Risky business

Anyone who follows manga in the news is familiar with the "less than informed, resorts to a few stereotypes, but covers something" reports that crop up in mainstream media now and again- local papers in particular love to capitalize on the "gee whiz, manga!" articles. Most, despite a few laughably bad generalizations or somewhat off the mark observations, still mean well in their intention.

Which is why I was most surprised to see this rather nasty editorial crop up in, of all things, one of the more reputed papers- the Wall Street Journal.

Some articles make it seem like manga is a bit geeky. This one makes it seem like there's something depraved about liking it at all. In just a few paragraphs, the writer manages imply that "the highly sexualized nature of the form, which can be exceptionally seedy, if not illegal" is something that abounds in the genre, managing to conjure up a few illegal lolita titles from the Kyoto prefectural sweep to back the claim up.
Okay, I could, at the very bounds of journalism, see how it's possible to stretch one crackdown on illegal material across the whole genre. But I simply don't see how one could conciously sit down and type the phrase "Anime and manga also tend to perpetuate negative images of daily life in Japan," and then follow that with "Most of the stories we get tend to be stereotypes showing heavy workloads and strictness, and a super-adherence to tradition." The author finishes spectacularly by citing the glossing over of war crimes in manga [sorry, must have missed that part in Naruto] and the "certain weirdness factor" that likens the "diehard" anime and manga fans of the States to their Trekkie counterparts.
Because apparently we've built a 200 million dollar market on super strict, pro Japanese porn.