Child abuse laws “exclude anime” for the same reason animal cruelty laws “exclude lettuce.” Drawings are not children.
Drawings are not real.
Half the goddamn point of saying CSAM instead of CP is to make clear that Bart Simpson doesn’t count. Bart Simpson is not real. It is fundamentally impossible to violate Bart Simpson’s rights, because he doesn’t fucking exist. There is nothing to protect him from. He cannot be harmed. He is imaginary.
This cannot be a controversial statement. Anyone who can’t distinguish fiction from real life has brain problems.
You can’t rape someone in MS Paint. Songs about murder don’t leave a body. If you write about robbing Fort Knox, the gold is still there. We’re not about to arrest Mads Mikkelsen for eating people. It did not happen. It was not real.
If you still want to get mad at people for jerking off to the wrong fantasies, that is an entirely different problem from photographs of child rape.