title: Transgender people in sports

text: The first out transgender person to make a US national team was Chris Mosier, who in 2016 qualified for Team USA in duathlon. Mosier is considered the catalyst for the change in the IOC policy on transgender athletes in 2015, when he challenged the policy after initially being banned from the world championship race. Mosier also became the first known transgender athlete to compete in the Olympic Trials in the gender with which they identify, and the first trans man to make a men's Olympic Trials, when he competed in January 2020 in the US Olympic Team Trials in the 50k Racewalking event.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In 2017, Mack Beggs, a teenager from Texas, was required to wrestle against girls throughout the season of his transition from female to male up through the state championship, despite wanting to wrestle against boys. This was due to state sport regulations requiring athletes to compete alongside athletes of their assigned sex. Some opponents say the testosterone prescribed as part of his transition gives him an unfair advantage and made it unsafe for the other wrestlers. (He finished the regular season at 52–0 and won the state championship.)


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In October 2018, Veronica Ivy (then known as Rachel McKinnon) won a gold medal at the cycling Masters World Track Championship in Los Angeles.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Since 2021, media has widely covered University of Pennsylvania student Lia Thomas, who swam for the men's team in 2018–2019, and for the women's team in 2021. "The Washington Post" wrote that Thomas was "shattering records". In December 2021, USA Swimming official Cynthia Millen resigned in protest, because of her belief that Thomas has an unfair advantage over her competitors. In February 2022, CNN called Thomas "the face of the debate on transgender women in sports". In March 2022, she became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in any sport after winning the women's 500-yard freestyle event.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Thomas lost muscle mass and strength through testosterone suppression and hormone replacement therapy. Her time for the 500 freestyle is over 15 seconds slower than her personal bests before medically transitioning. Thomas's winning time of 4:33.24 was 9.18 seconds short of Katie Ledecky’s NCAA record of 4:24.06. In other races, Thomas has been beaten by multiple cisgender women as well as by Iszac Henig, a transgender man not on hormones. According to "Swimming World", by the conclusion of Thomas's swimming career at UPenn in 2022, her rank had moved from 65th on the men's team to 1st on the women's team in the 500-yard freestyle, and 554th on the men's team to 5th on the women's team in the 200-yard freestyle.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In June 2022, the International Swimming Federation (FINA), an organization that administers international aquatic sports competitions, voted to bar all transgender athletes from competing in professional women's swimming, with the exception of athletes who "can establish to FINA's comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later". FINA also announced the creation of an "open" category for transgender swimmers to compete in.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: World Rugby, the sport's governing body, released the "World Rugby Transgender Guideline" in 2020. The guideline is based on player safety and performance advantage. National Rugby governing bodies are encouraged to use the guideline with flexibility to set domestic rules. The Guideline operates as a policy in all World Rugby Tournaments.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: To play women's rugby, transgender women must provide medical documentation confirming they have not experienced and are suppressing a testosterone-driven puberty. Transgender men, regardless of whether they transitioned pre- or post-puberty, may play men's rugby if they provide confirmation they have the physical ability to ensure they are not putting themselves at unacceptable risk. Transgender men who have begun a sex reassignment process that includes supplementing with testosterone may not play women's rugby.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Sports organizations have sought a test for sex verification to ensure fairness across all sports. This began in the 1940s with "femininity certificates" provided by a physician. In the 1960s, visual genital inspections were used to confirm gender, followed by chromosomal analysis to detect the presence of the SRY and DYZ1 genes, normally found on the Y chromosome. These tests were all designed to ensure that athletes were only allowed to compete as their sex, but mostly resulted in the exclusion of intersex athletes. Some LGBTQ advocates have referred to sex verification policies as "genital inspection" and "gender policing" of female athletes.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: The first mandatory sex test issued by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the world's track and field governing body, for woman athletes was in July 1950 in the month before the European Championships in Belgium. All athletes were tested in their own countries. Sex testing at the actual games began with the 1966 European Athletics Championships’ response to suspicion that several of the best women athletes from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were actually men. At the Olympics, testing was introduced in 1968. In some cases, these policies have led to athletes undergoing unnecessary surgery such as female genital mutilation and sterilization. Subsequent reports have shown that the tests could cause psychological harm. "Sex verification"—identifying athletes whose hormone levels are abnormal compared to others of their "purported" sex — can cause sex identity crises, elicit demeaning reactions (publicly and privately), isolate athletes socially, and lead to depression and sometimes suicide.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: More recently, testosterone levels have become the focus and, at the same time, new guidelines have been sought that would allow successfully-transitioned athletes to compete. Since the proposition in 2003 to use testosterone levels, reputable organizations such as the IOC have adopted strict policies that employ testosterone as a metric to allow successfully transitioned female athletes to compete. More recent guidelines have focused entirely on testosterone levels, such as the IOC's current guidelines, originally set in November 2015, which set limits on transgender athletes' testosterone levels for them to be permitted in women's competition categories. Controversy surrounding the 2020 Tokyo Olympics also centered around testosterone levels, specifically over whether the IOC's guidelines should be amended to set stricter testosterone limits, although this proposed change has been strongly debated. The testing of testosterone alone as a marker for athleticism has been debated.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: The increased visibility of trans women in professional sports has led to debates on the IOC policies. Many scientists criticize the policies because of published papers showing that people who went through male puberty retain significant advantages even after a year of testosterone suppression. In July 2021, the IOC's medical and science director, Richard Budgett, stated that the 2015 guidelines were outdated. In 2022, new guidelines were released. According to reporting by Sports Illustrated, the new framework "places the responsibility of establishing guidelines for trans inclusion on each individual sport. It also concludes that sporting bodies should not assume that transgender women have an inherent advantage over cisgender women, nor should transgender women have to reduce their testosterone levels to compete." The framework has been criticized by some medical experts who work for sports federations as ignoring the science on sex, gender, and performance and leading to unfair competition. They suggested that rules based on testosterone could vary based on sport and called on the IOC to set standards for sports to follow.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Biological sex differences in humans impact performance in sports. Debate over whether and how transgender women should compete in female sports often has to do with whether they have an unfair advantage over cisgender women due to higher testosterone levels and skeletal, muscle and fat distribution differences. Testosterone regulates many different functions in the body, including the maintenance of bone and muscle mass.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A 2021 literature review concluded that for trans women, even with testosterone suppression, "the data show that strength, lean body mass, muscle size and bone density are only trivially affected. The reductions observed in muscle mass, size, and strength are very small compared to the baseline differences between males and females in these variables, and thus, there are major performance and safety implications in sports where these attributes are competitively significant." After 24 months of testosterone suppression, bone mass is generally preserved. The review states that no study has reported muscle loss greater than 12% with testosterone suppression even after three years of hormone therapy. It found that trans women are in the top 10% of females regarding lean body mass and possess a grip 25% stronger than most females. They suggest that instead of universal guidelines, each individual sport federation decide how to "balance between inclusion, safety and fairness" due to differences between sports.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A 2021 systematic review found that significant decreases in measures of strength, lean body mass and muscle area were observed after 12 months of hormone therapy, while the values remained above those observed in cisgender women, even after 36 months, suggesting that trans women "may retain strength advantages over cisgender women." Effects of longer duration therapy were unclear due to scarcity of data.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A 2017 systematic review of literature relating to sport participation and competitive sports policies reported that there is no direct or comprehensive evidence of transgender women having an athletic advantage over their cisgender counterparts at any stage of transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones or sex reassignment surgery), due to the lack of quantitative research on the subject; this made it "difficult to draw any definite conclusions". Only one of the papers in the systematic review took any physical attributes into account. A 2018 extended essay analyzed the current IOC rule set in 2015 (testosterone below 10 nmol/L for trans women) and found that "the advantage to transwomen afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness", while they propose to abandon male/female categories in favor of a more nuanced division.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A 38-page draft document from World Rugby's transgender working group in 2020 acknowledged that rugby players who are cisgender women, when tackled by a player who has gone through male puberty, are at a significantly greater risk of injury. The working group calculated that increased injury risk for typical players with female characteristics when tackled by a typical player with male characteristics was between 20 and 30%, and potentially reaching "levels twice as large" in extreme cases where the players are unusually small and large, respectively. Consequently, the document proposes that in the absence of persuasive evidence to the contrary, International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines regarding a minimum 12-month lowering of testosterone are "not fit for purpose" in the context of rugby. This move was criticized because there were "no examples of transgender women causing serious injuries to cisgender women".


