This is old news, but I hadn’t realized that an ad on georgewbush.com features a very bad modification of an image of Nicholas D. Wolfwood as a “yakuza” (via anime news network

If you go to the audio and video section and look for the yakuza clip, you can see the ad. Way to go with the use of asian stereotypes, what with the gong and the rising sun backround. This article from asianmediawatch compares the image in the Bush ad to the Trigun ad that the image was taken from.

Now, I can see why Wolfwood would appeal to Republicans, because he is both a Man of God

and a Gun Owner.

But Wolfwood’s support of orphanages clearly markes him as a Democrat in his social policies, since he seems to be in favor of the kind of welfare state that Republicans are trying to eliminate. And I’m not sure if this would qualify as trademark infringement or copyright infringment, but the larger question is can the Bush campaign afford to alienate anime fans in key battleground states?