Kadokawa's president Takeshi Natsuno said that manga are unable to pass the examination of google and apple so the rules of what is OK or not to express in public must be changed for this era of internet. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Manga/Light Novel needs your help, and it needs it now. #NoNewStandards Hello, to whoever you are. I hope a friend sent this to you, or you found this scrolling, or someone reposted the text elsewhere online. Long story short, if you like anime and manga, we need your help. Here’s why we’re mobilizing. As many of you may not know, Kadokawa Publishing, one of the oldest and largest publishers of manga in Japan, and owner of a catalog of IP’s that almost certainly includes your favorite publication or show, has recently named a new CEO, Takeshi Natsuno, who has former experience in the early Japanese internet industry and who currently sits on the board of the World Economic Forum. As one of his first acts since being appointed in March, he went on an online livestream and claimed that manga was too risqué for global appeal and that he was open to exploring imposing “new standards” that would bring, in one swoop, roughly 45% of Japan’s manga industry in line with Apple and Google’s capricious content standards that currently control YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Apple’s online platforms, such as Music and Podcasts. This livestream has Japanese fans hopping mad. They’re organizing to try and stop this policy. But they know they can’t push back alone. In order to push back against Kadokawa, they need help from abroad. That’s where you, dear reader, come in. We cannot control what Kadokawa does directly. But that doesn’t mean we’re out for the count. Individually, Kadokawa has no incentive to listen to any of us, and their CEO certainly seems not to value the input of fans, anyway. In fact, there isn’t even an option on Kadokawa’s contact page to contact Mr. Natsuno unless you’re a shareholder. But there is an institution Kadokawa will respond to, and that institution is the Diet, Japan’s legislative assembly. The Diet already knows about this threat. Ken Akamatsu, the famous author of Love Hina, has been warning for years about coming regulatory attempts on the anime industry. A panel of female authors has appeared before the United Nations to rebuff calls to ban certain manga from sale. Sony Interactive, after relocating their headquarters to California, announced a draconian censorship code that has seen the market for indies on PlayStation shrink dramatically as Japanese developers panic. This is a real problem, and it is already taken seriously. There is national momentum behind enshrining anime and manga as key strategic resources for Japanese soft power. The government is currently converting mangaka residences to museums, adding manga properties to historic registers, and establishing national councils to secure the independence of the medium, including government subsidization of a National Manga Center. The iron is hot, and it’s time to strike. Here’s what I want you to do right now. Before you close this tab: In 2012, Japanese voters in Tokyo elected a politician named Taro Yamada, who campaigned on protecting the freedom of expression of Japanese artists from business and governmental regulation. He also wears a bow tie. In 2019, fed up with increasing demands to censor art and media for the upcoming Olympic Games, a coalition of nerds, otaku and their political allies handed Yamada a massive re-election. You can send a message to Councillor Yamada right here. (please note that bottom checkmark is a newsletter subscription, you might want to turn that off) I want you to contact him right now. I want you to write a message, in whatever language you speak, explaining that you are a fan of anime from overseas, and that you want this naked subsumption of Japanese media to speech codes dictated from foreign companies stopped this instant. I want you to tell him that you want to join the fight to keep Japanese media, fair, free and independent. I want you to tell him that Japanese media is at risk of being kneecapped by aggressive foreign tech monopolies, and that this is no longer an issue of simple artistic freedom but of naked economic sabotage against competitors. I want you to put your heart into whatever you write him, and then I want you to send this link to your friends and have them write him. I want so many foreign pleas for help in Councillor Yamada’s office that he thinks foreign spectators were let in for the Olympics. I want him wading through your pleas. I want him to look at his inbox and go “holy sweet pecan pie” and then I want more on top of that. Councillor Yamada also works with the Association for Freedom of Entertainment Expression, an artists’ lobby that opposes government censorship in Japan. I want you to send them a message, too, and I want you to explain that the United States, through tech companies, is engaging in soft regulatory suffocation of Japan’s domestic media production. If you really want to pack a punch, I want you to send Councillor Yamada a letter. Snail mail. Copy-paste his address onto your envelope. 