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Canadian sport organizations must comply with the Canadian Human Rights Act, which includes gender identity and expression as a prohibited ground for discrimination.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) is recognized as the Canadian policy leader for transgender people's participation in sport at the national level. In 2016, CCES issued guidance which sets out that, until international rules apply, athletes should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify without being subject to any requirements that are different from those of cisgender athletes, unless there is a specific and legitimate reason for the requirement.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: As an athlete moves into competitions governed by international rules, the athlete will decide whether to compete under the applicable international rules. Canadian sport organizations should not consider the athlete's ultimate decision when selecting athletes to represent Canada in international competitions.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Some sports organizations such as viaSport, Ringette Canada, and Gymnastics Canada have policies which align to the CCES guidance. Rugby Canada responded to World Rugby's guidance by releasing a statement recommitting to the "Rugby Canada TransInclusion Policy", which is aligned to the CCES guidance. Others, like Swimming Canada, have not fully aligned to the CCES guidance. For example, to swim in national selection events, transgender swimmers must provide written proof that they are eligible for international competition from the international swimming federation to Swimming Canada.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Public opinion polling indicates many Canadians believe it is unfair for transgender women to compete in women's sports. However, Canadian Women and Sport, a leading voice for the advancement of women and girls in sport, does not believe the inclusion of transgender women and girls threatens the advancement of women in sport.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: UK Sport published guidance for transgender inclusion in September 2021, which concludes that there is not a competitive model where the inclusion of transgender people allows safety and fairness to coexist. The Sports Council will work with the National Governing Body (NGB) and Scottish Governing Body (SGB) to find the optimal outcome under a framework that defines the priorities of the sport bodies. NGB and SGB will prioritize transgender inclusion, fairness, and safety equally to develop a decision-making model for their sports.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: UK Sport believes there is not yet enough evidence to prove that the suppression of testosterone for 12 months achieves parity of strength, stamina and physique for transgender women compared with females. UK Sport believes there is enough evidence to show testosterone supplementation in transgender men seems to create parity within the strength and speed of males. They believe there is evidence to show bone conformation remains and should be considered in sports where safety is relevant.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Sport New Zealand and High Performance Sport New Zealand, crown agencies that lead active recreation and sport throughout New Zealand, are currently developing guiding principles for the inclusion of transgender participants in community sport. This publication will serve to guide sport and recreation organizations at a national level toward developing a policy within their respective sport codes covering transgender inclusion in community sport, but not elite sport.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: New Zealand Rugby is currently reviewing its own transgender guidelines for grassroots community rugby with Sport New Zealand in consultation with stakeholders. Their stance on elite sport remains consistent with World Rugby's transgender eligibility and participation policy for professional rugby.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In June 2019, Sport Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission published a report together with the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (COMPPS). The report is targeted to sporting organizations at all levels from community sport to elite sport in the context of promoting an inclusive environment for transgender and gender diverse people in sport across the country. The COMPPS consists of member organizations in Australia including: Australian Football League, Cricket Australia, Football Federation Australia, National Rugby League, Netball Australia, Rugby Australia and Tennis Australia.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Rugby Australia released guidelines which permit transgender participants to play the game on a case-by-case basis for community rugby competitions at the amateur level, but remain aligned with World Rugby's policy for professional rugby.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In August 2019, Cricket Australia released their guidelines for inclusion. The guidelines serve to promote an inclusive environment for gender diverse participants playing community cricket and allows players to participate in the gender with which they identify rather than their sex, without requiring medical examinations.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In terms of grassroots sport clubs, the Australian not-for-profit sporting inclusion program Pride In Sport maintains a directory of independent LGBTQ sporting clubs in Australia. This listing published an extensive number of sports having at least one club within each of the states and territories of the country.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In July 2019, Sport Australia published guidelines on making sport more inclusive for transgender and gender-diverse people.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Provincial governing bodies for high school sports have independent policies on the participation of transgender or non-binary athletes on sex-segregated teams. Organizations such as the Alberta Schools' Athletic Association, the Manitoba High Schools Athletics Association and BC School Sports each have policies that allow the participation of transgender student-athletes in accordance with their gender identity.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Transgender or non-binary student-athletes looking to compete in a team consistent with their gender identity in British Columbia must submit an application to the BC School Sports Executive Director, and are required to have a written statement from both the student-athlete and the principal of their high school confirming their gender identity.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: There are no rules federally to regulate inclusion of transgender children. States vary widely on participation of transgender children in sports and which locker room those students should use. Opponents of including transgender athletes emphasize the argument that there may be an unfair advantage of larger size and strength in trans women, and trans athletes could threaten the safety of cisgender children, both in competition and in the locker room. Advocates in favor of allowing transgender children to participate in sports based on their preferred gender point out the known benefits of participating in sports and the psychological well-being of the transgender children. Many states have tried to mimic the NCAA and IOC rules that rely on testosterone level tests to determine when a trans woman can participate in women's sports competitions. These kinds of rules are more difficult to enforce in secondary education because of the lack of resources to test testosterone levels, and medical professionals are often hesitant to prescribe minors hormones. States have individually come up with rules to regulate trans athlete participation through restricting transgender athletes to teams of their assigned sex at birth, matching NCAA/IOC guidelines, allowing school districts to decide, or allowing complete inclusion.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: 19 U.S. States have banned transgender people from sports under their gender identity in various capacities. These states include Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, West Virginia, South Carolina, Utah, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, and Georgia. The US Department of Education has said transgender students are protected under Title IX.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In March 2020, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law the "Fairness in Women's Sports Act", also known as House Bill 500. This legislation, the first of its kind in the United States, prohibits transgender athletes from competing in sports against athletes of the other biological sex. In April 2020, the ACLU and the Legal Voice filed a lawsuit, "Hecox v. Little", arguing that this law violates the US Constitution and Title IX. ADF Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb, representing two female athletes, said: "Both of our clients agree: Putting male athletes up against females is simply not fair because it changes the nature and dynamics of sport for young women ... In one year, 275 high school boys ran faster times than the lifetime best of World Champion sprinter Allyson Felix." On August 17, 2020, the United States District Court for the District of Idaho issued a preliminary injunction against the law pending trial, issuing an opinion that the plaintiffs were "likely to succeed in establishing [that] the Act is unconstitutional as currently written". the case is before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: After women's high school competitions were won by transgender student Andraya Yearwood in Connecticut, a lawsuit was filed against the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) and several school boards in federal court to try to stop the participation of transgender athletes. Christiana Holcomb, ADF Legal Counsel in the case, said that Yearwood and Terry Miller (another transgender student athlete in Connecticut) between them "amassed 15 different state championship titles that were once held by nine different girls across the state." The lawsuit was dismissed in April 2021 by the district court as moot.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In October 2021, women's sports icons Billie Jean King, World Cup Champion and United States women's national soccer team Co-Captain Megan Rapinoe, WNBA stars Brianna Turner, Layshia Clarendon, and over 150 athletes in women's sports spoke out in support of transgender athletes and filed an amicus brief in an appeal of the "Soule v. CIAC" trial court dismissal, along with the Women's National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), Athlete Ally, and the Women's Sports Foundation, in support of CIAC and affirming the dismissal.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: On December 16, 2022, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Appeals Court ruled against the plaintiffs, citing the 2020 decision "Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia," in which the Supreme Court ruled discrimination against transgender employees violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In September 2018, U Sports, the governing body of intercollegiate and varsity athletics in Canada, released a policy addressing eligibility and best practices for the inclusion of transgender student-athletes at their member institutions. Under this new policy, U Sports student-athletes are able to compete according to their gender identity or sex assigned at birth provided they meet requirements of the Canadian Anti-Doping Program. Transgender student-athletes, like other U Sports athletes, are given five years of eligibility to compete and may only represent one gender of sports team per school year.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: Under the Equality Act 2010, discrimination based on sex or gender reassignment is illegal, but certain sporting activities are exempt if transgender athletes competing would put non-transgender athletes at an unfair disadvantage. It does not apply to those who consider themselves trans or non-binary, but have not undergone gender reassignment officially.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In April 2022, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he believed that transgender women should not compete in women's sport.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: In August 2011, the National Collegiate Athletic Association Office of Inclusion published the NCAA Inclusion of Transgender Student-Athletes resource outlining their best practices and policies for the inclusion for transgender student-athletes. This policy permits transgender athletes who are not using hormone therapy to continue to participate on the team that corresponds to their assigned sex at birth. A trans man student-athlete may participate on either a men's or women's team, unless receiving testosterone, in which case he may only compete on a men's team; athletes receiving doses of testosterone as a part of their transition must apply for a medical exemption through the league, as testosterone is considered a banned substance in the NCAA. A trans woman student-athlete is not permitted to compete on a women's team until after one year of testosterone suppression treatment. Ongoing monitoring of treatment and written documentation is required for student-athletes undergoing testosterone suppression.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: University and Tertiary Sport New Zealand (UTSNZ) has its own inclusion policy covering transgender and gender diverse athletes in sport. The policy allows transgender athletes to compete in the sport category that aligns to their gender identity.Transgender females are permitted to compete in a male UTSNZ competition. If transgender females have undergone testosterone suppression for 12 months, they may also compete in female competition. Similarly, transgender males are eligible to participate in either male or female competition (but not both categories within one season), provided they are not undergoing hormone treatment for gender transition. For transgender males who have taken hormone treatment with testosterone related to gender transition, they may no longer compete in female competition but can still compete in male competition.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A 2021 Gallup poll showed that 62% of Americans opposed people playing on teams that matched their gender identity rather than their birth sex. However, a 2021 PBS/NPR/Marist poll found 67% of Americans, including 66% of Republicans, oppose legislation that would prohibit transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A March 2022 Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found that 63% of Americans were against gender-transitioning athletes competing in opposite-sex sporting events, while 37% of Americans were in favour of them competing. 60% of Democrats, 32% of Independents, and 20% of Republicans were in favour of gender-transitioning athletes competing in opposite-sex sporting events, while 80% of Republicans, 68% of Independents, and 40% of Democrats were against them competing.


