Tokyo's "Anti-Anime" Bill Sparks Convention Wars

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I propose that there be another Bakumatsu in Tokyo to take down Ishihara, the xenophobic, racist, sexist homophobe. Other series that could be censored are Blade of the Immortal and Vagabond, both incredible series with great writing and drool-worthy artwork.

 

[Arehexes]

I'm with the anime/manga creators. They shouldn't have to answer to the whims of their government about what they can and can't make, especially if its some shotty bill that lets them set unfair classifications. Next thing you know you'll need an ID to purchase Lova Hina and Negima. And Dance at the Vampire Bung would just get ripped apart.

NEVER I love Ken Akamatsu's work(I bet I spelled that wrong). It's the only manga I can read and the over sex thing not bother me cause it's so damn funny lol. But it is kinda bad that a good chunk of anime falls in that trappings of fan service to get more numbers.

 

[Arehexes]

...This won't stop anything, I remember a trigonometry book where some questions where about looking up a womens skirt from a certain angle(One was going up stairs and another was sitting down)....so yeah even math is porno related

 

[Arehexes]

This law is moronic, art is art and you can't censor it.

Good on them for fighting back.

I would hardly call "Erotic depictions of minors" art, I prefer to call it "Sick".

There's a huge difference between erotic depictions of minors and the transformation sequences in Sailor Moon, sir.

Yet people still..."enjoy" them either way >_>;

 

[TheAbominableDan]

Let me start my post by saying that I do not agree with this law and wish it was not a thing. Just putting that out there.

I could be mistaken, in which case call me an idiot and I'll slink away. But this law doesn't prevent things like Evangelion and Berserk from existing. They'll still be there, just not for kids. I could be wrong in my estimates of demographics, but I don't think kids was who the creators of Evangelion were going for. Hell I watched it when I was 14 and didn't get it. I love it now, as an adult.

So kids wouldn't be able to buy it. But that was the case for me growing up here in Canada. I couldn't buy or rent an R rated movie as a child. Now that tended to vary from store to store, but it was true of most of the ones near me in my youth.

Yes it's big censorship and while I wish the sexualizing of young characters in anime would go away this is a bit of an overreach. But this law isn't going to make those series stop existing. Unless the studios decide not to produce them. Which could be an unfortunate side effect of this, but it's not a ban.

Relax people, your DVD collection isn't going to vanish.

 

[ZtH]

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I have absolutely no problem with children around that age purchasing anime with their own money. They are intelligent enough to make their own choices in regards to their entertainment. It actually quite nicely mirrors the current American debate over selling M-rated games to minors and I'm wholly against the planned government-imposed restrictions.

I'm not even really for government restrictions on the anime industry. I'm not a fan of censorship, even light censorship. However, you cannot deny that the industry has...rotted a bit. This is an industry that can produce shows like Eiken and Queen's Blade (both soft-core pornography in everything but classification) for the general market. This is an industry that makes its fortune primarily off the backs of fanservice-vehicles. It's not even the matter of oversexualization of minors that's the biggest problem, it's the lack of restraint the industry uses when using sex or sexualization.

Does this mean I'm against bold experiments like Panty & Stocking? No. Am I against sexualization in general? No, shows like Degrassi and The O.C. have used sex and high schoolers and there is nothing wrong with that. But those types of shows did not regularly feature girls with D or F cups, nor did they take pleasure in finding the most obscenely low shot to show of the girls' panties (keep in mind: "Panty Shot" is used almost exclusively to describe anime).

As for not buying borderline obscene or offensive anime to discourage the creation of similar titles: it doesn't work. With the exception of incredibly offensive, widely reported controversies over particular titles, boycotts don't work, at least not for fanservice titles. It would have the same result as boycotting a brainless popcorn Hollywood action flick, people would still go see it and the producing company would only lose a miniscule fraction of their potential sales. Fanservice, like brainless action, appeals to the lowest common denominator of people, who don't care what they're watching as long as it involves boobs and explosions. Boycotting those types of shows and movies are monetarily pointless, though the aforementioned bad press is one benefit (if it's loud enough).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that anime companies, and the industry as a whole, need to set higher standards for the sexual content in their product. I don't want to involve the government but the industry needs to set tougher standards or at least grow a sense of decency.

The stereotype is that "Anime is just cartoon pornography". The longer that the industry pushes the border of decency, the closer they are to proving that stereotype right.

I think that we are almost entirely in agreement. I think that the industry as a whole has long departed from what could be called "tasteful" sexuality. Unfortunately, government actions to censor the media will destroy too much good media to be redeemed regardless of how much tasteless anime they stop. Really what needs to happen is simply having the industry become committed to releasing high quality products rather than marketing to the lowest common denominator. Also consumers need to raise the standards of the anime that they will buy so that those types of show don't get the funding to continue.

