So the Tokyo Ban passed, oh that noise it whining by the way

[Sukunai]

Gee looks like everyone that cares about manga and anime will be very unamused today.

Yeah THAT ban passed. Don't ask for a link, if you don't know what I mean, you're under a very large rock indeed.

Sure is going to play hell on a lot manga and anime.

Panty and Stocking for instance, oh it's sure going to be rough trying to put out shows like that now.

Yosuga no Sora type shows will be dropping like flies.

Neptune and Uranus, might actually be cousins now

The girl fans will be pissed as they live eat and breath yaoi.

Tittie scenes, you will be lucky to see a fully dressed school girl potentially.

Going to be a very interesting 2011 me thinks.

[mirkosp]

If this means more *GOOD* shows like Yuasa stuff for instance, I'm totally down for it. And yes, I know that Kemonozume fits quite well in the erotica category (actually Kaiba too, a bit), but I'm positive it's in the kinds of the "prudent application of the law in light of any artistic, social, scientific or satirical merits the work might express" and all that jazz.

[Qyot27]

I'm not totally convinced it'll do much at all. Especially if the TAF incident, and statements from both the manga publishers and the Prime Minister are any indication, the Tokyo government will have a huge fight on its hands before this goes into effect next July.

And even if it does go into effect as planned, it might take two or three routes:
*It's totally ineffective as a law, and gets repealed or amended later.

*It creates a situation like the Texas educational standards travesty has - most publishers adhere to the guidelines because they're located in the publishing heart of the industry, but there's nothing stopping publishers outside of the blast radius from doing everything said guidelines prohibit.

*As a corollary of the previous, the publishers may up and move out of the city entirely. This seems to be the TAF incident coming to its most logical extreme. Edgy (or most/all, depending on how deep this thing gets) anime and manga publishing would simply leave Tokyo; the economic impact of such would surely be hundreds or thousands of times worse than what the TAF threat does.

[Sukunai]

One problem I have, is I can not really be expected to know the time slot of a show to know if it was aimed at adults or not.

I watch the anime I like when I encounter it. Manga, I have no real background with.

My concern, is for all the ordinary seeming mangas and anime shows, that for years, no one has thought much of.

Ranma, I can still recall the first time I saw Ran chan butt naked in the show and no fuss being made over it. No real detail shown of course, but today, I wonder, do the new rules regard any form of nudity over the line? Ranma is after all, a young teen minor.

And can you just imagine all the manga and anime with shower/sauna scenes? Even the most tame shows technically feature naked teen minors rather casually. I wonder, what is to become of all the product sitting on shelves right now, that right now, might technically get a vender in hot water.

How many businesses will just say screw it and dump manga and anime as being too rife with land mines.

And all the people employed making what last month seemed harmless content according to a decade of having done it.

Because if it gets labeled adult content, ya sure I can buy it, I'm an adult. I wonder though, what a great big bunch of teens being told 'sorry that is porn and you are not old enough' is going to do to the industry if they can't buy the product.

[Jasta85]

I honestly doubt it will have a huge impact, it's supply and demand, right now there is a huge supply of ecchi/hentai material. If everyone dropped production there would be very little supply and suddenly a huge demand which = more potential profits. Studios will just move out of the city and keep right on making the same materials. All this has done is lock a few publishers, all the ones outside Tokyo are probably rejoicing right now as their competition has just gone down. Either way, this won't help tokyo very much, they won't gain any profit in either scenario, and will probably lose some just from certain producers leaving.

Feels a little similar to what happened with production of the hobbit movie in new zealand, the stupid federation of actors union tried to tell their people not work work if the movie was to be filmed in new zealand cause warner bros wouldnt agree to their demands. warner bros threatened to film it in an entirely different country which put all of new zealand in a panic as it would potentially lose their economy $1.5 billion in profits. the government (and most of the population) basically told the unions to STFU and the filming continued.

[EkaCoralian]

Well this ban being passed doesn't really affect me all that much. I mean personally I hate it when I'm watching a perfectly good show, and then randomly there will be fanservice. Fanservice ruins it for me most of the time (unless its like a few guy fanservice shots from battle or something. Iunno, I'd call Bleach an example of that. *cough* Renji. :3 *wheeze*) I guess I mainly mean women's fanservice.