title: Transgender people in sports

text: A May 2022 Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that 55% of Americans were against allowing transgender women and girls to compete with other women and girls in high school, 58% were against allowing transgender women to compete with other women and girls in college and professional sports, 30% of Americans were in support of transgender women and girls competing with other women and girls in high school, college and professional levels, and 15% had no opinion. The poll also found that 49% of Americans were against allowing transgender girls to compete with other girls in youth sports, 33% were in support of transgender girls competing with other girls in youth sports, and 17% had no opinion.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Yakuza 0 is an action-adventure game developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega. It is the sixth main entry in the "Yakuza series" and a prequel to the original game. It was released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in Japan in March 2015, and in North America and Europe for PlayStation 4 in January 2017. It was released on Windows on 1 August 2018 and on Xbox One on 26 February 2020. A free accompanying game application for PlayStation Vita, titled Yakuza 0: Free to Play Application for PlayStation Vita, was released in Japan in February 2015. Set in late 1988 during Japan's bubble era, and seventeen years before the events of the first game, the story follows Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima as they get embroiled in a conflict between various Yakuza factions for control of a patch of land known as the "Empty Lot".


title: Yakuza 0

text: The game received generally favourable reviews from critics, and is largely responsible for the franchise's rise in popularity and sales in the West, the series being deemed obscure beforehand. "Yakuza 0" was followed up by a remake of the original game, "Yakuza Kiwami", the next chronological installment of the series.


title: Yakuza 0

text: "Yakuza 0 " is an action-adventure game set in an open world environment and played from a third-person perspective. The game takes place from December 1988 to January 1989, in Kamurochō and Sotenbori, fictionalized recreations of Tokyo's Kabukichō and Osaka's Dōtonbori areas respectively. The player controls series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and recurring character Goro Majima, alternating between the two at predetermined points during the story.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Players can freely walk around Kamurocho and Sotenbori, interacting with people they meet to trigger side-quests, battling enemies who attack them on the street, or playing several minigames, including fully playable versions of Sega arcade games such as "Out Run", "Super Hang-On", "Space Harrier" and "Fantasy Zone". Completing certain objectives, such as eating every dish at a restaurant or reaching a target score in a minigame, will also grant the player special Completion Point currency; these Completion Points can be spent at a shrine to receive additional bonuses, such as special items or character upgrades.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Character customization and growth is similar to the system from "Ryu ga Gotoku Ishin!", with abilities bought off of a skill tree that is gradually unlocked during the game. Instead of using experience points to buy skills, the player uses money acquired from fights or via Kiryu and Majima's side businesses. Money is more liberally awarded in "Yakuza 0" than in previous entries, with every heavy attack causing enemies to drop cash. The player can lose their money if they encounter a special enemy called Mr. Shakedown, huge men who are far stronger than normal. If the player is beaten, they will lose all their cash, but can beat the enemy again to earn back their money and extra.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Kiryu and Majima also have side businesses that they run during the game to earn money: Kiryu invests in real estate in Kamurocho, while Majima runs a cabaret club in Sotenbori. Completing side-quests will often result in characters they meet offering to help with side businesses, allowing players to more easily and quickly progress. Progressing in side business sequences or training with specific masters will unlock additional abilities for purchase on the characters' skill trees.


title: Yakuza 0

text: A major innovation of "Yakuza 0" is the addition of multiple fighting styles for both Kiryu and Majima that can be switched in the middle of battle. Kiryu utilizes the balanced Brawler style, similar to that of previous entries; the powerful but slow Beast style, which allows him to use heavy weapons; and the fast boxing-based Rush style, which emphasizes mobility. Conversely, Majima uses the balanced Thug style; the weapons-oriented Slugger style, primarily focused around a baseball bat; and the capoeira-based Breaker style. Completing Kiryu and Majima's side businesses will unlock an additional "Legendary" fighting style for the characters, the "Dragon of Dojima" and "Mad Dog of Shimano" styles, respectively.


title: Yakuza 0

text: In December 1989, yakuza Kazuma Kiryu is framed for murder in an empty lot in Kamurochō, Tokyo. As the Empty Lot is the last piece of land needing to be purchased before the Tojo Clan can redevelop the area, it has become the target of Dojima Family patriarch Sohei Dojima, believing obtaining it will grant him enough power and influence to become Tojo Clan chairman. To protect his adoptive father, Shintaro Kazama, from punishment, Kiryu leaves the Dojima Family.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Kiryu meets real estate agent Tetsu Tachibana, who promises to clear his name in exchange for helping him acquire the Empty Lot before Dojima. After Kiryu and Jun Oda, Tachibana's right-hand man, interfere with squatters related to the Dojima family, Dojima lieutenants Daisaku Kuze, Hiroki Awano and Keiji Shibusawa demand Kiryu turn over Tachibana. Kiryu refuses, prompting the Dojima family to hunt him down. His oath brother Akira Nishikiyama cuts ties with Kiryu to keep each other safe. Tachibana tells Kiryu that the Empty Lot's owner is his estranged sister, Makoto Makimura, who inherited it from their grandfather and lives in Sotenbori, Osaka.


title: Yakuza 0

text: In Sotenbori, ex-yakuza Goro Majima is forced to run a cabaret club by Tsukasa Sagawa, a member of the Omi Alliance, the Tojo Clan's rivals. Following the orders of Futoshi Shimano, a secret traitor to the Tojo Clan, Sagawa offers Majima a chance to rejoin the Shimano Family by assassinating Makoto, who suffers from psychogenic blindness. Majima finds Makoto under the protection of Wen Hai Lee, a former assassin. After Majima decides to protect Makoto, Lee suggests murdering a look alike of Makoto to fool Sagawa. Shibusawa's assistant Homare Nishitani does so. Suspecting the fraud, Sagawa kills Lee. Sagawa then attempts to kill Majima and Makoto, but is stopped by Masaru Sera, Kazama's ally, who takes Makoto away. Majima and Sagawa confront Sera and find that he turned Makoto over to Kiryu.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Kiryu and Oda escort Makoto to Kamurocho but are chased by Shibusawa's men. Oda, revealed to be a mole for Shibusawa, attempts to kill Kiryu and Makoto. Kiryu subdues him, and Oda explains that he and Tachibana were former Chinese gangsters in Japan. At that time, Makoto migrated to Japan to find her brother, but ran afoul of Oda, who sold her to a Korean gang, where she was sexually abused. Oda discovered Makoto's identity after Tachibana saw her on a documentary, and feared his reprisal ever since. Regretting his crimes, he allows Kiryu and Makoto to flee, before being executed by Shibusawa.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Kiryu meets Tachibana, who reveals that he knew that Makoto was looking for him. He also reveals that upon learning her inheritance of the Empty Lot, he turned to Kazama, who helped him form his company to protect Makoto from Dojima, who also planned to annihilate the Kazama family. With their interests coinciding, Kiryu and Tachibana flee but Tachibana is captured by Dojima's assassin, Lao Gui, the true perpetrator of the Empty Lot murder. Tachibana is tortured to death by Kuze and his men, whom Kiryu and Nishikiyama defeat. Makoto discovers her brother's body and regains partial sight.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Meanwhile, Majima learns that Shimano sent the kill order so that Majima would be pressured to have Makoto hand over the Empty Lot to Shimano. Majima finds Makoto in the Empty Lot, plotting revenge for Tachibana's death. Despite Majima's concerns, Makoto meets Dojima, offering the Empty Lot in exchange for the deaths of his lieutenants. Dojima declines and has her shot. Sera arrives and escorts Makoto to a hospital. However, Shibusawa finds Makoto and holds her captive on a ship. Kiryu and his family storm the ship and save Makoto, whilst Majima defeats the Dojima family in the Tojo HQ, resulting in Awano's death. Nishikiyama prevents Kiryu from killing Shibusawa, and both him and Kuze are handed over to the police.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Sera ultimately acquires the Empty Lot. He orders Majima to kill Shimano for his treachery, but Shimano terminates his dealings with the Omi Alliance and reinstates Majima into his family, resulting in Sagawa's assassination. In January 1989, Sera becomes the Tojo Clan Captain, with Dojima languishing after the loss of his lieutenants. The Empty Lot is destroyed and the Millennium Tower is built on its stead. Meanwhile, Majima adopts a new persona, based on Lee, Nishitani and Sagawa, to empower himself. He allows Makoto to live a peaceful life with her new boyfriend, and cheerfully meets Kiryu in Kamurocho.


title: Yakuza 0

text: The game was first announced in a special "Yakuza" event on 24 August 2014, together with a trailer. Thirty most popular AV idols, as voted by fans in an earlier poll, were also announced to make cameo appearances in the game, with the top 10 having more significant roles (the top five would appear as the highest tier hostesses in the cabaret club minigame). A Chinese-language localization of the game was announced in 2014 and eventually released in Asia in May 2015. Shonan no Kaze performed the game's main theme and ending theme, and respectively; these songs were not licensed for the English release and were instead replaced by original instrumental tracks.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Sega wanted to make Majima stand out from Kiryu, as the two share the role of protagonists. Sega described Kiryu as a "straight man trait – tough but honorable and keeps to himself a bit" implying little difficulty in writing him. Through this game and the remake of the first game, "Kiwami", the relationship between Kiryu and Majima is explored further than in the first game of the franchise, most notably because of changes to Majima's characterization and his views on Kiryu's actions, with the two being friends and enemies simultaneously. "Yakuza 0" also showed a part of Kiryu's story that Sega wanted players to know before "Yakuza 6". Kiryu's traits in "Yakuza 0" were specifically changed to a "loose-cannon hot-head" to the point long time fans would be surprised by his actions. However, chief Masayoshi Yokoyama stated the character would mature across the storyline. The goal of the localization team was to make Majima and Kiryu more likeable, although Strichart believed Kiryu was more popular than Majima in Western countries. Despite Kiryu's fame, Sato noted that players ended up enjoying Majima far more in the franchise.


