Anime Industry Returns to TAF, Grovels Before Ishihara

The anime industry has grovellingly conceded that censorship under the firm hand of Tokyo fuhrer Shintaro Ishihara is OK after all – Kadokawa et al. have all humiliatingly folded and agreed to participate in the Tokyo International Anime Fair, all talk of their own “Anime Contents Expo” quietly forgotten.

The roster for TAF 2012 sees all the major publishers back under Ishihara’s heel, and the ACE homepage is blank with no word released about it since the devastating March earthquake Ishihara hailed as “divine retribution” against the corrupt innocents of Japan.

Their craven submission is particularly humiliating given Ishihara’s contemptuous treatment of the industry – “the earthquake serves them right,” “if you don’t like it, don’t come,” “they’ll just come back next year,” “they just have a persecution complex,” “otaku have corrupt DNA,” “mangaka are despicable people,” etc.

As an evidently spineless industry with no influence whatsoever, the success of further bans seems assured.

Meanwhile the Japanese government has been fantasising about Japan creating a cultural export industry on par with its manufacturing industry, and led by the state – quietly ignoring the fact that both regional and national governments are busily attempting to pass bans of all kinds on 2D material, and apparently not grasping the rather more basic realisation that no government has ever had any success in doing anything but strangling its own creative industries.