Anime masterpiece Akira seemingly banned in Russia due to fears of mentally damaging kids

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St. Petersburg doesn’t want people to watch Neo Tokyo EXPLODE.

More than 30 years after its release, Akira is still widely considered a must-see both by serious anime enthusiasts and scholars of theatrical animation. That opinion, though, is apparently not shared by the Russian government.

Bounding Into Comics reports that the 1988 anime film classic has been banned in the country, citing a statement from the official Telegram messaging account of what the website calls the “Courts of St. Petersburg.” No judicial body matching that exact name seems to exist, and while St. Petersburg is the location of the Constitutional Court of Russia, the Google-translated version of the Telegram posting shared by Bounding Into Comics references the “Frunzenskiy District Court of St. Petersburg.”

▼ Trailer for Akira

According to the translation, the Frunzenskiy District Court issued its ruling in regard to a prosecutor’s request that distribution of Akira be banned on the grounds that its content “can be harmful to the health and mental development of children.” The translation adds that “By the same decision, reference to the Elven Song is prohibited. Another decision was made to ban further references to Tokyo Ghoul and Death Note,” with Elven Song likely being the anime Elfen Lied (which translates from German as Elven Song). However, it is unclear from the quality of the translation whether the statement’s use of “reference” is meant as the court ruling to ban Akira specifically because of the precedent of banning/restricting distribution of other anime series previously, or if it is simply included in the statement to provide historical context.

Source: Bounding Into Comics via Yurukuyaru via Jin, Telegram
Top image: YouTube/Madman Anime
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