title: Yakuza 0

text: The Chinese localization of the game replaces late-game character Lao Gui, a Chinese assassin hired by the Dojima Family, with the face model and voice of Hong Kong actor Sam Lee.


title: Yakuza 0

text: On 5 December 2015, at PlayStation Experience in San Francisco, Sony Computer Entertainment's Gio Corsi announced that "Yakuza 0" would be coming to the Americas for the PlayStation 4. Initially, no official confirmation was made of a European release. In July 2016, it was announced that the game would release in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 4 in January 2017.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Western localization of the game was led by Scott Strichart, associate producer of Atlus USA, who has localized "Yakuza Kiwami", "Yakuza Kiwami 2", and "Yakuza 6". The team took a year and a half to localize Yakuza 0, which has 1.8 million Japanese characters, nearly twice as many as the average JRPG, which has 1 to 1.2 million Japanese characters. In addition to challenges translating tone and humor, Strichart's team at Atlus had difficulties localizing traditional Asian games, including Mahjong and Shogi. In order to make these minigames accessible to Western audiences, Atlus had to provide detailed rules alongside gameplay. During the localization process, Strichart said the team wrote a total of "34 pages of Mahjong explanation."


title: Yakuza 0

text: "Yakuza 0" received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, with the Xbox One version receiving "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator Metacritic.


title: Yakuza 0

text: PlayStation LifeStyle's review of the import version was a 9/10, calling it the best in the series and "the result of 10 years spent not just perfecting a formula, but adding to it." The game received a 36/40 from "Famitsu" on both platforms. "Eurogamer" ranked the game 45th on their list of the "Top 50 Games of 2017", while "Polygon" ranked it 44th on their list of the 50 best games of 2017, and "The Verge" named it as one of their 15 Best Video Games of 2017.


title: Yakuza 0

text: The game's fighting system has often been praised for its brutality, though "IGN" felt it might come across as too simple due to players' tendencies to smash buttons. "GameInformer" compared the random battles with arcade beat em up games and praised the usage of its grinding system as its usage is needed due to how challenging every character is across later chapters. "GameSpot" was critical to the gameplay, calling it dated as he remarked that, despite gameplay improvements from the PlayStation 3 games, there is still occasional poor performance. Nevertheless, the reviewer enjoyed the fighting system and the grinding aspects, finding them more entertaining. "PlayStation Life Style" praised the encounters with minor characters as well as the heat function for the cinematic movements Kiryu and Majima perform although he felt they were barely stronger than normal moves. The cabaret club minigame was particularly praised as "addictive" and "the best part" of the game.


title: Yakuza 0

text: Reviewers also commented on the story and cast, most notably due to its accessibility as a prequel. Majima's different characterization had some writers find him more interesting than Kiryu. "EGMNOW" liked the contrast the duo had in the narrative. "The Jimquisition" called both characters "like-able protagonists who consistently have to act as straight men in a variety of weird situations". "GamesRadar" praised the constant switch between protagonists, as it "helps to refresh the narrative". "Polygon" had mixed feelings in regards to the cast as the antagonist often end up becoming trustworthy regardless of violent acts as well as the fact that most female characters are poorly treated both in the main narrative and minigames. "GameSpot" felt the story was the greatest strength of the game, due to its handling of cutscenes, serious storytelling and appealing voice acting. Despite finding that the game carried many common scenarios from the previous games, "PlayStation LifeStyle" said that "Yakuza 0" has the best narrative in the entire series, praising elements such as the fast pace and the 1980's portrayal.


title: Yakuza 0

text: The game debuted at number 1 on the Japan software chart in its first week of release. The PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4 version sold 146,000 units and 90,000 sales respectively. As of June 2015, the game has sold over 500,000 copies within Japan and Chinese-speaking regions of Asia. Sega president Haruki Satomi stated that the Chinese version of the game sold more than originally expected.


title: Yakuza 0

text: In the UK, "Yakuza 0" was the 8th top selling game in the week of 28 January. Stock for the game was running low, which indicated the game sold far beyond expectations.


title: Yakuza 0

text: The Japanese version of "Yakuza 0" won a Japan Game Awards Award for Excellence in the Future Division (for pre-release games showcased at the Tokyo Game Show) in 2014. The game was nominated for "Best PS4 Game" in "Destructoid"s Game of the Year Awards 2017, and for "Best Action-Adventure Game" in IGN's Best of 2017 Awards; it also became a runner-up for "Best Style" in Giant Bomb's 2017 Game of the Year Awards. The game won the award for "Best Main Character" (Goro Majima) in "Game Informer"s 2017 game of the Year Awards.


title: Trench foot

text: Trench foot is a type of foot damage due to moisture. Initial symptoms often include tingling or itching which can progress to numbness. The feet may become red or bluish in color. As the condition worsens the feet can start to swell and smell of decay. Complications may include skin breakdown or infection.


title: Trench foot

text: Trench foot occurs due to prolonged exposure of the feet to cold, damp, and often unsanitary conditions. Unlike frostbite, trench foot usually occurs at temperatures above freezing, and can be classed as a form of non-freezing cold injury. Onset can be as rapid as 10 hours. Risk factors include overly tight boots and not moving. The underlying mechanism is believed to involve constriction of blood vessels resulting in insufficient blood flow to the feet. Diagnosis is based on symptoms and examination.


title: Trench foot

text: Prevention involves keeping the feet warm, dry, and clean. After the condition has occurred, pain medications may be required during the gradual rewarming process. Pain may persist for months following treatment. Surgery to remove damaged tissue or amputation may be necessary.


title: Trench foot

text: Those in the military are most commonly affected, though cases may also occur in the homeless. The condition was first described during Napoleon Bonaparte's retreat from Russia in the winter of 1812. The word "trench" in the name is a reference to trench warfare, mainly associated with World War I.


title: Trench foot

text: Trench foot frequently begins with the feeling of tingling and an itch in affected feet, and subsequently progresses to numbness or pain. The feet may become red or blue as a result of poor blood supply. Later, as the condition worsens feet can start to swell and smell of decay as muscle and tissue become macerated. The feet often feel warm to touch.


title: Trench foot

text: Advanced trench foot often involves blisters and open sores, which lead to fungal infections; this is sometimes called jungle rot. It is marked by severe short-term pain when feeling returns.


title: Trench foot

text: Unlike frostbite, trench foot does not require freezing temperatures; it can occur in temperatures up to and within as little as 13 hours. Exposure to these environmental conditions causes deterioration and destruction of the capillaries, and leads to damage of the surrounding flesh. Excessive sweating (hyperhidrosis) has long been regarded as a contributory cause; unsanitary, cold, and wet conditions can also cause trench foot.


title: Trench foot

text: The diagnosis of trench foot does not usually require any investigations unless an underlying infection of bone is suspected, when an x-ray is performed. A full blood count might show a high white blood cell count if infection is present and inflammatory markers such as an erythrocyte sedimentation rate or C-reactive protein (CRP) might highlight severity.


title: Trench foot

text: Keeping the feet dry is the first line treatment. The initial aim is to protect undamaged tissue of the feet and prevent any further destruction of the feet. Applying emollient helps.


title: Trench foot

text: The mainstay of treatment, like the treatment of gangrene, is surgical debridement, and often includes amputation.


title: Trench foot

text: Self-treatment consists of changing socks two or three times a day and usage of plenty of talcum powder. Whenever possible, shoes and socks should be taken off, the feet bathed for five minutes and patted dry, talcum powder applied, and feet elevated to let air get to them.


title: Trench foot

text: Trench foot was first reported in 1812 by the French army surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey when Napoleon’s army was retreating from Russia.


title: Trench foot

text: It was also a problem for soldiers engaged in trench warfare during the winters of World War I (hence the name). It was also discovered in World War I that a key preventive measure was regular foot inspections; soldiers would be paired and each partner made responsible for the feet of the other, and they would generally apply whale oil to prevent trench foot. If left to their own devices, soldiers might neglect to take off their own boots and socks to dry their feet each day, but when it was made the responsibility of another, this became less likely.


