BENGALURU: As the anime culture in the country has flourished in the past year, parents in the city are worried about this growing trend.
The general perception among disapproving parents is that anime is animated pornography. Annaka Karunya, a housewife in Indiranagar, explains her trepidation,”I never let my kids watch anime because of this”.
Subha Rao says he saw his kid watching anime with teenage girls dressed in extremely short skirts. When asked about Hollywood showing equally provocative images, his prompt answer was, “But when animated, the perversion goes to another level”.
Another parent, Sujatha Srinivasan has issues with the dark nature of this Japanese form of entertainment. “It is so weird and dark. I just don’t like the feel of it. If he wants to watch cartoons, he can watch Chotta Bheem. Not some Japanese stuff,” she avers.
Several teenagers in the city label the anime community in the city as geeks or nerds. Anime fans ardently defend this medium as art.
“The misconception that anime is for kids or is pornography will be debunked if people watch movies made by Miyazaki or Satoshi Kon. Miyazaki won an Oscar for Spirited Away and Satoshi Kon made Paprika, which was later copied by Hollywood and turned into Inception,” says Prathik Pandey, an anime fan.
While experts appreciate anime as an art form, but also caution its negative impact on children. “There are sudden deaths and heavy themes in certain anime which might skew the thinking of viewers of an impressionable age,” says English professor Chakravarthy Ranganathan.
Child psychologist Jayashree Narayana, counters this view.
“Children watching anime is only as risky as children watching movies. There is a likelihood of them stumbling upon adult content on TV when they flip through the channels also. I don’t think this has affected them in anyway,” she says.