aespa's Karina has found herself in the hot waters with Chinese netizens.

The popular idol has found herself at the center of controversy after recommending a Japanese anime currently prohibited in China. The ban is due to the controversial naming of a character which alludes to a grim historical incident from the second Sino-Japanese War.

Netizens pointed out that Karina recently endorsed the anime 'My Hero Academia' on Bubble. In this series, a character's name bears an unsettling resemblance to 'Unit 731,' a covert Japanese Imperial army operation in Harbin, China, infamous for its inhumane medical experiments conducted on prisoners during the 1930s and 1940s. The connection to such a horrific chapter of history has understandably sparked widespread criticism of the anime.

The anime disclosed that a character, known as Ujiko, had the real name of Maruta Shiga, and was portrayed as a scientist. This sparked a significant uproar, resulting in the decision to alter the character's name. The uproar was caused by the term "Maruta," which translates to 'log' in Japanese. However, it carries a dark historical implication, referencing the dehumanizing label given to victims of Unit 731's experiments.

Unit 731 was a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, notorious for conducting brutal experiments on human subjects, including chemical research, inhumane operations on living people, and the testing of biological weaponry. To veil the horrifying truth of what was going on, these human test subjects were callously referred to as "logs." The anime's allusion to such a grim chapter of history incited widespread backlash in 2020.

After Karina recommended this anime through the fan communication app Bubble, countless Chinese netizens went to Karina's Instagram and Weibo accounts to terrorize the comment sections demanding the idol apologize.

Korean netizens are now rallying to Karina's defense, given the likelihood that she was unaware of these historical implications. Furthermore, they argue that 'My Hero Academia' ranks among the most popular animes today, with countless individuals recommending it.

They commented, "There is no way she could have known that kind of information. I don't think that many people know about this," "I don't know why they are asking her to apologize," "My Hero Academia is so popular though," "I don't know why they are asking her to apologize when China's problem that it's banned," "So this information about this anime was released a few years ago and the Korean fans who found out, they stopped watching but still a lot of people don't know about that information because they deleted the problematic name and renamed the character. So there is no way she would have known," "This is such a famous anime, why are they doing that to Karina," and "I watch 'My Hero Academia' and I didn't know about this character name issue."