Recently, from a Japanese manga "Kousaku Shima" which once had controversial, even disrespectful content, my friends and I joined the discussion about how the relationship between fictional content and reality should be. For example, the "Kousaku Shima" artist admitted that he had just drawn that manga with incomplete research. Then, I accept that anyone can criticize this artist's ethics/morals about this (they can even "blame" him). However, then how can the creators who possibly make fake content handle the ongoing issues? For example, if I wrote a novel that could be based on a sort of conspiracy theory or net folklore (any very silly one), that could be approved as a serious one enough to be discussed, or to be published with a right?
TBH, I have been thinking about this with creating no useful conclusions. As a Japanese reader who has been soaked into Haruki Murakami (I guess he must be one of the most marvelous storytellers in this world), I admit that well-made fiction can have the splendid power/possibility which even eases us, or reunites us together (like John Lennon's song "Imagine", which contains a sort of ideal, certainly reunites us. Or any national anthems might have that kind of function, too... Although, you must say "Imagine" or national anthems must not be fiction for us).
How should we handle the magical power of any fiction, even though it can have a sort of blasphemous content? Should that content be saved from the freedom of speech/expression? Or should that be edited/remade by another person or any establishments? About this, even now I can never give a single good answer from any side yet. A user tells us that "from caring readers, how about giving them a clear credit which tells us that 'all of this manga's content has been created as a fiction'?". However, even though I approve of this way of solving this issue, I want to keep asking this: What if some "innocent" readers still get soaked into the manga with their tactical/intentional mind which says "Even though this is fiction, I am loving because of its well-made fakeness"?
