Forum - View topicNEWS: Seven Seas Heads Speak on Nymphet Aftermath
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HitokiriShadow Subscriber Posts: 4908 |
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| I really don't think the title is the problem. Changing it to something else, something less sexual, may have been even worse in that some kid or parent could pick it up thinking it was very innocent. At least this title gives a parent a fair warning to not bother looking at it. In either case, it doesn't change the content, which was the real problem. Changing the title wouldn't have prevented this discussion or the potential shitstorm. | ||||||
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| Zac ANN Executive Editor  Posts: 4298 Location: Death Star Cocktail Lounge |
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It's been said a couple times now by Seven Seas that "Nymphet" was the title the Japanese creator asked them to use. |
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CCSYueh Posts: 1913 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Tokyo Pop did this all the time--early volumes had a lower age rating than subsequent volumes of a title when they saw the content was no longer acceptable. I never noticed since, at 47, I could give a flying rat's ass over the ratings & go by my tastes. However, I was at a Comic-Con International panel when this very copmplaint came up if peopple starting a title & then not being able to finish because their parents policed their purchases. (TP claimed they were working on it) There's also a problem with on-going titles. Everything published may be 13+, then poof-author writed the last volume & pulls out al the stops. A large amount of yaoi follow this pattern whern all the action happens in the last chapter of the story or so making it difficult to gauge whether it can remain a TP title or has to slide over to Blu unless they speak with the author on every on-going title they license(I thought they just deal with the publishers). And there's also the option of the author being directed to spice things up, so then what's an American licensee to do? I don't have time for scans, but there is nothing inappropriate in the Loveless anime. Up to what I've read of the manga(Vol 3 or 4) there is still nothing other than the female Zero couple, although the male zero couple made some comments about losing their ears. Soubi's made no moves on the 12 yr old beyond his function as a fighter unit & the fact I believe we saw him at a young age sans ears, but the thing's coming out so slowly here, it's hard to keep the continuity up. I'll probably have to re-read it at some point soon. Last I heard, all the action in Negima was under age. The girls chasing Negi are's legal age themselves. I dropped the title ages ago (a 10 yr old teacher being chased by his teen-age students. Riviting) so I'm unaware of where it's gone since vol 2 on whether the girls are ripping his clothes off & raping him or if we're still schoolgirl crushland(and that can be pretty scary). This lands it in the realm of someone I know who is upset she has to give up shouta when she turns 18 even when I tell her how wrong shouta is. |
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kolibri Posts: 712 Location: Vancouver |
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Thanks dormcat. I think they made a wise decision on this. |
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| Swissman Posts: 278 Location: Zurich, Switzerland |
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For those who want to see the three pictures themselves, voilà (just remember what Dormcat wrote) : P.129 P.130 and p.131 I wasn't offended by this scene, but I remember the first time I read it I though "now, that is risqué!", and until now it's the most risqué scene out of all, I think. P.129 and p.131 are scans straight out of Comic High, issue november 2006. P.130 is a picture taken with my cell phone, I apologize for the bad quality. Now, why not showing a scan, some may ask. .... Well, here's the strage thing: I downloaded the chapters from a well-known site this afternoon and exactly this page was missing from chapter 19. When you count the page numbers which do appear sometimes on some scans, this page was also included in the original issue. Now, I don't want to fuel further paranoia, but either it's a huge coincidence and this page was simply, well, missing, or somebody outthere tries to alter this scene for whatever strange reason. Last edited by Swissman on Thu May 31, 2007 2:10 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| pat_payne Posts: 168 |
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[s]Um, Swissman...you repeated the cell-phone pic twice by mistake.  [/s]Last edited by pat_payne on Thu May 31, 2007 2:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Swissman Posts: 278 Location: Zurich, Switzerland |
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| mistake fixed. | ||||||
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| ArielTsuki Posts: 176 |
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Soubi, who's 20, kisses Ritsuka, who's 12, a couple of times. That's pretty much pushing it. Even though that Soubi said that he doesn't do kids, he's not shy to make advances to Ritsuka or make jokes about it (especially in vol. 5 where he told his former Fighter teacher, Ritsu, spoiler[that Ritsuka makes him scream with pleasure all the time]) And despite if the two parties were underage, it's still shoutacon/lolicon. I do find it very contridictary that Negima! is okay but Nymphet is "OH MY GOD! THE APOCALYPSE IS COMING!". Do you really think that the conversative group would care if Negi gets sexually harassed by his students, and even being romantically pursued by some because they're both underage? Despite Negi being mature most of the time, he's 9 at the beginning of the series and still reminded that he's just a kid. And techincally, the students who are pursuring him are pedophiles also. According to the DSM-IV about pedophilia, the perp only needs to be 5 YEARS older AT LEAST or over 21 (depending on state age of consent laws, it can be 18). So if a 14 year old girl is making romantic pursues to a 9 year old, she's techincally a pedophile. Just because the perp is underage DOESN'T mean it's better. And so what Negima is being published in a shounen anthology, it still have plenty of sexual jokes. Not as risque as that infamous Rin quote, but conviently fallinf very near some girl's panties or boobs isn't that innocent either. Hell, in a later chapter Nodoka spoiler[imagines a threesome scenario between her, Negi and Yue. It's not explict but clearly implied. ] While I'm no fan of the lolishouta genre, and find it definately NOT my tastes, I am disappointed with the attitude with the posts on ANN. First of all, I think we have a very inflated on how popular anime is in America. I mean with titles like Beserk, Battle Royale and the such still in major book chains for years now means that the industry won't catch any heat anytime soon. And if the chance we do (and it would be ironic if it's Negima of all manga), we have to stand up and educate them. Self-censoring ourselves is no win for us. So Nymphet being cancel is a loss for us, despite our feelings on the lolicon/shotacon subject. |
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| tasogarenootome Posts: 262 |
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| I'm uncomfortable with loli/shouta manga and so have tried to stay out of this, since eventhough the discussions have been interesting, I really could care less if Nymphet got released. But I applaud Seven Seas for being open about their reasoning behind it - I mean come on, they'd have lost a good chunk of money, can't fault them there.
