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NEWS: Dark Horse to Bring Ghost Talker's Daydream Manga Back

littlegreenwolf wrote:

Sudo wrote: That's their fault for being ignorant of what they were paying money to license. Why wouldn't you do your research ahead of time? It boggles the mind. True. Even so, if a company knew what was to come in Narutaru, the chance of it being brought over here would probably be something similar to a snowball's chance in hell. I'm glad they brought what they did over, or I might never have discovered it. In Dark Horse's defense there stands a possibility that when they licensed it, the "bad" stuff hadn't been published yet, and they may have only been a few volumes into the manga in Japan (I think they were up to volume 5 or 6 when it was brought over here). Outside of the whole wrist cutting thing, it took several volumes for them to get to some of the more questionable material.

There were already seven volumes out in Japan before Dark Horse released the first one in English, so I find that to be very unlikely. They release Berserk uncensored, and it's much worse than Narutaru in terms of violence. If they felt they needed to censor it, they shouldn't have licensed it in the first place. I thought they were a company that prided themselves on licensing more mature content.

I just dug up my old Super Manga Blasts, and the first issue came out February/May of 2000. At the same time in Japan only volume 4 was out. I'm skimming through all four volumes of Narutaru now, and looking at them there isn't really anything to complain about. It still looks like a relatively innocent teen manga with slightly dark tones here and there. Up to volume four the worst that was done was that one of the kids was killed, and mentioned previously, the whole thing with the wrist cutting.

Most all of Dark Horse's edits were to cut down on under-aged nudity. If you're a fan, you're aware of an incident happening in Japanese volume 6 (volume 7 here, the final to be released in America) that was a rape scene involving an under-aged girl. Volume 7 came out well over a year after Dark Horse bought the Narutaru license.

littlegreenwolf wrote:

Sudo wrote: That's their fault for being ignorant of what they were paying money to license. Why wouldn't you do your research ahead of time? It boggles the mind. True.

Actually, not true. Dark Horse published the title but they didn't license it direct from the Japanese publisher - it was "packaged" by Studio Proteus (as were most of Dark Horse's manga at that time) and, as such, it was Studio Proteus' responsibility to give Dark Horse an accurate picture of what the series consisted of and to adapt it in such a fashion as to make it palatable to the English-language market.

Sudo wrote:

Dark Hose canceling Narutaru is the reason I'll never buy anything from them again.

Uh-huh. Given that all of the major US manga publishers have edited and / or dropped titles at various times, I guess that means you don't buy any manga at all?

I can't help thinking that all of these people who pop up on ANN all the time and say they're never going to buy anything ever again from Viz / DH / CMX / whoever because a title was dropped or a nipple was airbrushed (and in spite of all of the completed and unedited titles those companies publish) are either cutting off their noses to spite their face or simply trying to justify their scanlation habits.

Sudo wrote:

There were already seven volumes out in Japan before Dark Horse released the first one in English

But given how long it takes to negotiate a license, there wouldn't have been seven volumes out when Studio Proteus set about securing the title.

littlegreenwolf wrote:

I just dug up my old Super Manga Blasts, and the first issue came out February/May of 2000. At the same time in Japan only volume 4 was out. I'm skimming through all four volumes of Narutaru now, and looking at them there isn't really anything to complain about. It still looks like a relatively innocent teen manga with slightly dark tones here and there. Up to volume four the worst that was done was that one of the kids was killed, and mentioned previously, the whole thing with the wrist cutting. Most all of Dark Horse's edits were to cut down on under-aged nudity. If you're a fan, you're aware of an incident happening in Japanese volume 6 (volume 7 here, the final to be released in America) that was a rape scene involving an under-aged girl. Volume 7 came out well over a year after Dark Horse bought the Narutaru license.

Dark Horse should had waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... till they're SURE there's nothing untoward happens anywhere at all in the manga!

enurtsol wrote:

littlegreenwolf wrote: I just dug up my old Super Manga Blasts, and the first issue came out February/May of 2000. At the same time in Japan only volume 4 was out. I'm skimming through all four volumes of Narutaru now, and looking at them there isn't really anything to complain about. It still looks like a relatively innocent teen manga with slightly dark tones here and there. Up to volume four the worst that was done was that one of the kids was killed, and mentioned previously, the whole thing with the wrist cutting. Most all of Dark Horse's edits were to cut down on under-aged nudity. If you're a fan, you're aware of an incident happening in Japanese volume 6 (volume 7 here, the final to be released in America) that was a rape scene involving an under-aged girl. Volume 7 came out well over a year after Dark Horse bought the Narutaru license. Dark Horse should had waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... till they're SURE there's nothing untoward happens anywhere at all in the manga!

Way to be a sarcastic prick. I'm sure it was really hard for them to imagine where the series was going after the things that happened prior to that. None of the actual rape is explicitly shown, and I don't remember there being much, if any nudity up until that point. They should've just put an 18+ sticker on it and released it in a plastic bag like they did with Berserk.