Forum - View topicManga in The Crosshairs: The State of Manga Bans in 2025
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Gilles Poitras
Posts: 497 Location: Oakland California |
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Another resource is the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund which was established to fight censorship.
https://cbldf.org |
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1515 Location: Nova Scotia, Canada |
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As a Library Technician of 15 years who has worked in both public and academic libraries, I have to point out that libraries are more than just Librarians, and a lot of us also do collection management work, help patrons find what they are looking for, and generally fight the good fight both behind the scenes and with the public to show how relevant and important these spaces are.
Please support your local libraries! Go get your card if you don't have one! Even if you don't think you'll use it often(but do so anyway!). This was a wonderful article, thank you. |
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Dfens
Posts: 467 |
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So various school libraries from various cities and states who have a politicians with a agenda and need a scapegoat/reason to blame Manga as it could influence or be in their mind inappropriate for children. Leads to some how Trump is going to ban all Manga in the United States is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard in my entire life.
Is the President going to halt all new Manga digital and print and basically put all the publishers out of business? Are law enforcement going to go door to door and to be more specific come to my home and confiscate all my books and destroy them? mdo7 you really need to tone it down, I remember the last major thread where you saying the sky is falling and made it seem to some unsuspected readers of these forums that they better be prepared for ban on Japanese Manga because the boogeyman in the White House is on another tirade. The government has more to worry about then some Japanese Comic Books that people read and collect. Even my local public libraries have Japanese Manga and Light Novels to check out to anyone with a library card. Some books are donated while others are purchased with tax payer funding. If a school or public library won't acquire a title or refuses to stock it/ban it because a librarian has the personal authority on what goes on the shelves then either read it online or do what I did in way back when I was in high school go to a store and buy it or do what ever one does now order it online from various retailers. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 8233 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm not panicking, but how long have you been living under the shell for, did you not see Trump's anti DEI order, or did you not read anything from the Answerman thread about the alt-right (unless you're one of them), do you not watch the news at all? |
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Bertram
 Posts: 78 |
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A conflict I generally see regarding leaving it up to parental choice is a lot of teachers and librarians argue they should not have an obligation to inform the parents what their child is doing at school and they want the right to hide things from parents. So offloading the responsibility to the parents would be difficult if they don't want to tell the parents what books they're trying to read at school. So if teachers and librarians can't be relied on to give parents that information when their kid tries to check out a manga then it leads to angry parents which further leads to schools having to make the issue affect everyone else.
Personally I wish ANN showed this much interest and effort every time the American release of a manga, anime, or video game gets censored. |
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Wizardizar
 Posts: 210 |
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Yeah man, that's the real censorship, not the US gov disappearing pro-palestinian students in the middle of the street.
Look, I empathize with your worries, but that's like saying Trump will ban kebab because of tensions in the Middle East or Maple syrup because our politicians call him out. Like I think we should focus on what is happening right now, which is already bad enough, and not on some hypothetical based on the Japanese-American community sheltering migrants to a bigger level than other communities (which I don't think is a thing that is happening anyways). If anything kills manga and anime in the US it's gonna be tariffs (and as of now only physical copies). |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3270 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Reminder that this topic is about manga, comics, books, and libraries. Please stay on topic.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19142 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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In case Lynzee didn't make this clear enough, I've gone a step further and removed some posts that were starting to spin the thread off-topic. This article is about manga bans over the years and currently. It is not about immigrants, and this conversation will not be allowed to go in that direction; there are plenty of other places to talk endlessly about that. So if you're going to bring that up, it had best be in a way that specifically relates to manga bans - and no, "they're doing this to immigrants, so they could do it to manga" doesn't count as an acceptable way to do that.
On the actual topic, I've been in public libraries a fair amount lately for job-related reasons, and I've certainly seen some manga titles on shelves whose presence there I somewhat question due to their extreme graphic content. However, most public libraries (at least in my area) seem to have people on staff who know manga, so I trust their professional judgment, and it's not like the extreme graphic stuff (Elfen Lied, for instance) is in the kiddie sections. Sad that too many people in the government don't trust librarians because they think librarians have harmful agendas. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8233 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Fine, fair enough, I won't mentioned immigrant on the thread again (even though the collective punishment aspect of this is still sort of relevant), and is it OK for me to add this story from Texas(you deleted my post that contained that particular story) about what looks like a possible ban or censorship to anime (and that extend to manga too)? Because that's something every anime/manga fans in the US should think about and probably fear, and try imagining this on a nationwide scale given that we're talking about manga bans in the US, I feel like it's my duty to mentioned that situation in Texas. And to make this worse, there is a Texas bill that want to target bookstore, and if they want to... Yeah, an indirect blanket ban on manga if that bill passed and setting up a 1st amendment fight. Add anti-DEI into that, and you can have another way of having manga ban at not only library, but bookstore too. |
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Gina Szanboti
 Posts: 12751 |
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"Manga's right-to-left format challenges what the uninitiated see as the 'right' or 'proper' way to read, from a primarily-white American perspective.”
