My Thoughts on Censorship in Manga

I was recently perusing some anime/manga news sites and came across several articles about censorship with regards to manga. This provoked memories of some manga that I own and read that have featured censorship. However, not all censorship is equal and I intend to give my own thoughts on censorship in manga.

The first thing that I should clarify is that I oppose any censorship that changes the context of the story. I believe that any work of art is entitled to tell the story the way it wants and to have someone besides the creator change that is reprehensible. However, most of the censorship that I’m going to cover here does not change the story and will be judged based on if it affects the reader’s immersion and whether it changes the intent of the scene.

The first example that I would like to touch on is a series called “I”s” from which I can recall two scenes of censorship. In the first volume of the series, the main character, Ichitaka, is shown a picture from a magazine of a naked model with his love interest’s head superimposed onto the body. He understandably freaks out but what I was freaking out about was how obviously censored the picture was with two stars covering the nipples. The glaring censorship immediately took me out of the story and reminded me that I was reading.

However, a later volume actually does feature some inconspicuous censorship when the characters are at a spa. In the original Japanese release, we saw the exposed breasts of the female guests. However, in the Viz Media edition that I have, some touch up art was used to tastefully use the steam to conceal the breasts. In contrast to the censorship found in the first volume, I found the art used in the censorship did not interfere with my reading experience.

Amongst the worst censorship I have ever seen in a Western release of a manga comes from volume 23 of the Viz Media release of Hunter x Hunter. Near the beginning of the volume, Killua is fighting a chimera ant and kills him by twisting his neck. However, what we see is a very ugly rectangular black box covering the neck in two panels. This proved extremely disruptive to my immersion and drew me out of the story.

However, it is interesting to note that this censorship can sometimes be reverted. When I learned of Viz Media’s release of Fullmetal Alchemist, I learned that a scene in volume 8 had been censored. This scene depicted the character Envy on a stone cross but for the Western release, Viz decided to turn the cross into a slab. I fully expected this when I picked up the Fullmetal Alchemist manga boxset but I found that the volume (in its fifth printing) had reverted the scene back to the original.

Censorship is a very ugly word in the anime/manga community and many of these censors were derided by fans at their release. However, I think it is important that not all censorship be tarred with the same brush. I think that, as long as the story remains intact and the censorship remains inconspicuous, we should be able to tolerate these modifications. Let me know what you think of my thoughts on manga censorship, what your own thoughts are and any examples that you found noteworthy.

Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!