Like, I just did a google search for Misty (with safe search off), and it did not take long for arguably sexual images to pop up, including one with nudity. No explicit sex, but I'm sure a quick trip to a million different image galleries/communities could solve that.
The internet has always collectively turned a blind eye to this stuff, simply because it's fictional. Ignoring it/handwaving it away leads to complacency, and complacency leads to articles like this where someone can post this stuff and seemingly, at no point in the process, genuinely think about what they're doing. And what this porn is depicting. They don't think of it in the same terms as real porn simply "because" it's fictional. No one is being "harmed" by fictional depictions. They're not "real".
And since there's no way on Earth you'd ever be able to have any sort of objective study on the effects of the availability of fictional depictions of child pornography, they'll hide behind the "it's not real what's the big deal" excuse for as long as possible because it's on you to prove it's harmful, rather than them to prove it's not.
It's extra hard when countries like Japan fight so hard against laws that would start to restrict stuff like this, usually in the name of artistic freedom and under the guise of fighting "censorship".
This seems like a huge miss in editorial oversight. What are editors there for if not to stop someone from posting images of animated pornography? (To say nothing of the underage angle, which is a whole wildly terrible other piece of this.) There are ways you can cover these topics in thoughtful, critical, and meaningful ways I'm sure. This was not one of them.
What editor at Kotaku looked at this and said, "Yes, this has merit on our website."
I fully believe this article was written and approved by the sole metric of "horny kids will click on this". This is the equivalent of writing an article about Fortnite porno, and simply picking other random properties kids might have been interested in and not really thinking too far beyond that. This kind of stuff really is common the moment you wander away from the "mainstream" internet. It's a testament to how much people genuinely don't stop and think about what this stuff is actually depicting.
Just gonna point out that any image you see in your browser gets downloaded to your computer and gets cached in a temporary files folder where it could stay for quite some time unless manually removed or enough time passes.
Also want to point out if your temp folder is on a traditional HDD, even after deleting the files they may linger until that data is eventually overwritten (if ever).
