The Rurouni Kenshin Problem

What Happens When The Media is Wholesome and the Creator is Not?

Recently it’s been revealed that the much-beloved manga and anime Rurouni Kenshin will be getting a remake set to debut in 2023, the trailer featuring breathtaking animation sequences and a brilliant usage of light and color. While many are delighted that their favorite anime series will be getting another chance at life, so many more are indignant about the implications of allowing Kenshin to have more spotlight, as it implicitly gives a type of forgiveness to the creator, Nobuhiro Watsuki who was convicted in 2018 of possessing a substantial amount of Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSEM). It was originally theorized in 2017-2018 that Kenshin’s availability was going to spiral downward as most Japanese companies are keen to shy away from their reputations becoming besmirched, but Watsuki’s creation hasn’t exactly encountered this issue: the series that was placed on pause while he dealt with the charges was resumed and Watsuki continued to play a role in its production.

Twitter is, understandably, atwitter with reminders for those who weren’t in-the-know about Watsuki’s past associations with CSEM and criminal charges, but how many of Twitter’s fandom youth will bother to look into whether or not Watsuki is a real pedophile? The mangaka, who once told police that he prefers girls “…between the ages of upper elementary school students to about the second year of junior high,” is most certainly a true, honest-to-god pedophile, but he doesn’t fit the standard profile of a “pedo” to which so many fandom youths ascribe. His work is fairly sexless, there are hardly ever “problematic themes,” and not a single loli to be found. According to plenty of antis, this is nearly unheard of—creators who create “disgusting,” “dirty,” “sinful” things are the ones that are “freaks” or are considered “dangerous” and those who create wholesome, sexless content are generally considered “safe.”

Watsuki seems to have blown that whole ideology out of the water and the implications for the new series are messy in Anti-Land. In a curious split, some antis believe that they are fully able to separate the new series from the creator, apparently believing that because it will not portray degenerate acts, it will be okay for consumption with the caveat that you must pirate it; other antis believe that merely watching the anime will be an indication that you are a passive supporter of pedophilia, choosing to prioritize your own entertainment over making a moral statement. Some antis, in an even more draconian stand-point have made the case that to watch any anime at all is supporting an industry that refuses to bring Watsuki and other “degenerates” to heel.

Fortunately this debacle has some fairly low stakes compared to some other incidents in the past when antis couldn’t tell the difference between an actual crime based on CSEM and drawn loli pornography (one day maybe I’ll write an article on that) but it still serves to highlight some of the major issues fandom is having when a lot of them cannot understand the weight of a word. “Pedo” has become something of a joke among many; having lost its original connotation as “threat” it now simply means “somebody we don’t like” whose fictional media preferences can be portrayed as problematic (which is anything if you try hard enough). The consequences of this are interesting when it comes to the renewed controversy surrounding Rurouni Kenshin: it has become difficult for young, morality-obsessed fandom-goers to distinguish whether or not Watsuki’s works are problematic. When the usual metric for determination is Problematic Works = Problematic People, it starts getting bizarre when they have to flip the two around.

Twitter user @LeBanMn states “Ruroni Kenshin controversy? You’re weird if you like it, end of story.” Some antis take issue—how could someone be weird for liking something so inherently sexless? What if they didn’t know who the creator was or what the creator had done? Could they still be considered “weird” or a “freak?” In this case, the argument that many antis have that they “are critical of their favs” doesn’t count here because Rurouni Kenshin as a series is considered objectively unproblematic and one cannot simply “be critical” of a creator who obtained and hoarded hundreds of nude images of 13-15 year old girls.

So what’s the right answer here when a much-loved anime series reboot might put money into the pocket of someone who’s committed heinous acts? Well, it comes down to personal choice and the long-running conflict humans have with minding their own business. Do you ruin long-standing friendships over an anime series your friend decided to watch? Is their choice in media automatically indicative of their personal morals? Enemies of J.K. Rowling who have been trying to bury the Harry Potter franchise would likely claim that the answer to that is complicated but ultimately: yes. Their solution: pirate it! But for antis and Kenshin, it’s far let cut and dry than “just pirate it” as the media itself is what normally decides the distinction of “pedo” or “freak.” When the media itself is unproblematic and none of the usual “red flags” are present, antis have a far harder time determining a course of action.

What are the implications of this in the smaller levels of fandom? If a person’s media is decidedly wholesome, are they to be trusted and let into spaces with minors despite that the sort of media one consumes or creates doesn’t equate to their personal morals? Watsuki has proven to hundreds of antis that even those who don’t display “hints” as to their predilections can be harboring hundreds of images of CSEM on their hard drives and perpetuating further victimization. Their constant moral vigilance focused on the fictional creations of people means that the real life acts go relatively unnoticed and in some cases, smoothed over by those who enjoy those wholesome creations (as seems to be evidenced by Watsuki’s continued success in the manga business). Would Watsuki have been allowed to continue his work with Kenshin had he also made morally questionable content that linked him to a company and “betrayed” his depravity? Or was he allowed to slip through because Kenshin is an adored, wholesome, staple of the manga and anime cultural world?

Whatever the answer is for any of these questions, the interesting part is always the fallout—how many antis will find themselves declared a “pedophile” for having sat at home watching a fun little episode of a new anime series? How many will soon discover just how fickle their circles really are when they are thrown under the bus for having enjoyed themselves while watching it? If only all of our problems were as simple as deciding what to watch on TV…