Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Speaking of anime censorship, I've been informed that this season's incest romance, Koi Kaze, had its eighth episode banned from broadcast, for reasons that passeth all understanding. It's being called "7.5" as a result. I haven't seen it - I've lost patience with Koi Kaze, I keep rooting for the police or biker gangs or something violent to show up and kill the older brother - but I've been told that it's an unexceptional flashback episode about divorce proceedings.

So, let's see. Somebody at a television network authorized the broadcast of a romance featuring the amours of a fifteen year old girl and her creepy fucking boyfriend of a genetic brother - no putzing around about step-siblings or maybe they are and maybe they aren't and three-card-monte parental swapping and all that - they signed on the dotted line and paid the animation studio and corralled the sponsors and aired seven episodes. Then, they decided that the eighth episode of incest-love just was too much, and refused to air it. End of story, executive comes to senses, cancelled show, right?

No, that would make too much sense. They go on to air the ninth episode, and then the tenth, and I happened to see the end of the eleventh episode, where Lolita and her brother Humbert kick her romantic, age-appropriate, non-related rival out of his apartment, and get down to the old in-and-out, beast-with-two-backs, horizontal bop. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, JAPAN?

I almost want to see this episode 7.5, to determine for myself that there isn't anything more offensive than incest-sex in this mysteriously banned episode which would explain to my satisfaction why it was banned, and not the "beginning of Middlesex" episode 11.

Oh, well. I just hope that their offspring just have a few extra digits, or an easily fixed birth defect. The Anatolian Greek siblings in Middlesex ended up with a grandchild with whom you can't use gendered pronouns in any proper sense.

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