A Florida sheriff has attacked the manga Soul Eater as being a cause of an arson attack in which a 14-year-old girl set fire to the garage of her home while her mother and brother were sleeping inside, then ran away. They both escaped safely, but Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco, in remarks transcribed by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, tied the arson to the Soul Eater manga and Slender Man, an Internet meme that’s the subject of online fiction and drawings.
"I understand there’s a First Amendment and we defend the Constitution, I believe in it," Nocco said. "However, when there’s times when they know they’re putting things up there and their targeted audience, you know, they’re absolutely manipulating their brain, causing them to do things, you know, such as try to set, you know, kill people, harm them, and this girl’s situation, you know, it leads to her trying to burn her family, kill her family?... That causes great concern. You know, not only from the Sheriff’s Office perspective, but I’m a dad. You know, I don’t ever want my kids reading these things. I don’t think any parent out there would want their kids to be reading these type of things."
Soul Eater, published by Yen Press, was #4 on the last ICv2 Top 10 Shonen Properties chart (see "Top 10 Shonen Properties--Spring 2014").
Nocco went pretty far off into the world of hyperbole when rhetorically addressing the publishers. "You know, if you [the publisher] are a parent, if you care about people, look to see what your authors are writing about," he said. "Look to see what they’re influencing. Because how many more people have to die because of this? How many more families have to suffer because you want to put something out there that you think is entertaining? But what you think is entertaining is actually destroying communities."
Says Caused Arson Attack
Posted by ICv2 on September 15, 2014 @ 2:16 am CT
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