Distanced From Current Events / Anime & Manga

• Digital Manga Publishing dropped their release of the controversial Cure Your Gays manga The Beautiful Skies of Houou High mostly due to the rising amount of LGBT bullying and suicides around the time they released it.
• Black Jack:
  • The third episode of the 2004 anime adaptation was skipped in the series' initial run, as it deals with an earthquake, and a real one had just struck Niigata Prefecture. This leaves a minor plot hole because that episode is the one that introduces their pet dog.
  • The 28th episode of the same adaptation was delayed two months due to the Amagasaki derailment that occured a month prior because it was about shikansen bullet trains going too fast, causing problems at a hospital near the station they originated from. That episode would become the 34th in the series.
• One of the reasons why Blue Comet SPT Layzner was cancelled was how the second part of the series had Earth conquered and oppressed by a tyrannical and virulently racist Empire... whose actions were very similar to how Imperial Japan had treated its colonies and ESPECIALLY the Korean Peninsula a few decades ago. Technically speaking Gundam had been doing it for years with Zeon, but the difference is that Gundam was at least a little more subtle about it whereas Layzner took the theme and dealt with it much more directly.
• One manga case in Case Closed involved a relatively large earthquake striking while the Detective Boys were playing in an abandoned building, which led to a kidnapping victim in the building waking up and trying to alert the kids to their situation. The anime adaptation of that case cut all mentions of earthquakes due to the then-recent 2011 earthquake, and instead had the kidnapping victim simply hear the kids in the building and try to get help.
• The long-awaited Chinese Federation story arc of Code Geass R2 was delayed a week, presumably due to the earthquake that struck central China in early May 2008.
• Coppelion, had both the original manga and its anime adaptation put on hold because its plot was initiated by a nuclear reactor exploding due to an earthquake destroying its cooling system and rendering Tokyo almost uninhabitable for more than 20 years.
• Doraemon: Nobita's Chronicles of the Moon Exploration was postponed from its original August 2019 release date to October of the same year (and then later cancelled indefinitely) in Korea due to rising historical anti-Japanese sentiments (for some reasons) and major anti-Japanese protests there. It was instead put on Korean streaming services, and later received a television premiere on Champ TV a year later.
• The second half of Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu's first episode had Kaname getting abducted by a female gang leader, with Sosuke responding by kidnapping said leader's little brother^note Though it's revealed that it wasn't a real kidnapping, the brother was a willing accomplice and Sosuke paid him off with an RC car; it was cut from broadcast due to a high profile kidnapping case at around the same time.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, the character of South Korea had to be pulled out of the webcast due to protests by Korean groups. This might also explain why Tibet, featured as a part of the East Asian group in one of the strips, was replaced by a panda when said strip was animated.
  • Also likely the reason there is no canon North Korea. The author also avoids mentioning the Holocaust if at all possible to keep up the series' lighthearted tone (and because Germany's one of the main characters). The English dub, on the other hand, isn't afraid to sneak in a few jabs about it.
• One episode of Higurashi: When They Cry and the final episode of School Days had to be delayed for a week in Japan because the contents of it were eerily similar to a murder case in Tokyo, where one girl killed her father with a cleaver which was identical to the kind that Rena has. This eventually led to Higurashi Kai and School Days being dropped from several channels' prime time line up and Higurashi's opening song being reworked to change the scene of Rena's cleaver to that of the junkyard where she goes to. In terms of School Days' changes, see this link.
• The release of Is This A Zombie? was pushed back a week for "violent content" due to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
• After Auditiongate (it's a long story), all DVDs and Blu-ray discs of Kokoro Connect were delayed for a month in the aftermath. It's also the reason why a new opening theme was recorded for this initial home video release; one member of the band who wrote the original OP hinted at the scandal's existence via Twitter and thus unintentionally provoked the Internet into counterattacking the producers, so he decided to take a hiatus from the group as a direct result of the fallout.
