The creepy thing is funny because nerds fawning over stylized drawings is just about the most innocuous thing there is

Until things like this happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Miyazaki

Ah, yes, surely this man killed and raped little girls because he was influenced by cartoons, and not because he was born with a deformity into one of the most collectivist societies on earth and then ostracized for his entire life. We're so lucky that sexually normative people never rape or kill anyone.

Sarcasm aside, this is one of the many, many examples of choosing a scapegoat to frame an entire sexuality, race, or any group of people with a common interest as evil while completely ignoring any and all context. People are not animals and possess some degree of responsibility and the ability to tell reality from fiction. Unless someone presents some hard evidence that stylized drawings lead to actual attacks against real children (and to my knowledge, this simply is not true; in fact, it's easy to argue the opposite) we need to stop with this puritan outrage like we stopped blaming computer games for any and all violent crime back in the late 90s.

Yes, it's a textbook example of moral panic and the WP article says so. I was primarily pointing out that to most people, especially in Japan, the image of "nerds fawning over stylized drawings" sounds about as innocuous as "Catholic priests fawning over little choir boys".

I've confirmed that what you say is accurate on Wikipedia, though I'd take your word from it because your username starts with "hatsune". I think this might be the first time I've been beetlejuiced on HN...

Hehe, I know quite a bit about her.