Forum - View topicNEWS: Germany Restricts Yamane's Finder Manga as "Harmful"
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yblees
 Posts: 165 Location: New Zealand |
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Notice that only Volume 1 of Viewfinder was indexed ? Out of 5 volumes.
OK, I admit certain scenes in vol 1 are ... shocking and morally (?) dubious. But the series really DOES develop into a stunning, completely riveting and yes, brilliantly plotted story from here on. So please don't judge it, or make negative assumptions about its readers until you've read it in it's entirety. |
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poonk
 Posts: 1490 Location: In the Library with Philip |
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Any comment I would've made about the Finder story and the reason behind (and evolution beyond) that first S&M-themed one-shot, and the irrelevance of the Handley case, has already been stated nicely by sunflower's & yblee's posts, so I'll leave that alone. Other than that, like many others this story leaves me going, "And...?" I don't have my hardcopies of the BeBeautiful (American) releases with me at the moment but I'm pretty sure they were marked 18+ too, and for good reason. I'm kind of surprised it's not standard operating procedure, really.
P.S. And I'm jealous that Germany got 4 volumes so far, and here in the U.S. we only got the first 2 (now OOP). |
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sunflower
 Posts: 1080 |
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Poonk, there was a short-lived English release of vol 3 also by BeBeautiful, though it's much scarcer than vols 1-2. But you can find it, though you'd have to pay an awful lot for it. I was lucky and bought mine on the first day of its release, which was one of the few days it was actually on sale.
Nice icon. ^_~ |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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What's your point? I didn't say it was the only publication ever covered by the BPjM - I said that it was rare for books to be restricted in that way in Germany and pretty much unknown in most of the rest of Europe.
Duly noted. I wasn't aware of any previous judgements regarding manga - as you suggest, English language comics news sites / blogs tend to focus on English language issues.
Did I at any point suggest otherwise?
Are you perhaps conflating me with somebody else? Far from being paranoid, I have absolutely no problem with legislation that keeps explicitly pornographic and/or graphically violent comics out of the hands of children. And since I have zero interest in yaoi (or any other otaku-pandering fetish porn for that matter), it's not something that would impact upon me personally in any case. I can assure you that I'm not one of those adolescent faux-libertarians who litter this board with contextually butchered, half-understood excerpts from Orwell, Niemoeller and Voltaire and oh-so dramatic predictions of future calamities.
You're rather missing my main point. To whit: the news, regardless of whether or not it's an entirely novel occurrence, is of some (admittedly minor) inherent interest to comics fans, particularly those of us who live in Europe just as news of a rock song being restricted would be of interest on a site devoted to rock music. As for speculating about "global consequences"; I'm interested, both as a librarian and as a consumer of comics, to see one form of (ad hoc) regulation in practice given that it might, conceivably, ultimately serve as a model for regulation here in the UK where we have a forty year history of sporadic obscenity trials regarding comic books, a twenty year history of occasional moral panics regarding Japanese pop culture and a general state of confusion as to what's potentially legally problematic for publishers, retailers, libraries and individuals. Some kind of workable framework that restricted some material without banning it - maybe on the German model, maybe not - would actually serve to protect the industry (after all, to give a UK analogy, nobody has ever been prosecuted for making, distributing or buying a BBFC-rated video or DVD regardless of its contents) but, as I said, such a model would be difficult to implement given that imports are central to many European markets.
Publisher's age ratings are suggestions - they aren't legally binding and nor do they place restrictions on the marketing of the work. |
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sunflower
Posts: 1080 |
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To butt in, I've been told by a number of German friends discussing this that indexing a book is a pretty common occurrence in Germany, and that I'd be surprised at how extensive the list is. This is the only method the government has to designate print media as adult in Germany, so they use it. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3964 |
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I think that if you're over 18 you have the right to read it and it's your business.
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fearlololoki
Posts: 5 |
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Errm... Could someone explain this article to me? I'm pretty sure the Finder series most definitely is meant for the "young persons" demographic anyway. Is sale of adult materials in Germany normally not restricted? What are the implications of putting a story on this index?
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tebalith
Posts: 134 |
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Moomintroll, simply put, my point is that the entire way how this is being reported and discussed is misleading and therefore pointless.
Of course it would be interesting to learn something about the methods different countries use to regulate how adult material is kept away from children. But most of the blog entries and forum posts I've seen skip the most essential step: find out what the BPjM is and what it does and what this indexing actually means. Yes, my reply was quoting something you said, but it wasn't meant to be read by only you, and I included some things that I thought a lot of people who might read this could use to be told. Your reply was written in a tone that suggested you were in the know, knew stuff about Germany, since you stressed how unusual this was, making it sound like it's an absolutely rare and special occurence when a book is indexed, and automatically meaningful. But turns out, that was just an assumption on your part? How is that helpful?
That would be the case if the reports were correct and properly explained what had happened and why, as well as provided the context necessary for a non-German user to understand the significance. This was not the case, as evidenced by your reply and others. If you are really interested in how the BPjM works, more power to you, but you'll have to research it. |
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chounokoe
Posts: 1 |
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Well in Germany there is an age restriction system for media, but it is normally only used for DVD and videogame publications, sometimes it is also used on TV but only if it reaches the higher scales. The german scale is divided into levels of 'for everybody', 'starting age 6', 'starting age 12', 'starting age 16' and 'no distribution to minors'. The problem is that most of the time this rule is followed by only very few people, in fact you can send in a person of age and let them buy it for you or maybe even be lucky and they don't even ask for a verification of your age. Additionaly books, CDs and the like don't really make use of that, normally because literature and music has normally been regarded as having a rather low influence on young people compared to visual miedia. Therefore comic's with content which is deemed unfit for minor's carries only a small sticker (showing: Only 16/18 and above) and is normally sealed in store. So to avoid even the chance of those media being sold to minor's the BPfJS is able to put those media on 'the index', which means it is forbidden by law to sell those to minor's. Additionally it is forbidden to advertise it commercialy in places minor's can reach (at least as far as I know). So naturally this means instant death for any media, because if you can't advertise something it is practically nonexistant. Therefore it is the thing that publishers in Germany try to avoid by any cost (meaning self imposed censoring etc.). This is pretty important because it is still in the constitutional law that 'there shall be no censoring' (article 5). It is always a pretty heavy discussion here in Germany among fans once something is put on the index or a publisher changes an original product to avoid being put on trial for the index (the last case being I think Silent Hill 5). Somehow it always feels like the government doesn't really trust the public to be able to take care of their minors alone, while most people are pretty sure that really BECAUSE everything is governed so strictly are there so many minor's who are drawn towards 'forbidden media'. |
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tebalith
Posts: 134 |
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According to what Tokyopop's Jo Kaps said in the Finder thread, they are waiting to hear from the BPjM with specifications which parts or elements were offensive, to decide whether they can release an edited version of the volume. Of course, if the issue was how the story as a whole comes across, it'd be difficult to find a solution, short of changing the text... |
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