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[Irond Bill 156] - The Japanese Anime, Manga, and Video Game Holocaust
Posts
look - you're saying that you see no harm to incest or pedophelia or rape cartoons, and you have no problems with the kinds of creepers who obsessively go in for that sort of thing
i understand this. this is a statement that appears to be central to your personal identity.
but it seems that a sizable number of japanese people disagree - enough so that a politican can make this a central campaign element.
and these people, apparently, would like to see these cartoons removed from general stores to specialty stores that can only be accessed by adult creepers
it is likely that they do not want to see their children grow into the types of adult creepers who would purchase rape animes, and they hope that limiting access to these materials might reduce the possibilities.
now, in my opinion, it's unfortunate that the broad concepts of homosexuality is lumped in with these other deviancies in the minds of the japanese public, but i guess it also doesn't really frustrate me that japanese parents want more control over what their kids are exposed to.
if there really are enough creepers to keep a market open for rape cartoons, then there will be producers and specialty stores and exports for your consumption. they don't need to be sneaked in with the kiddie cartoons.
The biggest difference with the addition that I'm noticing is the "unjustifiably glorify or exaggerate" part, and it doesn't even sound like that big of a difference.
Which doesn't sound too bad to me, it's a bit vague but even with that vagueness I can't say I'm overly concerned anyways. There's silliness present in the bill but I can't say it's the sort of silliness that would make me stand up in rage. Or even sit down in rage. Heck, in the absolute worst case scenario the bill only affects the Tokyo region anyways so most companies would find ways around that I'm sure.
It definitely would be nice to see a non summarized version of the bill, the summaries tend to raise lots of questions Like for example in that link you gave I am a little concerned about #3 since the wording is really awkward to the point that I can interpret it in many different ways and it would be nice to have it clarified, though I suspect the correct interpretation would be that it punishes companies that don't label their stuff correctly. It would be really helpful to see the full language though since that's mostly a guess on my part based on what the law is trying to accomplish.
(On a side note I am actually more concerned about #7 on that link than anything, the fact that parents have to justify why they would want to remove cell phone filtering for their kids sounds a bit unsettling, though I'll definitely admit I don't have much of an idea how different the situation is over there).
That last point did seem unusual, basically make sure it stays filtered by making it just enough of a pain to get unfiltered that you wouldn't bother.
Yea I agree though, overall it doesn't sound like the doom and gloom most places make it up to be. The current law certainly doesn't seem to be held to hard and fast so we'll have to see how this one is handled when it comes into place.
I think what he's trying to get at is that it would be the equivalent of, say, banning a Grocery store from carrying beer, wine and other assorted hard drinks if children can enter the store
Yes, I have no problem with all that rape stuff which is ALREADY in adult only sections and away from children. Why, Will, do you think stuff like bondage porn should be outright outlawed?
It is especially telling that Japan ranks so low on the child pornography list. There are a huge list of other problems pervading that culture, including subway groping, but that is completely unrelated to the matter at hand, just like how you discussing porn is completely unrelated to the matter at hand. Please stay on the topic of censoring non-porn materials.
Please cite where a sizable number of Japanese people agree with this bill. From what I've read, this bill was defeated before and was pushed through extremely quickly. It was not exactly a campaign element and more of the fact that the youth don't vote. There is a pretty large write-in campaign against this bill and the Prime Minister himself even displayed dissatisfaction with its passage.
Besides, even given your proposition that people agree with his office about how old women are sinners by living, how the Rape of Nanking never happened, how mountains are eating our children, and how homosexuality is wrong, it doesn't make it right. Things like Prop 8 and Joe Arpaio deserve to be mocked and argued against, not argued for on the thinnest of logic.
which many locales do
including my entire state!
Indeed.
To point: If this was just about drawn and animated porno, I don't think we'd see publishing houses telling their authors "Yeah, you can't have school uniforms in your romance manga anymore"
Or see major publishers like Shueisha (do they even publish adult materials? I'm only familiar with the Jump line of manga) or Kadokawa Shoten boycotting anything to do with Tokyo.
1) you don't like the potential expansion of what is considered inappropriate for kids
2) you don't like the really objectionable stuff being removed from general stores to specialty stores
3) you don't like this particular politician
i was addressing your objection number 2 in my post, and your response seems to be "olol but what about everything else"
To be fair that school uniform line came from Sankaku Complex. It's a site that's basically yellow journalism mixed with porn. I'm not sure if I'd even give it a grain of salt without seeing another source reporting on the same matter.
