CCTV Investigates Explicit Anime Figures Reaching Underage Buyers in China

A middle schooler in Jiangsu used a parent's phone during the holiday to order six anime figurines. When the package arrived, the family saw what was inside and called the police. Forensic examiners concluded that five of the figures were legally obscene — with exposed private areas and "sexual suggestiveness" in posture — and, the verdict noted, carried no cultural or scientific value. The case, aired by state broadcaster CCTV this week, has opened a window onto a shadow corner of China's enormous anime-merchandise market, one where explicit figures reach buyers who are not old enough to buy them.

The investigation followed a court ruling in which a man named Wan and his co-defendants were found to have produced more than 60,000 obscene or pirated figures and sold over 10,000 of them, worth nearly a million yuan. They were sentenced to between two and four years in prison for producing and selling obscene material for profit. CCTV framed the story as a warning: such items are sold "through concealed online channels," and a significant share of buyers are minors.

The response on Weibo split along a familiar line. Many users drew a firm boundary by age rather than by content. "Some of these aren't merely risqué — they're essentially pornographic," went a representative post. "If an adult buys them, so be it, but it's genuinely not appropriate for children." Others widened the lens to the broader "two-dimensional" — erciyuan — youth culture around anime conventions, arguing that the occasional over-the-line cosplay display at comic expos deserves the same scrutiny. That impulse, to police the edges of a subculture in the name of protecting minors, has been a recurring theme in Chinese media coverage of anime and gaming; it is the same logic behind earlier crackdowns on violent game content and the time limits on underage gaming.

The commercial backdrop matters as much as the law. Chinese fans call the cheapest mass-produced figures "景品" or prize figures, and the low end of the market is fast and loosely labeled. The figurine industry has grown into a multi-billion-yuan domestic market, and its most devoted buyers are precisely the school-age consumers a cleaning-out of explicit stock would most affect. What CCTV's report makes plain is that the line between a collectible and contraband is, for a certain class of retailer, a matter of how carefully the listing is worded — and regulators are now paying attention to the gap between the two.