A good portion, perhaps even the majority, perhaps even the overwhelming majority of American conservatives, and people elsewhere in the world who align more or less to the same political principles, hate Japanese cartoons, ie. anime. Most of them seem unable to give any rational reasonable explanation or reason why they hate it so much, and some of them say that it's "evil" and depraved and corrupts children. Which sounds like the most stereotypically conservative thing one could say about anything.
Is this all complete hogwash and just your typical "get off my lawn!" "in my youth everything was better" conservative old fart talk, or is there any aspect to this antipathy and these claims that might actually have some rational basis in reality?
It's certainly true that claiming that all anime is depraved just because there are some individual anime movies and series that are (quite arguably) depraved is as silly as claiming that all live-action movies are depraved because there are a few that actually are. Even these conservatives don't usually think that all movies are bad simply because some of them are outright evil.
But what about their claims that anime corrupts children and teenagers?
Well... there's at least one aspect that makes me not want to completely throw such an idea into the trashcan outright, with zero consideration.
It's not really the anime movies and series themselves that directly corrupt young people (well, in most cases at least). However, there might be a point in that the ancillary cultural phenomena that are inspired and induced by anime in some cases do. In other words, the anime fandom and its customs and behavior.
Japanese anime is a quite distinct and specialized genre that, quite often, really excites the imagination of teenagers and young adults (and sometimes even full-grown adults). The scriptwriting, the voice acting, the animation style, the oftentimes lavish and extremely detailed art... it has all been developed and perfected over the span of almost half a decade to be as exciting and engaging as possible, and it especially excites a younger audience (mostly in the teenage / young adult age ranges) in a way that very few other genres (even cartoons made in other countries) are successful at.
In Japan anime is so popular that it's an integral part of the culture, and you can see it everywhere, and there are entire city districts dedicated to pretty much nothing but anime culture and merchandise. Part of this culture is anime conventions, displays and so-called cosplay (where people dress up as characters from the most popular anime series).
Naturally, given how popular anime has become in the west over the last 20+ years, the anime culture has also likewise been largely exported, especially in certain western countries. Some of the largest anime conventions, often with literally tens of thousands of visitors, are held in some cities in western countries. In many circles anime culture is absolutely huge.
And the thing is, just like anime itself, this anime culture very easily draws in young people, especially teenagers, usually quite young teenagers. (It's actually truly amazing how good some of the self-made cosplay costumes are, showing an amazing amount of talent and craftmanship.)
This in itself is still not bad. As someone could say, "better have them cosplay at an anime convention than doing alcohol and drugs in some clubhouse".
What is bad is that this culture, these conventions, these anime fan circles, draw in a lot of pervs, groomers and political activists (nowadays especially "trans" activists), who see an opportunity. This especially in online forums where they can be completely anonymous.
The grooming problem in both the anime and the furry fandoms (which have a great deal of overlap, especially in the direction that a "furry" is extraordinarily likely to be a huge anime fan) is very well know and absolutely huge. There's a huge amount of pervs grooming young teenagers, all the way from just sending them revealing pictures to outright personal meetings that go all the way, and this is a very well known problem.
I don't know, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are forums in the deep web where such people converse and exchange tips on how to groom teenagers eg. to send them nude photos. They have probably developed very detailed and elaborate instructions on how to slowly groom some unwary teenager in a way that keeps the perp completely safe from harm, and makes the teenager not only go to horrendous lengths to be abused, but keeps her quiet and might even make her blame herself.
The other big danger in these fan communities populated mostly by teenagers is that in the last 5 to 10 years they have also been invaded by far-leftist political activists and, more recently, by "trans" activists set on "converting" as many people into transsexuality as possible (yes, that's literally their goal. To explicitly and actively "convert" as many people as possible, including those who do not show any kind of sign of being "trans". I know these activists exist because I have had conversations with at least one of them. It's astonishingly evil.)
The problem is that these teenagers are highly, highly susceptible to the far-leftist and the "trans" indoctrination. The amount of "trans" people among these fandoms is way out of proportion, and directly caused by these activists and groomers.
Anime might not be directly responsible for this, but it is kind of indirectly. By its very nature it has created a culture and a fandom that's very susceptible to pervs, groomers and political activists preying on young impressionable people.
So, in this sense, in some way anime could perhaps be blamed for one of the major crisis that the west is facing, ie. the actual corruption of its youth. This is not just some traditionalist religious ultra-conservative "they are corrupting our youth!" talk. This is quite objective and has nothing to do with conservatism or traditionalism.
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