Forum - View topicNEWS: Osaka Designates 8 Boys-Love Manga Mags as 'Harmful'
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Tomibiki
 Posts: 834 |
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The Osaka 'No Homo' train's gearin up for a big year.
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14795 |
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They're not banning the magazines. They're just placing 'em in a higher age rating. Like how it's illegal to sell age-inappropriate magazines to minors. Do the Japanese have their own reputable independent ratings board? (Not like the North American anime/manga companies that decide their own ratings.)
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sunflower
 Posts: 1080 |
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They're going to hurt sales though because the magazines can no longer be sold in certain venues, and because teens won't be able to buy them (and frankly a lot of the sexuality in BL is innocuous next to hentai). That's going to hit a niche genre hard and possibly cause them to change what they produce for the rest of us to read. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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Last time I recall, this was the responsibility of the parent, not retailers or governments. Since when should it become their responsibility to babysit? In other news: US Supreme Court to hear arguments about the sales of mature video games to minors. |
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Amitiel
Posts: 9 |
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Honestly, this made me laugh long and hard. No pun intended. To be honest, if it's legitimately what it says - publications with sexually explicit material (and by the sounds of it, to the point of being basically pornographic), it's hardly earth-shattering that they'd chose to restrict the age of purchasers. That really is no different from movie ratings or the same restrictions placed on other pornographic magazines. Is that going to hurt sales? Maybe. On the other hand, it's quite possible that that might also raise their sales, through the simple affect that some people will now buy them just to see what the fuss is about/because they are restricted. |
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LKK
 Posts: 426 Location: Virginia, USA |
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I'm curious as to what manga mags have been age-restricted. Was there a listing of them somewhere and I just missed it?
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2267 Location: Online Terminal |
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But this is restricting access to a book. It's a restriction I can live with, though, for reasons similar to why I'm okay with not allowing minors to play Grand Theft Auto |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4461 |
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The trick is that the politicians don't understand that argument. Games in the US have the ESRB standard because congress (more specifically Joe Lieberman) told them, "Either you regulate your prodcuts or we will." It always looks good to the older folks that actually vote if they do something "for the sake of the children." |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Due to the recession, I've not been able to keep up my subscriptions, but depending on the mag maybe 25% will be explicit. I wondered if they're told each month who gets to show full frontal & there are the magical invisi-penis we see in shonen. realistically, it's not uncommon to make it thru an entire volume(graphic novel) with nothing more than a kiss. As I recall Fake saved it all for the last pages of the last volume. Yaoi is shojo romance, so there's lots of emo (does he love me? Do I love him? We're both guys, we can't love one another!) stuff. Check out this week's review of Neo-angelique in Ms Finnegan's column-fan service for gals is a bit different from fan service for guys. Honestly, we don't see all that many bulging packages in pants (Spinal Tap-cucumber). Bare chests, naked butts. Any actual sex is often a couple pages, then we're on to the story. When I was around 15, I was into Star Trek. David Gerrold wrote some books about the show, so I went on to read his big title at the time-When Harlie Was One. In one scene the lead starts boffing a gal in the bedroom & they go on to the bathroom for about 3 or 4 pretty explicit pages. I wasn't scarred for life. I actually found it pretty pointless. (yeah, it seemed to mostly describe the gal) Why do girls need their virgin eyes protected more than guys? Why is it ok to show partial nudity (naked breasts) for a few seconds in pg-13? Why are gals getting stripped regularly ok for shonen? Somone suggested this has to do with the low birthrate in Japan & the perception that it's the gals' fault for being bolder & not quietly accepting arranged marriages. There's talk of teen girls seeing no problem with paid dates as one of the problems, but how is this the fault of society? I'm sorry, but by the time one is a teen one basically has one's morality formed so it's a bit late to go closing the barn door. Mommy & Daddy should have taught their baby girl morality from her earliest moments so that she doesn't think it's ok to prostitute herself out to buy clothes or pay for a cell phone or whatever else they're doing with the money. Honestly, the basics should be worked on before the child has learned to read of being a good person-sharing, not stealing, etc. If this is a rating, why the fuss? Or is is going to be illegal for the girls to even possess it? I bought Fake & Gravitation for my daughter as they were released here & saw no problem with it-she would have been around 12-13 at the start of it. Thing is--I knew what my daughter was into. I was reading them at the same time so it didn't bother me. I knew she was intelligent enough not to imitate everything she read in a book. So hell no--if this means I, as a mother, couldn't purchase the item for my child, then this is wrong because the government rearing children is a last-ditch thing-like the fosterchild system. There are som egood foster parents, but I saw so many who, as soon as the kid ran away were looking for that next kid because they get paid so much per kid per month. The government doesn't know my child. One size doesn't fit all. I butted heads with the parents of the other children my daughter went to school with because I refused to look at the surface. Why couldn't I let my daughter see what I felt she could handle? Why wouldn't I warn my precious child there are monsters out there who want to hurt children so she shouldn't talk to strangers? So when your child want to know why the kid in her class has a penis & she doesn't, one just says "He's a boy." & there's the first sex ed class. Kids have sexual feelings when they're small. They play with themselves so it's the parent's job to teach the child a healthy attitude about sex. If mom's ambiguous because she married out of duty (produce a grandchild), then maybe there's the problem Japan needs to address. Maybe Japan needs to promote more romance vs "It's your duty to produce 2.5 children". Maybe Japan needs to teach boys to respect girls as people & not baby factories to secure the nation's future. A 12 yr old reading Gravitation isn't why Japan's birth rate is down. The BL I've seen doesn't do prostitution all that much outside of the host club settings. About as common is the "sex friend" idea which is possibly part of the prostitution issue (having sex with a friend just to have sex seems similar to dating for profit). However, we have that concept in the West also & our birth rates seem ok. The usual issue with birth rate drop is women moving out of the traditional role of homemaker to having a career, so kids are a drain against a career vs being the career when one is a homemaker. |
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everapril
 Posts: 112 |
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spoiler[They contain butt sex!] Pft, I want to know what goes into determining a "harmful" BL manga - I just imagine some middle aged Japanese man, sitting in a government office, squinting at a BL manga and making notes on a clipboard, like: "Ah-ha! There is not enough shadow on that phallus." Check. "Is that ass cleavage?" Check. Gasp. "Is that penetration?!" Squints and leans closer, "I can't- I can't really tell through all these flowery screentones..." HARMFUL PUBLICATION! |
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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That's only the USA, I think. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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As if laws are going to change the feelings and opinions of young adults
 It's not the government's role to regulate the so-called 'healthy developments of youths'
I guess they'll just have to put up some more effort to travel to Tokyo or order online to get their mags. |
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sunflower
Posts: 1080 |
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Not really. The uproar started in Europe. |
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Parsifal24
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This may be off subject but this whole topic causes me to ask the question why are certain fan girls attracted to Yaoi and Boys-Love? I just don't get the attraction. guys and Yuri I can can get that but I cant just wrap my mind around women who find Yaoi "Stimulating" or what have you.
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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As a "guy" I also wonder the same about guys who enjoy yuri. Perhaps because we despise each other so much they'd rather stick with all-girls. But applying that to women wouldn't exactly work. |
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