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Tatsuki Fujimoto's Look Back 1-shot Gets Changed Post-Publication to Avoid "Promoting Discrimination"

posted on by Kim Morrissy
Lines referencing "paranoid episode", plagiarism were changed to reader feedback

The official Twitter account of Shueisha's Shonen Jump+ online service announced on Monday that the Look Back one-shot manga by Chainsaw Man author Tatsuki Fujimoto has been altered post-publication due to reader feedback regarding "inappropriate expressions." The changes were made "out of a desire to avoid depicting something that could be linked to promoting bias or discrimination."

Note: Story details regarding the manga are below:

In the one-shot, a man claiming to be hearing voices and having a "paranoid episode" goes into an art school with an axe, claiming that a student plagiarized his art. Although the event still occurs in the altered version, both the references to the "paranoid episode" and to the motivation of plagiarism have been replaced with different text.

In the Japanese version, the line "According to his statement, he was hearing voices insulting him during a paranoid episode" was replaced with a line saying that he had the intention to kill the first person he laid eyes on. The lines "They're wrong! It's mine, isn't it?! It was my idea first! You plagiarized my art, didn't you?!" were replaced with lines insinuating that the artist's creations were looking down on him and making fun of him.

Although the manga was well-received in Japan, accruing over 1.2 million views on Shonen Jump+, some readers pointed out the similarities between the events of the manga and the Kyoto Animation arson incident that occurred two years ago on July 18, 2019. There were also concerns that the portrayal of someone with schizophrenia as a mass murderer could stigmatize the mental illness.

The one-shot debuted on Shonen Jump+ in Japan on July 19. The English version of the manga on MANGA Plus has yet to be changed as of the publication of this article.

Sources: Shonen Jump+ Twitter website, ITMedia


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