Thursday, December 9, 2010

Anime and Manga Regulation Bill to be Passed

Special thanks on Zen Otaku Honbu for the pic.

According to Asahi, the Democratic Party of Japan, the ruling party of Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, decided to approve the revised anime and manga regulation bill.

They opposed to the original bill last June but they claimed that the revision has eliminated the possible abuse of the provision. Other major parties have already approved the bill, so it is going to pass the assembly on December 15, 2010. Two minor parties, Japanese Communist Party and Tokyo Residents Network, oppose to the bill.

The said bill excludes novels and live action materials from the scope of the regulation. At the general affairs committee held on December 9, the counselor Asakawa explained the reason that, "Self regulation is properly done in the live action industry. As for novels, the impression varies from person to person. On the other hand, the interpretations of manga and anime are uniform no matter who reads or watches them."

To those know about this bill, this bill proposes to prohibit the publishers to sell minors (under 18) anime and manga which:
1. provoke sexual sensation or induce crimes.
2. positively describe illegal sexual acts or incest.

Earlier, Kadokawa Shoten announced that they will boycott the upcoming Tokyo International Anime Fair due to this bill and adding to the list of groups that will boycott this event due to the bill is Manga Hihyo as announced in their Twitter account.

Source: MyAnimeList

All I got to say is, WTF?! I mean, this is worse than the censorship done by 4Kids! I mean, with this bill, the anime industry will go downhill since most titles right now are moe titles which some of those titles violate what the bill states (Oreimo, I am looking at you) which targets a major demography of otakus... unless the studios and manga publishing companies will do something.

Plus, with this law, it would lessen the amount of realistic anime/manga titles! 

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