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Answerman - Drug Induced Stupid


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mgosdin



Joined: 17 Jul 2011
Posts: 1302
Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 11:30 am Reply with quote
In the early 70's my brother's wife left a big stack of paperback books at our house for my mom.

Now being a young teen at the time and having a teen's curiosity I grabbed several of those books to read.

Well, I no longer had any questions for Dad about how things worked after that. Embarassed Rather I had all kinds of things to feed my young healthy imagination so it could illustrate them.

Mark Gosdin
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 11:43 am Reply with quote
I think part of the "no pictures" approach to smut comes from Dr. Frederic Wertham's 1950s book Seduction of the Innocent, from which the American comics market had a tough time recovering. You can look at some of the pre-code (Comics Code Authority) stuff at Fury Comics if you're interested, and then think about stuff like Rainbow Batman, which came post-code. (I've heard some people say the American comics industry never recovered, but I think that's a bit dramatic.)

Anyway, give Seduction of the Innocent a look - I think it explains a lot.
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Alan45
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Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:09 pm Reply with quote
I think it is clear that the reason the questioner couldn't buy the manga is because it had a sticker on it. He can buy the book because it, well, doesn't. Rules you know. I doubt the bookstore clerk actually thought about it.

The manga having a sticker is probably voluntary on the part of the publisher. Part may date back to Seduction of the Innocent but it may also be a manifestation of the idea that comics like cartoons are only for children and that they need to be warned if they are not. This is sort of ironic as anyone who has actually been in a comic shop would realize that the clients range from obviously mature to down right old. My local comic shop will not even let kids enter without an adult. Only a small percentage of comics these days are child related.

As an add on to the first question, and something that was touched on in the answer: Why is it that when an adaptation goes from print to video that it is usually good and can often surpass the original, but when you adapt from video to print it is almost always superficial if not actually bad. A good, bad example of this would be the manga spinoff of Cowboy Bebop.

This happens with live action as well, I remember reading novelizations of the TV series 77 Sunset Strip and the movie Hatari! and they were awful.
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:11 pm Reply with quote
I suspect the lack of closed captioning included may be related to the fact that HDMI has no way to transport them(the video portion is ripped from DVI), meaning they'd have to be converted to DVD/BD subtitles. Which, as Justin's said earlier, is something of a pain in the ass. If for some reason they fix the problems with actual subtitles for BD4K, you might start seeing them included.


@Princess_Irene: It depends on what they mean by "recovered". Before Seduction was published, comics were a mainstream media and covered all sorts of subjects for all audience. Afterwards, they were neutered into a kids' medium; now they tend to be a nerds' territory. So one can easily say they never recovered and be entirely right.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:13 pm Reply with quote
I find it to be a double standard that there are American parents who take issue with mature content in anime/manga may get criticism but they may turn a blind eye on stuff America series that also have mature content.
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:27 pm Reply with quote
Polycell wrote:

@Princess_Irene: It depends on what they mean by "recovered". Before Seduction was published, comics were a mainstream media and covered all sorts of subjects for all audience. Afterwards, they were neutered into a kids' medium; now they tend to be a nerds' territory. So one can easily say they never recovered and be entirely right.


That's a good point. I suppose I'd say that it's recovering, albeit slowly. There's a lot more variety now than in the Silver Age, although it hasn't gone back to the heights it was at pre-code. I also look at the reprints of, for example, "Young Love" and "Young Romance" as a positive sign that there's renewed interest in previously dead genres. (As an aside, I have a collection of 155 romance comics Golden - Bronze Age - crazy post-code changes there!)
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:27 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Why are manga shrinkwrapped and slapped with "for mature readers 18+" stickers but regular books aren't?

That's just Viz being conservative. If it were published by Seven Seas, that wouldn't happen.

Quote:
Is it because they have pictures? I thought at first it was just a suggestion, until I was straight-up refused purchase of Berserk at Barnes and Noble because I'm sixteen and didn't have a parent.

It really is only a suggestion:
animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-09-21/oregon-laws-to-limit-adult-content-from-minors-rejected
and that case used Berserk as an example too.

But they take whatever's on the label seriously because they don't want any bad press or political pressure. In contrast, buying Vampire Bund or Monster Musume should be no problem for you. I would also assumed the same applies to movies at BN that are unrated (most foreign films and movies with extra footage are unrated). In any case, I suggest ordering online. If you can't get a credit card, you can buy prepaid Visa/Mastercards for cash in various stores and use those instead.


Last edited by configspace on Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:33 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Shiroi Hane
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:29 pm Reply with quote
Polycell wrote:
they'd have to be converted to DVD/BD subtitles. Which, as Justin's said earlier, is something of a pain in the ass.

