🩸 Violence and Gore are the Original Sin of Anime: Changes Persist
Whenever a major violent event occurs in society (such as the Cheng Chieh incident or a random killing incident), a group of experts and scholars will immediately come out to discuss why these people are so violent.
⚔️ Two Sides of the Debate: Anime Responsibility and Social Factors
- Anime Influence School: Believes that manga and animation full of violence and pornography are a factor that leads teenagers to become brutal.
- Social Psychology School: States that it has nothing to do with anime, but the problem lies in the society and personal psychological factors.
The author thinks: Actually, both sides are right.
Instead, overly persistent belief that only one’s side is correct is the fundamental cause of the chaos. When everyone insists on their own opinion, they can no longer listen to others’ opinions, and eventually each talks to themselves without any common ground.
🧠 Sensory Stimulation and the Blurring of Moral Boundaries
Of course, it cannot be denied that the content of some manga is indeed too dark, and some teenage boys and girls even take pleasure in collecting these “evil path” (heretical) manga.
Manga itself is ultimately just manga, just lines drawn on paper. This is also why many people say that the criminal’s final choice still depends on their own thinking.
But there is a problem: if a person (especially a young person) is exposed to overly exaggerated manga for a long time, whether it is erotic scenes or scenes of violence and gore, it is easy to create a sense of alienation from reality, and the judgment boundary of moral right and wrong will become increasingly blurred.
Excessive sensory stimulation is like excessive indulgence in lust; one day it will no longer be possible to obtain the excitement from the ordinary that was felt the first time. Therefore, to maintain the same level of sensory experience, one will inevitably fall deeper and deeper, eventually doing something irreparable.
📰 Anime and Media: Distinction of Heavy vs. Light Responsibility
If manga and animation are compared to the Four Books and Five Classics that we had to memorize when we were young, their role is to allow people to achieve a subtle influence through the cultivation of wisdom (slow influence).
Then, does the news media that focuses on sensationalism have no responsibility? Wrong!
If anime belongs to slow influence, then the news media is like a cram school adopting Spartanism, forcing you to accept all information to achieve the goal of quickly defeating the demon king.
However, often after defeating the demon king, you also become the next demon king.