Mr. President, thank you for seeing me on such short notice, and so early into your term. 

I've been with DHS for about three years now, sir. Yes sir, that's right, I'm one of those guys that does cultural analysis work. Oh! Of course you can read on my badge! I forgot I had it on. Says it right there, doesn't it? Ha! Ha. (Oh boy.) 

There, it's uh, straight now. You know you really can't tell with these things unless you stand in front of a--

The job? Why yes sir, I like it very much, sir.  It's a tough job, but someone has to secure our cultural borders. Which is exactly why I'm here, actually. Mr. President, we've detected a threat to American culture, and--yes, it is, sir. It's quite serious. 

I understand you are busy, and I promise you, the importance of this issue will bear out your seeing me. 

Which brings me to the reason why I’m here! Mr. President, I understand that you are a comic book fan, and--

But! 

Mr. Pres--!

But!

Yes sir. I did say the subject of this meeting is serious. Please hear me out. 

Mr, President, I understand you collect Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comic books. "Collected"--yes, of course. I doubt any other presidential library will have such a unique contribution. 

You know the exquisite treasure that America has in it's comic book traditions.  These are American comics, written by Americans, with American values, and...yes sir, I'm quite aware that Conan is a Cimmerian, not an American. My point is that he's a staple of American fantasy and exhibits classical American virtues--he's strong, independent to the point of being a loner, a hard worker. A kind of cowboy for Hyboria, wouldn't you say. I knew you would!

Mr. President, sixty four years ago, we won the Second World War. We triumphed against the Axis Powers, and severely curtailed their ability to wage war. Um. Yes, you're quite right: except for Italy, but we believe that problem to be a self-regulating. 

Or rather, we thought we did. Since the 1980s, we have been under an assault of escalating intensity from The Empire of--I mean, Japan. Yes, Japan. 

No sir, I have never smoked crack cocaine before in my life. I wouldn't know what it looked like!

Mr. President, have you ever heard of "anime"? 

Anime is a Japanese word derived from the English word animation. It describes Japanese animation, or rather a particular, and most peculiar, style of it. It is as sinister a cultural threat to America that you’ll find out there.  

It’s...well, anime difficult to describe. Visually, it’s a very unique style.  Angular faces, big hair, and eyes like teacup saucers. Everyone looks like a scowling teenager, but when they think of something kawai--that’s cute in Japanese--they giggle and look like toddlers. 

Thematically it’s women in maid costumes with blue hair and ridiculously large breasts. Giant robots with swords. Lots of space ships. Lots of magic. Powers. Lasers. High kicking. 

Anime has established a beachhead in the United States. Have you heard of Pokemon? Dragonball Z? Akira? It’s on the Sci-Fi channel. It’s on the Cartoon Network. There are even conventions dedicated to anime that attract thousands of people every year. There are even Americans that..hold on, let me find the photographs. 

There are even Americans, such as those you see here, who dress like their favorite anime characters. It’s called...cosplay. Yes sir, these photos were all taken in the United States by our HUMINT assets. This photo? Yes sir, Washington state is pretty close to Canada, you’re right. They could indeed be Canadians visiting. I pray they are. But the next photos are from Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis...the Heartland, Mr. President. The Heartland of the homeland. 

Mr. President, I’m from St. Louis, and when I was young enough to be into such things, we dressed up as Star Trek characters, and not as some blue-haired freakjob with eyes the size of softballs and a laser samurai sword! I...I can’t imagine what has happened back there. No, I haven’t gone back. I--can’t go back. My family? I’ll just have to visit them when all of this is over. 

Cosplay. Just saying it makes my spine freeze. 

I don’t know, Mr. President. It’s hard to say how all this happened. Bush and his people, I could never their attention. They would always ask, “Does it have to do with Al Qaeda?” Well duh, of course it doesn’t! 

It’s never that simple. Anime is a different kind of problem. It’s all so subtle. It’s hard to even say what the objection to it is--even by me--just that on a certain level, it just seems so wrong. 

And let’s consider a moment the cultural displacement. There is only a finite amount of media out there. It’s like an invasive species that comes into an ecosystem and then strangles the natives. Nobody thinks purple-haired cartoon characters are a problem until one day you turn around and realize it’s been a decade since you saw Bugs Bunny.

Would you like to know our policy recommendations for dealing with this threat? 

Well, it’s complicated. This is Japan we’re talking about, one of our largest trading partners, and a key defense and foreign policy ally in Asia. We rely on them as a counterweight to the Chinese. No, sir, the Chinese have nothing comparable to anime. 

As a result whatever actions we take on this cannot involve economic sanctions or other actions that may impact our trade. 

Yes sir, there is also the Free Speech issue. We can’t outlaw anime. We can’t arrest cosplay dressers. We can’t do a thing about it on our own shores. 

That leaves us with only one possible recourse: expeditionary warfare. More specifically, the use of our nuclear arsenal. 

We believe that a single nuclear warhead, tuned to a 1 kiloton explosive yield will solve the anime predicament. We propose the target as the Tokyo district of Akihabara, the spiritual home of anime. Destroy the head of the octopus and the body dies, especially the part that has infiltrated America.

One surgical, tactical strike with strategic consequences, and we’re back to Star Trek and Daffy Duck. 

Blowback? Mr. President, the Japanese will probably never know what hit them. Yes sir, I understand they have a really good idea what a nuke going off is like. But the yield of the bomb will be so small, they won’t even suspect a nuke. They’ll probably think that a gas line exploded. A couple of them. Okay. Maybe a dozen. 

Well, sir, that’s my hour. Thank you for seeing me, Mr. President. I hope you’ll take our recommendations under consideration, we worked on them for a long time.

Oh! It's okay--I'm fine. It’s no problem, sir, my kids leave toys lying around the house all the time. Well, what do we have here? 

Mr. President, do these belong to your daughters? 

Mr. President! We have to get out of here! The Secret Service, we have to evac--