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Creator: Manga Was Pulled Due to Tokyo Ordinance

posted on by Egan Loo
Yuzupon's Welcome to Sugarpot no longer on Amazon, but is still sold digitally

Manga creator Yuzupon reported on Friday that the print version of the first Welcome to Sugarpot (Sugarpot e Yōkoso) manga volume was withdrawn from bookstores due to Tokyo's ordinances. The book just went on sale on February 15. The manga is set in Sugarpot, an isolated "utopia" by the seaside far from cities. Everyone in this extravagant house except the owner are girls.

Online retailer Amazon removed its listing of this manga volume, even though it was online as recently as two weeks ago. Animate and Neowing still list the volume as available. Yuzupon notes that the manga is still available (link NSFW) in digital format; Tokyo's ordinances do not restrict e-book sales as they do for print.

The revised Youth Healthy Development Ordinance expanded the number of manga and anime that could fall under "harmful publications," the legal category of works that must not be sold or rented to people under the age of 18. Erotic material was already restricted before the 2011 amendment, but the amended law now also restricts the sales and renting of materials that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government considers "to be excessively disrupting of social order."

The assembly evaluated another manga, To Love-Ru -Trouble- Darkness, last April but concluded the manga's depictions of nudity do not violate the ordinance's new standards. The anime series Yosuga no Sora was discussed in May for its depictions of incest but was not found to be in violation either.

No manga title has been formally restricted under the new rules in their first year of existence. However, the ordinance only applies to publications that are in print or available in release; at least one manga creator reported that some of his books will not be printed after the law went into effect. Aki Sora author Masahiro Itosugi revealed in April of 2011 that volumes 1 and 3 of the series would no longer be printed as of July 2011. Itosugi explained that the biggest problem is the series' depictions of incest, not erotically graphic content.

[Via Yaraon!]


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