Cognition Dissemination: The Watsuki Redemption Arc Is Real Bad

The name Nobuhiro Watsuki should be synonymous with an acknowledgement of him being a pedophile by now. It should not continue to be synonymous with his identity of being the manga artist and writer responsible for the Rurouni Kenshin and Buso Renkin franchises.

It was in November 2017 when Watsuki was arrested and charged for possessing a plethora of child pornography. “Plethora” deserves further emphasis considering he owned a whopping 100 DVDs containing the content between his workplace and home, enough that authorities suspected he was also distributing it. This isn’t referring to animated or drawn lolicon and shotacon hentai content here, but real children. Worse, his response when arrested, according to the deposition, exhibited his startling lack of remorse for owning the stuff.

This is the kind of heinous crime that should forever remain a mark of shame barring serious efforts at redemption, but Watsuki essentially (and perhaps literally) shrugged his shoulders at the ordeal. It’s easy to see why. As punishment, Shonen Jump suspended publication of the Rurouni Kenshin: Hokkaido Arc for a mere six months, and was merely asked to pay a $1,900 fine. It was the equivalent of sitting someone down and telling them not to do the bad things again — over pedophilia. This not only means Japan needs stronger punishment for owning child pornography, something that only became a crime a mere seven years ago, but it also means other key Shonen Jump artists and executives were willing to look the other way. We now know the identities of many people who turned their heads in unison.

There’s a new Rurouni Kenshin 25th Anniversary art exhibition happening, and one particular advertisement for it includes messages of support from fellow mangaka. If you follow anime and manga, chances are you know at least a few people from this list; if you don’t know them, you’ve likely heard of the franchises involved. The names include: Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto), Hideki Sorachi (Gintama), Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro (Toriko — the least surprising name here), Takeshi Obata (Death Note), Riichiro Inagaki (Eyeshield 21), Kentaro Yabuki (To Love Ru), Hiroyuki Takei (Shaman King), Yusei Matsui (Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo), Shinya Suzuki (Mr. Fullswing), Kazuhiro Fujita (Ushio and Tora), Nobuyuki Anzai (Flame of Recca), Yasuhiro Nightow (Trigun), Katsunori Matsui (La Sommelière), Mikio Itō (Getsuyoubi no Rival). (Itō previously served as an assistant to Watsuki.) If there was ever a list you’d like to end quickly, this is a top example.

Let’s be clear here: Every single one of these artists is complicit in rehabilitating a pedophile who paid a comically minimal price for the crime of child pornography. They have all undermined the abuse of children as an important issue. There is no way these artists weren’t aware of Wakatsuki’s crime as they sent these messages. Among them, it’s Oda who’s done the most to repair Wakatsuki’s image, who went as far as to hold an interview session with him while the incident was still fresh on the minds of many during the first Kenshin art exhibition. Oda has a lot of influence at Shonen Jump by being the creator of its second-most popular franchise (only recently, and perhaps temporarily, dethroned by Demon Slayer in manga volume sales). If an artist has his support, they’ll be fine regardless of their record.

Watsuki should have, at the very least, been dealt the same punishment doled out to Act-Age writer Tatsuya Matsuki. Matsuki was accused and eventually indicted for committing two indecent acts with underage girls over the summer of 2020. Justice isn’t completely served here, either, after he was given a suspended sentence where he’ll avoid jailtime if he’s on good behavior for three years, but Shueisha/Shonen Jump immediately cancelled Act-Age after news of this first manifested. It’s a shame Act-Age’s artist, Shiro Usazaki, was caught up in it all with the manga’s cancellation and the series’ nigh-banishment from existence, but she’s been receiving occasional work elsewhere.

As I mentioned in previous Watsuki posts, separating the art from the artist does not work for everyone, and flat-out doesn’t work when the crime is as severe as this one. It is not possible to concentrate on a work when you damn well know that the creator is a heinous pedo rehabilitated well before he should have been. This is despite Rurouni Kenshin not having any fanservice that could be interpreted as pedophilic — part of what made this ordeal so shocking in the first place. I advise against even trying to use this argument.

Viz’s continued refusal to resume the English publication of the Hokkaido Arc is too small of a consolation, but it’s nice that someone has standards. It’s bad enough that so many artists and an entire publication full of execs played a part in bringing back a pedo who doesn’t feel bad about what he did, but it’s worse that they also don’t feel bad about it. It speaks to the standards of parts of Japanese society that someone can be treated worse for mere drug possession than owning a pile of pedo content, but change starts with highlighting these issues and not brushing them aside.

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Cognition Dissemination: Rurouni Kenshin’s Quick Return Cognition Dissemination: Rurouni Kenshin, Nobuhiro Watsuki, and the Viability of Separating Art From an Artist Semantic Nonsense: One reason why I watch Anime Geek Babble- The Big Anime Queue Purge, Part Five