Tokyo Opening Ceremony: Where Did All the Anime Go?

The Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Summer Olympics aired earlier this week, showing off a number of the competitors that will take part in this event that was pushed back one year thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, but you might have noticed that while there was some influence when it came to anime, manga, and video games, many companies had decided to sit out of the event. While the stadium's seats were mostly empty thanks to some last-minute decisions that took place when putting together the games, more was brewing behind the scenes.

During the event, you could hear the faint sound of protestors who were seeking to shut down the games themselves, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic still being a very real threat to people in the Eastern country. Kyodo News had conducted a poll from Japan's citizens regarding whether or not they were concerned that the Summer Olympics was taking place as the Delta Variant now sweeps the globe and 87% responded that they were concerned, with 31% stating that they believed the Olympics should be outright canceled. The games themselves have been so politicized that a number of companies, anime included, decided to have nothing to do with it, with the car makers Toyota deciding to pull their advertising entirely.

While the Olympics continuing on despite the coronavirus pandemic and the Delta Variant is the biggest controversy, the Summer Games had more than a few headaches taking place behind the scenes. Many countries that were originally scheduled to participate felt it was in their athletes' best interests not to participate.

The Tokyo Summer Olympics have been receiving a lot of attention from anime fans thanks to the uncanny similarities the real-life games hold to their faux-counterpart in the legendary anime movie Akira, in which the citizens of Tokyo were attempting to cancel the games as well. In the movie, the Olympic Stadium is built in order to hide the location of the psychic Akira, and in turn, a new stadium was built that was created to help put into motion the "Recovery Olympics," as it was dubbed, spending over one billion dollars in order to do so.

Do you think the Tokyo Summer Olympics should take place? What do you think of the controversies surrounding the games? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the Olympics.