Forum - View topicNEWS: Voice Actor Tōru Furuya Steps Down From Detective Conan, One Piece Roles
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Bonham
 Posts: 439 Location: NYC |
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"Why should anyone be sympathetic to other people, to strangers who've gone through horrible things committed to them by awful people?"
I genuinely do not care if you hate me because I and others are calling out someone for being incredibly insensitive to others by telling them that they ought to not hate Furuya and dislike his performances because of how his heinous actions, including using his status as a voice actor, have tainted his reputation and work. I don't need to personally know every single victim of abuse, rape, or violence or oppression of any kind to both feel bad for them and to hate the people who have done that to them. Furuya's an abusive shithead. Many people don't like artists who are abusive shitheads. They also don't like it when someone tries to dictate how they should feel about the person and their art, downplaying what they did ("everyone makes mistakes"), just because that person cares more about his voice acting than the real world harm he caused to another person. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 20003 |
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It really shows the severity of what he's done that his entire career is basically over at this point and he's practically tainted his legacy.
It's also utterly ironic to see him lose his Conan role when that's literally based off of him and what got him into this mess in the first place. |
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Meowtain Duwu
 Posts: 186 Location: United States |
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How clueless and tone deaf do people have to be to even consider saying some of the dumbest and insulting things I’ve read in a while earlier on in this thread?! Really says a lot about what some kinds of people think about anyone in the entertainment industry that takes advantage of anyone else, be it other people in the industry, fans, children… the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately Toru Furuya isn’t the first or only scumbag to take advantage of others in this way, and he’s definitely not gonna be the last either. We just need to always call out anyone who hurts others in this way and support those who were hurt. We’ve all been through our own experiences of pain and suffering and the like, but there’s nothing wrong or pointless at all with sticking up and sympathizing for a fellow human being. I get that we all need to be a little selfish during life at times, but for real, keep this attitude of yours up and your social circle’s gonna get a little bit smaller each time you do. |
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jmaeshawn
 Posts: 176 |
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I don't want to sound like I'm condoning what he did, because I'm not. Involving himself with that female fan is absolutely disgusting and, although it's sad that his entire long career is basically flushed down the drain because of this stupid choice, he totally deserves it. I hope all the Japanese fangirls who love Amuro enough to have encouraged the creation of a Amuro spinoff series (Zero's Tea Time) will reconsider their love of the character when they think about who voiced the character and who Aoyama modeled the character after in the first place.
However, I really don't like the wording used here: "he caused the woman to have an abortion." To me, this seems like it's just a conniving, roundabout way of saying that he got the woman pregnant in order to try to make what he did not sound as bad as it is. But unless he threatened to further harm the woman in some way if she didn't get an abortion, he couldn't cause her to get one because that choice is hers and hers alone to make. When she found out that she was pregnant, she had three choices: A) Give birth to the baby and raise it, seeking a court order for him to pay child support. B) Give birth to the baby, but put the baby up for adoption so that a family who wants and is able to care for the child can do so. C) Abort the baby. Based on the information given to us, she chose the latter option herself and really shouldn't be making him take full responsibility, especially when she willingly chose to involve herself with him in the first place, and continued to come back to him for over four and a half years. But in the end, a 66-year-old man getting intimately involved with a young female fan like that makes him an absolute disgusting piece of trash and I'm glad to say good riddance to him. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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You should consider the power inbalance here before presuming to blame the woman for getting an abortion. I also think all the abortion discourse is getting away from the fact he physically beat the woman which domestic violence is a crime. |
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Nev999
Posts: 186 |
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We don't really know exactly what he did to her, but he's the one who said he "made her" have an abortion. Whether is was manipulating, pressuring, threatening her, we don't know, but she didn't make the choice without coercion from him. And she didn't "make him" say anything. We haven't heard a word from her. What makes you think she has any power or influence here? He's already admitted to physical violence, it was definitely an abusive relationship, why is it so hard for you to believe he may have threatened her? He was the one who'd want this hushed up for the sake of his career, not her. And blaming someone in an abusive relationship for staying in an abusive relationship...that's the definition of victim blaming. The cycle of abuse is well known, its not the victims fault. I'm not sure if you're so intent on blaming her because you have some feelings about abortion and want to convince us anyone who would do it it should be blamed but for me, I wouldn't care if she has an abortion based on her own wishes. I think people should be free to make that choice, which means I also condemn anyone who would threaten or pressure or manipulate someone into getting an abortion. It should be her choice. Also why are you going after "Japanese fangirls" for liking the main character of the first Gundam series, a pretty major character in anime history? Why aren't they allowed to enjoy their favorite character now? Why should they feel ashamed for enjoying an immensely popular character? Perhaps some people will find the character too tainted to like them anymore, but I imagine a lot of people will continue to like all these characters even knowing about this, because it wasn't these characters or even their creators that did this, it was Toru Furuya, he's been kicked out the way he should be, and they can always recast. And to the person talking about Tuxedo Mask: of course Naoko's not going to delete a character she created from existence because the guy who voiced him in an adaptation was a creep, he was already recast even before this, a different person voiced him in Crystal. |
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Velluekk
Posts: 56 |
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I believed them more because they were interviewing the people currently working in the industry. Why would I believe some random comments comparing to old shows like Akira, which aired in the 90s, and UBW, which aired in 2015? It's 2024 now, and the industry has changed a lot. |
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jmaeshawn
Posts: 176 |
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I'm not blaming the woman for getting the abortion. It was probably the best option for her. But there were other options available to her and the choice was hers to make. The article even specifically says that he contacted her to start the affair, meaning she had the choice to say "no" from the very beginning, or at any point after that. She also could have told someone she trusts - her family, her friends, etc - what was going on and sought help right away. And yet she kept coming back to him many times over the four-and-a-half year period and didn't speak up about it until after she discovering she was pregnant - almost as if she was enticed by the thought of being intimately involved with the man she was such a fan of, and never thought about the consequences of doing so until it was too late. Ultimately, it doesn't change the fact that he's am absolute scumbag for suggesting and doing such a thing to her. He deserves everything he has coming to him. But I still feel it's wrong for people to put the entire blame on him just because he's a celebrity. They're basically painting him as some pitch black bad guy while making her out to be a completely pure-white innocent victim. In reality, it more like he's an extremely dark shade of gray, while she's a very light shade of gray. ...unless of course, he forced himself on her. But neither the article nor his own statement have any implication of that, and I find that highly unlikely considering this wasn't just a one-off situation, and the two were involved with each other for quite a lengthy period of time. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 5960 |
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If you have to start off with "I'm not blaming the woman but" you're probably blaming the woman. |
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Meowtain Duwu
Posts: 186 Location: United States |
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It’s almost a certainty to feel like you don’t have a choice when you’re in a situation like that. It’s also really, really rich to say that “oh she had a part in this too because she accepted his invitation to start an affair!” because…she’s an adult???? Saying that she knew what she was getting into or some crap like that is really shifting the blame here.