title: Trench foot

text: The condition has been documented in survivors of shipwrecks and downed aeroplanes. Trench foot made a reappearance in the British Army during the Falklands War, in 1982. The condition was reported at the 1998 and 2007 Glastonbury Festivals.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American independent adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip by R. Crumb and starring Skip Hinnant, the film focuses on Fritz (Hinnant), a glib, womanizing and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot, and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, and the free love movement, and serves as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film had a troubled production history, as Crumb, who is a leftist, had disagreements with the filmmakers over the film's political content, which he saw as being critical of the political left. Produced on a budget of $700,000, the film was intended by Bakshi to broaden the animation market. At that time, animation was seen predominantly as a children's medium. Bakshi envisioned animation as a medium that could tell more dramatic or satirical storylines with larger scopes, dealing with more mature and diverse themes that would resonate with adults. Bakshi also wanted to establish an independent alternative to the films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, which dominated the animation market due to a lack of independent competition.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film's depiction of profanity, sex and drug use, particularly cannabis, provoked criticism from more conservative members of the animation industry, who accused Bakshi of attempting to produce a pornographic animated film, as the concept of adult animation was not widely understood at the time. The Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an X rating (a recent equivalent to NC-17 rating films), making it the first American animated film to receive the rating, which was then predominantly associated with more arthouse films.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film was highly successful, grossing over $90 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time. It earned significant critical acclaim in the 1970s, for its satire, social commentary and animations, although it also attracted some negative response accusing it of racial stereotyping and having an unfocused plot, and criticizing its depiction of graphic violence, profanity, sex and drug use in the context of an animated film. The film's use of satire and mature themes is seen as paving the way for future animated works for adults, including "The Simpsons", "South Park", "Beavis and Butt-Head", and "Family Guy".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: A sequel, "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat" (1974), was produced without Crumb's or Bakshi's involvement.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In the 1960s, at Washington Square Park in Manhattan, hippies gather to perform protest songs. Fritz, a cat, and his friends show up in an attempt to meet girls. When a trio of attractive women walk by, Fritz and his friends exhaust themselves trying to get their attention with their music but are annoyed to find that the girls are more interested in the crow standing nearby. The girls attempt to flirt with the crow, making unintentionally condescending remarks about black people. After the crow snidely rebukes the girls and leaves, Fritz convinces the girls that he is a suffering soul and invites them to "seek the truth". They arrive at his friend's apartment, where a wild party is taking place. Since the other rooms are crowded, Fritz drags the girls into the bathroom and the four of them have an orgy in the bathtub. Meanwhile, two bumbling police officers (portrayed as pigs) arrive to raid the party. As they walk up the stairs, one of the partygoers finds Fritz and the girls in the bath tub. Several others jump in, pushing Fritz to the side where he takes solace in marijuana. The two officers break into the apartment, but find that it is empty because everyone has moved into the bathroom. Fritz takes refuge in the toilet when one of the pigs enters the bathroom and begins to beat up the partygoers. As the pig becomes exhausted, a stoned Fritz jumps out, grabs the pig's gun, and shoots the toilet, causing the water main to break and flooding everybody out of the apartment. The pigs chase Fritz down the street into a synagogue. Fritz manages to escape when the congregation gets up to celebrate the United States' decision to ship more weapons to Israel.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Fritz makes it back to his dormitory, where his roommates are too busy studying to pay attention to him. He decides to ditch his bore of a life and sets all of his notes and books on fire. The fire spreads throughout the dorm, finally setting the entire building ablaze. In a bar in Harlem, Fritz meets Duke the Crow at a pool table. After narrowly avoiding getting into a fight with the bartender, Duke invites Fritz to "bug out", and they steal a car, which Fritz drives off a bridge, leading Duke to save his life by grabbing onto a railing. The two arrive at the apartment of a drug dealer named Bertha, whose cannabis joints increase Fritz's libido. While fornicating with Bertha, he realizes that he "must tell the people about the revolution". He runs off into the city street and incites a riot, during which Duke is shot and killed by one of the pig officers.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Fritz hides in an alley where his older fox girlfriend, Winston Schwartz, finds him and drags him on a road trip to San Francisco. When their car runs out of gas in the middle of the desert, he decides to abandon her. He later meets up with Blue, a drug-addicted rabbit biker. Along with Blue's hippo girlfriend, Harriet, they take a ride to an underground hide-out, where two other revolutionaries—the lizard leader and John, a hooded snake—tell Fritz of their plan to blow up a power station. When Harriet tries to get Blue to leave with her to go to a Chinese restaurant, he hits her several times and ties her down with a chain. When Fritz attempts to break it up, the leader throws a candle in his face. Blue, John, and the lizard leader then throw Harriet onto a bed to gang rape her. After setting the dynamite at the power plant, Fritz suddenly has a change of heart and unsuccessfully attempts to remove it before being caught in the explosion.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: At a Los Angeles hospital, Harriet (disguised as a nun) and the girls from the New York park come to comfort him in what they believe to be his last moments. Fritz, after reciting the speech he used to pick up the girls from New York, suddenly becomes revitalized and has another orgy with the trio of girls while Harriet watches in astonishment.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: R. Crumb was still a teenager when he made the character Fritz the Cat for self-published comics magazines he made with his older brother Charles. The character first appeared to a wider public in Harvey Kurtzman's humor magazine "Help!" in 1965. The strips place anthropomorphic characters—normally associated with children's comics—in stories with drugs, sex, and other adult-oriented content. Crumb left his wife in 1967 and moved to San Francisco, where he took part in the counterculture and indulged in drugs such as LSD. He had countercultural strips published in underground periodicals and in 1968 published the first issue of "Zap Comix". Crumb's cartoons became progressively more transgressive, sexually explicit, and violent, and Crumb became the center of the burgeoning underground comix movement. Fritz became one of Crumb's best-known creations, particularly outside the counterculture.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Ralph Bakshi majored in cartooning at the High School of Art and Design. He learned his trade at the Terrytoons studio in New York City, where he spent ten years animating characters such as Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, and Deputy Dawg. At the age of 29, Bakshi was hired to head the animation division of Paramount Pictures as both writer and director, where he produced four experimental short films before the studio closed in 1967. With producer Steve Krantz, Bakshi founded his own studio, Bakshi Productions. In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca-Cola and "Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse", a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica. However, Bakshi was uninterested in the kind of animation he was producing, and wanted to produce something personal. Bakshi soon developed "Heavy Traffic", a tale of inner-city street life. However, Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund the film because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: While browsing the East Side Book Store on St. Mark's Place, Bakshi came across a copy of "R. Crumb's Fritz the Cat" (1969). Impressed by Crumb's sharp satire, Bakshi purchased the book and suggested to Krantz that it would work as a film. Bakshi was interested in directing the film because he felt that Crumb's work was the closest to his own. Krantz arranged a meeting with Crumb, during which Bakshi showed Crumb drawings that had been created as the result of Bakshi attempting to learn Crumb's style to prove that he could translate the look of Crumb's artwork to animation. Impressed by Bakshi's tenacity, Crumb lent him one of his sketchbooks as a reference.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: As Krantz began to prepare the paperwork, preparation began on a pitch presentation for potential studios, including a poster-sized painted cel setup featuring the strip's cast against a traced photo background, as Bakshi intended the film to appear. In spite of Crumb's enthusiasm, he was unsure about the film's production, and refused to sign the contract. Cartoonist Vaughn Bodé warned Bakshi against working with Crumb, describing him as "slick". Bakshi later agreed with Bodé's assessment, calling Crumb "one of the slickest hustlers you'll ever see in your life". Krantz sent Bakshi to San Francisco, where Bakshi stayed with Crumb and his wife Dana in an attempt to persuade Crumb to sign the contract. After a week, Crumb left, leaving the film's production status uncertain, but Dana had power of attorney and signed the contract. Crumb received US$50,000, which was delivered throughout different phases of the production, in addition to ten percent of Krantz's take.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: With the rights to the character, Krantz and Bakshi set out to find a distributor, but Krantz states that "every major distributor turned it down" and that studios were unenthusiastic about producing an independent animated film due to the prominence of Walt Disney Productions in animation, in addition to the fact that "Fritz the Cat" would be a very different animated film from what had previously been made.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In the spring of 1970, Warner Bros. agreed to fund and distribute the film. The Harlem sequences were the first to be completed. Krantz intended to release these scenes as a 15-minute short if the film's funding was pulled; Bakshi was nevertheless determined to complete the film as a feature. Late in November, Bakshi and Krantz screened a presentation reel for the studio with this sequence, pencil tests, and shots of Bakshi's storyboards. Bakshi stated, "You should have seen their faces in the screening room when I first screened a bit of "Fritz". I'll remember their faces until I die. One of them left the room. Holy hell, you should have seen his face. 'Shut "up", Frank! This is not the movie you're allowed to make!' And I said, Bullshit, I just made it."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film's budget is disputed. In 1972, "The Hollywood Reporter" stated that "Fritz the Cat" recouped its costs in four months following its release. A year later the magazine reported that the film grossed $30 million worldwide and was produced on a budget of $1.3 million. In 1993, director Ralph Bakshi said ""Fritz the Cat", to me, was an enormous budget – at $850,000 – compared to my Terrytoon budgets." In an interview published in 1980, Bakshi stated "We made the film for $700,000. Complete".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Warner executives wanted the sexual content toned down, and to cast big names for the voices. Bakshi refused, and Warner pulled their funding from the film, leading Krantz to seek funds elsewhere. This led to a deal with Jerry Gross, the owner of Cinemation Industries, a distributor specializing in exploitation films. Although Bakshi did not have enough time to pitch the film, Gross agreed to fund its production and distribute it, believing that it would fit in with his grindhouse slate. Further financing came from Saul Zaentz, who agreed to distribute the soundtrack album on his Fantasy Records label.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Bakshi was initially reluctant to direct "Fritz the Cat" because he had spent years working on animated productions featuring animal characters and wanted to make films focusing on human characters. He became interested in working on the film because he loved Crumb's work and considered him a "total genius". During the development of the film, Bakshi says that he "started to get giddy" when he "suddenly was able to get a pig that was a cop, and this particular other pig was Jewish, and I thought, 'Oh my God—a Jewish pig?' These were major steps forward, because in the initial "Heckle and Jeckle" for Terrytoons, they were two black guys running around. Which was hysterically funny and, I think, great—like Uncle Remus stuff. But they didn't play down south, and they had to change two black crows to two Englishmen. And I always told him that the black crows were funnier. So it was a slow awakening."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In his notes to animator Cosmo Anzilotti, Bakshi is precise, and even specifies that the crows smoked marijuana rather than tobacco. Bakshi states that "The weed had to read on screen. It's an important character detail." The film's opening sequence sets the satirical tone of the film. The setting of the story's period is not only established by a title, but also by a voiceover by Bakshi playing a character giving his account of the 1960s: "happy times, heavy times". The film's opening dialogue, by three construction workers on their lunch break, establishes many of the themes discussed in the film, including drug use, promiscuity, and the social and political climate of the era. When one of the workers urinates off of the scaffold, the film's credits play over a shot of the liquid falling against a black screen. When the credits end, it is shown that the construction worker has urinated on a long-haired hippie with a guitar. Karl F. Cohen writes that the film "is a product of the radical politics of the period. Bakshi's depiction of Fritz's life is colorful, funny, sexist, raw, violent, and outrageous."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Of his direction of the film, Bakshi stated, "My approach to animation as a director is live action. I don't approach it in the traditional animation ways. None of our characters get up and sing, because that's not the type of picture I'm trying to do. I want people to believe my characters are real, and it's hard to believe they're real if they start walking down the street singing." Bakshi wanted the film to be the antithesis of any animated film produced by the Walt Disney Company. Accordingly, "Fritz the Cat" includes two satirical references to Disney. In one scene, silhouettes of Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck, and Donald Duck are shown cheering on the United States Air Force as it drops napalm on a black neighborhood during a riot. Another scene features a reference to the "Pink Elephants on Parade" sequence from "Dumbo". A sequence of the camera panning across a garbage heap in an abandoned lot in Harlem sets up a visual device which recurs in "Hey Good Lookin'".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The original screenplay consisted mostly of dialogue and featured only a few changes from Crumb's stories. The script and storyboards went largely unused in favor of more experimental storytelling techniques. Bakshi said, "I don't like to jump ahead on my films. The way you feel about a film on Day One, you may not feel the same way forty weeks down the road. Characters grow, so I wanted to have the option to change things, and strengthen my characters  ... It was sort of a stream of consciousness, and a learning process for myself." Bakshi wrote the characters without feral animal behavior to lend the material greater realism.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The first part of the film's plot was adapted from a self-titled story published in a 1968 issue of "R. Crumb's Head Comix", while the second part is derived from "Fritz Bugs Out", which was serialized in the February to October 1968 issues of "Cavalier", and the final part of the story contains elements of "Fritz the No-Good", first published in the September/October 1968 issue of "Cavalier". The last half of the film makes a major departure from Crumb's work. Animation historian Michael Barrier describes this section of the film as being "much grimmer than Crumb's stories past that point, and far more violent." Bakshi stated that he deviated from the comics because he felt that the strips lacked depth:


