Variety Asia reports that the Chinese government is continuing its crackdown of the popular manga series Death Note by closing down a fan site that contained uploaded videos.

Chinese officials began targeting toy and school-supply stores in April, searching for Death Note-inspired stationery notebooks that had become popular with students. The scope of the confiscations widened in May to include ghost and horror stories, many of which are printed illegally.

As of last month, the government had seized nearly 6,000 copies of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s manga series, which centers around a high school student who sets out to rid the world of evil using a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it.

According to a circular issued by the agency tasked with fighting illegal publications, “Death Note stories contain elements of mystery, death and revenge, and are harmful to children’s psychological development.”

Death Note has inspired an anime series, two live-action films (with a third announced), a light novel and a video game.

Related: Salon.com looks at the Death Note phenomenon

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Animation, Fandom, Internet, Manga, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.