is curious about it.
https://www.animeherald.com/2018/06/0...
While I think I can agree that it isn't right to mar someone's life permanently for past social media use (especially if he is truly remorseful and tries to do things to show he has changed), I feel it's probably within the employer's right to refuse to work with him based on his usage of social media. A lot of employers have social media policies these days afaik.
MINE is a pseudonym, so he may be able to re-establish himself under a different name. Who knows. It is pretty sad that he and his series were this close to the top, and it comes crashing down because of his hangups.
ANN is catching flak for promoting an anime originally produced by a "religious organization" (some call it a cult).https://twitter.com/pancakeparadox/st...
The film above came to the US from Eleven Arts, and its English cast is a whose who of talent, which some find bizarre to see they attached their names to it.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dv9-VkoU8...
More on that religion, the danger of normalizing potential cults as religious organizations, and their impact on the anime industry talent pool here.
https://twitter.com/highimpactsex/sta...
What makes it even more bizarre is that ANN even did an article in 2015 on the impact of cults on the anime industry, which included a section on this organization.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-...
It’s hard to say how one should behave when one finds out creators of manga and anime have done pretty bad stuff. Fiction creators as a class tend to have very imperfect lives: most of them seem to be alcoholics, and a few have worse sins. It’s very rare to find an author as clean and upright as J. R. R. Tolkien in his personal life.So, what does one do with the fact that writers are often flawed people? G. K. Chesterton (himself a heavy alcoholic) said that bad writers reveal the truth about themselves while good writers open a window into reality and the human soul. So, I think that it is possible to enjoy a good story written by a wicked person, like Nobuhiro Watsuki’s Rurouni Kenshin. His pedophilia does not play a part in the story. A bad story written by a bad person, on the other hand, is probably unendurable except to a psychologist.
Having said that, foreknowledge of a really bad fault in the author does dampen one’s desire to read a book and one might start wondering how a story mirrors the author’s psychology rather than what’s in the story itself. There are many young fans who cannot enjoy RK the way fans could before the evidence against Watsuki appeared. Many probably can’t read it.
On the topic of the Japanese and WWII, I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that they’ll emphasize the heroic qualities of their soldiers while *ignoring* the bad. They’re not like Westerners who will *acknowledge* the bad while emphasizing the good. (Think of the way a Southern Patriot talks about the War Between the States: slavery was evil, but that evil institution cannot completely efface the heroic sacrifices of Southern Soldiers or the good of states’ rights. The Japanese version would completely ignore the issue of slavery.) The Japanese are wrong to write the crimes of their country in WWII out of history, but they are a free country and can guide their culture as they see fit. A scene in Ghost Hunt shocked me by the heroine admitting to Japanese War crimes, and I cannot recall seeing a similar scene since.
What should you do if the creator or someone else heavily involved in a project is a Nazi or a pedophile or is convicted of a serious crime? Especially if their work has nothing to do with it?
For example, the creator of Rurouni Kenshin was arrested for pedophelia a few months ago. The director for MMO Junkie has Nazi rants and Holocaust Denying posts on his Twitter.
What are your thoughts on this? Should we boycott? Watch critically? What do you think?