One news article gets massive amounts of manga removed

[Jasta85]

http://l7world.com/2010/04/google-spons ... raphy.html

I visit a number of websites to read manga online with mangafox being one of my main ones, however due to the above article the company behind manga fox immediately reacted in a knee jerk fashion and shut down every single manga that was rated mature, adult or had the following tags: lolicon, shotacon, yaoi, yuri, loli, shota, harem, etc and some other genres. Naturally none of the series were actually reviewed to see if they had any offensive material in them, if they had any of the above words in their description or search tag they were auto banned. Even series like kaicho wa maid sama were knocked off. It is a bit understandable though, as from what i read google told them to remove any series that might be considered child porn or pretty much anything else that might be offensive to your average american.

I really hope this is an isolated case cause honestly, I would say a large number of perfectly decent series have at least one of the descriptors above (fruits basket is a harem series one or two yaoi characters in it lol). not to mention the fact that mature/adult series were pretty much universally shut down. Just pisses me off that just one random news article can set off a chain reaction that ends up shutting down a lot of very good series. Let's just hope it doesn’t spread too far out to other major manga databases. however, the fact that the article mentions a number of websites by name and web address probably means google will be cracking down on them and others.

[Taite]

I don't use any of those sites, but this is pretty disappointing. Sucks for us in the US and UK.

[EkaCoralian]

Personally I find it rather amusing that they've only jumped on this sort of thing now, of all times. I'm not really interested in reading any of the series mentioned, so I'm not too irritated with it. I'm sure others are, though.

What's even more amusing to me is that even Crunchyroll got hit. Crunchyroll. The one website which promises to promote anime and request paying memberships for some shows in order to promote it.
Interesting. Very interesting.

[TEKnician]

Hmm...what tipped them off? I mean all these mangas developed over a long-ass time. Not that I read them, but I knew of them for a while. Do they not realize that we can buy/preview them at Borders? Ehh, someone'll find a way around it. It's a fact of life. Oh wait... ... ...sorry, what're we talking about?

[Qyot27]

The thing that pisses me off about this is not about Google's reputation, I can understand them not wanting to be associated with stuff that's illegal (if said things actually are, which in this case it's either hazy or not at all illegal), it's that the guy is defining 'child pornography'/'lolicon'/'shotacon' all on his own and then essentially trumpeting that as the only correct way of seeing it. Just because a series has mature themes doesn't automatically make it porn of any type. If it's explicit, I can understand the concern and the takedowns are justified, but they're extending it things that aren't explicit (see how many times it simply lists 'nudity', not 'sex', just 'nudity'...not that simple nudity can't be explicit, but there are certain telltale things that separate explicit nudity from non-explicit nudity, and the article is really trying to destroy that distinction), and merely hint at things or in some cases, aren't even relevant at all (the extension of it on some sites to yaoi and yuri, for instance...maybe it is a violation of Google Adsense's TOS, but the issue is necessarily becoming larger than that because of Victorianistic fear rearing its head).

I do read Kodomo no Jikan, and it's clearly obvious that the article is simply jumping onto the bad press it already had (as that series that Seven Seas had to pass on), but taken in the entire context of the series, it's only controversial, not pornographic. There are several notable examples of American/Western media that are in a similar boat and don't have such heavy-handed crap spewn about them. One of the things I like about the series is how realistic it actually is to the subject matter it deals with and fair to the intelligence of the characters in it. Pegging it as something it's not just because it's controversial demeans that (and that's not to say there aren't points that I was uncomfortable while reading it, but in the broader scope of the story it made sense and was relevant to the plot).

The question is 'who is doing the judging here?' and 'how far is this going to go'? And really, if the series are licensed and being sold in the U.S. already, what else are they trying to do? I saw Dance in the Vampire Bund stocked on the manga shelves at Borders just a couple days ago.

[NelTu]

omg yes! One manga is doing clean up on all the manga =/ they say they don't want to get in trouble because alot of young people read manga there

[CodeZTM]

I really don't have anything constructive to add, just that I'd really love to see how they react to Encyclopedia Dramatica and the chans.

[TEKnician]

The thing is ... kids in Japan can handle the amount of nudity better than American kids. They actually have the discipline to understand that they're just watching cartoons. They also have the sanity to deal with it. Unlike some (actually, most) parents in the US, Japanese parents do a better job of instructing their children to accept it maturely. Their culture actually has historical and cultural ties to nudity and/or sexuality, so its common for them. Why do you think that they have unisex baths and hot springs and not us?

And when something is in art form, it gets praise and commendation because their culture stresses the importance of art as a part of their culture. It's a way of keeping those ties to their past while proceeding towards the future. What some people don't get is that kids are actually smarter than they think. And since they will never actually know, they have to play it safe and remove stuff. They have to "put them up one shelf" so to speak.

[Qyot27]

Japan may be more relaxed about nudity, but the unisex baths/onsen are far from commonplace, even in anime. Familial bathing is more of a presence there, though, as is the higher relative age when it stops. This isn't doesn't make a person's psyche arousal-proofed upon seeing nudity, though.

The actual difference is simply that ribald humor is more acceptable for more ages there. In America it's not appropriate if it's present to any degree for programs aimed at less than the 15 year old demographic, and the heavier amounts of it not until 18 or more. The introduction of anime popular with those demographics is really the only true exception to that, but that's not American media.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Japan may be more relaxed about nudity, but the unisex baths/onsen are far from commonplace, even in anime.

QFT

There are maybe 10 left in the entire country. I've been to one, and people just self-segregate into their own separate areas anyways. The only female in the mixed springs the entire time I was there was a 3-year old with her father.