The Four Color Media Monitor

Even the world of manga/anime in Japan, sadly, is not without people who've turned out to be repugnant fiends, as one of the editors of Attack on Titan turned out to be:

Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Tuesday arrested the first editor of the popular manga “Attack on Titan” in the alleged murder of his wife, 38, at the residence they share in Bunkyo Ward last year, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Jan. 10).

At around 2:50 a.m. on August 9, Park Jung-hyun, a 41-year-old vice editor for publisher Kodansha, telephoned emergency services to report that his “wife had collapsed.”

[...] An autopsy later revealed the cause of death to be suffocation due to pressure applied around the neck.

Park, who at the time lived in the residence with his wife and their four children, initially claimed that his wife “fell down the stairs.” However, he later changed his story, saying she “committed suicide by hanging herself by a handrail.”

An investigation was launched after police were unable to find sufficient evidence to back Park’s claim of suicide.

Unlike some of the recent cases in the US, where at least two creators turned out to be felons trafficking child porn and/or molestation, the Attack on Titan manga series may not be as tainted since this was only an editor who committed the violent crime, not a writer/artist. Nevertheless, it'll surely be an embarrassment for the medium as a whole, because now a career contributor to the manga industry's become a violent criminal much like O.J Simpson. I hope Park Jung-Hyun's given a severe punishment for what he did to the poor woman, and no sane person should allow him near the medium ever again.

Labels: bad editors, Europe and Asia, manga and anime, misogyny and racism, violence