On September 10, a magistrate court in Moscow fined MangaLIB manager Ivan Kvast 200,000 rubles. He was found guilty under Part 3 of Article 6.21 of Russia’s Code of Administrative Offenses on the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among adults.
According to Baza, the case was triggered by the Japanese manga “The Girl Married to the Snake”. During the hearing, the court sided with the prosecution and concluded that a relationship between a human and a “mythological creature” falls under the definition of “non-traditional.”
The judge said that, under this interpretation of the law, the term covers any sexual relationship outside the heterosexual norm, meaning any relationship other than that between a man and a woman.
MangaLIB is described as the largest Russian-language online platform and mobile app for publishing comics and works in the manga and anime style. The site hosts both professional material and amateur stories and illustrations.
The library has more than 91,000 subscribers on Telegram, while its page on VKontakte has more than 607,000 followers. In June, the platform gained a new co-owner: Boris Makarenkov, who heads the Russian legal entity of Storytel and is also a co-owner of Litnet.