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INTEREST: My Hero Academia Manga, Anime Removed from Chinese Digital Platforms

The Communist leaders of China doing what they do best: getting butthurt and censoring.

This is nothing. Earlier in the year, they cancelled the NBA in China because one of the general managers of one of the teams retweeted a post in support of Hong Kong. Yeah, a multibillion dollar decision based off a retweet. The NBA, amazingly, didn't bow even though they lost a lot of money. And that was the right move.

Of course, during that crazy fiasco, the Chinese government sent all their apparatchiks around the internet trying to drum up controversy and support for firing said GM, and I'm sure they'll be doing the exact same thing here. So, beware any particularly pro-China opinions from new accounts or people that don't have a lot of posts.

Megiddo wrote:

AkumaChef wrote: This MHA fiasco is a great example. The character in question is the main villian if I understand correctly. If we assume the name of this character was a deliberate reference to Unit 731 then there really is no problem here...naming an evil guy after an evil event makes sense. You gravely misunderstood. The author allegedly named the evil guy after the victims of Unit 731. Not Unit 731 itself, but the people who were experimented upon. Unless you're trying to say the victims themselves were evil or whatnot, then that's just beyond the scope of civil argument for me.

I did not misunderstand anything. I'm well aware that the word maruta refers to the victims rather than the Unit itself or one of the people responsible for the atrocities committed there, but I'm not sure how that distinction matters. It's beyond absurd to think that anyone is calling the victims evil; I can't fathom how anyone might think that was even a remote possibility on the author's part. If the name was indeed an intentional reference to Unit 731 it's just a general one for the unit itself. Perhaps the author wanted to reference the unit and maruta was the only word he could think of which both did that and maintained consistency with his naming conventions of using the tree character for quirkless characters, etc.

To use a different example, is there really a distinction between naming a fictional evil character who performs human experiments Zyklon Untermensch as opposed to Zyklon Mengele?

Just to make sure I'm understanding your argument, you don't think there's an issue where an evil character is named after the people who suffered rather than the evil person/people who were the cause of the suffering?

What if you were to name a fictional evil character who wants to commit genocide Mordecai Anielewicz for instance?

Trying to explain why these kind of things get banned is very difficult due to culture differences.

First of all, there is that collectivist vs individualist culture.

Some people here think it wasn’t a name of a specific victim so there’s no problem. In China, people wouldn’t have cared as much if the name referred to a specific victim because people look at it as a group situation. Not to say they won’t be upset if villain was named after one victim but it would more be because of association that victim has with themselves than outcry for that specific individual.

Many many many fans and series non-fans (anime fans) and people who don’t even watch anime or those who are just trolls and flames for sake of flaming are upset because to them, this is disrespecting the bottom line of their entire identity as Chinese.

They associate both themselves and victims as Chinese and hold that group identity of these victims suffered are ancestors. People in China have strong belief systems based on their ancestors instead of god that it’s similar to a religion. Therefore whenever something like this happen, they feel strong emotions personally and have immediate knee-jerking reactions. Things like this are almost never forgiven by vast majority of Chinese.

If I explain it this way, maybe some people in the west would understand this situation better.

I look at it like this: There are trillions of us on the planet, and we all have different histories, backgrounds, nationalities, and preferences. It is truly impossible to have something that doesn't offend someone out there. Because of that principle we owe it to everyone around us to not meddle in their interests unless we want them to meddle in ours.

Scion Drake wrote:

Яeverse wrote: Horikoshi ruining the jobs of so many people, surprised neither he, his staffers, or editors exercised caution regarding that name. Did no one know? (Actually I didn't know either. Not a history buff) Well neither is he since Japan’s schools don’t teach this stuff much so they grow up without realizing the magnitude & what this stuff means to people. Hopefully this doesn’t affect the series that badly.

And that's a big problem Japan education system and Japan as a whole need to realise what Japan did in the past and start to apologize for their war crime. They want to act as if that never happened and it's not good.

A lot of countries did mistake in their and apologize for their wrong doing. For example Germany is a prime example of what a Nation should do for dealing the issue about their past.

Also unlike Germany, Japan never got a true trial for their war crime and that's a big issue for the victime on the Korean and China side. Japan never truly paid for that because big old Uncle Sam somehow "protected" them.

I really don't get why is China making such a huge deal out of this, there have been several anime characters with Murata as their last name before, hell even KnY had a character whose name was just "Murata" and that was last year but I don't remember anybody making a fuss about that

I really don't get why is China making such a huge deal out of this, there have been several anime characters with Murata as their last name before,

This is not an example of "cancel culture". We only need to worry if it's banned in the west or Japan. Storm in a teacup.

No one ask a mangaka to be a historian that knows every bit of history, but if he does not know how to properly done a reference and just go “oh since you guys don’t like it I will just change the name in future chapters and manga volumes” as an “apology”, do expect people getting upset, especially over a manga that constantly portrays the importance of heroism and social justice.

Apologized and said the character would be renamed.