Satoshi Yamamoto, the manga artist who runs the Pokémon Adventures series, offered an apology via his twitter account for posting pictures of the manga to this social network using a hashtag to criticize the Japanese government.
In his message of apology he mentions the following: “I am very sorry to use the panels and the lines of the manga as a means to express my opinions without using my own words. I have stained the image that readers have of the manga and its characters. I also regret having done this on more than one occasion. I am going to delete all the tweets related to the topic although I know that this will not solve things completely ”.自分の言葉を使わず作品のコマやセリフを隠れ蓑にして主義主張し、読者の作品やキャラクターに対する思いを汚し傷つけてしまったこと、ご指摘を受けるまで放置し繰り返していたこと、大変申し訳ありませんでした。取り返しのつかないことと思いますが、当該画像ツィートを削除します。— 山本サトシ (@satoshi_swalot) May 9, 2020
The tweets Yamamoto was referring to are believed to be unedited panels from the Pokémon Adventures manga accompanied by the hashtag # 検 察 庁 法 改正 案 に 抗議 し ま す (I oppose the revision of the prosecution law). The panels featured lines like "There are people trying to change the world in the most convenient way" and "You can't just take something so precious from us with selfish reasoning."
The hashtag in question refers to opposition to a bill currently under discussion in the Japanese parliament, which would raise the retirement age for some senior political positions from 63 to 65. Critics argue that this would allow some politicians to stay in office longer, which would harm the country's democracy by not giving new currents or opinions within parliament a chance.
According to the Kyodo News newscast, this hashtag has been used in more than 3.8 million tweets since Sunday night. Various Japanese celebrities and artists have voiced their opposition to this new bill, including singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and actors Arata Iura and Kyoko Koizumi.
The Pokémon Adventures manga is published in CoroCoro Ichiban magazine! since 1997 and currently has 10 published volumes. Volumes 1 to 9 were worked on by the author Mato and later, the author Satoshi Yamamoto took over the series from volume 10.
Via Hachima Kikō
