Thread: Manga and a murder

Hey this forumcaught my eye because I'm a journalist reporting on a murder case - and manga comics were suggested as an influence.

The murder seems to have been sexually motivated and involved more than one killer.

i don't know what the prosecutor's reasons were for suggesting manga had a role. But in your experience, could a manga story really make someone murderous or make sexual violence seem glamorous?

Would be interested to hear your views...

No more so than any other work of fiction.

Originally Posted by purple_sky

Hey this forumcaught my eye because I'm a journalist reporting on a murder case - and manga comics were suggested as an influence.

The murder seems to have been sexually motivated and involved more than one killer.

i don't know what the prosecutor's reasons were for suggesting manga had a role. But in your experience, could a manga story really make someone murderous or make sexual violence seem glamorous?

yes i want to kill and rape you. first kill then rape of course.

seriously you know the answer to this stupid question. every reporter and every politican knows the answer to this garbage.
killergames/actionmovies and manga are just excuses used by politicans since working on the real problems is to much effort for them/costs to much/would imply that the system is not working.

but it seems that playing ignorant allways wins. tell the people that manga/killergames are the enemy and time after time they will believe it.
reminds me of telling people that the blacks or the jews are evil. did work as well.

Hmm... since manga is a very diverse medium catering to a lot of different demographics, I won't deny that there is a category of manga that fetishes or glamorises sex and violence. This usually exists in some of the edgier seinen manga (manga aimed at young adult males) and many subgenres of hentai (pornographic) manga.

But then again, the same can be said of novels, video games, movies and TV series. Perhaps manga just happened to be more accessible to your killers than the other forms of media. Collections of static graphic images like manga are more visceral than words on a novel, quicker at gratification than video games where you have to slog through to get to the "good stuff", and are more portable / easier to download than movies and TV series. But then again, that speaks about the accessibility of manga as a medium of communication, not about the message/values that the manga conveys. (Consider the ARIA or Yotsubato! manga series, which also target young adult males, but are about as far away from sex and violence as you can possibly get.)

I've also experienced the power of manga as a moving emotional / thrilling experience - some of the sports manga especially do this really well. So I can imagine that if after reading a basketball or boxing manga, you can feel your adrenaline pumping and you want to practise basketball or boxing, then I suppose the same person reading a manga about rape or murder might feel the same.

To me, though, that speaks more about the individual's own susceptibility to influences from media... or perhaps an unbalanced media diet. If one reads nothing but manga that glamourises sex and violence, then naturally one's viewpoint might get a little warped. I suspect this could be what happened in your case. Did the murderers have any other media influences with positive messages to counterbalance whatever manga they could have been reading?

... On a side note, interestingly enough, I was reading an article recently about the dangers that certain shoujo manga poses to the mindsets of teenage girls in the west. See here: She was Asking for It. I thought it was rather thought-provoking.

-Dizzy-

Guess OP means the belgium Manga murder case. As said, you can misuse every form of media for murder.

The Manga Murder (Mangamoord in Dutch) is an unsolved, Belgian murder case possibly involving a serial killer, referred to as the Manga Killer.[1] The name of the case was coined by the Belgian media and has to do with the notes that were found near the victim. The notes carried a sentence in capital letters and in different colours,[2] originating from the manga series, Death Note: "Watashi wa Kira dess", a transliteration of "I am Kira" (私はキラです, Watashi wa Kira desu?).[3][4] Light Yagami, also known as Kira, is the protagonist of the series. In Death Note, Kira goes on a killing spree assisted by his supernatural notebook, trying to cleanse the world of criminals.

Lawlz, what a dumb fag trying to imitate Kira.

Sad thing that politicians blame one medium and all it's community for one shitty little douchebag.
Same with horror movies and computer games. If some teen or adult is influenced so hard by a manga to commit murder, he just must have to be retarded. Every normal person can differ between a fiction story in a manga and reality.

That may be the case you know? I remember this one time when i tried to conquer the world after reading a bit of 666 Satan. Alass, it never came to be

No, he had nothing better to do and little to nothing to lose.

There are some out there that might highlight the positive effects that the murderer might feel from the killing to a point were you might be able to understand why the bad guy gets off on doing whatever it is hes doing. But i think of the question of it can made glamorous or not is really in the eye of the beholder...

That someone uses the manga Death Note to warrant his murderer's ambition is already a hint how low minded that someone may be. Following the story it must be a hypocratic loner who wanted to profile himself. Police just have to look for someone with low education who reads manga and they have him. Of course, belgium police isn't known to work effective. Keke.

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