The only other point left to address is the "pushing the border of decency", which I feel is not a bad thing. As mentioned earlier in the thread the rape of Casca in Berserk would quite probably fall under this ban. Casca's rape certainly pushed the boundaries of what would be considered decent, but did so in a tasteful and meaningful way. So rather keeping shows from toeing the line of decency and occasionally crossing over it would be better to promote the tasteful or thoughtful use of sexuality rather than mindless and gratuitous flashes of sexuality.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

I giggled at the preposterousness of the last sentence in the 5th paragraph.

 

[SimuLord]

Whenever I see a list of names I've never heard of in a foreign language (like those anime studios listed in the article) I read it as...

"Ariaga. Ariaga II. Bariaga..."

 

[DTWolfwood]

alright hurt them where it counts, convention revenue!

They should just bust out of Tokyo and move to another province/prefecture/city to publish their works.

p.s. point of note: this bill is localized to ONLY TOKYO, not all of japan.

 

[Dana22]

This law is moronic, art is art and you can't censor it.

Good on them for fighting back.

I would hardly call "Erotic depictions of minors" art, I prefer to call it "Sick".

Censorship is a greater evil.

So moving away from the subject of anime, are you for or against penalization of child pornography ?

The creation of real child pornography should be banned, yes. That legitimately harms real children.

The possession of it is a trickier issue, as it shouldn't really exist in the first place. In an ideal circumstance, if the possessor in question never actually harmed a child, they should go without penalty, and the creators of the "substance" in question would be tracked and shut down. Alas, real life always gets in the way of my idealism. And no one ever agrees with my idea that pedophiles might not always child molestors.

Back to the issue at hand, I always compared lolicon hentai and manga to the situation I call, Baby Skull Necklaces.

Now, say necklaces featuring the skulls of infants were to become very popular. Of course, getting baby skulls would mean alot of baby murdering and tiny grave robbing to supply the demand, and that's bad. But say, instead of going ape on your local maternity ward, they just make fake baby skulls out of painted wood. People get all the baby skull necklaces they want, and babies get to keep their tiny heads. Of course, corpse based jewelry is a very sickening thing, and as much as we wish it would go away, if no actual babies are being harmed, you can't do a thing about it.

The same applies to lolicon. It's essentially drawings on a page or screen, so no REAL child is actually getting sexually abused. Thus, no reason to censor it any more than any other kind of pornography.

Thats a good example and let me take it further by asking: Where you would draw the line that we (the humanity) shouldn't cross ? What about phantom babies and preteen girls, that look real and maybe even react realistically but are made of rubber and what not ? Surely that wouldn't hurt anyone. Or lets take it more into sci-fi realm. Lets say you don't like your neighbor or a politician, what if you could ask a "company" to create a robot (or whatever) copy of this person, and you could do whatever you want to them,
smack the politician with a crowbar until it bleeds artificial blood, rape your teacher etc.

My point is, where do we stop with feeding or fueling someones perversion or deviation or in same cases, mental sickness, as a society ?

 

[John Funk]

Both sides of this debate are freaking out over nothing. This is alarmism at its finest. I have seen THREE articles now on the Escapist making claims about how prolific non-sexualized anime COULD be censored, without any real evidence to back up the idea that they would be attacked. All of this alarmism is predicated on the belief that Japan will go insane and crack down as hard as possible on all anime, which is unlikely.

Even then, this doesn't ban such anime from being sold! It sends it to the back rooms of stores. Would stores stop stocking NGE if it was in the back? No. They certainly didn't stop stocking Red Alert 2 when it was temporarily 'banned' to the back of stores after 9/11. Bottom line is, NGE probably should not be watched by kids in the first place, whether you consider nudity or not.


I guess I just wish the Escapist would show it's a little bit better than other news outlits and stop fearmongering over what could happen until there's hard evidence that it will happen, or at least that the Japanese government is dumb enough to crack down so hard on all "non-sexualized" anime that it destroys its own GDP through lost sales.

We report on it because it's relevant, and there are some very eerie parallels to the California bill about games currently at the SCOTUS.

As far as your other point goes: Yes, it's actually happened before. Some stores and chains will opt to not stock product entirely if it's rated thusly, which means that creators are less likely to produce content that falls under that umbrella.

It's a chilling effect.

 

[D Moness]

We report on it because it's relevant, and there are some very eerie parallels to the California bill about games currently at the SCOTUS.