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: It was cute, it was sweet, but there was nowhere to put it. That's why Crumb hates the picture, because I slipped a couple of things in there that he despises, like the rabbis—the pure Jewish stuff. Fritz can't hold that kind of commentary. Winston is 'just a typical Jewish broad from Brooklyn'.  ... [The strip] was cute and well-done, but there was nothing that had that much depth.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Bakshi's unwillingness to use anthropomorphic characters that behaved like feral animals led him to rewrite a scene in "Fritz Bugs Out" where Duke saves Fritz's life by flying while holding Fritz; in the film, Duke grabs a railing before the car crashes into the river, a solution that Bakshi wasn't entirely satisfied with, but prevented him from having to use any feral animal behavior in that scene.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In the film, there are two characters named "Winston" – one appears at the beginning and end of the film, the other is Fritz's girlfriend Winston Schwartz. Michael Barrier notes that Winston Schwartz (who appears prominently in "Fritz Bugs Out" and "Fritz the No-Good") never has a proper introduction in Bakshi's film, and interprets the naming of a separate character as Bakshi's attempt to reconcile this; however, the two characters look and sound nothing alike. Bakshi intended to end the film with Fritz's death, but Krantz objected to this ending, and Bakshi eventually changed it to the final ending.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film's voice cast includes Skip Hinnant, Rosetta LeNoire, John McCurry, Judy Engles, and comic book distributor/convention organizer Phil Seuling. Hinnant, who would become known as a featured performer on "The Electric Company", was cast because he "had such a naturally phony voice", according to Bakshi. Bakshi and Seuling improvised their dialogue as comically inept pig officers; Bakshi enjoyed working as a voice actor and later went on to provide voice roles for some of his other films. Bakshi re-created the voice he did in this film for the part of a storm trooper in his 1977 animated science fiction film "Wizards".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Some scenes used documentary recordings which were made by Bakshi and edited to fit the scene; these were used because Bakshi wanted the film to "feel real". According to Bakshi, "I made tons and tons of tapes. ... When I went to have the film mixed, the sound engineers gave me all kinds of crap about the tracks not being professionally recorded; they didn't even want to mix the noise of bottles breaking in the background, street noise, tape hiss, all kinds of shit. They said it was unprofessional, but I didn't care." Although the sound designers insisted that Bakshi needed to re-record the dialogue in the studio, Bakshi refused to relent.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Almost all of the film's dialogue, except for that of a few of the main characters, was recorded entirely on the streets of New York City. For the film's opening sequence, Bakshi paid two construction workers US$50 each, and drank Scotch whisky with them, recording the conversation. In the Washington Square Park sequence, only Skip Hinnant was a professional actor; Fritz's friends were voiced by young males Bakshi found in the park. One of the sequences that was not based upon Crumb's comics involved a comic chase through a synagogue full of praying rabbis. For the voices of the rabbis, Bakshi used a documentary recording of his father and uncles. This scene continued to have a personal significance for Bakshi after his father and uncle died. Bakshi states, "Thank God I have their voices. I have my dad and family praying. It's so nice to hear now." Bakshi also went to a Harlem bar with a tape recorder and spent hours talking to black patrons, getting drunk with them as he asked them questions.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film's score was composed by Ed Bogas and Ray Shanklin. The soundtrack was released by Fantasy Records and Ampex Tapes, along with the single, "You're the Only Girl" b/w "Winston". The film also featured songs by Charles Earland, Cal Tjader, Bo Diddley, and Billie Holiday. Bakshi bought the rights to use Holiday's performance of the song "Yesterdays" for $35.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Many of the animators who worked on the film were professionals that Bakshi had previously worked with at Terrytoons, including Jim Tyer, John Gentilella, Nick Tafuri, Martin Taras, Larry Riley, and Cliff Augustine. According to Bakshi, it took quite a long time to assemble the right staff. Those who entered with a smirk, "wanting to be very dirty and draw filthy pictures", did not stay very long, and neither did those with a low tolerance for vulgarity. One cartoonist refused to draw a black crow shooting a pig policeman. Two female animators quit; one because she could not bring herself to tell her children what she did for a living, the other because she refused to draw exposed breasts.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In order to save money by eliminating the need for model sheets, Bakshi let animator John Sparey draw some of the first sequences of Fritz. Bakshi states that he knew that "Sparey would execute them beautifully." Poses from his sequences were photocopied and handed out to the rest of the crew. The film was produced almost entirely without pencil tests. According to Bakshi, "We pencil tested I'd say a thousand feet [of footage], tops. ... We do a major feature without pencil tests—that's tough. The timing falls off. I can always tell an animator to draw it better, and I know if the attitude of the characters is right, but the timing you really can't see." Bakshi had to judge the timing of the animation simply by flipping an animator's drawings in his hand, until he could see the completed animation on the screen. Veteran Warner Bros. animator Ted Bonnicksen was incredibly dedicated to his work on the film, to the point where he completed his animation for the synagogue sequence while suffering from leukemia, and would take the scenes home at night to work on them.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In May 1971, Bakshi moved his studio to Los Angeles to hire additional animators there. Some animators, including Rod Scribner, Dick Lundy, Virgil Walter Ross, Norman McCabe, and John Sparey, welcomed Bakshi's presence, and felt that "Fritz the Cat" would bring diversity to the animation industry. Other animators disliked Bakshi's presence, and placed an advertisement in "The Hollywood Reporter", stating that Bakshi's "filth" was unwelcome in California. According to Bakshi, "I didn't know who these guys were because I was from New York, so I threw the ad away." However, Bakshi found the negative reaction to the film from his peers to be disheartening.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Because it was cheaper for Ira Turek to trace photographs to create the backgrounds, Bakshi and Johnnie Vita walked around the streets of the Lower East Side, Washington Square Park, Chinatown and Harlem to take moody snapshots. Turek inked the outlines of these photographs onto cels with a Rapidograph, the technical pen preferred by Crumb, giving the film's backgrounds stylized realism that had never been portrayed in animation before. After Turek completed a background drawing in ink on an animation cel, the drawing would be photocopied onto watercolor paper for Vita and onto animation paper for use in matching the characters to the backgrounds. When Vita finished his painting, Turek's original drawing, on the cel, would be placed over the watercolor, obscuring the photocopy lines on the painting. However, not every background was taken from live-action sources. The tones of the watercolor backgrounds were influenced by the "Ash Can style" of painters, which includes George Luks and John French Sloan. The film also used bent and fisheye camera perspectives in order to replicate the way the film's hippies and hoodlums viewed the city.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: "Fritz" received an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (equivalent to the modern NC-17 rating), becoming the first American animated film to receive such a rating. However, at the time, the rating was associated with more arthouse fare, and since the recently released Melvin Van Peebles film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song", which was released through Cinemation, had received both an X rating and considerable success, the distributor hoped that "Fritz the Cat" would be even more profitable. Producer Krantz stated that the film lost playdates due to the rating, and 30 American newspapers rejected display advertisements for it or refused to give it editorial publicity. The film's limited screenings led Cinemation to exploit the film's content in its promotion of the film, advertising it as containing "90 minutes of violence, excitement, and SEX ... he's X-rated and animated!" According to Ralph Bakshi, "We almost didn't deliver the picture, because of the exploitation of it."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Cinemation's advertising style and the film's rating led many to believe that "Fritz the Cat" was a pornographic film. When it was introduced as such at a showing at the University of Southern California, Bakshi stated firmly, ""Fritz the Cat" is not pornographic." In May 1972, "Variety" reported that Krantz had appealed the X rating, saying "Animals having sex isn't pornography." The MPAA refused to hear the appeal. The misconceptions about the film's content were eventually cleared up when it received praise from "Rolling Stone" and "The New York Times", and the film was accepted into the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Bakshi later stated, "Now they do as much on "The Simpsons" as I got an X rating for "Fritz the Cat"."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Before the film's release, American distributors attempted to cash in on the publicity garnered from the rating by rushing out dubbed versions of two other adult animated films from Japan, both of which featured an X rating in their advertising material: "Senya ichiya monogatari" and "Kureopatora", re-titled "A Thousand and One Nights" and "Cleopatra: Queen of Sex". However, neither film was actually submitted to the MPAA, and it is not likely that either feature would have received an X rating. The film "Down and Dirty Duck" was promoted with an X rating, but likewise had not been submitted to the MPAA. The French-Belgian animated film "" initially was released with an X rating in a subtitled version, but a dubbed version released in 1979 received an R rating.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: "Fritz the Cat" opened on April 12, 1972, in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Although the film only had a limited release, it went on to become a worldwide hit. Against its $700,000 budget, it grossed $25 million in the United States and over $90 million worldwide, and was at that point the most successful independent animated feature of all time. The film earned $4.7 million in theater rentals in North America.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In Michael Barrier's 1972 article on its production, Bakshi gives accounts of two screenings of the film. Of the reactions to the film by audiences at a preview screening in Los Angeles, Bakshi stated, "They forget it's animation. They treat it like a film.  ... This is the real thing, to get people to take animation seriously." Bakshi was also present at a showing of the film at the Museum of Modern Art and remembers "Some guy asked me why I was against the revolution. The point is, animation was making people get up off their asses and get mad."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film also sparked negative reactions because of its content. "A lot of people got freaked out", says Bakshi. "The people in charge of the power structure, the people in charge of magazines and the people going to work in the morning who loved Disney and Norman Rockwell, thought I was a pornographer, and they made things very difficult for me. The younger people, the people who could take new ideas, were the people I was addressing. I wasn't addressing the whole world. To those people who loved it, it was a huge hit, and everyone else wanted to kill me."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Critical reaction was mixed, but generally positive. Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote that the film is "constantly funny  ... [There's] something to offend just about everyone." "New York" magazine film critic Judith Crist reviewed the film as "a gloriously funny, brilliantly pointed, and superbly executed entertainment ... [whose] target is ... the muddle-headed radical chicks and slicks of the sixties", and that it "should change the face of the animated cartoon forever". Paul Sargent Clark in "The Hollywood Reporter" called the film "powerful and audacious", and "Newsweek" called it "a harmless, mindless, pro-youth saga calculated to shake up only the box office". "The Wall Street Journal" and "Cue" both gave the film mixed reviews. Thomas Albright of "Rolling Stone" wrote an enthusiastic preview in the December 9, 1971 issue based on seeing thirty minutes of the film, declaring that it was "sure to mark the most important breakthrough in animation since "Yellow Submarine"". But in a review published after its release, Albright recanted his earlier statement and wrote that the visuals were not enough to save the finished product from being a "qualified disaster" due to a "leaden plot" and a "juvenile" script that relied too heavily on tired gags and tasteless ethnic humor.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Lee Beaupre wrote for "The New York Times", "In dismissing the political turbulence and personal quest of the sixties while simultaneously exploiting the sexual freedom sired by that decade, "Fritz the Cat" truly bites the hand that fed it." Film critic Andrew Osmond wrote that the epilogue hurt the film's integrity for "giving Fritz cartoon powers of survival that the film had rejected until then". Patricia Erens found scenes with Jewish stereotypes "vicious and offensive" and stated, "Only the jaundiced eye of director Ralph Bakshi, which denigrates all of the characters, the hero included, makes one reflect on the nature of the attack."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 64%, based on 22 critic reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Fritz the Cat"s gleeful embrace of bad taste can make for a queasy viewing experience, but Ralph Bakshi's idiosyncratic animation brings the satire and style of Robert Crumb's creation to vivid life."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Crumb first saw the film in February 1972, during a visit to Los Angeles with fellow underground cartoonists Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, and Rick Griffin. According to Bakshi, Crumb was dissatisfied with the film. Among his criticisms, he said that he felt that Skip Hinnant was wrong for the voice of Fritz, and said that Bakshi should have voiced the character instead. Crumb later said in an interview that he felt that the film was "really a reflection of Ralph Bakshi's confusion, you know. There's something real repressed about it. In a way, it's more twisted than my stuff. It's really twisted in some kind of weird, unfunny way.  ... I didn't like that sex attitude in it very much. It's like real repressed horniness; he's kind of letting it out compulsively." Crumb also criticized the film's condemnation of the radical left, denouncing Fritz's dialogue in the final sequences of the film, which includes a quote from the Beatles song "The End", as "red-neck and fascistic" and stated, "They put words into his mouth that I never would have had him say."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: Reportedly, Crumb filed a lawsuit to have his name removed from the film's credits. San Francisco copyright attorney Albert L. Morse said that no suit was filed, but an agreement was reached to remove Crumb's name from the credits. However, Crumb's name has remained in the final film since its original theatrical release. Due to his distaste for the film, Crumb had "Fritz the Cat—Superstar" published in "People's Comics" later in 1972, in which a jealous girlfriend kills Fritz with an icepick; he has refused to use the character again, and wrote the filmmakers a letter saying not to use his characters in their films. Crumb later cited the film as "one of those experiences I sort of block out. The last time I saw it was when I was making an appearance at a German art school in the mid-1980s, and I was forced to watch it with the students. It was an excruciating ordeal, a humiliating embarrassment. I recall Victor Moscoso was the only one who warned me 'if you don't stop this film from being made, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life'—and he was right."


