Celebrities have a huge influence on their fans, and whatever they recommend will turn into a hot issue – but not always for good reasons. Recently, aespa member Karina (카리나) recommended a Japanese anime with a controversial character, and she’s now apologising after receiving backlash from Chinese netizens.
The anime the K-pop star recommended was “My Hero Academia”, a well-known series amongst anime fans that also includes a character with a controversial name – a doctor named Shiga Maruta. While the name sounds like a typical Japanese name, the word ‘maruta’ (丸太) refers to the victims of human experiments done by the Japanese forces during World War II.
The name resulted in a widespread backlash towards the anime creator, Hirokoshi Kohei (堀越耕平), who renamed the character Kyudai Garaki following the backlash. However, the anime remains banned in China and is still highly controversial amongst Koreans, thus the criticisms against Karina.
Following the controversy, the 23-year-old has taken to the Bubble account to clarify her recommendation. In the message, the K-pop idol wrote, “I found out belatedly there was an issue with the anime I recommended. I was unaware of the issue as the character had a different name. I did not recommend it with any intentions, so I hope there are no misunderstandings. In the future, I’ll become a more careful Karina so I can share more good information with MYs.”
After her response, many netizens were relieved to see the idol clarify the issue and learn from her mistake. Fans are also hoping that her apology with bring an end to all the backlash.
Since the character’s original name references a dark time in history, we can understand why netizens were disappointed with the idol’s recommendation. Hopefully, Karina will learn from this incident and be more knowledgeable in the future.