• The 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway remain a very bad subject to be insensitive about in Japan. Neon Genesis Evangelion, for instance, being in production at that time, was more or less re-planned on the fly to avoid being offensive in a manner that was not intended to be offensive.
• One Piece:
  • In the Thriller Bark arc, Invisible Man Absalom stabs Sanji repeatedly with a knife as Sanji is protecting Nami, which bites him in the ass when he gives his location away by stepping into a pool of blood. However, when the anime reached that part, a massacre involving a knife had occurred in Japan, so the scene was altered to make Absalom relentlessly beat Sanji instead, and give his location away by stepping too close to him. The scene was restored to normal in the DVD versions when it wasn't an issue anymore.
  • The anime ran into this problem again later on during the Dressrosa arc. One of Kyros's first acts upon being restored to his human form was to decapitate Doflamingo, only for him to turn out to be Actually a Doombot. While the decapitation itself aired without incident, only a few days later ISIS executed two Japanese hostages in a similar manner (see below), so that in following episodes a swirl of yarn was hastily slapped atop the headless puppet, and frames showing the head on the ground were zoomed in and/or cropped to avoid showing the severed neck.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • "Battle of the Shaking Island! Barboach VS Whiscash!!" has never aired anywhere: an episode about Barboach creating earthquakes was never shown on Japanese TV because of a strong earthquake a few days before it was set to air. Judging from the episode list on The Other Wiki it seems as though they're trying to forget the episode even existed. The anime also retired the moves of Earthquake, Fissure and Magnitude after the episode was pulled. Similarly, the move Bulldoze was not used during its debut generation's anime season likely for similar reasons (plus the same reason for the Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma episode detailed below getting cancelled), and wouldn't see an anime debut until the following season.
  • After "Electric Soldier Porygon" gave children seizures, TV Tokyo pulled any programming related to Pokémon from its lineup and VHS rental chains pulled tapes of the anime off their shelves. Like the Earthquake move above, in the anime the eponymous Pokémon has never appeared in a major role since and its evolutions have only made extremely rare and brief appearances as stock artwork when the show's forced to show all the Pokémon existing at the time (Porygon2 was shown in the Johto Pokérap, and both Porygon2 and Porygon-Z were glimpsed in the intro of Pokémon: Kyurem vs. The Sword of Justice, which featured stock art of all the Pokémon up to Meloetta).
  • The appearance of Jynx (a controversial Pokémon which had earlier caused a couple of episodes to get pulled due to being perceived as a blackface stereotype) in a three-episode Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire arc set to be broadcast in America during Black History Month in 2006 caused the entire arc to be pushed back to May of that same year. As the arc was a very important one, it couldn't be skipped, unlike Jynx's other appearances. Jynx, even with the recolor, hasn’t been seen since the 2005-2006 Battle Frontier arc.
  • The first 20 or so episodes of Pokémon the Series: Black & White had a story arc building up to a battle between Team Rocket and Team Plasma. The week before the two-parter was set to air however the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami occurred, resulting in massive death and property damage — something that would've occurred in said two-parter. This resulted in the episodes not airing, in spite of the massive marketing of the episodes, and the ending of the previous episode having Ash and co. heading toward the location of this battle (the scene of them heading towards the Desert Resort would be removed from the English Dub as a result). The plan was to eventually air them, but by the time it was considered appropriate Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 had been released, in which Team Plasma had a brand new look and completely different goals, on account of the games' two-year Time Skip. This caused Team Plasma's introductory episode (and presumably any plans for the team afterward) to be rewritten from scratch, with the unaired two-parter falling into Canon Discontinuity. The tsunami also caused the episode "A Fishing Connoisseur in a Fishy Competition!" about a fishing tournament to be moved to later in the season and edited to remove all mentions of it taking place in Castelia City.