Yeah problem is that when it is about the gaming bill almost everyone here feels that their hobby is being violated so everyone is up in arms about it.

Now you report about the same kind of bill that has the ability to cripple another kind of entertainment but because there is a lot of hate/dislike for this entertainment there is less cries of outrage. Even people that agree with the law even.

This to me is just being hypocrite. Any way of censorship by a government is bad.

 

[ProtoChimp]

This shit again. Isn't Japan's economy so bad right now that they need the anime and manga industry to survive. *sigh* I'm not worried about this shit. The law is so illogical that it's SURE to fail. Give it a few months and we'll be fine, trust me.

 

[GothmogII]

This law is moronic, art is art and you can't censor it.

Good on them for fighting back.

I would hardly call "Erotic depictions of minors" art, I prefer to call it "Sick".

Censorship is a greater evil.

So moving away from the subject of anime, are you for or against penalization of child pornography ?

The creation of real child pornography should be banned, yes. That legitimately harms real children.

The possession of it is a trickier issue, as it shouldn't really exist in the first place. In an ideal circumstance, if the possessor in question never actually harmed a child, they should go without penalty, and the creators of the "substance" in question would be tracked and shut down. Alas, real life always gets in the way of my idealism. And no one ever agrees with my idea that pedophiles might not always child molestors.

Back to the issue at hand, I always compared lolicon hentai and manga to the situation I call, Baby Skull Necklaces.

Now, say necklaces featuring the skulls of infants were to become very popular. Of course, getting baby skulls would mean alot of baby murdering and tiny grave robbing to supply the demand, and that's bad. But say, instead of going ape on your local maternity ward, they just make fake baby skulls out of painted wood. People get all the baby skull necklaces they want, and babies get to keep their tiny heads. Of course, corpse based jewelry is a very sickening thing, and as much as we wish it would go away, if no actual babies are being harmed, you can't do a thing about it.

The same applies to lolicon. It's essentially drawings on a page or screen, so no REAL child is actually getting sexually abused. Thus, no reason to censor it any more than any other kind of pornography.

Thats a good example and let me take it further by asking: Where you would draw the line that we (the humanity) shouldn't cross ? What about phantom babies and preteen girls, that look real and maybe even react realistically but are made of rubber and what not ? Surely that wouldn't hurt anyone. Or lets take it more into sci-fi realm. Lets say you don't like your neighbor or a politician, what if you could ask a "company" to create a robot (or whatever) copy of this person, and you could do whatever you want to them,
smack the politician with a crowbar until it bleeds artificial blood, rape your teacher etc.

My point is, where do we stop with feeding or fueling someones perversion or deviation or in same cases, mental sickness, as a society ?

You know, it's okay not to agree with those things. You don't have to apply false pretence by implying that you agree with the notion and then dropping on a ton of sarcasm. If you don't like it then say so!

As someone else mentioned in an earlier post: "I don't support censorship...but" and then proceeds to list the various things that, oh actually they -do- support censorship of, but that of course doesn't mean they support censorship in general, no no, these are just the far and few exceptions, otherwise it's totally wrong to ban anything that harms no-one directly. -_-

 

[Helmutye]

This law is moronic, art is art and you can't censor it.

Good on them for fighting back.

I would hardly call "Erotic depictions of minors" art, I prefer to call it "Sick".

Censorship is a greater evil.

So moving away from the subject of anime, are you for or against penalization of child pornography ?

The creation of real child pornography should be banned, yes. That legitimately harms real children.

The possession of it is a trickier issue, as it shouldn't really exist in the first place. In an ideal circumstance, if the possessor in question never actually harmed a child, they should go without penalty, and the creators of the "substance" in question would be tracked and shut down. Alas, real life always gets in the way of my idealism. And no one ever agrees with my idea that pedophiles might not always child molestors.

Back to the issue at hand, I always compared lolicon hentai and manga to the situation I call, Baby Skull Necklaces.

Now, say necklaces featuring the skulls of infants were to become very popular. Of course, getting baby skulls would mean alot of baby murdering and tiny grave robbing to supply the demand, and that's bad. But say, instead of going ape on your local maternity ward, they just make fake baby skulls out of painted wood. People get all the baby skull necklaces they want, and babies get to keep their tiny heads. Of course, corpse based jewelry is a very sickening thing, and as much as we wish it would go away, if no actual babies are being harmed, you can't do a thing about it.

The same applies to lolicon. It's essentially drawings on a page or screen, so no REAL child is actually getting sexually abused. Thus, no reason to censor it any more than any other kind of pornography.

