A Tokyo man, who claimed that a Super Saiyan from the anime series Dragon Ball told him to stab another man with a kitchen knife, was sentenced yesterday in Japan.
The Tokyo District Court judge Masato Itō certified that Mitsuru Imai, a 38 year old man who claimed a Super Saiyan (an alien race featured in the popular anime Dragon Ball) told him to stab another man with a kitchen knife, had diminished mental capacity.
The stabbing took place in Tokyo’s Taitō ward on February 8, 2010. Imai believed he was being harassed by an unfamiliar drunken man. Imai then went into a nearby convenience store, and bought a knife. When he left the store, he stabbed another man who resembled the man he believed was harassing him. The 57 year old victim received several serious stab wounds to the abdomen.
Imai claimed during his trial that he stabbed the victim because he was told to kill the man with a kitchen knife by a Super Saiyan. Imai’s defense claimed that his diminished mental capacity was a mitigating factor in the crime. While Judge Itō agreed that Imai did have a diminished mental capacity, it was not enough to declare him not guilty by reason of insanity.
Mitsuru Imai was sentenced to serve a three-year prison sentence that will be suspended five years. If Imai is not convicted of another crime within that time period, he will not have to serve the prison sentence under Japanese law.
Source: http://www.chacha.com/topic/anime/news/did-an-anime-character-cause-a-man-to-kill
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