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High Score Manga Artist Chinami Tsuyama Says Cigarettes Now Banned in Ribon

High Score manga artist Chinami Tsuyama wrote on Twitter on March 15 that there will no longer be any scenes in her manga where characters hold cigarettes due to tightening restrictions in the shojo magazine Ribon. In the same tweet, she also mentioned that three years ago she had been told not to make any cigarettes she drew emit smoke, and even then she was taken aback by how tight the restrictions were.

Because Tsuyama found cigarettes useful as a way of conveying her characters' personalities, she decided to ask her readers via Twitter poll what sort of alternative she should make her characters hold. 61,716 users voted in the poll, and "facial roller" won the vote. Tsuyama said that she would go buy one for reference, and promised to do her best within Ribon's restrictions.

After her tweets were reported on by several Japanese news outlets, Tsuyama wrote a follow-up tweet on March 17 stressing that she is only talking about what she was personally told in her own case, and that she cannot comment on what happens at other magazines, or about how other manga series serialized in Ribon are handled. She also noted that although cigarettes have been banned, her editors have allowed her to depict other things that would be considered risque in a magazine for young girls, like showing a male character dressed only in his underwear proposing to a girl in a theme park.

High Score is a four-panel gag comedy manga that follows the misadventures of a beautiful, self-centered girl named Megumi and other students at a high school. Tsuyama began the manga in Ribon in 1995, and it inspired a television anime in 2011.

Source: Chinami Tsuyama's Twitter account via Otakomu