HIV Anime

Hard to believe it's been more than 4 years since I spent 2 weeks on vacation in China (full story here). I long ago posted photos from that trip, but I neglected to post any videos. The other day I ran across the footage I'd captured; specifically, this short segment I filmed during my layover in Tokyo's Narita airport in Japan on the first/second day of my trip. Leave it to the Japanese to make even a public service announcement about AIDS into a cartoon. Yes, that's right, playing on a continuous loop in kiosks throughout the terminal was a cartoon about the perils of HIV.

I had four hours until my connecting flight to China and didn't want to chance napping and oversleeping (a peril of traveling alone), so one thing I did to kill time was tape this PSA. Maybe it was because I'd barely slept over the previous 24 hours, but I thought it was kinda funny. You can't really hear the video because of the airport PA system, but it's subtitled. The visuals are the main thing anyway (I especially like the depiction of the heroin addicts). And can you imagine anything like this being allowed to play in a public space here?! The religious right would have this shut down so fast (it mentions ... gasp! ... condoms!) you'd think someone had just seen the hint of a nipple for a quarter of a second.

So enjoy Japan's cartoon Everyman as the Narrator guides him through the perils of AIDS, dispels myths about transmission, and learns some valuable lessons about HIV:

Click to play