Sure, but the issue here is that the default mysql "utf8" encoding is not actually utf8. You can write as many validation layers as you want, but if they are as

Sure, but the issue here is that the default mysql "utf8" encoding is not actually utf8. You can write as many validation layers as you want, but if they are assuming that utf8 actually means utf8, they won't help, and mysql will potentially screw it up when it gets stored.