For one, this woman was a fan of this man, a very established voice actor, so already this relationship is off to a bad start. In addition to that, there is a massive age gap between the two; just because this fan wasn’t a minor and could consent due to being an adult doesn’t erase the fact that he’s lived a lot longer than she has and thus has way more lived experiences than her. Those two factors combined clearly spell out a very one-sided relationship. And before people come at me and tell me all about celebrities getting together with other people outside of the entertainment industry, every case is different. Hell, there’s even articles about these relationships on this very site. But the one thing that sets those relationships apart from this one is that these voice actors, manga artists, writers, and so on and so forth didn’t abuse any sort of potential power dynamics in place. At the very least, and this is a hell of a low bar, he didn’t have a relationship with a child or teenager. But is this one of these kinds of low standards we should really be comparing things to? Yeah, this man wasn’t like John Kricfalusi who abused his power as a famous animator to groom young girls, but he still took advantage of a young woman who was a fan of his. |
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Fluwm
Moderator
 Posts: 1609 |
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Unsurprising but still very yikes.
MODERATOR'S NOTE: Remember to treat each other with respect and civility; also please try to stay on topic. Otherwise this thread will be locked permanently. |
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Meowtain Duwu
Posts: 186 Location: United States |
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Really damn funny when people keep changing the topic in these kinds of threads, huh? In the Pusu thread, people got fired up over the definition of “pedophile” (yes, I was in that thread as well and my comment there was what was sparked that unnecessary debate to begin with), and in this thread, it’s abortion discourse!
Oh, and there’s one thing that both that situation and this one have in common: the victims involved were adults (with the former one it’s not a certainty though because she’s only been disclosed as being a “teenage high school girl” so she could still be under 18). Just because all parties involved are consenting adults doesn’t mean jack when one or both parties begin to abuse the trust and security relationships are made of. Seriously, how many times does this need to be said???? I feel like a broken record at this point…. 
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jmaeshawn
Posts: 176 |
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First, Japanese people have a tendency to word things in an indirect, roundabout way in order to try to not "rock the boat" by being so direct. My interpretation of him saying that he "made her" get an abortion is that he was just saying "I had intercourse with her and got her pregnant" in a roundabout way to try to save face with the public by making what he did not sound as bad as it actually is. Putting the focus on her aborting the baby instead of how he caused her to be pregnant in the first place is a pretty disgusting thing for him to do. ><
I have no feelings about the topic of abortion because, as I already said, that is ALWAYS the woman's choice to make. No one else should have any say in it. But no matter how much of a heavy-handed jerk he is, or how he used his influence to try to convince her otherwise, I don't understand why she stayed with him long enough to get pregnant. The moment she felt uncomfortable with how he was treating her, she could have cut ties with him and hid from him at her parent's home, stayed with a close friend, or even gone straight to the police and received their assistance in protecting herself from the abusive partner. The only reason I can think of that she didn't do any of those things is because she didn't want to have to admit to someone that she knowingly got herself sexually involved with a married man who was over twice her age - and that part is solely on her.
I said absolutely nothing about the character from Gundam, as I have no interest in the franchise. I'm talking about his work on Detective Conan voicing the character of the "triple-faced" Amuro Tooru/Furuya Rei/Bourbon. It's talked about a lot in Japanese media outlets that there's a very large number of fervent "fangirls" who gush over the Detective Conan character simply because he's a dark-skinned, blond haired jack-of-all-trades that's full of secrets and mystery. Aoyama Gosho (the creator of the series) once said that he specifically modeled the character after Furuya Tooru and even named the character after him in hopes that he would do the voice of the character when the anime got to that point, and that's exactly what happened. So when the character has such deep connections to a vile and disgusting man, it might be too much for the female fans of the character to mentally separate the character from the disgusting man that the character was modeled after and who he voiced for the past 10 or so years. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 5960 |
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Americans literally live in a country where politicians threaten women they have affairs with if they don't get abortions to cover up the affair but I bet you think that was the women's fault too. |
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NeverConvex
 Posts: 2690 |
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"We need to talk about the woman's choices too" kind of died for me with the acknowledgement of domestic abuse, and with him 'causing her to have an abortion'. That sounds like a terrible situation to blame her for failing to pull herself out of---a lot darker than just arguing about whether she's celeb/wealth-chasing or he's abusing a power imbalance to date a much younger (but unambiguously adult) fan or whatever. Glad he's seeing serious industry repercussions for this; too many "social/personal harm" stories from the anime industry seem to end with superficial consequences.
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