SHANGHAI — All Chinese domestic satellite channels have pulled popular children’s cartoon Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf off the air after censors voiced concerns over the level of violence in the show. Officials at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) announced that they would allow the show to come back if scenes depicting the show’s antagonists, Big Big Wolf and his wife, being variously drowned, shot at, tortured, boiled in oil and electrocuted were toned down.

However, censors assured the public that re-runs of the show would not omit particularly popular scenes, such as one in season 4, episode 12 where Fatty Goat eats Big Big Wolf’s entire wedding banquet, or another in season 10, episode 8 where Pretty Goat is raped by a squad of Japanese soldiers.

“We’re not here to sanitize entertainment,” said SARFT president Wang Jianmin. “Prat-falls, visual gags and the torture, rape and murder of Chinese citizens by the Japanese imperialist hegemony are the bread and butter of Chinese light entertainment.”

“We can’t deny our children that,” he added.

“Prat-falls, visual gags and the torture, rape and murder of Chinese citizens by the Japanese are the bread and butter of Chinese light entertainment.”

Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf became an overnight hit in China after airing almost a decade ago. Depicting the Road Runner and Wylie Coyote-esque antagonism between a pair of wolves and a flock of goats, the show’s simple style, comic content and humorous depictions of make-believe war atrocities proved popular with young audiences and their parents alike, spawning several movies, including Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Super Snail Adventure (2009), Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Tiger Prowess (2011), and the upcoming Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf Retake the Diaoyu Islands.

However, cultural critics decried the violence in the show, which they labeled “gratuitous and unrealistic.”

Pointing particularly to a scene in season 14, episode 23,984, in which Big Big Wolf is electrocuted before being injected with syphilis and thrown off a suspension bridge by Pleasant Goat and Sparky Goat, an internal SARFT memo commented that,”it is unrealistic for this cartoon wolf to be subjected to such torture by delightful, fluffy and ethnically Chinese lambs.”

“As we know, only the Japanese are capable of such perversions and therefore scenes such as this should be either rectified in accordance with the facts, or removed altogether.”

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, SARFT spokesman Yang Laoshan remarked that “only wholesome, entertaining, family-friendly plot-lines should feature on popular kids’ shows like Pleasant Goat.”

“All TV shows should conform to state broadcasting regulations, which outlaw gratuitous violence, nudity, sex and foul language that isn’t perpetrated by Japanese soldiers against noble Chinese people.”

“Or, indeed, goats,” he added.