Peter's Japan blog

In a park in Belgium, some people have found body parts that were dumped. These were mostly limbs. These were accompagnied by 2 notes which had the text "Watashiwa Kira dess" written on them in different color. This is a reference to the very popular Japanese manga/anime "Death Note", in which Kira is the main character. It disgusts me to hear this, and that it was even written wrong, but I especially find this a sick joke.
The moral in Death Note is about the fact that "if someone has the power of god, and wants to rid the world of all criminals and kill them all. Can that be justified?"
The one who did this clearly didn't understand the manga/anime, it even seems that he didn't even read it, because Kira doesn't cut off limbs at all, he isn't even physically in contact with the victims. He just writes a name in his death note, and then the victim dies within 40 seconds of a heart attack (other ways of death and time of death can also be specified in the death note). This story has got a lot of suspense as it all revolves around the fact that people want to stop Kira and they need to find him and prove that he is Kira. This whole process is very well done and in much detail and complexity.

I think that this is quite blow to the already cliché image that manga/anime has in the west, especially in Europe where it is not well known, and it is mainly known to always contain violence and sex, which is so not true. Okay, there are those that contain violence or sex, but there's also action movies and porn too in the normal movie industry. It's just the same as regular movies, you have any genre you can think of, the same counts for manga/anime. It is true that you have manga/anime with bloody action or hentai (erotic/sex), but you there are many more that are comedy, drama, sports, magic, sci-fi. Many of these are even aimed at children. You have manga and anime for all ages and for all genres, just like regular movies. This is must one of the biggest misconception in the world about manga/anime.

I'm utterly disgusted by this sick joke, and the extra negative attention that manga/anime get, and gives makes the misconceptions even bigger. I don't like it, I love anime and manga, and I would never even think about making these stories real, one must be a real sick person to actually kill someone in this way and even make reference to something like that. And because I live in Belgium, I'm ashamed of it.