〒100-0014 千代田区永田町2-1-1 参議院議員会館623号室 If you’re still pissed off, you can send foreign messages to Prime Minister Suga’s office, but chances are low this will help much. Suga probably doesn’t care, and he’s also busy with a certain sporting event that has his nation on high alert. Here’s what I want you to do in the coming days. Social media platforms are not your friends. But they’re the best hope we have. I want you to disseminate this call to action. I want you to translate it if you can. Ask your Discord friends to help out. Post it on Twitter. Tag anitubers, anitwitter people, anyone you can think of. Come up with some clever hashtag like #KeepMangaFree, I don’t know; I don’t use Twitter or Discord. Use the #NoNewStandards hashtag. You mobilized to keep the Internet free, now manga needs your help, too. Say it loud, and say it with all the fans in Japan who need your help. Don’t let these companies limit free expression. Make posts in other communities raising awareness. If you don’t want to be associated with this post, don’t even mention it. Disavow us. We’re just passing the signal, grab and transmit. This has nothing to do with GamerGate or any stupid culture war. This is about keeping a medium we all love independent. Whether you’ve only ever read popular shonen or binge multiple series a week, whether you read official translations or fan scanlations or buy the volumes at the bookstore. Whether you’re an angry weeb, a progressive activist, are apolitical, or anywhere in between. Whether you post on animemes, or goodanimemes, or no meme subs at all. This is bigger than that. No matter what, we need your help. You totally pirated manga at some point. Don’t lie. Now is your chance to give back. Because if we don’t act soon, the fate of manga may not be pretty. FAQ I don’t even like anime or manga. Why should I care? This decision by Kadokawa reinforces the precedent that private companies should feel an incentive to comply with dictates set by tech companies. That means your favorite independent bookstore, or your favorite indie music label. It means any business that is now dependent on digital ads in a world of ecommerce. It means queer, LGBT, racial minority, or other marginalized creators lose their right to sell their work if it offends a national government partnered with these companies. It means no mention of Taiwan or Hong Kong or Uyghurs. It means activists and sex workers getting demonetized. A loss for any of us harms all of us. But the CEO has a point. Anime and manga ARE oversexualized. Couldn’t Western influence could help them with representation issues? Setting aside that Western localizations of anime routinely engage in queer erasure already, and that this would only become worse if all manga had to be Google approved, when was the last time efforts to curb sexualization in media helped? Twitch’s attempts have lead to the hot tub meta, YouTube’s have led to Elsagate, Apple’s have led to mass blocks of Discord channels. Regulation of these things does not work. Isn’t this posted on a fucking GamerGate sub? Aren’t you a reactionary piece of crap? Why would we help you assholes after everything you’ve done? Fair point. And it would be easy to say that we’re signal boosting this because we’re a bunch of scared losers who just don’t want their manga fucked with. Absolutely. But, when it comes to pressuring companies, we’ve seen a lot of it. Take it from a community that’s taken and flung a lot of shit, you do not want your hobby to become a culture war. Either you stop this now, or every manga and anime commentator is going to be 100% outrage, all the time. You don’t want that. We don’t want that. If the origin of this post annoys you, copy-paste the call to action. We won’t get offended. Isn’t this just gonna mobilize people who DON’T like manga to support these companies? Aren’t you afraid of kicking a hornets’ nest? Yes, it will. If this goes anywhere, there will be articles on every anime site about how bad we are, and probably a few counter-campaigns. But those people are already winning. They’ve gotten collaborations and campaigns canceled, they’ve gotten on production committees, they’re in every localization studio. Inaction is just conceding a win. This isn’t going to do anything; it’s a waste of time. A small group of activists managed to ignite the Uzaki-chan controversy that ate Twitter for months. No matter how you feel about that controversy, never underestimate what just a few complaints can start. This is outrage bait, fuck you. Everything is outrage bait until the outrageous actually happens. We need your help. If you want to forget about this afterwards, that’s fine, but please at least pass it on. News - https://twitter.com/seri3ma/status/1419320150495531008?s=20 News (Japan) - https://twitter.com/nmisaki/status/1419196162880335872 Reaction from the r/manga community- https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comm.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAc.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I read about 70%. Kadokawa just wants to make more money. It is just the same way Hollywood invented PG 13 so more people could watch adult movies. Niche will be taken over by Independent publishers. Literotica if you want risque. I find it funny that otakus protest. I expected Hikikomoris to be hiding at home. Publishers are private businesses not public services. You won't want the government to decide how you have sex with your lover
Little did they know that Marvel and DC are on a brink of death these days, two giant comic company can't sell, Demon Slayer Alone outsells the whole comic industry in America, which is a shame considering the contribution of American Comics before.
