"don't go easy on them just 'cause they're cute!"

This is a trailer (with subtitles) for the Japanese animated series Cat Shit One.


As one might imagine, it's generated a lot of comments along the lines of "OMG, that's so wrong!" But apart from the characters, it's imagery that is so common in movies and, especially, video games (think Call of Duty or any of the Metal Gear Solid series) that it's otherwise hardly worth mentioning.

So I wonder, how come cute anthropomorphic animals torturing and killing each other is so much more disturbing to so many people than imagery of the same things done by and to actual (or even CGI) human beings?

Just askin'.