  • One episode in Pokémon the Series: XY, "An Undersea Place to Call Home!", was held back due to the sinking of a ferry off the South Korean coast. The episode depicts a luxury liner that has been submerged for some time. It would finally be aired months later after an initial airing in Korea. The initial Japanese and US airings were skipped and replaced with Ash's gym battle with Grant; with the episode airing in Japan not long after South Korea and later aired in the English Dub in early 2015.
  • The episode "Tentacool & Tentacruel" (which was previously removed from rotation after 9/11, see that page for more) was taken out of the rotation again for a couple of weeks following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as it portrays a city flooded with water.
  • Due to growing racial tensions in America, an episode where Lillie helps Ash disguise as a Passimian^note A lemur-like Pokémon with a black muzzle; Ash coloring his face black coupled with the history of black people being compared to monkeys led to Unfortunate Implications for American audiences was skipped in 2018—the first time in 16 years, it so happens, this happened to any episode. To put it in perspective, the last episode to go unaired outside of Japan fell afoul of the same political correctness standards regarding blackface with a major appearance by Jynx.
• Pretty Cure:
  • After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the third Pretty Cure All Stars movie was edited in its initial theatrical release to remove a tsunami scene that was subsequently restored for its DVD release.^note The scene in question was a flood of fairies pouring into the mall the heroines were in, sweeping them away, ending with Hibiki floating on top and crying out "What is going on?!"
  • This trope was the reason why The Melody of Sorrow was completed in Suite Pretty Cure ♪. The creators wanted the kids to relate to the horrific events on that day by having their beloved heroines suffer through a similar event. However, the show still had a happy ending where the characters defeat Noise and the Melody of Happiness is sung. In addition, a scene in episode 6 of Suite had the glittering effect added to cake mix that Hibiki's brother, Souta, was trapped in to make it look less like a fluid.
  • Smile Pretty Cure! was made as a response to the earthquake disaster, with the series having a Lighter and Softer tone than most installments of the franchise.
• Similar to the Yu-Gi-Oh! example on the 9/11 page, the premiere of Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream was held back a week due to the March 11th disaster.
  • Five years later, the show's Spiritual Successor, PriPara, suffered from this trope in Korea, when episode 36 was supposed to play on the day of the Brussels attacks. After the incident happened, the episode was pulled from broadcast due to the episode's plot involving Laala trying to revive Falulu after she dies, and they skipped to episode 37. However, the episode did show up on a Korean online TV service.
• On the day before the fourth episode of the new-edit Psycho-Pass anime was to be televised, a 16-year-old girl murdered her 15-year-old classmate in her apartment in Sasebo by dismembering and decapitating her. The episode's broadcasts were initially cancelled soon after, due to very similar violent content in said episode.^note The episode in question revolved around a deranged schoolgirl who was kidnapping and dismembering her female schoolmates in order to make works of art out of their body parts.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica got postponed for over a month due to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, as the final episodes showed a destroyed city that was flooded and strong weather conditions.
• Sports pedophilia incidents such as the Jerry Sandusky scandal have led fans of basketball Light Novel Ro-Kyu-Bu! to accuse its production committee of this trope for banning the series from home video release outside of Japan.
• School Days: The final episode, in which a Yandere schoolgirl kills her love interest and romantic rival, was set to air the day after a real life schoolgirl murder. As a result, it was quickly pulled from the broadcast schedule. Since it was so last minute, there wasn't anything to replace it, so they ended up filling its timeslot with tasteful stock footage of boats. This went on to start a meme.
• Soul Eater episodes were being re-aired during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, so two climactic and destructive episodes were skipped in favor of the more lighthearted episodes that immediately succeeded them.
• X/1999, which has been suspended at 18 out of a planned 21 volumes since 2003, has been forced to distance itself from current events repeatedly. The series is intentionally violent and disturbing, but uncomfortable resemblances to real-life tragedies have caused repeated suspensions in publication. In particular, beheadings depicted in the story became controversial after the gruesome Sakakibara Incident and the recurring theme of earthquakes as a sign of the end of the world after the Kobe Earthquake. The current publication hiatus does not seem to have a single trigger but may be due to the general post-9/11 climate towards terrorism (which is essentially what the antagonists are engaging in). CLAMP has stated in interviews that they did not believe that they would be able to get the planned ending published at the time and that they have not abandoned X. Fans have mixed opinions about the likelihood of the series restarting publication.
• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds anime, the tornadoes that Placido/Primo creates in his Duel against Yusei are completely absent from the dubbed version of one episode. This was done due to the tornado disasters in the Midwest that occurred during this time period.
• Thanks to ISIS taking and murdering Japanese hostages, the last weeks of January 2015 had been pretty bad weeks for violent anime, including Assassination Classroom. Even the comparatively light-hearted Tantei Opera Milky Holmes didn't escape the fallout.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, Shark wields a card called "Poseidon Wave", which visually creates a tsunami to stop enemy attacks. Thanks to the 2011 tsunami, they were forced to change the card's name to "Zeus Breath" and change the tsunami to a wall of wind.
• The "Martial Figure Skating" arc of Ranma ½, which included a girl who stole things and "kidnapped" people/animals out of Cuteness Proximity, was delayed because of several kidnappings which had taken place in Japan around the time the three episodes were set for broadcast. They would only be shown months later after the series had been Un-Cancelled and an episode depicting flashbacks to said episodes had been broadcast as part of the initial run.
• Following the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the deaths of all onboard, Cartoon Network pulled the Cowboy Bebop episode Wild Horses, which heavily featured the Columbia, including almost suffering the exact same fate of burning up during re-entry because of heat tiles falling off.
• Fire Force had the broadcast of Episode 3 halted after the arson attack at Kyoto Animation due to the series' premise about firefighting, and this specific episode being about an arsonist trying to burn down a building and kill the people inside. The episode aired the following week in an edited format, with changes such as changing the color of the flames and reducing the impact of the narration.
• In 1998, a woman at a Wakayama summer festival put arsenic in a pot of curry being served there, killing two adults, a 10-year-old and a 16-year-old when they ate it and poisoining 63 others. This lead to scenes featuring characters eating curry being cut from episodes of Super Radical Gag Family and Takoyaki Mantoman that premiered at the same time.
• When NHK re-broadcast Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water in 2004, episode 31 was skipped because it featured an earthquake scene and was slated to air around the time the Niigata earthquake had happened in Japan. Instead, the next episode was rerun, with opening narration for episode 31 edited into it.
• Kaiji had a scene in the manga where The Hero imagines himself being swept away by high tide during a high-stakes underground gamble. Thanks to the 2011 tsunami, the anime staff were forced to change this scene to having him being swept away by gusts of wind instead.
• Three different anime were impacted by the Coronavirus Pandemic:
  • The anime adaption of A3, which already had a Troubled Production from the start, had an episode delayed because it had an unknown scene considered to be too similar to the pandemic.
  • The English-subtitled version of the fifth episode of Season 2 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War originally subtitled a piece of dialogue as "What's the deal with the social distancing?". However, because the subtitle was a Woolseyism derived from a current real-life topic that was not in the original Japanese script, the line was later retranslated as the more accurate-to-the-script "Why are you so far away from me?". Aniplex, who made the official subtitles, later apologized for the mistake.
  • SD Gundam World Sangoku Soketsuden went on a year-long hiatus due to the unfortunate timing of having a Chinese-based series about a deadly virus being spread. When the hiatus ended, all previous material was edited to rename the "Yellow Zombie Virus" (After the Yellow Turban Rebellion, which the virus is based off of) into "Etiolation Trinity" to reduce the chances of someone linking it to the coronavirus.
• Animax suspended its 2011 re-airing of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 after the sixth episode due to the Tohoku earthquake.
• The second episode of Teppen–!!!, which involved some of the characters getting mixed up in a political assassination attempt, had its initial broadcast canceled after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's assassination days before the episode's release. The episode was later rescheduled to air on September 10th, 2022.

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