Huh. I'm kind of thinking back to Bleach, and I wonder what'll happen to it...
I mean there's no explicit nudity or anything, but there's Yoruichi when she's in human form. Geez, even Naruto's got that Jutsu or whatever where he turns into a naked girl with conveniantly-placed smoke.
Does conveniantly-placed smoke count under this ban?!

Anyways, I guess I have mixed feelings on this. Its great that the ban is separating the 100% ecchi and adult material from the normal stuff, but it kind of freaks me out because they haven't entirely specified what they're going for. I mean (and I'm glad I already own this example) the E7 movie, for instance, is something I'd watch and buy in a heartbeat and I thought it was great (minus a few crappy blips in dialogue.) However the final scene shows a character naked, with arms, hair and legs covering those risky areas. Sure I'd say thats fanservice for the people (and yes I did 'WTF' and get slightly annoyed with it), but the scene also had symbolism and represented Eve from the Adam & Eve story etc. etc. Would they go so far as to ban this movie because of that? D:

Actually even in E7's TV series there were shots of the novel 'The Golden Bough' which featured a naked woman on the cover, uncensored (they censored it on TV Tokyo though I think, because it wasn't a show for older people. I remember hearing in one of the episode commentaries that it aired on a kids' station at like 7 am. xD) The Golden Bough's cover also represented Eve, if memory serves correctly: would THAT be enough to ban it? You just don't know!
That's whats freaking me out about this.

Actually come to think of it, Star Driver might even get pulled. =c There's quite a few shots of naked shrine maidens with suggestive expressions on their faces.
Damnit BONES. Why'd you go and ruin a perfectly good show with that anyways? *sigh*

[Jasta85]

Also, what happens if they adapt a well known manga that has lots of skin (a manga that is actually GOOD but just happens to show a lot of skin, they do exist...really). Are they just going to completely neuter it and cut out/change every scene that has women naked/suggestively dressed? Fans would riot, not necessarily because of the lack of boobs (well at least not entirely) but because a good series is getting butchered just to be politically correct.

I would use history's stronger disciple as an example, I love the series, and yes it has boobs and butts showing up all over the place yet it is still good. If they stuck miu and shigure in sweat pants and jackets instead of their spandex and short cut kimono there would be blood in the streets, fans would lynch the anime studio.

[Qyot27]

I guess the thing that bugs me about this the most is that it seems like the decision is being made without any rationality, or even sense of reality, whatsoever.

Even here there's a stratified ratings system (usually optional) which identifies things which are explicitly pornographic or violent (or could be argued that way) from such that aren't, but still carry age restrictions. Just look at the difference between an R and NC-17 (or self-regulated X) rating. The domestic anime/manga distribution companies even have their own schemes - 13+, 15+, 17+, etc.

The lack of rationality means that things which could responsibly be given a 16+ or 17+ designation are instead rated as 18+, which carries undertones that it contains things that it may not contain at all. If it was approached from that perspective, this would be nothing - and perhaps even a boost to seinen and josei works, which are already intended for those older demographics anyway. I don't think accurate labeling would cut into their profit margins so long as the label was not some heavy-handed moralistic affair (putting aside that any labeling is, by definition, moralistic to some degree).

[BasharOfTheAges]

So... this ban... is it on the production of within the city, or the sale of within the city? I honestly don't see the problem if it's the former - real estate prices are a lot lower outside of Tokyo anyways. If they're that adamant about cutting off their nose to spite their face, then more power to them. When the jobs go elsewhere, they're really going to have to explain themselves to their constituents.

[outlawed]

So... this ban... is it on the production of within the city, or the sale of within the city? I honestly don't see the problem if it's the former - real estate prices are a lot lower outside of Tokyo anyways. If they're that adamant about cutting off their nose to spite their face, then more power to them. When the jobs go elsewhere, they're really going to have to explain themselves to their constituents.

This is not a ban. This is a bill about further regulation. If you want to understand what is really going on with this read Dan Kanemitsu's blog posts.

http://dankanemitsu.wordpress.com/