The content on those specified pages does seem problematic, at least. As someone said before, it is weird how (with regards to anime/manga at least) our country has a double standard about sex vs violence when censoring, which is really weird because when I was in Japan, a lot of my Japanese friends were under the impression that Americans were oversexualized, citing movies like American Pie as reference. It would be cool if the Japanese licensor made a statement (though they probably won't) - this case makes you think about the differences between what is considered "acceptable entertainment" on either side of the Pacific. |
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| fighterholic Posts: 9194 |
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Geez whiz, imagined all the fire the title would have gotten if it had been called: "Children's Time" 
I think the letter clears up issues that were raised as a result of the cancellation. I have to agree with Mr. DeAngelis, not releasing it is not cencorship. They probably could have censored stuff but that would have gone against their "policies" at Seven Seas. ANN was also getting a lot of fire at http://www.gomanga.com , particularly Zac in question. |
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| kolibri Posts: 712 Location: Vancouver |
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Ah, I was hoping we could avoid going into this as it's strictly speaking OT but oh well. Like people defending Nymphet, I feel like screaming "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CONTEXT!!!1!!" when it comes to Loveless. Soubi's advances on Ritsuka, while sexual in appearance, are not meant to be titillating, they are meant to be disturbing. Sure, you could lift out pages from it, just like has happened with Nymphet, and they would look wrong - however, they are meant to be wrong. Do 14-year olds read it and think it's the hottest thing ever when cute catboys cuddle - sure. Just as there will be pedos who read Nymphet and get off it. Loveless is not a comedy, or even BL (it's shojo, not that it matters here but I just need to underline it), it's a story about love and loss and difficult power-balances in disturbing relationships. There are lot of really uncomfortable themes discussed throughout the series, for example in later volumes like 5 and 6 there are some extremely distressing child abuse scenes between spoiler[Ritsuka and his mother where she, clearly mentally ill, beats him up and tries to drown him while Ritsuka is trying to tell himself that this is not what his mother is really like, it's just her illness - talk about parenting your parents]. It raises questions about identity, the effect of words have on people (on physical and metaphysical levels), about growing up and finding your place, way and purpose in life. It flirts with sexual themes, but it's not about sex, it's about love - love for another person no matter the gender or age or past. Yes, Yun Kouga's art is very beautiful and sensual. But this is not wank-off material in any way - the beauty in art is an extreme contrast to the uncomfortable themes of love and betrayal this manga really is all about. Nymphet uses sexual jokes for cheap laughs, it's meant to be funny (and I'm not taking stance on if it succeeds or not) and even it's defenders don't claim it be deep or meaningful. Loveless uses sexual themes for character development, intensify the story and to make a point. I hate it when people clump these together  |
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| Zac ANN Executive Editor Posts: 4298 Location: Death Star Cocktail Lounge |
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They're just looking for a scapegoat and I'm an easy guy to hate. ANN is a big target, as well, so it's easy to point to us and condemn me for having an opinion on the matter and speaking my mind. The truth is, reading DeAngelis' response to this, it's obvious that my stupid column had very very little - if anything - to do with the title being cancelled. If people want to infer that I said "Welp I don't like this stuff it's gross" and Jason DeAngelis said "What?! Zac doesn't like it?! STOP THE PRESSES" then fine, but that's a complete fantasy. I had about as much to do with this as the people arguing about it in the forums did, which is to say, almost zero. Yeah, we talked about the issue. But the truth is, Nymphet was cancelled because retailers pulled out and the company discovered that later on the series gets even raunchier. That's the whole of the matter. Me saying "ugh gross" was not the reason this comic was yanked. But people will believe what they want to believe, and throw stones and get angry all they like and there's little I can do about it. |
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| taiyakiotoko Posts: 9 Location: East Coast US |
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| No matter how controversial this is (and it's far less bad than a million other things you can find on the shelves that aren't even shrink-wrapped), if you take the last resort of slapping 18+ warnings all over it and making it an online-only release, which they didn't do, there should be no problems. Of course, then you may as well not release it because everyone's just going to download it, but that's true even if it was released to bookstores. Besides, even regular scanlation users often like having a physical copy, reading manga on a monitor gets annoying after long periods of time.
Dark Horse was pressured to not release MPD Psycho, but they went ahead and did it anyway (only releasing it online and to specialty shops), and came out unscathed. Is our society is much more accepting of extreme violence than relatively mild sexual content? Apparently. Come on Seven Seas, show some backbone... |
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ichiro3923 Posts: 167 Location: hiding in your closet watching you |
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About the Answerman column, will you ever answer any questions that are lolicon related? |
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| belisarius Posts: 193 Location: Concord, NC |
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One minor problem : Making any money on the release. Please read what other people have posted in this thread about how unlikely such a release strategy would be to turn a profit. Short version : not bloody likely.
This is less about backbone and more about common business sense. Would you risk releasing a product, any product, if the business you relied on to pay your bills and keep your family fed could potentially go bankrupt as a result? |
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In the meantime, let's pray that Fox News doesn't get hold of a copy of Negima or Loveless.
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