There were those who said there was nothing to worry about, after all, it was only the dirty and perverted stuff that would be reclassified as adult, right?
Nope. Anything with a hint of sexuality has just zoomed from the normal racks into the porno section. It’s simple really, the store owners don’t want to be charged, but under this new vague law they don’t know what will really get them in trouble, so they solve the problem by dumping almost everything into the adult section! So much for the world’s largest comics industry!
Tokyo manga fans are disgusted to witness their beloved manga already being dumped into the porno corner en masse in order to comply with Ishihara’s twisted manga ban.
Some explanation may be required – in Japan, convenience stores usually sell adult (porn) magazines in an out-of-the-way corner, with the shelves marked off with a “成人向け雑誌” separator and minors prohibited from browsing the shelves or buying anything therein.
Similar arrangements exist in other shops for DVDs, eroge and so on, often with curtained off areas of the shop or otherwise. However, many outlets will not stock anything which needs to be separated into an 18+ section at all.
More details here, along with comments from local manga fans.
Now, on the “plus” side, I’m sure the industry will respond quickly and create some sort of comics code authority which will review and put it’s stamp of approval on “safe” manga to keep the peace. Of course, certain things will have to change as to what can and can’t appear in manga, but it’s all for the children, right? After all, manga’s for children, and no adult reads it? ^_-
>Of course, certain things will have to change as to what can and can’t appear in manga, but it’s all for the children, right? After all, manga’s for children, and no adult reads it?
And the 50’s parallels continue! I’ve always felt it was the Senate hearings that put the idea in people’s heads that comics were exclusively for kids here. I wonder if the same is gonna happen in Japan. Here comics got censored huge, whereas newspaper strips didn’t Plainclothes Tracy could still gruesomely dispatch his foes. Batman; not so much. Does Japan have a newspaper strip industry? Or the equivalent? I know they have political cartoons, but do papers have regular, syndicated strips?
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. Ten years after the Comics Code we had the underegrounds develop. Will Japan do the same? COULD they? Segregating the questionable stuff sometimes opens new markets for it, and puts them on a treadmill of disturbing. Like how ALL N. American 90’s anthro comics HAD to be sex books. Doubtles because Omaha got so much press…. mostly ‘cos of the nudity. Prior to that ninja mutants were the thing, and prior to THAT space opera…. a-la Albedo…. seemed to dominate. Or for another example; without the PMRC and “Parental Advisory” stickers Gangsta rap could NEVER have happened.
….but COULD there be underground comics? How do you top some of the MAINSTREAM stuff for shock value? Maybe some of the fan stuff will move up a notch on the publishing scale? Although I do think mainstream Japanese stuff has been kiddified since the late 90’s. (“We can SELL stuff to kids?!?!?”) So maybe there will be room for more “mature audience” stuff in ten years or so, since by then everybody will have forgot durned near everything Go Nagai did (so to speak) and boobs and blood will be novel once more.
I also gotta wonder at what the perception of comics in general in Japan is nowadays. Do people now see comics as a homogenous whole, or do the Pachinko comic fans consider their books an entirely different species from the Shonen stuff? Could an argument be made LEGALLY that they’re a different entity? Would anybody try?
Don C.