As officials raced to restore power to tsunami-damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today, one artist is attempting to explain Japan’s nuclear crisis to kids with some potty humour.
“Nuclear Boy” follows a square-headed lad suffering from a tummy ache. After Nuclear Boy expels a few worrisome clouds of gas, doctors work around the clock to medicate him with seawater and boron, this so he won’t defecate all over the country.
“Nuclear Boy is notorious for his stinky poo. It would surely ruin everyone’s day if he pooped,” reads the translation.
Set to a banjo soundtrack, the cartoon also features characters shaped like the stricken Chernobyl and Three Mile Island plants.
Commenters are divided.
Responding on Salon, some said Nuclear Boy is a highly offensive and insensitive piece of “propaganda,” a “euphemistic way of explaining the hideous consequences and danger of [nuclear] devastation and calamity.”
(It should be stressed, the video is not an official address but the work of artist Kazhiko Hachiya.)
Others argue that Nuclear Boy helps relieve the horror and explains TEPCO’s mess in (extreme) layman’s terms.
“The video hints at the real problem with nuclear power, and it’s a nice metaphor,” writes another Salon commenter. “Diarrhea is terrible and to be avoided but EVERYONE has to poop sometime. If no one knows how to dispose of the diaper, that’s the real issue isn’t it? Is nuclear boy supposed to ‘hold it’ for ever?”
The cartoon has garnered more than a million views since it was posted on YouTube last week.
What do you think? Should bad news be played down for kids, or can they handle the truth better than we think?
Editor's note: Commenters argued over the Nuclear Boy cartoon on Salon.com. Incorrect information appeared in the original version of this article.
