Russia also bans Akira
You got it right: Russia managed to ban even Katsuhiro Otomo's masterpiece, Akira, first released in Japanese cinemas in 1988, written and directed by the same master Otomo at Tokyo Movie Shinsha and considered the absolute masterpiece of the author and one of the first animated films to feature a notable use of CGI, computer-generated imagery or "computer-generated images".After censoring Death Note, Tokyo Ghoul and Inuyashiki because they are considered too violent and because they incite suicide and isekai anime because they promote strange ideas and beliefs about reincarnation, now the motivation behind this new rejection of one of the many Japanese animated products is that it could harm children's health. Let's see in more detail.
The decision of the St. Petersburg court
As announced by the United Press Service of the St. Petersburg courts via their official Telegram account on July 5, as reported by Bounding Into Comics, Frunzenskiy District Court issued its ruling in connection with a prosecutor's request to ban Akira's distribution on the grounds that its content "may be harmful to children's health and mental development" .Although these bans were allegedly applied to forcibly prevent pirated distribution websites from making adult content available to younger audiences, their effects have had far-reaching consequences for legal distributors, as multiple streaming services had to remove affected series to avoid conflict with the Russian government.
One example is the service Kinopoisk HD, which was recently forced to remove Tokyo Ghoul from its library of offerings to comply with the latest state rulings.
So, after banning Akira, in total the Russian government has banned the distribution within its borders of 13 anime productions, including the series already mentioned at the top of the page and Elfen Lied , Interspecies Reviewers, Naruto, Nekopara, Princess Lover, That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime and Zombieland Saga.
Start reading Akira's manga, available on Amazon!
Russian Olympic Committee to send 335 athletes to Tokyo
Russia's Olympic Committee will send 335 athletes to the Tokyo Olympics next month, its president said on Tuesday, where they will compete without their national flag and anthem due to doping sanctions.
Russian athletes are barred from competing at major international events, including the Olympics, with their flag and anthem until 2022. The country will compete in Tokyo under the name 'ROC', an acronym for the Russian Olympic Committee.
'The Russian Olympic Committee has just approved the team for the Tokyo Olympics,' president Stanislav Pozdnyakov told reporters. 'There are 335 athletes on the list.'
Volleyball player Maksim Mikhaylov and sabre fencer Sofya Velikaya are ROC's designated flag bearers, he said. They will use the Russian Olympic Committee's flag.
The ban is aimed at punishing Moscow for providing global anti-doping authorities with doctored laboratory data that could have helped identify drug cheats.
Instead of having their anthem played on the podium, Russian gold medal winners in Tokyo this year and at the 2022 Beijing Games will hear music by composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Many Russian athletes were sidelined from the past two Olympics, and the country's flag was banned at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games as punishment for state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Games.
Russia has in the past acknowledged some shortcomings in its implementation of anti-doping policies, but it denies running a state-sponsored doping program.
© Thomson Reuters 2021.