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In a 2008 interview, Bakshi referred to Crumb as a "hustler" and stated, "He goes in so many directions that he's hard to pin down. I spoke to him on the phone. We both had the same deal, five percent. They finally sent Crumb the money and not me. Crumb always gets what he wants, including that château of his in France.  ... I have no respect for Crumb. Is he a good artist? Yes, if you want to do the same thing over and over. He should have been my best friend for what I did with "Fritz the Cat". I drew a good picture, and we both made out fine." Bakshi also stated that Crumb threatened to disassociate himself from any cartoonist that worked with Bakshi, which would have hurt their chances at getting work published.


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: In addition to other animated films aimed at adult audiences, the film's success led to the production of a sequel, "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat". Although producer Krantz and voice actor Hinnant returned for the follow-up, Bakshi did not. Instead, "Nine Lives" was directed by animator Robert Taylor, who co-wrote the film with Fred Halliday and Eric Monte. "Nine Lives" was distributed by American International Pictures, and was considered inferior to its predecessor. Both films have been released on DVD in the United States and Canada by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (the owners of the American International Pictures library via Orion Pictures) and the UK by Arrow Films. Bakshi states that he felt constricted using anthropomorphic characters in "Fritz", and focused solely on non-anthropomorphic characters in "Heavy Traffic" and "Hey Good Lookin<nowiki>'</nowiki>", but later used anthropomorphic characters in "Coonskin".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: The film is widely noted in its innovation for featuring content that had not been portrayed in animation before, such as sexuality and violence, and was also, as John Grant writes in his book "Masters of Animation", "the breakthrough movie that opened brand new vistas to the commercial animator in the United States", presenting an "almost disturbingly accurate" portrayal "of a particular stratum of Western society during a particular era, ... as such it has dated very well." The film's subject matter and its satirical approach offered an alternative to the kinds of films that had previously been presented by major animation studios. Michael Barrier described "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic" as "not merely provocative, but highly ambitious". Barrier described the films as an effort "to push beyond what was done in the old cartoons, even while building on their strengths". It is also considered to have paved the way for future animated works for adults, including "The Simpsons", "Family Guy" and "South Park".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: As a result of these innovations, "Fritz" was selected by "Time Out" magazine as the 42nd greatest animated film, ranked at number 51 on the Online Film Critics Society's list of the top 100 greatest animated films of all time, and was placed at number 56 on Channel 4's list of the "100 Greatest Cartoons". Footage from the film was edited into the music video for Guru's 2007 song "State of Clarity".


