It’s happening again. A man in the United Kingdom was sentenced to nine months in prison for owning some hentai, AKA sexualized manga or anime.

Of course, that’s not what the courts called it. They said it was “illustrated child pornography.” How did they identify it as child pornography? Because some of the girls in the drawn images were wearing school uniforms, indicating to the courts that they were underage.

As Otaku USA’s Joseph Luster put it:

“None of the images were of real people, but the drawings—both still and animated—were deemed dangerous due to their depiction of young girls, some in school uniform and some engaging in sexual activity.”

Over the past few years, several men—and they are all men, I suppose because of our global misunderstanding that only men pose a danger to children—have been convicted under similar charges. After they found hentai on his computer, a Maine man was restricted from contact with children. Meanwhile, a Canadian man was charged with attempting to import hentai over the border. Sure, some of the hentai they were into was really gross, but since when do we make laws based on what’s gross? I’m sure a lot of you wouldn’t like to read my sexy fanfiction, but I don’t think you want me to go to jail over it.

Perhaps the most famous case was that of Christopher Handley, the Iowa comic book collector who was sentenced to six months in prison for obscene manga. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which publicized and fundraised for his case, noted that Handley “had no history of criminal behavior, possessed no actual photographic pornography of any kind, and posed no danger to anyone in his community.” 

Eric Chase, the lead lawyer on Handley’s team, argued that cultural differences led to authorities misunderstanding what constitutes children vs. adults in manga. 

“There is explicit sex in yaoi comics. And the men are drawn in a very androgynous style, which has the effect of making them look really young. There’s a real taboo in Japan about showing pubic hair, so they’re all drawn without it, which also makes them look young. So what concerned the authorities were the depictions of children in explicit sexual situations that they believed to be obscene. But there are no actual children. It was all very crude images from a comic book.” 

Of course, some of the hentai these guys were into sounds pretty disgusting—including drawings of adults having sex with children. But they’re just that—drawings. I get it, nobody wants to come across as if they’re on the side of child porn. But it’s hard to argue that these drawings, regardless of how obscene they may be, are actually harming real children. When these men are arrested, it doesn’t protect human children, of which not one of them have ever had a history of harming.

This whole thing came really close to home last month when I ordered some (G-rated) doujinshi from Japan. As I’ve previously mentioned, I like to practice my Japanese by translating trashy doujinshi because I am not a perfect person. But after the UK arrest, it dawned on me how dangerous it has become to import manga over the border. This doujinshi I ordered was pretty tame, but it did feature some boys kissing in school uniforms. According to the authorities, school uniforms indicate minors, so even if I argued the characters were canonically 18, they probably wouldn’t believe me.

If you’re an anime fan you should be worried about the precedent of putting people in jail for hentai possession. As I’m fond of saying, what do you think Kill La Kill would look like to your average judge? If a judge says something you own is child porn, that could ruin your life forever. Regardless of whether or not you’re an actual danger to society, nobody is going to risk their career to defend an accused child pornographer. It looks good all around to lock up somebody like that.

What can we do? Donate to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Speak publically about our disapproval of these ambiguous manga cases. And for the love of God, please don’t import anything over the border if there’s even a chance of it being misinterpreted.

Photo by me of CosplayerKyo‘s insane car.