72-Year-Old Deputy Prime Minister of Japan tells Elderly to 'Hurry up and Die'

The Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Japan, Tarō Asō, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care. The full story of this bizarre incident can be read here at The Guardian.

Chinese State TV Uses Clips from Anime to Criticize Japan

 State-run Chinese Central Television (CCTV) used clips from the 2002 anime film Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street in a piece criticizing what it described as Japan's move toward right-wing conservatism and political nepotism. The piece covered Sunday's national election in Japan and focused on how 75 of the 480 winners are progeny of previous generations of politicians, including Shinzo Abe, the presumptive next prime minister from the winning center-right Liberal Democratic Party. The clip used shows the character Shiho "Ai Haibara" Miyano looking at a ballroom full of children of Japan's politicians with disdain, saying that this lineage is "what led to a corrupted future. […] It's because of this politics of inheritance which led to human beings repeating its mistakes in history." After the piece CCTV aired an uncensored version of James McTeigue's live-action film adaptation of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta comic book series, and both moves have led to speculation about ideological shifts in both the station’s output and also the ruling administration headed by the newly-installed Chinese Communist Party general secretary, Xi Jinping. The piece can be viewed (in Chinese) here, and move can be read here.

Japanese Superhero goes from Fighting Villains to Promoting Tourism

Jangara, the local superhero of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, has had to switch from fighting costumed villains to the fear that the area is unsafe to visit after the earthquake and tsunami disaster that triggered meltdowns at the nearby Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March last year.
The Jangara character was first introduced in autumn 2010 amid a nationwide boom for community-based superhero characters, but his show was stopped after the disaster, officials saying the character was "suffering" from a few injuries in the catastrophe, before restarting this October.

Jangara's costume reflects the traditional Jangara Nenbutsu Odori (Jangara Buddhist prayer-chanting dance), a set of long "tasuki" sashes trail from his shoulders, and his mask was inspired by the head of a coelacanth, a fish that was long thought extinct, from the city's Aquamarine Fukushima aquarium. His emblem is a stylized い, the first hiragana character for Iwaki (いわき市) to let people know where he`s from.
Jangara appears at local events for children to confront the masked villains, Deresuke (a sloppy person in the dialect of Iwaki) and Horosuke (a fool), and discipline them, and since his comeback has appeared on television and around Japan to promote not just his original mission to deliver "dreams and courage" to people, but also to "spread the word that Iwaki is a vibrant and fun place".
"The worst enemy now is Fuhyo (negative reputation)," Jangara says, "It will likely be a long battle, but I won't lose."
You can read more about Jangara here,

io9 Roundup of Superhero, Political and Futurist Articles, Part 8

Today we've got a roundup of recent, relevant, and few just really cool, articles from the science, science fiction and fantasy blog io9.com. Stay tuned for all the parts.

• Is this the Justice League’s big, bad villain?
• Man of Steel poster imprisons Superman in handcuffs and lens flare
• What would it take to be Bane? A Dark Knight Rises infographic
• Japan’s new ‘communications robot’ will prevent astronauts from getting lonely in space — by being absolutely adorable
• How to make your voice sound like Darth Vader
• The sci-fi inspired buildings that communism built
• At first glance, The CW’s Wonder Woman show seems to be getting back to Diana’s roots
• Remember that time Willie Nelson and Frank Sinatra teamed up to do a PSA for NASA?
• Your First Look at the Animated Remake of the Soviet Union’s Most Monty Python-esque Movie
• The Top 10 Claims Made by Creationists to Counter Scientific Theories

Infamous Dictators Reimagined as Anime Ladies

From Japan, a new book featuring biographies of 40 dictators was recently released, with the twist that it includes illustrations of the dictators drawn by famous Japanese artists as women, in an anime style, with several done in the "cute girl" moé sub-style.
(At right, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, & Omar al-Bashir)
While turning things into anime-style characters has been popular lately, the book, Nyotai ka!! Sekai no Dokusaisha Retsuden (にょたいか！！世界の独裁者列伝 or loosely, "In Female Form?! Biographies of World Dictators"), has been criticized by some for "trivializing" the dictators with the depictions, although some have said that some of the images, like the one of Pol Pot at right, can make the dictator appear more frightening. More information and a gallery of some of the images can be found at Kotaku.com.
If you want to see anime-styled personifications of the nations of the world, check out the Hetalia series.
And if you wanted to know which dictator has been responsible for the most deaths, you can check this infographic from popten.net.