According to Anime News Network, Recovery of an MMO Junkie anime director Kazuyoshi Yaginuma has been retweeting and liking antisemitic tweets for years, but recently, he’s started making his views known in English.
[Image via Funimation]
Kotaku‘s Cecilia D’Anastasio called Recovery of an MMO Junkie her favourite anime of last spring.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/11/my-favourite-anime-this-fall-is-about-an-mmorpg-obsessed-woman/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/g0dlj5e8ujmonzm67qac.png” title=”My Favourite Anime This Spring Is About An MMORPG-Obsessed Woman” excerpt=”I was not expecting my favourite anime so far this season to be about an unemployed, 30-year-old MMORPG addict with an unhealthy drinking habit, but here we are.”]
Besides Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Yaginuma has worked on a variety of anime shows and movies, including doing key animation on three Naruto flicks and directing several Pokemon Generations episodes.
Besides conspiracies, he’s asked his followers why it was necessary for Nazis to kill mass numbers of Jewish people, questioned whether that atrocity really happened, and questioned the accuracy of Anne Frank’s diary and whether or not it’s fake. (The Dutch Government proved its authenticity decades ago.)
Yaginuma also appeared to doubt Nazi gas chambers on the grounds that there are no images of how they worked.
The parent company of Crunchyroll, which streams Recovery of an MMO Junkie, issued the following statement:
To which Yaginuma replied:
Signal MD, the animation studio that made Recovery of an MMO Junkie, recently issued a statement on February 16 denouncing Yaginuma’s tweets and saying the director was no longer employed by the studio. He had been brought on to direct the anime, which finished its run. Signal MD’s statement can be read below:
Statement by SIGNAL MD concerning Tweets under the name of whom the director of “Recovery of an MMO Junkie”
It has come to our attention that a series of Tweets under the handle, @yaginuma_san, apparently made by Mr. Kazuyoshi Yaginuma have included anti-Semitic comments. SIGNAL MD wishes to make it clear that it is strongly opposed to and deprecates anti-Semitism and all forms of racism or discrimination.
Mr. Yaginuma was director of the anime “Recovery of an MMO Junkie” produced by SIGNAL MD, has never been our company member and is no longer employed by us.
Assuming the comments which appear under the Twitter handle @yaginuma_san, were indeed made by Mr. Yaginuma, they are not linked to his role as director of “Recovery of an MMO Junkie” and are not supported by SIGNAL MD.
We will continue to create works that are moving and enjoyable, with the philosophy of giving excitement to many viewers and working to create works that satisfy our clients.
Thank you for your support and understanding.
SIGNAL.MD, Inc.
On February 17, Yaginuma tweeted this:
And this, among other tweets:
Comments
15 responses to “Anime Director Causes Controversy With Antisemitic Tweets ”
I was in Japan working in the mid 90s, and although nearly everyone I met was very humble and lovely, once you scratched the surface, a large amount of people were overtly racist.
People often called me horrendous names, not realising I could understand the language.
Things may have changed now, but the relative isolation of Japan, through geography and policy seemed to incubate some xenophobic attitudes.
Hopefully things have improved, though with how much worse things have gotten here, who knows?
It’s true, but what you find is its like that pretty much everywhere you go, it all depends on how different you are from the greater population.
The shit I hear in Australia on a daily basis makes my jaw drop.
We are not the most acceptinb of species and we really, really don’t like things that aren’t instantly identifiable as being the same as us.
On the subject of the story, Whoo boy, somebody spent a little too long on YouTube late one night xD
(And trust me when I say this kinda thing is being artificially spread for political reasons in many counties right now, just look at how Australian politics is suddenly being reshuffled by foreign interests and money, new names popping up spouting US driven rhetoric. There is a shit ton of American money being thrown out way and some very troubling lobby groups appearing)
By American money you mean Russian money right? :\
Kind of glad this all came to light after the anime finished airing. Don’t want to see another Kokoro Connect where the scumminess of one person or a handful of the staff overshadows an otherwise good show.
Also very glad the studio has publicly distanced themselves from this loon.
Oh man, i didn’t hear about this and looked it up, what a mean spirited thing to do to a person when you have a show that at its core is about understanding and not being horrible to people.
i really liked the show but now i don’t think i’ll be re-watching it any time soon.
Right? imagine finding all that out as your watching it halfway into the show’s airing season. It threw a huge shadow over what I still consider a great show. A lot of people rightly boycotted the show and pre-orders got cancelled like crazy.
Thankfully the handful of staff I knew of and liked from the series had nothing to do with that horrible mess.
For anyone wishing to sift through some of the evidence of the camps, there are good resources posted here:
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30469/did-the-nazis-kill-jews-with-gas-chambers
After having gone through a lot of that contemporaneous evidence, including Sonderkommando testimonies, confessions from war criminals and photographic chronicling of the death camp process, it beggars belief that anyone could deny that the holocaust occurred.
While you’re at it, could you give us a link to evidence of Palestinian camps, especially that extra-large one they call Gaza?
Man, this is a really fun show, too.
The Japanese are still a bit brain washed when it comes to ww2. Their texts used in schools skims over a lot of atrocities commuted by the axis powers.
While the catastrophe is not on the same level it sounds like the people right now denying that the recent school shootings are real, claiming not the shooting themselves are fake but the victims are paid, actors. It boggles the mind when you have an insurmountable amount of evidence, first-hand testimony, victim reports and evidence, as well as evidence from the culprit themselves that people can deny somethings happen.
The kind of people who buy into these supposed conspiracies are usually the forever alone type who dont have any friends and they spout these conspiracies because it gives them the false belief they are a part of some secret part of society and that they are better than everyone else.
Essentially they are the lowest scum of human beings.
Funny you say that, it was reported Trump Jr liked two crisis actor conspiracies regarding the Florida school shooting on Facebook.
That’s a pretty big generalisation and they are often wrong.
You’ve also described symptoms of anxiety and depression.