That is very misleading. Last I checked Mangas are not adapted into movie franchises earning $1 billion per film. Perspective is important. You cannot fault Kadokawa for wanting a broader audience. Government can start their own non profit publishing companies That will solve the issue
I worded it incorrectly without context, what I mean is that, last year 2020, full reading here https://andyarttv.com/demon-slayer-manga-outsells-entire-american-comic-book-industry/ If only the government acts, sadly this move will kill them slowly
The problem with trying to appeal to an international audience, is you need there to be a market for the content there, and the sexualization of manga is not the biggest factor in what is holding it back, it is a contributing one but not the biggest. So the question is will this help, or will it hurt as it could easily cause lower sales from those not happy with the change. But there is a chance it brings in more readers. But it would likely be years before they see a real international growth. So is your complaint. If you want to bring up Marvel and the MCU you kind of need to compare it to other Us comic book movie. MCU is very successful but is the exception, to many comic movies have flopped hard, or only been a success because of diehard fans of the property (which manga simply does not have outside of Japan with few exceptions). Similarly there are anime and manga that massively out perform the others. and are worth billions. Dragon Ball, One Piece, Pokemon, all have worth in the double digit billions. But if you go to movies, most manga would need to be animation, and there is just no where near the market for that internationally. Interesting. In the couple years, I have filled a (small) bookshelf (4 2 foot wide shelves) with manga volumes. In that time I have bought exactly 5 comics issues, the Warhammer 40,000 Calgar mioi-series they released last year.
Gotta go hog manga and LNs. Personally, I think if kadokawa does that they're just digging there own grave. I mean they're basically trying to change a whole culture into something else. And who supports the manga/anime? The fans. The fans wouldn't like that meaning they would lose viewers and supporters and some authors would just not do it anymore. It's like suddenly banning gasoline because it's not eco friendly. Also it's not like kadokawa is the only publisher out there. Authors would simply go to another publisher and the influence of kadokawa would gradually fall. Why don't they create a subgenre like pg so it's not that "sexualized". I mean demon slayer for example is not sexualized. They are plenty of sites that start with the letter p and ends in n out there that post sexualized contents. I mean one is even the 8th most visited website.
Rating systems will not appease the puritanically international markets they want to court for sales? To many people lump the entire media into 1 as opposed to separating out the different audiences that they are made for. But ya, there are plenty of titles that are not overly sexualized. and some are that are still less then American comics. My Hero academia got into issues over a couple characters outfits, but there are worse outfits in most American comics, though that the characters in manga tend to be <18 due to being marketed primarily to <18 yo males likely does not help. But you constantly see worse outfits on 20's female character from American comics. Though it does seem that there is to much perversion for the sake of perversion in a lot of Japanese media, and they likely could use toning it down. but not an outright ban.
You do know that DC makes like 20 animated films every year? Same with Marvel. Then you have the dubs of all those movies. Hollywood animation is doing quite fine. They have taken unpopular Japanese anime, dubbed them and turned them into toy cash cows. Hollywood invented PG 13 rating for a reason: It helps moves make more money. Reducing your audience to just adults is dumb. The Japanese comics industry is just too niche. This is what I know. You have one issue of One Piece at a time. How many issues of Superman, Batman with all their parallel universes. Not everything is disclosed but there is a reason Kadokawa wants to copy it. Besides, you all seem to forget Artists make bad business men. Yes, this might kill artistic expression but it is a tried and true method to make more money. Let an expert explain it better
Sex bad. What's new? Yet you still get teen TV series where they bonk and do drugs like they're already bored of life. So which is it?
Whenever they say "for the children" it never is, and never will be about protecting children. Oh no, but what if a kid sees it and then googles 'boobies'!? It will be the end of the world, I tells ya! Watching people get shot to death and commit horrible crimes is fine, though. In fact, focus testing shows that the bloodier it is, the better! But you better not show some side boob!
"Gravire idols in swimsuits" Do Shonen magazines actually feature real live models wearing swimsuits ? Shouldn't it be manga characters wearing swimsuits, or something like that ? Reminds me of why I prefer English subbed movies & anime over English speaking Marvel & DC content. I have subscribed iQIYI, and ditched Netflix, mostly because of this.
reminds me of child pageants... Las Vegas: but then again, a comic book is no place for photos of child pageants, or any other models/idols. ...maybe the Japanese government wants to get Japanese manga fans interested in real girls again, to procreate and repopulate Japan's shrinking populace ? Anyway, point is, American content standards are arbitrary, with changes every decade, and would ruin the Japanese manga industry. The 'TRADE WAR' continues... First they came for Alstom, who buckled & got sold to GE. 2nd they came for Huawei, who resisted & got sanctioned. now they are coming for Japanese manga... History will always repeat itself... again... and again... and again