10 Manga Publishers to Boycott Tokyo Anime Fair

According to Anime News Network

Not sure if they will accomplish anything this way, bu i surely hope so. I mean, manga is another form of art and art shouldn't obey to restrictions.

 

I agree that Bill 156 is extreme and badly worded, but I take issue with this point. Pornography is rightfully restricted to those older than 18 years, as are violent works. Child pornography can arguably be viewed as art, but that has a blanket ban. Not to mention murder-art, which is just plain illegal.

 

But think is, you can't compare pornography to a legit form of art. I know, some people think of pornography as art for whatever reason but it's not. Saying it is art it is as absurd as saying that animal cruelty is art. Manga, cartoon, comics is just another type of drawing it's like mainstream art, i mean no one will censor Guernica that depicts such cruelty or more easy to understand and quite vulgar if you want paintings, whether they are good or not.

Don't get me wrong, i understand what you mean and you do have a point but overprotecting kids where will lead to? I am not saying excess violence or hardcore sexual acts should be easy to obtained in any form by kids but at some point we have to realize that the job of a parent is to talk to their kids, explain them how the world works, we can't expect that a bill will protect them. Not to mention that we live in an era where kids are more exposed to stuff like that and they find out sooner about sex, violence or whatever so forbidding a form of enjoyment, literature and art seems rather ridiculous and we shouldn't underestimate what kids are able to understand and what not.

I hope i am making some sense here, its just thoughts right out of my head.

Anyway, what i'm hoping for is that the bill will eventually be revised, although i doubt it, and will not be as strict.

 

You've let in a loophole. You initially stated that art shouldn't be restricted, but now you've said that pornography isn't art, and thus can be restricted, which is essentially what the bill is doing. It takes the semi-pornographic anime (which there have been a lot of), and restricts them. You've also stated animal cruelty isn't art. Suddenly everything depicting animal cruelty can be restricted. 156 has done a similar thing, and stated that glorifying violence, sex and criminal activities is not art. They then restrict it. It's a slippery slope, and once you start restricting some things, it becomes harder to defend against it.

You see, they're not afraid of the youth finding out about the activities depicted; they're afraid of the activities being glorified, inspiring youths to imitate. That's where the argument of restricting them comes in. It's not about protecting the innocent eyes and ears of the youths; it's about protecting the mindset of the youths. They're allowed to know about sex and violence, but they shouldn't link it to entertainment or fun.

At least, that's the perspective of the government.

 

You do have a point but what i'm trying to say is that in the case of pornography there is no artistic value, there's only one reason for it to exist, while the depiction of sex scenes, whether those are of rapes, homosexual (and i am emphasizing this because of the negative comments of the government towards homosexuals) sex scenes or anything else serve the purpose of a story. The bill, the way it is put together can prohibit any kind of sexual depiction that the government doesn't like and it doesn't even have to be something as vulgar as child pornography (example references of the government towards homosexuals as if they are some kind of disease) Imagine what they can do now to simple scenes showing a partially naked body. Take for example Naruto's "Sexy No Jutsu" scenes where we can pretty much see almost everything but is basically is nothing too explicit. They could as well say that it glorifies or whatever the image of the woman body and ban it or whatever. And funny thing is, that this is the occasion with many female characters. Girls from Soul Eater, One Piece and so on.

There's a difference between pornography and depiction of sex. In a story(or any form of art), whether that is in a manga, anime, movie or book form the various sex parts no matter how "hard" they might be, they serve a purpose, whether that is to progress/tell a story or to express feelings/ideas of the artist/writer whatever about this matter. While porn is just this, porn. I do support the idea of prohibiting child pornography but the bill is insane when it states this:

So their only problem is manga and anime? You can go buy as many porn magazines as you want, read about suicides, murders and so on on books and watch then on tv but you shouldn't read/ see such things in comics. No no. By this standard they should as well ban books like Dostoevsky's "Crime and punishment" with the narration of so many murders. If this isn't crazy then i don't know what it is.

Partially i understand what they tried to do but they didn't do it right and most important this whole bill screams hypocrisy when it comes from this person:

Spoiler

Source: Kotaku

Also this

 

How do you decide whether depicted sex is porn or not? Pick an Ero-ge. You'll see sex scenes, certainly. You could argue that they're important development of the characters, or you could say that they're nothing but smut. Intent is arguable, and porn cannot be easily distinguished from art.

