2D adult artwork, manga, and hentai containing fictional children has allegedly been condemned as child abuse by Italy’s Supreme Court, making it illegal.

Back in 2022, Italy’s child protection and sexuality laws were changed. While previously one could be punished for being caught with child pornography, now people can be punished if they’re merely accessing it:

“In 2022, the Italian legislator introduced a new crime under Article 600-quater paragraph 3 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the mere (intentional) “access to online child-pornographic material”. Before, accessing child pornography had remained unpunished, since the crime of possession (detenzione) of child pornography implied at least the download from the web from a file sharing program or from a messaging app – even if the file is then deleted and even if there is no evidence that the file has been opened. The new legislative intervention intends to fill a gap that results from those who access websites containing child pornography without downloading any of the content.”

European lecturer Paolo Caroli was quoted as saying the legal definition of pornography is actually more broad:

“The legal definition of pornography does not even require that the content was created for the purpose of inducing sexual arousal, since it is sufficient that it has this function “in the eye of the beholder” (e.g. pictures of naked minors playing normally on the beach).”

“With a decision heavily criticized by the scholarship, the Italian Court of Cassation extended the concept of child pornography even to comics and hentai anime, the so-called “totally virtual pornography”. According to the Court, the possession of child pornography is a crime of concrete danger (reato di pericolo concreto or konkretes Gefährdungsdelikt) and in the case of comics, the danger is represented by the evocation of real situations in which “children are reduced to mere sexual objects, sex toys with which and on which to perform acts of sexual nature” (Cass. Pen., Section III, 13 January 2017, n. 222659).”

It was noted that “The part mentioned in 2017 is still under development, it’s NOT final”.

One individual interpreted it as anything depicting children in a way that can potentially induce arousal (including manga and hentai anime), even in situations not explicitly of an adult nature, could be deemed as pornography, and thus illegal:

Editor’s Note: Featured image by Tsurui