With its soaring popularity in the United States, anime has fallen under the scrutinous eye of conservative America, its reputation for extreme levels of sex and violence now approaching the center of public discourse. A decade ago, most titles slipped under radar, available only in specialty shops or abroad, but the emergence of US based distributors marketing to a worldwide audience has stoked the embers of public attention. And with theatrical releases of A.D.V.'s "Spriggan" and Manga Entertainment's "X" planned, the darker underbelly of a narrative medium recently characterized in the mainstream American consciousness by "Princess Mononoke" and "Pokemon" will lie exposed to an apprehensive public.

The average citizen, without severe convictions one way or the other, still accepts the conventional standards of what stations can and cannot broadcast on TV, especially for children-oriented TV. So Fox's inclusion of "Vision of Escaflowne," rife with adultery, transexuality and bastard children, in this fall's Saturday morning lineup raised more than a few eyebrows. The ensuing censorship debate didn't center on "will they cut" but rather "how and what will they cut." The existing "Dragonball Z" controversy pits die-hard fans against the FUNimation team marketing the Japanese favorite to the 6-11 demographic from whom the concept of death and the reality of blood must creep behind the wizard's curtain.

But beyond FCC fervor, even non-broadcast material marketed to adults comes under the scalpel. Media Blasters' "Kite" release depicts semi-graphic scenes of statutory rape and indulgently graphic episodes of carnage, which echo the blatantly explicit scenes they cut from the original Green Bunny label.

"You'll never see a fully unedited version of "Kite," at least not from us," says Media Blasters' President John Sirabella in an Akadot interview conducted at Anime Expo 2000.

Media Blasters by no means shies away from objectionable material, their Kitty label being one of the larger distributors for hentai (pornographic) anime. But releases on their Anime Works label, which includes "Kite," "Fake" (a gay cop drama), "Magic Knight Rayearth" (a girl power fantasy) and "Earthian" (a pseudo-biblical epic), requires a more sensitive hand; Anime Works titles aim at a wider audience, including those that would eschew hentai but enjoy a powerful story of urban decay, a.k.a "Kite."

"I've found that a lot of people actually, a lot of people, got turned off from 'Kite' once they actually saw those few scenes because (the scenes), well, just suck," Sirabella continues. "Then it just becomes pornographic. And this story has a lot more to offer than that. And that's how come we felt that we didn't want to go in that direction. So we edited it. We watered it down. We get tons of criticism from the guys on the internet but we're willing to live with it."

According to Sirabella, the editing isn't about censorship per se, though he admits that it is most conclusively the end result. It's about not getting sued or indicted for criminal action while trying to reach a larger audience. Generally, if a company labels questionable material obscene - the 18 or over warning emblazoned on pornography video jackets for instance - then it avoids government regulators, but the move limits the demographic.

"If it's not labeled as such, and someone buys it as such, that could be a problem," he says. An angry father started legal proceedings against Media Blasters in September of 1998 (a case only now reaching its final stages) for a "mislabeled" product given to his son. He found a trailer at the beginning of Media Blasters' "Gappa" release objectionably obscene.

However, where carefully labeling material may appease would-be litigants in some areas of the country, overwhelming conservative attitudes reign in others. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund reports that a Texas comic book store owner (whose name remains protectively unavailable) currently faces criminal obscenity charges for selling issues of the popular "Legend of the Overfiend" manga to, in two separate indictments, an undercover cop and a member of the local PTA.

Despite the customers being adults and the material sanctioned off in an area of the store labeled "Adults Only," the sitting judge denied the motion to dismiss the case and the prosecution refused to consider suggestions of a reduced charge. An incident like this rarely reaches trial in most major metropolises, but suburban and rural America metaphorically fill the role of a sticking wheel on a shopping cart, slowing a process moving inexorably forward - the influx of anime into popular currents.

The vague language of obscenity laws accounts for the variance of legal action throughout the United States, leaving a lot open to interpretation - the interpretation of anime fans, the interpretation of experimental artists, the interpretation of judges, the interpretation of overzealous prosecutors responding to their community's position against "objectionable" material.

Japan, in another socio-historical irony, adopted much of its constitutional attitude from the United States after World War II. As a result, very little is actually considered illegal, protected by an almost fanatical embrace of the First Amendment. Only in the last year has Japan felt international pressure to introduce legislation limiting the profusion of child pornography. Current laws specifically outline objectionable offenses but hardly call enough acts illegal to curb the runaway porn industry. Japan then has an admittedly lenient but nonetheless specific obscenity code prohibiting the depiction of pubic hair, genitals and the sale of child pornography. Producers of pornography, animated or otherwise, must legally alter the images in accordance with said code. Even the illicit sex scenes in the Japanese version of "Kite" cover areas of penetration with digital scrambling.

Meanwhile America's modus operands in this field involves the definition of the word "obscene," first used against an individual by the Supreme Court in 1957's Roth vs. The United States:

Hardly a definition of substance, the court defers the power to determine obscene material to local governments, every region having a different standard of judgment. So the elusive word's history has wound around myriad artists, political voices and social radicals as lawmakers have bandied about various definitions. Probably the most pedestrian conclusion poured from Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 when he declared "I know it when I see it."