Russia's battle against anime continues as The Moscow Times reported last month that the Kolpinsky district court of St. Petersburg banned Inuyashiki and Death Note from two unstated websites, and Tokyo Ghoul from one. A report in Russian broadsheet newspaper Kommersant added that Elfen Lied was also banned.
The reason the court gave for banning these titles is that the websites that hosted them had insufficient age verification processes for ensuring only the right audience can view mature material. During the hearing in December, the prosecution claimed that "every episode contains cruelty, murder, [and] violence" in regards to one of the shows.
The Telegram channel of Kolpinsky's district court's Joint Press Service requested five times in December for certain titles to be banned from streaming. These includes the ones listed above plus Interspecies Reviewers, Terror in Resonance, Aki Sora and even Naruto, as well as a list of 49 links to websites where those titles could be viewed without age restriction. Four of those requests were ultimately filed by the Kolpinsky district court, but only for prohibiting certain series on three websites where they could be seen by underage viewers.
Death Note has had a bad reputation in Russia since 2013, after a 15-year-old girl tragically killed herself by jumping out of 13th storey window. In her room, police found four volumes of the manga alongside a note that read "I can't live anymore." The Parents Organization of the Ural Federal District of Russia sent an open letter to President Putin asking him to ban the manga for supposedly being harmful to children.
While only a handful of anime series were banned out of the list given in the Telegram channel, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (or Roskomnadzor) have the ability to ban any anime from streaming on any site without the required legal proceedings in the future. Also, Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev will be overseeing an investigation into Aki Sora for possibly violating the law.
Do you guys think their concerns are justified, or is this just a moral crusade by a different name? Sound off below as always!