The overall reaction online to the bill is more probably doom-saying than necessary. I have read that much of the criticism from publishers/creators toward this bill is because they had very little input in it. The added specific restriction to these mediums doesn't help either.
I think you're right in that we'll have to see how it plays out when it's in place (or the responses that publishers will take in the coming months).
Irond: What every keeps trying to get at is that the wording of the bill makes it so that it isn't solely restricted to "Tentacle Screw 2040: Purple Tentacle's Nastytime Boogaloo." What people (and, as shown by several publishers reactions) are worried about is that even what stories you and I would consider benign are put at risk thanks to the shite wording of the law.
Again, we've already seen the chilling effect happen with at least one publisher who told one of their authors (that we know of; I would imagine it was a company wide edict) that certain restrictions would now be put in place on what they will allow to be published because of the law's passing.
And, personally, I don't think a chilling effect on speech is rarely, if ever, good
The really objectionable stuff had already been pushed to adult-only stores by previously established law. The supposed target of this bill is non-pornographic works that may include rape, incest, or homosexuality. And given that Japan has quite a low rate of child pornography when compared to other countries, I'm fine with allowing works about what some would consider immoral themes in order to preserve the freedom of speech. I believe that you can disagree with the content while agreeing with the right to publish that content.
As has been already said, the bill not only removes the above, it has pressured publishers to refuse works that contain school uniforms and homosexual romance.
well, here's the original tweet in question:
http://twitter.com/#!/shoko_takaku/status/13827585075052544
I can't read it, but Google Translate reads it as
Sankaku translated it as:
the other "Boys Love" (Example: Gravitation, which to my knowledge isn't explicit) author mentioned in the article:
I would figure, despite the rather... hard time that any automated translator has with Japanese, that their translations weren't too far off.
You can, however, read magazines on the stand, generally including porn.
And yes, censorship of manga that aren't meant to be necessarily adult is a big fucking deal because of all the perfectly legit series that happen to depict a titty or a sex scene somewhere. Sure it gets a lot of the fucking creepy stuff but it also takes a ton of legitimately good material with it. Even the original run of Dragonball could, in theory, be taken off of shelves depending on how they implement this.
EDIT I should also here note that you guys really all should read the rest of the bill because it fucks with a lot more than anime and manga The scariest shit is the almost mandatory internet filters for minors.
http://dankanemitsu.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/the-governor-strikes-again-gays-deficient-and-bill-opponents-need-christian-morals/
EDIT: added the last line in the quote to drive the point right on home
if the law is not an actual censoring of anything and a final byproduct is "a chilling effect on speech" regarding sniggering and erotic portrayals of pedophelia, rape or incest as marketed to japanese children and by proxy american weeaboos, then i guess i find myself indifferent to this effect.
adult titles are exempt
what is damning about this again?
Why?
Why must you take my Smegma Princess Tentacle Loli Chronicles from me?
I have a tumblr.
Check it out.
Yeah, it has occasional HORRIBLY GRAPHIC moments, but the story is good, and the artwork is haunting.
Far as I know existing titles won't be grandfathered in.
And even if that wasn't the case, I'm pretty sure Berserk wouldn't be affected by the law since it'd take a real nutcase to argue that the depictions of rape in the manga are glorifying it. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Would it fall into the "Exaggerated" aspect though?
I haven't read Berserk myself, but to my understanding, some of the stuff I've heard about is extremely tragic and disturbing, to say the least.
Some of the God Hand and critters associated are exaggerated and monstrous.
And yeah, there has been a moment of "tentacle rape" or two in the series as a whole.
But those moments are never painted as good in any light, the monsters committing the act are shown to be monsters incapable of humanity and are the enemy in every sense of the word, and the hero, while a violent and somewhat harsh figure, has made it his life mission to destroy these aberrants.
It's like literally the only story that has had that element in it where I wasn't immediately turned off when it showed up. I was revolted and saddened, but I keep reading because I want to see Guts win.
but if the acts are graphic and terrible enough, isn't it reasonable to pass a law restricting it from sale to children?
Absolutely.
Were I to have a little syndalis, I would not want him or her flipping through my collection until they were at LEAST 16, probably 18.
It's worse than most R rated movies at times.
But that said, I think it should not be "ghetto'd" to adult stores. Just top shelf and shrink-wrap them, and require ID to purchase titles like this, or ones with similar levels of ... ahem... mature content.
