Forum - View topicAnswerman - Drug Induced Stupid
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Maybe. When I lived in Texas, Red River and Battle Royale were the only titles I saw shrink-wrapped. The yaoi had it's own little bookshelf, titled "Erotic Graphic Novels"--riiiight next to the teen lit section. 
This was in either Barnes and Nobles or Borders btw, can't remember which. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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Last edited by Zalis116 on Tue Jun 17, 2014 12:08 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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@Zalis 116
I'm not that familiar with that site, so I won't comment beyond noting that this may simply reflect the beliefs of the people or persons responsible for the purge of that site. My experience is that outside fandom, most people don't even know anime and manga exist, though it may have a higher profile at the college level. As a result a lot of otherwise "objectionable" material gets a pass because the book burners don't even know it exists. You mention 50 Shades of Gray. The press had a brief field day with that one. I have yet to see main stream comment on similar titles in manga or anime form such as Ghost Talkers Daydream. On occasion obscurity can be helpful. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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The owner took issue with the fact that anime & manga were overrepresented(mostly because the fandom's the most likely to be attracted to this kind of thing) and too many tropes with Japanese titles opaque to outsiders(never mind the number of tropes with obscure names only Joss Wheden fans would get); he took to refusing to allow new tropes with Japanese names be created and even demanded existing ones be changed, even if the only English equivalents were ridiculously clumsy. Shortly after that, and what caused me to get the hell out of there before it deteriorated any further, he and the mods decided that somehow you can avoid becoming a "hugbox" by banning an entire major political party under the guise of all their opinions being those of dicks - basically, they got rid of anybody who didn't share their opinion and everything of value was lost.
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Fencedude5609
 Posts: 5088 |
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I got permanently IP banned by Fast Eddie by essentially calling him a fascist dick to his face.
It was in retrospect entirely worth it. TVTropes is trash. |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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You're right about stuff having their shrink-wrap taken off in B&N. I've seen copies of stuff with wrap-on sitting next to copies with wrap-off. I should have thought of that. On the other hand I've seen something like 5 copies of a title with no shrink wrap on, which maybe should have had some wrapping, and it doesn't make sense that all copies would have the wrapping removed. I suspect that sometimes there maybe some consolidation of inventory between different stores perhaps even different chains. Something is not selling well or moving? Maybe it goes to another store that it does move or sent back to distribution where it may end up in a totally different chain like RightStuf, which may explain why I get stuff from RightStuf with both wrapping and not wrapped for the same title. So stuff without wrapping, which it might originally had, may find its way to a new home to be sold.
This was my suspicion too as I would expect the publishers know their content better than the store staff at a local B&N and would look to avoid an outcry from some group. This was why I was hoping for some clarification from Conner Crooks as he would probably have more detailed information. It seemed odd to me that an individual store as he put it could request to have something shrink-wrapped. If there is a decision being made from a chain to have something shrink-wrapped I would expect it to come higher up the ladder or just by regulations that a chain has (i.e. telling publishers and their distributors that anything which has visually explicit material needs to be shrink-wrapped). After all, does an individual store have the staff to review every book, comic, manga, etc for material that maybe considered objectionable? I would expect that with the thousands of releases every year and cost cutting measures, that booksellers would probably leave it to publishers and distributors to follow bookseller policies. Breaking their rules might get a publisher banned and again I expect the publisher knows its material the best. However, this is all conjecture on my part but I was really curious how this stuff works. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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@One-Eye
You know, it never occurred to me previously to wonder how this occurred. I always considered it something of a nuisance. The manga I get goes directly into my box at the comic shop and is not seen by the public. Conner Crooks represents Seven Seas and basically said that they don't do shrink wrap. Of course they are not shy about what they put out. I don't remember any of theirs coming shrink wrapped. I suspect it is done by individual publishers. It is possible that some brick and mortar stores or chains may have their own policies. I don't think there are any laws here* that require shrink wrap. "Real" books don't generally come shrink wrapped except to protect a delicate cover. Art books with nudes don't, calendars are but usually show their contents on the back for all to see. What I'm getting at is that I think that both the shrink wrap and age ratings on manga (and comic books for that matter) are put there voluntarily by the publishers to avoid problems. *As usual, laws may vary by state or locality. Boston used to be famous for banning books. |
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whiskeyii
Posts: 2245 |
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Actually, now that you mention it, I've only ever seen ONE printed book that had any kind of "age recommendation", and that was The Golden Compass. On the publishing info page, it said it was recommended for those ages 12 and up. I did wonder why something like that wasn't more common; I picked up quite a few adult books by accident that way (this was before I realized the association of novels categorized as "for adults" = sex scenes, or heavy implications. I just naively assumed it meant "more complex plots").
