In a move that will hopefully inspire a positive shift in the current state of online discourse, Ranking of Kings (JP: Ousama Ranking) mangaka Sōsuke Tōka has responded to a Twitter user who made wild accusations against his character with not a simple block, but rather with a full-blown defamation lawsuit.
Set in an alternate version of Earth, Ranking of Kings centers on a world where the various kings of Earth are continually ranked according to their general ‘power’, with the king at the top receiving a small payout from the fabled ‘Divine Treasure Vault’.
Though deaf and often looked-down upon due to his extremely-small-size, Bosse Kingdom prince Bojji dreams of one day taking the seat atop the pantheon of kings.
Sadly, Bojji does eventually receive the chance to pursue his goals, but only when his father, King Bosse, passes away – but thanks to the Kingdom’s low opinion of Bojji’s capabilities, rather than being crowned the ruler of Bosse Kingdom, the young Prince is instead temporarily ousted from the throne, being told that he must train himself in order to be worthy of his position.
Per a report from Japan’s national NHK broadcasting agency, as machine translated by Google Translate, the mangaka filed the lawsuit after said user, a 30-year old woman who purportedly resides in the Kagawa Prefecture, took to her personal Twitter account in July of 2023 and asserted, “I wonder why I feel uncomfortable after reading [Ranking of Kings]. It’s because the author is a pedophile and a neto-uyo’ (a shortened form of the Japanese slang term ‘netto-uyoku’, which translates literally to ‘Internet Ultranationalist/Internet Far-Righter’).
According to police, who began investigating the matter in this past April after Tōka filed an official report about the incident, when questioned about the post, the woman explained, “I thought the content was imitating another manga I like, so I tried to vent my anger at the author.”
As of writing, the woman has officially been referred to Japan’s Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of defamation. It is currently unknown just what damages Tōka is seeking, nor what potential punishments could await the accused.
As noted above, Tōka’s refusal to let such categorically false accusations slide just because they were made on social media is a welcome consequence in the current internet era of ‘terminally online social media users wantonly accusing anyone they have even the slightest disagreement with of having committed the most heinous crimes imaginable’.
In terms of anime and manga, thanks to the typically youthful nature of each respective medium’s general art styles, these accusations often amount to various Japanese creators being accused by online critics – their ranks made up almost exclusively by Western ‘fans’ – of being outright child predators of the highest degree simply for drawing any character as anything other than a grotesque mish-mash of racial and social stereotypes.
(And to head off the inevitable push back from these critics in which they claim to only take this stance against ‘sexualized underage characters’, a cursory glance at the discourse surrounding any given anime series reveals that this is a complete lie, as even full-blown, non-loli, adult characters regularly draw such accusations.)
And far from just the creators themselves, these critics have also made it their mission to level such claims against those fans who would deign to enjoy any material they deem to be ‘disgusting’.
Most recently, this phenomena was seen in the situation surrounding anime YouTuber Chibi Reviews, who found himself facing death threats, accusations of being a child predator, and full blown doxing from Western anime fans simply for complimenting just the animation of a scene in the newly premiered Dandadan anime in which its female lead, Momo, faces a potential ‘forced encounter’ with her alien captors.
The Animators didn't need to go so hard for this scene pic.twitter.com/2WTIjCi4NQ
— Chibi Reviews (@ChibiReviews) October 3, 2024
And if that wasn’t frustrating enough, a handful of those same fans even went so far in their attempt to smear him that after gaining unauthorized access to the YouTuber’s personal DeviantArt account, proceeded to upload actual child sexual exploitation materials to its galleries.
However, like Tōka, Chibi Reviews refused to take this entitlement-fueled incident lying down.
As previously reported, in light of these attacks, the YouTuber has announced that he will be taking legal action against the individuals who attempted to denigrate his character.
