Piplup is my bias

Personally, am not familiar with this anime however I'm incredibly concerned about the rampant racism and xenophobia that is arising over this situation, and am not comfortable continuing in the group while that remains the case.

South Korean television has very strict censorship policies. You cannot show tattoos, smoking, mens nipples, sexual content, and pornography is banned. The manga has been heavily edited for Korean television, with a TV-15 rating, and to act as if watching a very popular, very widely acclaimed anime that has much of the dark content removed equals being predatory or in any way condoning predatory behaviour in real life is disgusting and trivializing actual survivors.

This same energy is not being used against western celebrities who have endorsed this particular anime, or other western media that containd prooblematic content; see Timothee Chalamet (CMBYN, working with Woody Allen), the cast of Euphoria, anyone who has ever watched or posted about media such as Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (all of which contain adult characters dating, "imprinting on" minors, and in some cases SA), and also Emily Rudd who I see has also been banned. For the record I don't support any of these people being banned because I don't believe it's in any way helpful. Media is often used to explore and discuss dark and sometimes triggering topics in a safe setting.

I know the mods have already been linked to many threads regarding sharing information on this situation and have taken it into account, and I'll be happy to share them with anyone who is interested to know more.

The fact that Asian Men of Colour are being villainized over MENTIONING an anime is frankly deplorable, and villainizing their characters over media that was shown to them heavily censored, with the most graphic content removed, is frankly unfair. It does nothing to support actual survivors, the exact opposite, because acting as if WATCHING media that involves anything problematic means supporting that action IRL is trivializing and unhelpful.

People have also now been subjected to mass amounts of triggering content and told they are not safe to be around children if they don't also villainize these people. Because they watched and mentioned an anime.