In this case, an article from Perthnow, which is published by The Sunday Times in Australia, labeled anime as pornography. The article, with an unknown author, stated the following:

“Bao Peng Lim, 22, pleaded guilty in Perth Magistrate's Court to four charges -- one count of importing child pornography, charges of importing and possession anime pornography depicting sexual violence, and one count of making a false statement to Customs.

"Anime'' is a Japanese form of animated pornography”. 

This is not the first time that anime has been labeled this way. Multiple articles in the past have associated the term anime with pornography. Even online store giant Amazon.com includes “hentai” in their anime search selection. Note to the person who wrote the article, “hentai” is the term that you’re looking for, and not “anime,” as anime is a form of Japanese animation and has a diverse range of artistic styles and subjects, with genres from sports, romance, action, sci-fi, educational, to cooking shows, and more, and not just pornography.

I guess if it is true that anime is so-called “porn”, I myself along with the fans out there are considered porn addicts, oh and better yet, Disney showed us porn in theaters when it released Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle a few years ago and don’t forget they also released the international anime hit Princess Mononoke. Disney made another mark in history in the film industry when it released the Academy Award Winning Spirited Away, which garnered the Best Animated Feature Film in the 75th Academy Awards in 2003 in North America. Wait, I think that should be AVN’s Best Animated Porn Feature Film, right?

However, I’ll give the writer of the article the benefit of the doubt that their under the pretense that anime is all about porn and they had never bothered to educate themselves about the genre. However, not knowing the appropriate term to use and placing all anime under one derogatory connotation gives anime a bad reputation and people who are not aware of what anime is, will always associate anime as porn after reading an article such as the one that was posted on Perthnow. Personally, I have experienced that myself first hand when someone asked me if I was watching animated pornography when I was watching R.O.D OVA. For those of you unaware of the title, it is about a woman who has special powers over paper, a love of literature, and works as a secret agent. It is as far away from porn as Bambi is to being the next Rambo. Oh for the love of anime why does it have to be R.O.D! Maybe Agent Deep was penetrating through too many walls with her sexy tight body suit while using her super powers? I don’t know.

My point is that anime is not Porn, PERIOD. It is a Japanese art form, PERIOD. Too often it seems reporters jump the gun when dealing with this topic without doing any research when it comes to the term anime, or maybe anime just has not hit the mainstream thoroughly enough yet, but that is another story.

Article written by Rommel Salandanan