Thats a good example and let me take it further by asking: Where you would draw the line that we (the humanity) shouldn't cross ? What about phantom babies and preteen girls, that look real and maybe even react realistically but are made of rubber and what not ? Surely that wouldn't hurt anyone. Or lets take it more into sci-fi realm. Lets say you don't like your neighbor or a politician, what if you could ask a "company" to create a robot (or whatever) copy of this person, and you could do whatever you want to them,
smack the politician with a crowbar until it bleeds artificial blood, rape your teacher etc.

My point is, where do we stop with feeding or fueling someones perversion or deviation or in same cases, mental sickness, as a society ?

I would argue that it is not up to society to worry about "perversions" unless they actually hurt somebody. People are awfully quick to throw the mental disorder judgment out there, but no behavior, no matter how weird, is considered a disorder by psychologists until it interferes with a person's daily life and/or poses a threat to them or someone else. If a person really gets off on shoes, for example, and bases their entire sexual life around shoes, there is no problem so long as they are not spending themselves poor supporting their fetish, mugging strangers and stealing their shoes, or so long as they themselves do not consider it a problem.

Many societies are going through a pretty strange stage right now as far as pedophilia and child pornography goes. I am with Dana22--as long as no actual children are harmed, what is the basis for making certain images illegal to create or even possess? How is forbidding such things not a blatant violation of free speech? The usual argument by the people who want to forbid such things is to say that fake child pornography encourages people to do things in real life, but there is no real evidence of this. And unless that link can be proven--unless it can be shown that these images actually put real children at risk--it is just puritanical censorship and demonizing, pure and simple.

And consider whether or not our social "norms" are even that normal. Many other societies have had very different views on the sexuality of minors and gone on to be very successful societies. Take the Greeks (Sparta in particular)--did you know that it was normal for adult men to find and have sex with 11 or 12 year old boys? It was a normal part of growing up for them. There are tribes in Africa where a boy is not considered a man until he ingests a certain amount of semen from older men. And even in Europe, it was normal for girls to be married as early as age 12 during the middle ages. All of these societies were/are successful. The people living in them weren't/are not insane. The children who undergo such things in those societies are not being injured--they grow up to be normal members of their community. In their eyes, WE would be considered a little crazy or possibly insane. So arguing that even depicting a minor in a sexual situation will somehow psychologically wound children is pretty stupid when you put it all in perspective. If children are harmed by anything, I think they are harmed by people making them think that they have been damaged and that they are now traumatized.

 

[RvLeshrac]

This law is moronic, art is art and you can't censor it.

Good on them for fighting back.

I would hardly call "Erotic depictions of minors" art, I prefer to call it "Sick".

Censorship is a greater evil.

So moving away from the subject of anime, are you for or against penalization of child pornography ?

The creation of real child pornography should be banned, yes. That legitimately harms real children.

The possession of it is a trickier issue, as it shouldn't really exist in the first place. In an ideal circumstance, if the possessor in question never actually harmed a child, they should go without penalty, and the creators of the "substance" in question would be tracked and shut down. Alas, real life always gets in the way of my idealism. And no one ever agrees with my idea that pedophiles might not always child molestors.

Back to the issue at hand, I always compared lolicon hentai and manga to the situation I call, Baby Skull Necklaces.

Now, say necklaces featuring the skulls of infants were to become very popular. Of course, getting baby skulls would mean alot of baby murdering and tiny grave robbing to supply the demand, and that's bad. But say, instead of going ape on your local maternity ward, they just make fake baby skulls out of painted wood. People get all the baby skull necklaces they want, and babies get to keep their tiny heads. Of course, corpse based jewelry is a very sickening thing, and as much as we wish it would go away, if no actual babies are being harmed, you can't do a thing about it.

The same applies to lolicon. It's essentially drawings on a page or screen, so no REAL child is actually getting sexually abused. Thus, no reason to censor it any more than any other kind of pornography.

Thats a good example and let me take it further by asking: Where you would draw the line that we (the humanity) shouldn't cross ? What about phantom babies and preteen girls, that look real and maybe even react realistically but are made of rubber and what not ? Surely that wouldn't hurt anyone. Or lets take it more into sci-fi realm. Lets say you don't like your neighbor or a politician, what if you could ask a "company" to create a robot (or whatever) copy of this person, and you could do whatever you want to them,
smack the politician with a crowbar until it bleeds artificial blood, rape your teacher etc.

My point is, where do we stop with feeding or fueling someones perversion or deviation or in same cases, mental sickness, as a society ?

You know, it's okay not to agree with those things. You don't have to apply false pretence by implying that you agree with the notion and then dropping on a ton of sarcasm. If you don't like it then say so!

