Canned Dogs is reporting and Moon Phase corroborates that a fifteen year old boy in Nagano has been arrested and charged with attempted murder for attacking his father with an axe (the father is still alive as of this writing). Moon Phase speculates that this is a copycat crime in the mold of the one that prompted the replacement of School Days episode 12 with a nice boat, and it’s hard to see it as anything else; given what has now become a string of such incidents it seems there is nothing we can do but throw up our hands and resign ourselves to the violence in anime for the indeterminate future being dealt solely by implements not easily obtained by the average Japanese junior high student. Like guns, or giant robots. Or boats.
I realize this post is rather flippant in the face of what is undeniably a terrible, senseless crime. I hope the father recovers safely and the boy receives the punishment – and counseling – he obviously badly needs. That said, I can’t help but be discouraged by this turn of events; this really was the last nail in the coffin of any hopes for the continuation of Higurashi any time soon, and perhaps other anime projects as well. I just hope the issue is approached sanely by the authorities and that creators don’t retreat too far from their artistic vision as a result.
It’s probably inevitable that someone will draw said conclusions. And it’s usually ineveitable in the following media misrepresentation that the media and the public continue to choose to ignore that plenty of people can watch the episode without resorting to murder, and that plenty of people who’ve never watched a fictional axe-attack attack other people with axes. The intention matters more than any ‘influence’ fiction can effect. Even if our collective fiction has been reduced to happy happy roses and cheesecake anime, someone will be attacking someone else with knives. Or cheesecake. The people tend to forget (or rather, to refuse to acknowledge) that fictional murders were imagined or thought up by real humans, and what one man has done, another can do as well, whether or not they watch it on television.
[…] another one. See HD, whom says to see Canned Dogs and MoonPhase, for […]
Well, one can only imagine what would ensue if someone were to bash someone’s head in with a Gundam figure.
Counseling, punishment… … …
And a sniper to blow his brains out should he ever do that again.
[…] No srsly another axe murder? […]