
The mangaka defunct rag WaiWai branded a paedophile, over his using a tastefully dressed girl character (above) to illustrate an official manga version of an otherwise dry defence white paper, has shot back at Mainichi, demanding a public apology, only to be told that he can expect an under the table settlement, but under no circumstances must he write about it on his blog.
でこくーる / decocool wrote about it on his blog, revealing the details of the interchange in full.
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Rag Gendai suggests that top shrink and noted game hater 岡田尊司 / Takashi Okada’s theories on “mental pollution” are directly applicable to the case of Akiba stabber Tomohiro Kato; in his view children into games lose the ability to discern fantasy from reality, exhibiting all the symptoms of drug addiction, and so degenerate into inhuman killers shorn of all pity or remorse.
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Ultra lowbrow English language tabloid WaiWai, a part of the Mainichi Daily News and known for its extremely liberal handling of source material in pursuit of page hits (if not outright fictional news), has been forced to back down over its more extreme stories (examples below) thanks to a sustained campaign waged by 2chers and others, which finally began to break through into the mass media. Several of their more egregious stories have now been pulled.
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Necrophile child eater and apparent otaku psychopath 宮﨑勤 / Tsutomu Miyazaki, who was hanged recently after languishing on death row for ten years, apparently spent his years in solitary confinement reading manga and watching anime, it has been revealed by a recipient of his letters.
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In what is either an act of exaggerated melodrama or craven cowardice, figure maker Kotobukiya has voluntarily suspended the impending August release of their テイルズ オブ デスティニー リオン・マグナス / Tales of Destiny “Leon Magnus” (or “Lion Magnus”) figure, citing the “social effects” of the recent Akiba incident.
In fact it seems the stabber had something of an interest in Leon, having drawn him at some length… ten years ago when he passed out of his middle school star pupil phase of life.
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Mako Akishino (16), or 秋篠宮眞子内親王 as she is pretentiously styled, a princess of the Imperial House, has recently ascended from the levels of mere aristocracy to become something of an idol in her own right; of course, the organisation which runs the Imperial family, the Imperial Household Agency, doesn’t seem to like this one bit (although in fairness there does not appear to be much they do like apart from male heirs).
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The man to whom persistent rumours of his being the next Japanese Prime Minister have attached, 麻生太郎 / Taro Aso (67), has penned a newspaper column which is bold in its support of otaku, defending them from the vile calumnies the media heaps upon them, and also paid a visit to Akihabara to pay his respects to the fallen.
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“I’m boasting, but I’m a virgin, small, and have phimosis (and full phimosis at that)”. The ongoing efforts of the media to pin the blame for Akiba stabber Tomohiro Kato’s rampage on his otaku interests, as well as the efforts of 2ch to pin the blame on Toyota’s temp downsizing, have both taken a blow with the revelations about the man’s character emerging from a detailed dissection of the thousands of posts he made to various sites over the past year. They depict rather strongly a man obssessed with his own isolation and sexual insecurity.
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Finally, the media finds the story it needs; we hear that Tomohiro Kato (25), the Akihabara mass murderer, had numerous dojinshi in his apartment (above), liked games, only sung anime songs at karaoke, and was an army otaku, with an interest in militaria (Fuji video bulletin, replete with ominous music). He “only had an interest in the 2D”, like a certain previous case. Let the witch-hunt begin?
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The practice of using net cafes as permanent or semi-permantent residences has been on the increase in recent years, due to their cheap price, good amenities and central locations. The Japanese government has published figures suggesting that “net cafe refugees”, people who use a net cafe or manga kisa as their sole residence, now number around 5,500.
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According to a Yomiuri survey, 72% of Japanese profess no belief in religion of any sort. Of course, as you might expect from these kinds of statistics, things are a little more nuanced than at first they seem, though the general ambivalence of the Japanese to religion does not appear to be in doubt.
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A man, Takanori Hoshijima (33), who admits to murdering his lady neighbour with the intention of raping her, and who then apparently carved the body up into small pieces and disposed of them by flushing them down the toilet, even as police searched the neighbouring apartment, now has even more infamy to contend with – the mass media for some reason highlights his tenure working for a large game company.
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