You've drawn your line at 'Sex scenes that have no purpose'. They've drawn their line at 'overly erotic poses that have no purpose'. People can argue purpose back and forth all day. Are those panty shots necessary, or just gratuitous panty shots? Allow through Naruto's Sexy no Jutsu and you allow through an anime made up entirely of nude girls and smoke.

So how do you separate 'these people love each other' from porn? Take the Hentai Doujin RE-TAKE of Evangelion. Great Doujin, reached acclaim in the fandom, wraps up the plot ends and has fairly good characterisation. Also has a few gratuitous sex scenes. Are they to help the plot, or to provide sex? How about any Hentai? Most of them have a paper-thin plot, but even so, a plot. You can't separate porn and art so easily.

I think the argument is that manga/anime glorifies it more than other mediums do. Ideally, they should censor everything, or nothing at all. However if that serves to be impractical, they must start with the most important aspects first: Namely the manga and anime.

 

I'm kinda worried about this. For one thing, I've heard that one of the things they've tried to ban is depiction of school uniforms.

 

Okay that's just stupid beyond belief. I doubt that is true because it'd make it almost impossible to write a manga or anime that is based in school and schools are a very common setting in manga and anime.

 

Interesting. To be honest i have never watched any of this kind of anime, be it Hentai, ecchi, pantsu, yaoi or whatever. Never found any interest in it so i can't say whether or not sex plays a role and i admit that i'm not the most suitable person to talk. Thing is, that all of those categories, or at least most of them and most important Hentai serve merely as porn, there's no deny (and one of the reasons is the law that forbids the depiction of penis in real porn and in any kind of media in general.) I believe there's a difference in the depiction of a human body be it naked or half naked and its pornographic use. When you see Niche's naked sister in Letter bee you don't think of it as porn, it is just a naked woman who lives in a cave and doesn't wear clothes, while a naked man or woman who appears in an genre created for the reason of pornographic use is obviously there to stimulate those reading/watching.

See the difference? The bill now can forbid the depiction of naked bodies or any so called stimulating images even if they have really nothing vulgar. They may thing that this or that violent or sexy image can cause problems but someone else might thing different. Personally i find it ridiculous, since the human body is our part, it is who we are, why hide it when nothing "wrong" is depicted? But then again art should be free, because artists do that thing, they express ideas. I understand what you mean but since there is already a law that prohibits young people from getting harmful material this one is crazy.

As for manga and anime glorifying certain images -aside from the fact that this term could be used for any possible manga/anime ever created for a variety of reasons, be it exorcists in D. Gray - Man because they glorify the battle of God vs Satan, Dragon Ball for glorifying the human strength and so on- i could say the same for any porn magazine that uses photoshop to enlarge certain parts of a human body and edit it in a way that has nothing to do with reality. Yet, once again the current bill doesn't care much about real life images of porn and violence :

Yes, kids and teenagers have better access to comics and cartoon so from a point of view it makes sense to "attack" those media that glorify certain images but we live in an era in which pretty much everyone who wants, can find access to the internet and watch whatever he likes. Finally this "glorify/exaggerate" thing is pointless because pretty much that is the point with cartoons, you just let your fantasy go wild. If you believe what you see is plausible ( i hope i made good use of the word here, sorry if it doesn't make sense) and possible and repeat those acts, then that is your problem first.

@Umiyuri Papaeyra: Actually they pretty much said that they won't allow depiction of romance in school or something in these lines. Well, guess what. It happens in real life and oh! There goes a whole genre of school themed anime!

 

What about all of ecchi anime though? Panty shots galore, close ups of jiggling breasts, swimsuits, etc. All of which is frequent and placed in there purely for sexual appeal. That's essentially soft porn.

One of my favourite visual novels is an H-game: Saya no Uta. The plot and characterisation is great, and (most) sex scenes don't feel particularly out of place.

Naked body≠Sexual content. I've seen more sexual content in anime with fully clothed characters than I have with naked ones. Hopefully with the bill, they'll be judicious in deciding. It's difficult to word a law that allows for characters to be completely nude, but not for gratuitous camera angles and focus.

They mean exaggerate or glorify the activity of pseudo sexual acts between close relatives whose marriage would be illegal, not exaggerated scenes in general.

They can find what they like online (although they're attempting to censor that too), but that's not the same as being exposed to it regularly through manga and anime. It's not a matter of them seeing a murder in manga, and then imitating it, it's a matter of them seeing many murders in manga, and getting desensitised to them. Calvin explains it rather nicely.

One mangaka was told not to set her series in a school, or include school uniforms.