

IPad Says No to Violence and Adult Situations in Manga - jpatte
http://mangahelpers.com/news/details/369

======
sketerpot
So, they're censoring anything with blood or nudity? Just for fun, let's look
at the most popular manga on One Manga:

<http://www.onemanga.com/directory/top/>

1-4: Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Fairy Tail. These all have blood and violence.
They generally don't have much sexual content, though there is occasional mild
fanservice.

5\. Hajime no Ippo. It's about boxing. There _will_ be blood. And broken
bones, and so on.

6\. Full Metal Alchemist. _Pretty gosh-darn violent._ Dark, too.

7\. History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi. Guess what: it's another fighting
manga! Less bloody than you might expect, actually, and I'm pretty sure they
keep the sexual content down to PG-13 levels. This one would probably get
through! Way to go, Apple!

Skipping #8, because I've never heard of it...

9\. Hunter X Hunter. Quickly flipping through it at random turned up a page in
chapter 28 where a murderous nightmare clown is carrying a severed head.
Pretty tame sexually, though.

10\. No Bra. There is no way in hell this would pass any censor, anywhere,
ever. Moving on,

11\. Mahou Sensei Negima. Oh dear lord, no. It's not just the violence,
although it has violence aplenty. It has pretty vast amounts of sexual
content, most of it involving characters who are, at most, 15 years old. (Fun
fact: has a _freakishly_ long TV Tropes page.)

This kind of strict policy doesn't just block a lot of manga; it blocks almost
all of the most popular manga. It's madness, and the policy's only redeeming
virtue is that it probably won't be applied consistently, so they might let
some stuff through that they would have blocked if they'd been more thorough.

~~~
tptacek
I'm going to burn some karma for saying this, but is it the _policy_ that's
mad here, or is it _manga_? You can't get through the top 10 grossing _R-rated
movies_ without finding at least two (Up In The Air, Crazy Heart) that would
make it past this standard.

~~~
sketerpot
Part of it is that the manga which achieves the most popularity tends to be
shounen fighting stuff. I mean, look at the top four: Naruto, Bleach, One
Piece, and Fairy Tail. They all use much the same formula, but with the
details changed. (Naruto has ninjas, One Piece has pirates, Bleach has
something else, and Fairy Tail has mages.) It gets tiresome after a while, but
that kind of thing tops the charts, consistently.

Meanwhile you have absolutely beautiful manga like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou
(which is made from liquid happiness) that don't even get licensed for
official English translation.

------
mozz
If this is true, it's a complete joke. When material that is designed for
12-13 year old boys is blocked for being too rough, you might have issues with
your standards.

~~~
sirn
It's true, but manga in Japan is not limited to 12-13 years old but very
segmented throughout age groups. For example, anything labeled with "Seinen"
(usually those published under magazine with title prefixed with "Young", e.g.
Young Jump, Young King) is intended for the 18~30 age range. Even "Shonen"
(male 13~18) nowadays are not very strictly shonen. "Shoujo" (female 13~18)
most of time shouldn't really labeled shoujo.

The problem is that Kodansha never publicize the title of 30% that has been
rejected, so we're in no way to know whose standards are at issue here.

------
sirn
If you can read Japanese, the actual interview quoted in the Japanese source
can be found at:
[http://builder.japan.zdnet.com/sp/epub2010/story/0,380010362...](http://builder.japan.zdnet.com/sp/epub2010/story/0,3800103623,20412980-2,00.htm)
Here's the line in question, translated (note he's talking about _iPhone
application_, not the iPad):

Hagino: "Of all Kodansha's application to Voyager to be made into an iPhone
application, about 30% are rejected by Apple. There are series that was
accepted until vol.4, but we can't release vol.5 and on. Not only violence,
but blood depiction are also considered brutal by Apple. 'Hatarakiman' (series
about female editor) was recently rejected because of a massage scene. There's
no series with office lady as a main character that has no bathing scene, but
we're not allowed to show that too because there's breast depiction."

This one is interesting:

Hagino: "This is another story, but anything related to Apple is also
rejected. Two books called "The Company That Invented an iPhone" and "The Man
That Made an iPod" are also recently rejected. The reason for that was they
disallow merchandising anything related to Apple employee. Then how about
Microsoft? (Laughs)."

------
lispm
No violence anymore? Wow, a lot of Hollywood movies in the iTunes store show
mostly violence in epic form. Some movies only seem to exist to show as much
violence as possible. Steve, what do you want to do about that?

------
Terretta
You know, ComicZeal on my iPad shows violence and adult situations just fine.

It also shows Tintin, which for some, could be even more disturbing.

~~~
Hexstream
I really don't know what people have against Tintin.

Maybe because I grew up with a partial collection of it that I inherited from
my brothers.

Can you explain what's disturbing about it?

~~~
jpatte
The first album was written during colonial times and reflects the
consideration European people had towards natives at this time (ie. they would
be savages waiting to be "enlightened"). This is considered a racist behavior
today and some people are offended by it being still available for young
children without any censorship, while others see it as an historical document
that should remain intact.

------
dagobart
The idea looks like what already failed on the fictional character of RoboCop
- be too tame.

------
papachito
Someone needs to tell Apple about <http://mobile.youporn.com/> and all other
thousands of web sites that stream porn for free on the iphone/ipad.

~~~
xenthral
Jobs wants to keep the walled garden pure of corruption.

Says not to eat of the fruit of the tree of porn, lest the consumer lose their
innocence.

The serpent of webkit/safari tempts you.

