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The Legal and 'Soft' Censorship Affecting Manga in America
by Reuben Baron,
Daniel Cruz, from the free expression advocacy group PEN America (the organization presenting the panel), focused on the legal side of censorship and steps being taken to combat it. Varun Gupta, founder of Manga Mavericks, and Kristiina Korpus, an editor for Abrams Books' Kana line, came at the subject from a different angle: the “soft censorship” decisions publishers have to make to protect themselves and their IP from getting into the legal trouble of “hard censorship.” Hannah Lee from the Japan Society moderated the discussion, balancing multiple topics over the course of an hour.
For a clear example of “soft censorship,” Korpus pointed to the cover-ups of body parts you might see in hentai — “blurring, lightsabers, little black boxes.” This censorship often comes directly from the original author; when a title in Seven Seas' Mature-rated Steamship line displays a black box instead of full nudity, it's because the artist didn't include anything to fill that space. Gupta had a different example of soft censorship on a title he worked on: replacing lyrics from Nirvana's “Heart-Shaped Box” to avoid potential copyright issues (this would have been the time to make a JoJo reference, but no one did).
Neither Korpus nor Gupta wants to have to make content changes to manga, and when they have to, Gupta said changes must be made “in respect to the original publisher and mangaka's intention.” The larger chilling effect of book-banning is that it makes publishers more likely to have second thoughts about publishing certain books at all. As a smaller publisher, Manga Mavericks chooses to avoid licensing certain types of more explicit content. Korpus emphasized how publishers are assessing risk when some books might be unsellable in entire states, saying, “publishers doing LGBTQIA+ work and even things that are politically sensitive, they're still publishing these things knowing they can be taken out of the lexicon.” Cruz emphasized the toll this can take on authors: “Authors stop writing the content that's getting censored.”
The inconsistencies of various publishers' ratings systems for manga are another complicated issue to navigate. Some hypotheticals the panelists brought up: What do you do when a series starts all ages but introduces more controversial content later on? Does a yuri story with no objectionable content have to automatically be given a 13+ rating amidst homophobic censorship laws? Should criticism of religion affect content ratings? Korpus praised the effectiveness of how romance novels have handled detailed trigger warnings, allowing readers to “protect themselves” from stuff they don't want to see while still making it possible for such content to get published and find an audience, but doesn't see manga as having gotten as far in this regard.
How do school boards in rural Oklahoma even know what a “BL manga” is? Cruz blames Florida and “copycat bans” — the long list of book bans in Florida is often copied by censors in other states without even checking what exactly was found objectionable in said books in the first place. The United States has a strict definition of what constitutes obscenity, but according to Cruz, “the recent epidemics of book-banning ignore those definitions.”
Cruz is concerned that the current administration makes fighting book bans on the legal level extremely difficult for now, though during the audience Q&A session of the panel, a staffer from Kodansha proudly noted that Penguin Random House is working alongside PEN in suing state governments over book bans. For fans, the best defense against book bans is on the grassroots level. “Ask your public library to buy these books that are in danger,” Cruz said. “If you have the funds, buy them yourself, and go to your local school board meetings to make sure bans aren't happening.” Korpus added, “We live in a capitalistic society and your money talks louder than you do, so support what you want to see in the publishing space with your buying power.” All of the panelists encouraged adults to support literature access for the teens in their lives.
There's a lot about the current wave of censorship this manga-focused panel couldn't cover. While long-standing app store restrictions were mentioned, the recent content purges at itch.io and the protests against censorious payment processors went unmentioned. However, it was clear that some audience commenters had these concerns on their minds. One sure thing, for better or (more likely) worse: we won't run out of stuff to talk about at these kinds of panels.
ANN's coverage of Anime NYC 2025 is sponsored by Yen Press!
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