66 Pounds of Hentai Confiscated from Comiket-goer by Swiss Customs

Melonpan is a Swiss otaku who’s built an internet following over the last several years publicizing his “perverted” antics. Posing with his anime merch in his underwear (or bare-ass) for selfie tweets is a regular thing for him. In 2013 he filmed himself licking nearly 100 scantily-clad female anime figurines, and in 2015 he turned heads with a series of photos in a bathroom plastered wall-to-wall with dozens of copies of the same picture of a Kancolle character. While his enthusiasm for hentai has made him popular on the internet, it’s had the opposite effect with employers and authorities.

In many countries outside the U.S. and Japan, the under-age appearance of many characters in hentai has caused it to be equated with child pornography. This has resulted in hentai being severely frowned upon in many countries, if not grounds for jail time. This has begun catching up to Melonpan this year; in April he was fired by major Swiss bank UBS for his reputation with hentai, and when he finally found a job with delivery service DHL, he was fired on the first day.

It seems Melonpan then decided that with no job to report to, it would be opportune to visit Japan just in time for Comiket. According to his tweets, while at Comiket he purchased 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of mostly-lolicon doujinshi, which wouldn’t fit in his luggage, so he mailed it all in a package back to Switzerland. Upon arriving home, he found that the package had been seized by customs officials, and that he was wanted for questioning in some capacity.

https://twitter.com/MeidocafeR/status/1029691259638689792

He tweeted this story from outside a local police station on Wednesday. In it he mentioned “I’m tired of being in the slammer”, though it’s not clear whether he actually has faced real jail time before, or merely used the Japanese phrase incorrectly. The next say he reported back on the proceedings:

“The situation isn’t looking good. It’s like the female official handling my case has no tolerance whatsoever for hentai culture, and is even stricter about loli stuff. Is this as far as my hentai gentlemanliness will take me? I’m scared.”

When Sora News 24 first reported on this story, it looked as if Melonpan was never getting his package back, prompting a promise that he’d move to Japan over the incident. However, about 5 hours before this writing, he declared his victory over customs with some NSFW photos of the confiscated material sitting on a table at his home. It seems that after Melonpan exhaustively pleaded his case, someone in charge eventually admitted that no living people were harmed in the making of hentai.

While the situation probably seemed harrowing to Melonpan at the time, he’s actually lucky that Switzerland isn’t as strict about hentai as many other Western countries. Canada and the UK have both put people in jail for possession of hentai with characters that appear underage. In Australia, a convicted murderer even had 6 months added to his 30 year sentence for obsession of hentai. While we in the United States are used to drawn media being protected under freedom of expression, surprisingly few other countries see things that way.

Source: Sora News 24