As someone else mentioned in an earlier post: "I don't support censorship...but" and then proceeds to list the various things that, oh actually they -do- support censorship of, but that of course doesn't mean they support censorship in general, no no, these are just the far and few exceptions, otherwise it's totally wrong to ban anything that harms no-one directly. -_-

To put it simply: For society to remain civil and advancing, you can't punish people for *concepts,* you can only punish them for *actions.*

You can't punish someone for thinking about robbing a bank, you can only punish them for putting in the work to rob the bank.

You can't punish someone for thinking about murder, you can only punish them for putting in the work necessary to make it happen.

When you begin to outlaw concepts, it isn't long before someone starts passing laws against things that you enjoy.

If that means paedophiles get virtual-child-pornography, or rapists get virtual-rape-simulators, so be it. We still don't allow them to do the real thing, and they will be punished for it.

 

[Rae Yearnd]

It's hard to defend a media that has too many bra and panty shots to begin with. The core of the problem is we have become accustom to this. Heck I would lose my ___ if some character lost their top because of a slight breeze or splashed with water in a undignified spot on their person. The times of old have changed we aren't bombarded with harems anime like tenchi muyo and ranma 1/2. The market needs to grow up in more than one sense. I agree that government censorship is one of the worst possible solutions to an already bad situation. The Japaneese have already demonized anime since it's conception. What it is built on should be the first thing to change or just flat out disappear. the "Art" of anime should be appreach for what it is, but crude jokes and cheep shots isn't art. We need to take a second or third look at our ourselves and what we buy. Fandom of anime/manga has been pushed, shoved, and kicked in the head so many times that anyone associated with it is a "bad person". Just like other media we need to make intelligent and thoughtful decisions about what the money is really going towards. That said this is a media that appears on syndicated television and new stuff is already in the works for next season or even next year. Many people are paided less than minimum to draw, animate, and getting it in the hands of their produceres to sell it to various companies to get the money to pay the bank and then get paided themselves. I don't know if the practice is still being used in todays economy, but if this is still true than getting money will be even harder now. I think more businesses will be closing their doors for good and effort by those same people would be thrown out with the morning trash.

 

[ZtH]

So after reading through this thread, I have determined the main argument against this bill to be as such:

1) Everybody in this thread has no moral issues with sexual depictions of children.
2) Everybody in this thread actively purchases works with sexual depictions of children and enjoys them due to such content.
3) Everybody in this thread would boycott the Anime industry if it stopped producing the virtual child porn that you guys know and love.

Good thing that I'm not a pedophile like you anime fans. I bet you fantasize about these characters by the looks of some of these comments. You might as well be child molesters because that's how you seem to be in your heads.

You clearly did not read very thoroughly as there were at least 3 posts that consisted simply of "good job japan on cleaning up your act" or some such. By missing these posts you've missed the supporters of this bill.

To address your first point, you seem to have missed a great many of the detractors of this bill who have stated that while they are not fans of the materials depicted the act of the government censoring them is wrong. This stems from the fact that the bill does not target works with "sexual depictions of children" as these are already marked as adult only and do not enter into the scope of the bill. Therefore the person's opinions of the bill and their opinion of the sexual depictions of children can not be linked. While there have been posters, myself included, who have invited discussion of the morality of such works we do not necessarily support the sexual depictions of children, and further do not represent anyone in the thread who hasn't voiced an opinion about that seperate matter.

Your second point is an extension of your already flawed assumption about the intentions and tastes of the other posters in this thread so it is refuted similarly to your first.

Your third post doesn't seem to have any basis in the discussion as no one has mentioned boycotting anime for that reason. In fact myself and others have discussed boycotting anime that DO contain these types of things, in the hope that they would no longer be produced, or at least be handled in a more sensitive fashion. It seems that you misunderstood our intentions and took the opposite of our intended meaning from our words.

As for your last comment the post above you sums up quite nicely the difference between the moralities of thinking and acting, and the review of its content may change your opinion on that matter.

tldr:
Your points stem from either not having read all of the above posts or from a misunderstanding of their content. I would also encourage you to not make generalizations, especially when they are so flawed as to lump those who agree with your apparent stance on this bill with those that don't.

Didn't mean to sound patronizing, but I'm fairly certain at the very least you've misunderstood posts I've made in this thread, provided that you did read them.


EDIT: It seems he was suspended prior to me even completing this post sorry for he waste of space.

EDIT EDIT: Fixed some grammar mistakes and clarified some awkward sentence structures.

 

[Jake the Snake]

Taking cleavage away from anime? Holy shit, the world really is going to end.