The 1970s ‘Pornographic’ Anime That Proves We’ve Lost Our Nerve
Belladonna of Sadness, a 1973 animated film of erotic horror and psychological collapse, survived through bootlegs and digital restoration. But today’s AI-driven content curation flattens its transgressive power into sterile data points. This article explores the tension between animation’s childhood coding and its capacity for radical shock, and warns that the very technology preserving the film is also erasing the human context needed to understand it.