Huh? He said "rendering out subtitles from a closed captions file isn't all that difficult".
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Polycell



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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:35 pm Reply with quote
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Alan45
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:39 pm Reply with quote
While double standards are not uncommon I don't think there is one that works against anime and manga. Actually I find it amazing how much anime and manga flies under the radar of the types who complain about that sort of thing. Other than an occasional dismissive "it's all sex and violence" you don't hear much.

This is probably due to the fact that most of it is marketed for adults or (like Pokémon) is clearly intended for kids. In addition the few cable outlets that do carry anime are very careful to make sure that nothing objectionable is show. In addition, Barnes and Noble and other remaining bookstores are one of the few places you see manga or anime for public sale. Most sales are on line which keeps them out of the limelight.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:51 pm Reply with quote
There was also a Hollywood analog to Comics Code. I'm not familiar with these, but it's very interesting to see how vastly different, pre-code Hollywood was:
http://the-toast.net/2014/04/17/pre-code-movies-worth-watching/

Polycell wrote:

I think Justin is only referring to rendering out subtitles that have already been timed. Just the rendering process--converting text into graphics--is very simple. Although there could issues converting the timing information of the JP TV captions into the SUP/PGS structure blu-ray uses. If you couldn't automate that conversion, you'd have to resort to manual timing, which is where the gigantic pain comes in Justin had mentioned.
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mdo7



Joined: 23 May 2007
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:55 pm Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
I think part of the "no pictures" approach to smut comes from Dr. Frederic Wertham's 1950s book Seduction of the Innocent, from which the American comics market had a tough time recovering. You can look at some of the pre-code (Comics Code Authority) stuff at Fury Comics if you're interested, and then think about stuff like Rainbow Batman, which came post-code. (I've heard some people say the American comics industry never recovered, but I think that's a bit dramatic.)

Anyway, give Seduction of the Innocent a look - I think it explains a lot.


Sadly Seduction of the Innocent many years later has now been under fire for falsified information and not following scientific research standard.

So I guess Captain Price from Modern Warfare 2 was right about one good lie can change the world:

Captain Price from Modern Warfare 2 wrote:
This is for the record. History is written by the victor. History is filled with liars. 'Cause all you need to change the world is one good lie and a river of blood. He's about to complete the greatest trick a liar ever played on history. His truth will be the truth.


The author of that book made a good lie and the censorship of comic book that happened by the Comic Code Authority would be "the river of blood".

But anyway, I like this week Answerman, very interesting to read.

the first part: yeah about the manga based on anime, yep promotion same reason why anime based on manga are made.

the second part: Yeah the show's producer and the production committee are the reason why they decide which licensor can pick up the shows for overseas release.

The third part: That doesn't seem to surprise me.

The Fourth part: well double standard is an issue and I hate it. But what can you do??


Last edited by mdo7 on Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:24 pm; edited 1 time in total
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:03 pm Reply with quote
Shiroi Hane wrote:
Polycell wrote:
they'd have to be converted to DVD/BD subtitles. Which, as Justin's said earlier, is something of a pain in the ass.

Huh? He said "rendering out subtitles from a closed captions file isn't all that difficult".

After saying
Quote:
There are probably some technical reasons why it's a pain in the butt. I've never had to deal with Japanese closed captions (which use a different system, as their digital broadcast method is significantly different than ours), but ...

... so its rendering out subtitles from a US-system closed captions file that isn't all that difficult.
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 2228
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:06 pm Reply with quote
The primary reason for no Japanese captions on dvd/bluray is this:

The people who pay for those are the broadcaster, i.e. the tv station. The tv station is only rarely the company on the committee that has the video package rights. The tv station produces those captions usually only because they are legally required to do so for broadcast (this is a requirement for some time-slots, areas, etc...)

Therefore to get those closed captions the video distributor company would have to pay the tv station for those rights, in addition to paying to convert them to bluray/dvd subtitles (which as previous people have pointed out is a very non-trivial process).
This isn't cost effective for them so they don't.

A few exceptions to this are when NHK is involved. NHK captions pretty much everything because they are a publicly funded network, and they also will occasionally put out their own dvds. The Japanese release of Dear Brother, for example, has Japanese captions on it, because NHK was on the committee and handled the DVD release.
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agila61



Joined: 22 Feb 2009
Posts: 3213
Location: NE Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:12 pm Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
The primary reason for no Japanese captions on dvd/bluray is this:

The people who pay for those are the broadcaster, i.e. the tv station. The tv station is only rarely the company on the committee that has the video package rights. ...


Thanks for this ... after glancing at the captioning standard (pdf), it looked like it would be easy to strip out the caption data packets, which are encoded in char-counted 255 byte text strings, and with the version embedded with the video broadcast, recording sync timing as they were stripped out would be straightforward. It looks like they took a packet based system for analog TV closed captioning and tacked special identifiers in front so it could be embedded in a digital TV broadcast, which after all is already just a sequence of data packets.

So I was just going to speculate that it was an IP/legal issue.
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