Which is exactly why they're upset about it. Rather than defending it, this response seems to me like it gave the book banners more ammo, in a more literate, well-written way than they could've mustered themselves. Nothing can be allowed to challenge the "American perspective" as seen through their eyes and only their eyes. I suspect they imagined Chainsaw Man was about a hard-working lumberjack clear-cutting his way across the wilderness. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8233 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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It's going to get worse for yaoi and yuri genre given the LGBTQ perspective (and a lot of them could face ban too if not nationwide if you were to applied anti-DEI order on there). Also you have mangaka like Eiichiro Oda putting stuff in One Piece whether intentional or not what could be perceived as "woke" ideology. You also got Riyoko Ikeda, the mangaka author of Rose of Versailles and other works that could face ban or attack in the US because one of her work had a transgender main character in it, and several of her titles could be deemed unacceptable by right-winger/MAGA in the US and also I want to mention that Ikeda was a member of Japan's New Left and was influenced by the 1968/69 student protests in Japan. Something that would not fly well with the Trump administration and the MAGA folks. [EDIT: All links removed. You've been cautioned before about overdoing this, and that you're ignoring that is not appreciated. - Key] |
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 861 |
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Well, there is a TX law that is attempting to make changes that could a lot of manga into felonies. They target content with "Possess, access, or promote any obscene material that appears to show a minor under 18 engaged in sexual conduct—even if no real child was involved." They say it is to target AI pornography, but as the ANN article mentions manga often includes nude imagery for comedic purposes such as as in Dragon Ball, which some places already targeted before. Hell, American Pie actually has teens having sex as the subject and could possible be considered media about minors engaging in sexual behavior worthy of felony status if this law passes. This is not some sky is falling claim, the linked article states that anime fans in Houston area are worried it will be used to target poplar series because it is too vague. Meanwhile you have Florida lawmakers claiming right now that gay books should be banned because "We’re not talking about something that has classical, historic, literary value. We’re talking about if within that there is something we have all agreed that is truly poisonous to the minds of our children.” In other words, they believe the gay books they banned are violating obscenity law. Obscenity law holds that cannot be banned if they have classical, historical, or literary value. It doesn't really seem like a leap to say that Texas may ban books like Sasaki and Miyano because to them gay children existing is "sexual conduct." mdo7's post was removed before I could see what he said, but regardless this idea that nobody is trying to affect the availability of manga except for school libraries is a complete lie as shown by the linked article. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8233 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Exactly a good way to explain it, thank you FishLion for adding to my post. |
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TokimekiCrisis
Posts: 131 |
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The most common manga I saw getting banned growing up was Death Note because kids keep making their own Death Notes and writing down students and teachers names they don't like into what is otherwise a hit list seems understandable schools would not want to encourage that behavior. It's not even an American school thing as I remember schools in European and Asian countries had that problem as well. That was in the mid to late 2000s though and I'm not sure how popular Death Note still is with kids in 2025. I suppose Assassination Classroom is the new Death Note from what I've read in these articles and its relation to school shootings in America. Maybe it's just me but if removing Assassination Classroom from schools prevents just even one kid from getting the idea to shoot up his classmates then it's worth it. If they really want to read it they can do so on their own time at home or in a bookstore but a school not wanting to be associated with it seems understandable to me.
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Dfens
Posts: 467 |
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It took some time to read the entire article and it was a long one had to take a break or two to process it all.
For the most part I took away from it is that school librarians have various criteria on what books are selected to be put out on shelves while other due to state laws or school policy have to restrict certain content is perfectly understandable. It's not like these books in question are banned on the open market when kids are not at school and are on there free time. Some Manga in my collection I would not advocate for being made readily available in public schools. As for the nonsense Texas law is just a proposal right now. Yes some idiots are trying to get the law to pass and I would hope that the voters and politicians would see it and vote against such garbage. Hell in my state right now some idiot law maker wants to make it illegal on a state level to modify a lawfully purchased item into a illegal item. But guess what it's already illegal on the federal level, so they want to make something more illegal. And the true intention of this new law is if any certain item can accept modification than said item is now a banned item for sale. So they found a work around to just out right ban a lawfully purchased item they don't like. And it might actually pass because the Governor is a idiot and would need a lawsuit to contest said law if it passes. So there is no shortage of idiot law makers who want to pass laws that the people don't want or make much sense. |
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