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One-Eye
Posts: 2261 |
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You know, I didn't even think about how laws in certain localities might come into play and if they have any impact. An interesting question how it all works and if its a streamlined process or more hodge-podge based on all the factors we've discussed. And yes, I agree my feeling so far is also that most of it is coming from the publishers. Oh, and in the past some Art books have come with shrink wrap if they had nudes or other material some might find offensive. I bought a softback book with paintings by Lucian Freud (most where nudes) that came in shrink-wrap and I saw some photography books in the past (can't recall if it was Diane Arbus or Joel Peter Witkin) that were shrink wrapped. Of course that was the past, most of the time when I go into a bookstore now the Art section is minimal and what feels like sanitized of any flavor or variety. I missed the days when I could go into a bookstore and discover new things. Seeing a few pages on Amazon doesn't quite compare for me to holding something in my hand and really browsing it. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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One-Eye wrote:
Amen to that. The problem with online shopping is finding something you weren't looking for. The unexpected treasure that is not like what you bought before. That is how I got into anime, just browsing the comic shop. |
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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Justin, I take valerian along with an over-the-counter pill for sleep, and it has never knocked me out the way you described (I wish). I am guessing you generally don't get enough sleep? Probably your body decided your airplane drug was a great excuse for catch-up. (If your airplane drug was valium, that drug is renowned for having a half-life of a couple of days.)
I think you are looking at the pre-Code era through rose-tinted glasses. Comic strips in newspapers were fairly mainstream, as everyone read the papers in those pre-TV days, but comic books were regarded as strictly for children and degenerates. I recall a Philip Marlowe story from the 1940s in which a young hoodlum is seen reading a comic book while moving his lips, which I think gives a fair idea of the mainstream perception of those days (and that story was written by a guy who had written for Black Mask, a pulp crime magazine). |
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Suena
Posts: 289 |
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This is a good point - a lot of people think the U.S. is completely homogenous, and it isn't. I've always lived in a fairly "liberal" part of the country. And I remember going on a family trip to Texas, and my parents being shocked at all the billboards there advertising Adult stores. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2607 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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I think it really depends on the genre. As I mentioned before, I have a collection of romance comics spanning the late 1940s through the early 1980s, and the neutering of the genre is pretty evident - some pre-code comics tackle issues of rape and seduction, while later books are pretty bland, with plots about bad-boys-turned-good or realizing that being a wife and mother is way better than a career. (The exception to this one is Charlton's Career Girl Romances, which ran during the late 60s and early 70s.) I have one 1971 Marvel romance comic with the title story "His Hair is Long, but I Love Him!", which is a far cry from some of the wartime comics in the genre. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I think most, if not all, of the "anime first" manga I own are Japanese-language only so I've never actually read them.
Both Kiddy Grade and Kiddy GiRL-and were "media mix" titles like this; the anime is clearly the "primary" work in each case, but there was other material that began magazine serialisation before initial broadcast in both cases (the Pr. light novel prequel for KG and the similar but unrelated Pure manga for KGA). Both have also had light novel adaptations while the former also had two spinoff manga and a number of short stories. Likewise for the other gímik anime Uta Kata, which had a manga adaptation running around the same time as the anime and a set of short stories released with the DVDs, and Gigantic Formula which had a Manga begin serialisation a month before the anime. |
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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I admit I had forgot about this aspect. The "Seduction of the innocent" debacle was mostly focused on violence and sexual depravity in "boys" comics - superheroes, horror, other violent genres. That is what most discussions now focus on anyway, though through googling I have found mention that Wertham used a case study to "prove" that "love comics" encouraged stealing. And in this online chapter, Wertham connects love comics to child prostitution. It must have been wonderful to be so stupid as to think a horror as old as history could be stopped by banning comics.... http://www.american-buddha.com/mediaviol.seductioninnocentwertham.7.htm For less blinkered people, his anecdotes show underprivileged children not depraved by comics but finding escape and sanctuary in them from some pretty grim facts of life. |
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