How were you able to get makers of cartoons to accept the level of violence in Usagi?
(The Comics Journal #192 Interview, December 1996) Well, we got around it in two ways. First of all, through syndication — you can get away with a lot more in syndication. Yeah, I mean, look at Batman…The Warner Bros. Batman is terrific but there is a lot of violence in there. Even more so with some other shows. Because of the success of some syndicated shows, the networks have become more lenient when it comes to cartoon violence. Also, with Space Usagi, we were able to create all these robots and things which basically were there to be blown up and hacked up and everything…so you’ve got the violence there, but no person is being killed or mutilated, it’s just these robots. It’s the same thing with the Ninja Turtles, they had those Foot Clan robots that would get sliced and diced and still, because they were robots, the networks let them get away with it. But yeah, for a while, the standards and practices guys were really looking over everything: Popeye couldn’t make a fist or hi