I really can't get behind that at a Government level, however. Store/Company Policy? Sure. Publisher puts an age rating plus a warning label about content? Hell yes. Parent watching like a hawk over their child's media consumption? Part of the responsibilities of parenting. But a law saying "Person of x-years-old cannot buy this" just does not sit well with me on first amendment grounds. It just begins a series of precedents about what can be regulated further down the road and raw emotion begins to overwhelm critical thinking skills for those making the vote to decide what no longer has full free speech protections.
And while I understand that the first amendment is American law, the principles behind that are something I feel should be respected by any nation and it's laws.
Of course, I am also fine with an ID being needed to buy Grand Theft Auto if you look like a teenager, so this doesn't really feel all that different to me.
If an industry peddling in violent / obscene content is crippled because underage consumers can't buy it without a parents supervision, that industry deserves to die.
The problem is that this bill restricts the sale to adults by forcing them to be sold in adult only stores, which in effect forces the publishers to stop supporting these works.
Imagine having to go to an adult store to buy your comic books. It's terrible for the industry.
Besides getting comic books by mail, where would one go to buy ... say ...a Punisher MAX comic book? A specialty store. You wouldn't find it on Walmart shelves.
If Marvel was told that it can only sell Punisher MAX in an adult only store, they would refuse to publish it.
i don't buy comic books
but if i were into rape-themed comic books, or pedophile-themed comic books, i would be fine purchasing them from an adult store
or a japanese importer, i guess
probably not. back in the 80s, marvel spun off epic and DC spun off Vertigo in order to separate their adult lines from their children's lines.
if there's enough of a market for panty shots of 12 year-old or tentacle rape (and judging by my experience this forum, there absolutely is), publishers will fill it.
the analogy falls apart though because the specialty store selling Punisher Max is not prevented from letting children into the store. It's only a "specialty" store in that it's primary wares are comics, not from the fact that it regulates who can and cannot purchase it's wares.
This aspect of the problems with the bill is why the games industry was so upset with the M-Rated games bill. It wasn't about not selling it to kids, it was the fact that stores would have to completely segregate the games from where minors* could access them and, IIRC, if they could not segregate them then they could not be carried. It makes it harder to sell the titles to adults because it made them harder to search out overall.
This of course doesn't touch on the other raised issue that what the Tokyo government finds objectionable may not actually be inappropriate for the target audience of a piece of media. For example, given the wording of the bill and the prejudices of the regulatory body, could a PG-13 love scene between two men be found to be "harmful" to children, thus prevent it's sale to minors despite the fact that it is not explicit?
*of course, another issue with that kettle of fish meant, near as I could tell, even 17 year olds, despite being allowed under the self-regulatory practices, would be prohibited from exposure and purchase of those titles.
I still don't think you understand WHY I'm defending these materials that are indefensible. Since the topic of comics have been brought up though, I'll link this article by Neil Gaiman:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
You keep bringing up tentacle rape (which ALREADY is adult only and restricted from minors), yet you ignore the fact that publishers are already censoring works that contain such gross icky things as school uniforms.
We've already pointed out this law does nothing at all to deal with actual adult content, nor have any of us here actually defended such materials getting into the hands of minors.
EDIT: In the meantime, B:L could we at least remove the MSPaint Hitler-stache from the Tokyo Governor in the OP? it's not really helping anything here, debate-wise.
This law would effect Beserk?
your citation of the school uniforms thing was an isolated reflexive reaction by a single publisher as far as we know. i'm certain that kids stories revolving around "schoolgirls having adventures" would be perfectly legal - as long as they weren't getting raped or whatever else.
i personally think that adult dudes' obsessions about schoolgirls getting raped is pretty fucking creepy. but if it's legal in japan and they want to restrict the sale of such things to such a degree that they are removing them from kids' comic stores and making them mail-order or adult store-only then i am really 100% fine with that.
Theoretically.
Again, that's the problem with this bill: The wording leaves it extremely vague as to what works would be considered and seems, from what I've read, to hinge on the prejudices of the deciding panel
but the pedotentacle thing is germane. it's not that the law does nothing to deal with adult content - it does! the problem that you have with it is that it might possibly catch some stuff in its net that you don't find to be objectionable (and we would very likely disagree on the objectionability of some of these things)
i mean, there is a lot of really objectionable and weird stuff coming out of japan's animation industry. they are famous for it at this point! if a tokyo politician is pushing to subject it to harsher limits and restrict its sale to adult-only stores, i think that's fine.
i mean, even the weird stuff isn't going to be banned under this law - it's just going to be restricted to adults. and i think that's reasonable.