The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLF) return this year's October 2012 New York Comic Con to raise funds and awareness of a case in which an American citizen faced criminal charges in Canada for manga brought into the country on his laptop.  For those who could not make it to this important talk, full audio and lengthy article CBLDF's Defending Manga panel have now been posted online.

As his laptop booted, a custom official noticed a manga/anime drawing of a provocatively posed girl appeared on the screen. “The agents saw my wallpaper and their eyes lit up when they saw an art book page, of a girl in summer.” Ryan was quick to add, “She wasn’t nude or anything.”

Still, the agent said, in a serious tone, “You should really not bring this stuff into this country.”

Ryan nodded, still unconcerned. “Two hours later, I was put into detention.” The customs officials kept asking Ryan about the images on his computer. “The customs agents really had no idea what they were looking at or what to do.”

Of particular concern was an image entitled “The 48 Positions: Moe Style.” The image was a parody image of “The 48 Sumo Positions,” done as “The 48 Sex Positions.” The Moe style of animation features a style of cute characters and was brought to prominence in series like Sailor Moon. The image Ryan had featured tiny super-deformed images of characters doing the act — these images did not even have genitalia. Brownstein interjected that “It’s clear to us what this was. But, the inspectors believed the characters to be four-year-olds.” Still, he stressed that this was not a photograph with real people in it, “No children were hurt in the creation of this drawing.”

via @CBLDF

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.