I used to work in IT at a medical school and your characterization of HIPAA is not accurate. HIPAA is not strict at all unless you've intentionally divulged protected health information. Your employer is going to a lot worse things to you (i.e. fire you) than any federal prosecutor.

I feel your pain and I was also quite disappointed by this thread, though this reaction is not uncommon. I get similar, but less juvenile reactions in real life when I try to talk to people about anime. Illustrated books and animation have been pretty much exclusively been marketed to children in the US (as well as many other parts of the world) and lots of people can't get past that.

I started to watch anime because it happened to be on after Futurama during the Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network. I was impressed with what I saw in some series (Full Metal Alchemist and Paranoia Agent) and started seeking out more of it on my own. Some anime is as good or better than any independent cinema you can find. There's some really unique stuff and just a lot of really good and interesting storytelling. You can develop a lot more depth in ten hours of content than you can in two hours and some anime takes advantage of this fact.

Anime is shown during primetime on major television networks in Japan. Manga is read by just about everyone in Japan. Forty percent of the books published in Japan are manga. There are tons of educational manga like the one reviewed in this post. Given the wide viewership and readership in Japan, a considerable range of manga and anime are created.

Illustrated books and animation are just two other art forms. Most Americans can't get past their limited use in the US. Too bad for them.

I hope the irony of posting such a comment as an "Anonymous Coward" is not lost on you.

gilgongo, "The English political reaction to the IRA was markedly different to the way the Americans reacted to 9/11 though. There was no security theatre - if anything rather the opposite. [...] So we just put up some road blocks in London and deployed armed police around sensitive areas."

That just doesn't represent the facts of the situation. The political reaction was this massive government intrusion into privacy which persists and expands 15 years later. I'd say the rhetoric used is a lot less relevant than the actions taken and their lasting effects. The US government and media present themselves to their constituents in wildly different ways than their respective UK counterparts, so I would say it's ill-advised to use it as a basis of comparison.

I have numerous friends and family who live and work in NYC. None of them are or were scared and no one they know are or were scared. I've never been scared for them.

You claim you experienced the Bishopgate bombings firsthand and I'll take you at your word. You did not experience the WTC attacks firsthand and you're not an American. You're comparing two different events from two completely different frames of reference. It's ethnocentric, it's elitist, and it's rude.