Image: nidomeno-jinsei
The Japanese light novel series New Life+: Young Again in Another World was slated to get a TV anime adaptation this fall. But in the wake of bigoted tweets its creator previously made, the show has been canned.
The light novel’s creator writes under the penname MINE. When the anime was announced, Twitter users pointed to tweets MINE made between 2012 and 2015 with racist and derogatory comments towards China and South Korea.
Twitter users also noted that the series apparently features a protagonist who had killed 3,000 people with a katana during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The backlash was swift. The show’s main voice actors – Toshiki Masuda, Megumi Nakajima, Kiyono Yasuno and Nanami Yamashita – all quit en masse.
As IT Media reports, MINE issued an apology on Twitter, writing, “As for several tweets I previously made, they caused many people a great deal of discomfort, and I truly apologise for the improper language.” MINE added that he was leaving up his Twitter account for the time being so his apology and remorse could be widely known. At a later date, he will delete his account.
MINE also added that he was talking with his publisher about correcting the original light novel so that it does not provide discomfort for readers. “Once again, I am truly sorry for the unpleasant feelings as well as the trouble I have caused.”
However, the light novel’s publisher, Hobby Japan, announced it was suspending shipments of the New Life+: Young Again in Another World light novel.
The TV anime is now being cancelled, with an announcement as well as an apology appearing on its official site.
Comments
20 responses to “Racist Twitter Comments Lead To Anime’s Cancellation”
Good.
Fixed.
The novel was apparently full of anti-Chinese and anti-Korean propaganda if you bothered to look as well, and it’s also been cancelled. Good riddance IMO.
3712 specifically. A barely coded reference to December 1937.
Um personally I don’t find it surprising at all.
I have read Chinese novels that is anti-Japanese and anti-Korean and Korean novels that is anti-Japanese.
Hardly affect anything if the story/plot is interesting.
Huh….
I think I’ve been reading the manga of this, but the article makes mention of the light novel and anime with no mention of the manga.
I’m not the most observant to this kind of thing, but I’m pretty sure the manga has avoided the racist tones of the source material. But I am curious to reread it to see if I can find anything.
Whats a light novel?
A Japanese novel targeted towards high school-aged readers
A serialised short novel with the occasional illustration, originally a Japanese concept that have seen recent translations and exports.
“short” isn’t really applicable to a lot of them. Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon Vol 1 is only about 10k words off being as long as “return of the king” and it’s the shortest book in a series of light novels that’s 23 volumes deep and counting.
The closest definition that sticks is Japanese novels frequently targeted at young adults that include illustrations and generally have minimal use of the more complex/obscure parts of the Japanese written language.
At this point though really it’s more a brand than it is a definable genre.
They’re basically pulp. Novels aimed primarily at middle and high school age and have periodic illustrations. Most of the popular ones are serialized, and most of them are around 50,000 words, but neither of those are a hard-and-fast rule.
They’ve been around for ages and are a common source material for anime, way back into the 80s and 90s – stuff like Vampire Hunter D, Record of Lodoss War and The Slayers were originally light novels.
Kinda sad how some of the comments are people saying its good this got cancelled, does it effect you in anyway…nope not at all.
Also fun fact Japan is actually pretty racist at times, but then again people tend to ignore them for more lets say ‘easier’ targets.
But that being said people tend to latch onto the slightest controversy these days, kinda sad really.
What are your thoughts fellow commenters?
I’m not exactly in the know but I know that Japan is very isolationist and their culture is a derivative of that.
Japan, China and Korea have been at opposition for centuries, casual racism towards the other is everyday practise.
Looking at modern China’streatmemt of fellow nations, treatment of their own people and the rewriting of history. I find it hard to sympathise with China.
There’s a lot of racism from everyone in that part of the world towards each other.
Centuries of bad blood will do that and it never gets extreme enough to cause a full backlash against it, just constant easily hidden mundane racism where nobody is forcing you into racially segregated zones but you will often get overlooked for jobs purely because of your heritage.
I do worry that controversy like that will pave the way for censorship via public outrage.
Sad.
‘awful things are fine as long as they don’t affect you’
What are my thoughts?
That’s a pretty obscenely self-centred world view right there, champ.
I’ve read some of this series and couldn’t find myself liking it, it’s a by the numbers reincarnation fantasy without anything to really set it apart from the sea of such novels other than it’s bizarre hyper Japanese-Nationalist backstory for its main character. Even if the novel itself was cancelled (which it probably wont be, it’ll lay low for a while and then pop back up again without making the mistake of having an anime to draw attention to it’s less savory aspects) I wouldn’t miss it.
That said I worry about the precedent this sets with Chinese outrage influencing Japanese products. It’s one thing when it’s something like this where there actually is anti-chinese sentiment from an author who’s said racist things publicly, but already people are complaining about Fate Grand Order’s new event which takes place at the end of WWII in Japan. It’s shows no signs whatsoever of glorifying the events, trying to rewrite history or justifying actions yet people are railing against it purely because of its setting and the fact that it’s written by a Japanese company.
The issue with the FGO event wasn’t so much the description of the event, but the date of the announcement (Korean Memorial Day).
You can kinda understand why some Korean and Chinese users might have jumped to those conclusions.
Isn’t racism “prejudice + power”?
How does this work with people of the same race?
Because they arent? The chinese and japanese largely see themselves as very different people, and you can usually tell the difference visually, not all asians are the same buddy
Like between people from ireland and london, sure they are both “white” and from the same islands in a small geographical area but you could totally tell the difference alot of the time
Its why racially defined groups are mostly bullshit and arbitrary
Hell even between regions of china (because its a fucking enormous country) there are different enough groups that they can be racist towards each other
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are all nationalities, not races. While they’re obviously not all the same, “Asian” is in fact the race.