My Hero Academia anime removed from Tencent and Bilibili after war crimes reference
The Chinese platforms previously removed the manga over a villain’s name that appears to reference human experimentation by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II
The controversy has angered people in both China and South Korea, because of an apparent reference to Japan’s covert Unit 731, which killed more than 3,000 Chinese and Koreans during the war. The manga’s author and publisher released statements saying the reference wasn’t intentional, but it wasn’t enough to appease Chinese fans.
A Weibo user wrote, “How it insulted China has proven to be irrevocable… The author had yet to apologize. But Chinese people actually won’t accept such an apology.”
In the latest chapter of the manga, the name of a mad scientist who experiments on humans is revealed to be Maruta Shiga. It appears to be a reference to when Japan’s biowarfare Unit 731 referred to experimentees as “maruta,” or timber. The experiments were done out of a facility disguised as a lumber mill in China’s then-occupied northeastern city of Harbin. People were purposely infected with diseases such as typhus and cholera and subjected to vivisection, amputation and frostbite.
