Bleach Anime Used in Defense in New Zealand Murder Case

Here in Spain there were a couple crimes that caused a certain moral panic in the 1990s. Role-playing table games were scrutinized after the first case, and RPG video games because of the latter. Apparently plenty of teens had to convince their parents that their Japanese video games weren't instilling dangerous ideas in their heads or were outright banned from playing them for a while. Manga and anime were also tainted to an extent since the similarities between the imaginary of JRPG and fantasy shonen were obvious. The media's attitudes towards role of both kinds improved through the 2000s, but plenty of people weren't convinced at all and El manga no es peligroso, la ignorancia sí ("Manga isn't dangerous, ignorance is") was likely the fandom's most quoted slogan in that decade.

Nowadays Japanese comics, animation and video games (or at least part of it) are in the mainstream and there's a consensus that they don't drive any sane person into psychotic madness, so I don't think that this kind of moral panic is likely to resurface. But this may vary between different countries.