by Problematic words that appeared in popular works
Among the many anime broadcasts, the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization (BPO) has received complaints about specific scenes. The BPO, a third-party organization that responds to complaints about broadcasts and issues of broadcasting ethics, has posted viewers’ opinions on its official website.
Although the specific name of the work has not been made public, it was possible to predict which work would fit by comparing the broadcasted work with the time of the complaint. For example, a particular scene in episode 808 of the anime “Detective Conan,” “Kamaitachi no Yado (Part 1),” broadcast in February 2016, has been called into question.
In the story, there is a scene where the proprietress of an inn is visited by the main character, “Edogawa Conan,” and his friends say, “I was asked to do a female body sushi.” The BPO website at the time of the broadcast stated, “There was a scene in an anime program broadcast in the evening that mentioned ‘female body sushi,’ which caused discomfort,” and this is said to be a complaint about the show, which was broadcast from around 6 p.m.
The story follows the original, and the female body that appeared in Kogoro Mori’s mind was blacked out. Still, the complaint to the BPO stated, “Even if the wording is in the original, we would like you to consider broadcasting ethics, the broadcast time, and the impact on children and change it to an appropriate expression for the broadcast.”
Perhaps some families were troubled by their children asking, “What is female body sushi?” Complaints were also received about the second episode of the TV anime Inuyashiki, which began broadcasting in the late-night slot in October 2017.
The story is about the main character, Ichiro Inuyashiki, a 58-year-old office worker involved in an accident caused by aliens who turn his body into a machine. The second episode, broadcast on October 13th, showed a scene in which a high school student named Shishigami Hiro, who was also turned into a machine in the same accident, broke into someone else’s house and brutally murdered a family with a finger gun.
At the same time, the BPO website received comments such as, “In the anime program, there was a scene where a stranger broke into a house and killed the family one by one. It was cruel and unpleasant to watch.
Even though it was late at night, I’m worried it could negatively influence children if they watch it on a recording.” Just like in the original work, it was a cruel scene in which even young children were killed, but online reactions included, “It’s a late-night broadcast, so it’s okay if parents can regulate it,” and “You can see that it’s not for children.”
In addition to the works that received complaints from the BPO, “Gintama,” which contains extreme sexual jokes and parodies in the original work, was discussed several times as being “too much.”
In episode 232, “The Forgetful One Comes When They Forget” (broadcast in October 2011), which traces the past of “Elizabeth,” an extraterrestrial pet of “Katsura Kotaro,” a female politician modeled after Renho appears and engages in eccentric behavior such as throwing fried chicken at elderly people and forcibly cutting her hair short. She also shows up a flip with the question, “What kind of kanji is ‘renho’ again?” This was an episode where she did whatever she wanted, and perhaps because of this, the anime channel AT-X suspended broadcasting of episode 232. Furthermore, when the series was made into a DVD, the scene in question was blacked out, the text on the flip was blurred, and censorship was added.