title: Fritz the Cat (film)

text: "Fritz the Cat" along with "The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat" was released on VHS in 1988 by Warner Home Video through Orion Pictures. In 2001, MGM distributed the film with the sequel on DVD. The film again along with its sequel was released on Blu-ray by Scorpion Releasing and Kino Lorber on October 26, 2021, featuring a new audio commentary by comic artist Stephen R. Bissette and author G. Michael Dobbs.


title: Lemuria

text: Lemuria (), or Limuria, was a continent proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater, theorized to have sunk beneath the Indian Ocean, later appropriated by occultists in supposed accounts of human origins. The theory was discredited with the discovery of plate tectonics and continental drift in the 20th century.


title: Lemuria

text: The hypothesis was proposed as an explanation for the presence of lemur fossils in Madagascar and India but not in Africa or the Middle East. Biologist Ernst Haeckel's suggestion in 1870 that Lemuria could be the ancestral home of mankind caused the hypothesis to move beyond the scope of geology and zoogeography, ensuring its popularity outside of the framework of the scientific community.


title: Lemuria

text: Occultist and founder of theosophy Helena Blavatsky, during the latter part of the 19th century, placed Lemuria in the system of her mystical-religious doctrine, claiming that this continent was the homeland of the human ancestors, whom she called Lemurians. The writings of Blavatsky had a significant impact on Western esotericism, popularizing the myth of Lemuria and its mystical inhabitants.


title: Lemuria

text: Theories about Lemuria became untenable when, in the 1960s, the scientific community accepted Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, presented in 1912, but the idea lived on in the popular imagination, especially in relation to the Theosophist tradition.


title: Lemuria

text: Lemuria was hypothesized as a land bridge, now sunken, which would account for certain discontinuities in biogeography. This idea has been rendered obsolete by modern theories of plate tectonics. Sunken continents such as Zealandia in the Pacific, and Mauritia and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean do exist, but no geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans is known that could have served as a land bridge between continents.


title: Lemuria

text: The idea of Lemuria was later incorporated into the philosophy of Theosophy and has persisted as a theme in pseudoarchaeology and discussions of lost lands. There is a vast fringe literature pertaining to Lemuria and to related concepts such as the Lemurian Fellowship and other things "Lemurian". All share a common belief that a continent existed in what is now either the Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean in ancient times and claim that it became submerged as a result of a geological cataclysm. An important element of the mythology of Lemuria is that it was the location of the emergence of complex knowledge systems that formed the basis for later beliefs.


title: Lemuria

text: The concept of Lemuria was developed in detail by James Churchward, who referred to it as Mu and identified it as a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean. Churchward appropriated this name from Augustus Le Plongeon, who had used the concept of the "Land of Mu" to refer to the imaginary lost continent of Atlantis. Churchward's books included "The Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Men" (1926), "The Children of Mu" (1931), "The Sacred Symbols of Mu" (1933), "Cosmic Forces of Mu" (1934), and "Second Book of Cosmic Forces of Mu" (1935). The relationships between Lemuria/Mu and Atlantis are discussed in detail in the book "Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature" (1954) by L. Sprague de Camp.


title: Lemuria

text: Pseudoarchaeological and New Age beliefs about Lemuria have been promoted in books by fringe author Frank Collin writing under the pen name Frank Joseph in books published by Inner Traditions – Bear & Company. Additional discussion of fantastic speculation about the imaginary land of Lemuria are examples of Lemuria in popular culture.


title: Lemuria

text: In 1864, "The Mammals of Madagascar" by zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater appeared in "The Quarterly Journal of Science". Using a classification he referred to as lemurs, but which included related primate groups, and puzzled by the presence of their fossils in Madagascar and India, but not in Africa or the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent (he was correct in this; though in reality this was Mauritia & the supercontinent Gondwana).


title: Lemuria

text: The anomalies of the mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that... a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans... that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have become amalgamated with... Africa, some... with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which... I should propose the name Lemuria!


title: Lemuria

text: Sclater's theory was hardly unusual for his time; "land bridges", real and imagined, fascinated several of Sclater's contemporaries. Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, also looking at the relationship between animals in India and Madagascar, had suggested a southern continent about two decades before Sclater, but did not give it a name. The acceptance of Darwinism led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolutionary origin. Before the acceptance of continental drift, biologists frequently postulated the existence of submerged land masses to account for populations of land-based species now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists tried to account for striking resemblances of rock formations on different continents. The first systematic attempt was made by Melchior Neumayr in his book "Erdgeschichte" in 1887. Many hypothetical submerged land bridges and continents were proposed during the 19th century to account for the present distribution of species.


title: Lemuria

text: After gaining some acceptance within the scientific community, the concept of Lemuria began to appear in the works of other scholars. Ernst Haeckel, a Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of proto-human "missing links" in the fossil record. According to another source, Haeckel put forward this thesis before Sclater, without using the name "Lemuria".


title: Lemuria

text: The Lemuria theory disappeared completely from conventional scientific consideration after the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift were accepted by the larger scientific community. According to the theory of plate tectonics, Madagascar and India were indeed once part of the same landmass (thus accounting for geological resemblances), but plate movement caused India to break away millions of years ago, and move to its present location. The original landmass, Mauritia & the supercontinent Gondwana prior to that, broke apart; it predominantly didn't sink beneath sea level.


title: Lemuria

text: Some Tamil writers such as Devaneya Pavanar have associated Lemuria with Kumari Kandam, a legendary sunken landmass mentioned in the Tamil literature, claiming that it was the cradle of civilization. A Tamil commentator, Adiyarkunallar, described the dimensions that extended between the Pahruli River and the Kumari River in the Pandyan country that was taken over by the ocean later on.


title: Lemuria

text: Since the 1880s, the concept of Lemuria has had a prominent place in the mythology of Theosophy, Anthroposophy and other occult and New Age beliefs, inspiring many novels, television shows, films, and music. These are not scientific ideas, but fall within the realm of pseudoarchaeology and popular culture.


title: Blake Bortles

text: Robby Blake Bortles (born April 28, 1992) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for eight seasons, primarily with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He played college football at UCF, where he received AAC Offensive Player of the Year honors as a junior and was MVP of the 2014 Fiesta Bowl. Bortles was selected by the Jaguars third overall in the 2014 NFL Draft.


title: Blake Bortles

text: As the Jaguars' starting quarterback from 2014 to 2018, Bortles set franchise records for single-season passing yards and touchdowns in 2015. His most successful season was in 2017 when he helped bring the Jaguars to their first division title and AFC Championship Game appearance since 1999. However, Bortles also led the league in interceptions during 2015 and had a league-high 75 interceptions by the end of his five years with Jacksonville. After being released by the Jaguars in 2018, he spent his final three seasons as a backup for the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, and New Orleans Saints.


title: Blake Bortles

text: Bortles attended Oviedo High School in Oviedo, Florida, where he excelled in football and baseball for the Lions. As a senior, he completed 151 of 233 passes for 2,211 yards with 27 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He finished his high school career with a Seminole County record 5,576 career passing yards and 53 touchdowns.


title: Blake Bortles

text: Labeled a three-star recruit by "Rivals.com", Bortles was listed as the No. 44 pro-style quarterback in his class. Bortles chose UCF over offers from Colorado State, Purdue, Tulane, and Western Kentucky.


title: Blake Bortles

text: Bortles accepted the offer from UCF, which was the first college to offer him a scholarship and was located near his home. He was redshirted as a true freshman in 2010. As a redshirt freshman in 2011, he played in 10 games, completing 75 of 110 passes for 958 yards with six touchdowns and three interceptions. As a sophomore in 2012, he started all 14 games at quarterback. He completed 251 of 399 passes for 3,059 yards with 25 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He also rushed for 285 yards and scored eight touchdowns.


title: Blake Bortles

text: He was the MVP of the 2012 Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl after completing 22 of 32 passes for 271 yards with three touchdowns and 79 rushing yards against the Ball State Cardinals.


title: Blake Bortles

text: In 2013, Bortles led the Knights to the inaugural championship of the American Athletic Conference, earning the league's automatic berth to a BCS bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. Passing for 301 yards and rushing for 93 yards and four touchdowns, Bortles led UCF to an upset of fifth-ranked Baylor, 52–42. Bortles was named the Offensive MVP of the game, which was UCF's first major bowl win in school history. In his final collegiate season, he was 259-of-382 for 3,581 yards, 25 touchdowns, and nine interceptions. He added 87 rushes for 272 yards and six rushing touchdowns.


title: Blake Bortles

text: As a starter from the 2012 and 2013 seasons, Bortles had a 22–5 () record for the Knights. , his career passer rating of 153.9 is the highest for any UCF quarterback with at least 500 pass attempts and he was fourth in career completions, yards, and touchdowns behind Daunte Culpepper, Ryan Schneider, and Darin Hinshaw.


title: Blake Bortles

text: On January 5, 2014, Bortles announced that he would forgo his senior season and enter the 2014 NFL Draft.


title: Blake Bortles

text: On May 8, 2014, at the 2014 NFL Draft, Bortles was chosen in the first round with the third overall pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars. Bortles was the first of an eventual 14 quarterbacks to be drafted.


title: Blake Bortles

text: On June 18, 2014, Bortles signed his rookie contract worth $20.6 million guaranteed for four years with the team.