The title may sound too ridiculous to be true, but it's not. According to the Comic Books Legal Defense Fund, the CBLDF, a U.S. citizen was flying from his home in the States to visit a friend in Canada and, while at the airport, security searched his laptop, iPad, and iPhone. Customs determined that the manga found on his laptop was child pornography, and he is now being charged with possession and importing these materials.
There's no mention of what type of manga the man, a computer programer in his mid-twenties, saved to his laptop. It's possible that Canadian officials determined ecchi, titlating but not erotic situations, or moe, situations involving cute girls, were actually erotic, or worse yet, they opened the wrong page in any number of Japanese titles containing benign child nudity. In the event that he was in fact holding on to lolicon or shotacon hentai, pornographic manga involving underage girls or boys respectively, support for him may wane drastically as was the case in 2007 with Christopher Handley who ended up serving a six month sentence in jail.
If the accused man had saved something not meant to be erotic, then the comic book, anime, and manga fan communities will need to act in unison to defend materials that may be perceived as illicit or perverted. However, if the manga in question are fully pornographic and involve small children, the issue becomes far more complicated. Many would say art is always art, and censoring any form of it is wrong and that there is no crime committed in simply looking at the materials. On the other hand, others would say that such materials are indicative of pedophilic tendencies or are in some way morally harmful to living children.
The debate is ongoing, and as anime and manga becomes more prevalent around the world and government actions against lewd or indecent materials and behavior seem to step up in intensity, what the future will bring is a matter of theory.
If you would like to support the unnamed U.S. citizen, you can donate here to the CBLDF to support his case, and you can read more from the original article and another that provides additional information.
Viz Media LLC has been a long time rock in the North American anime and manga industry. Titles like Naruto, Bleach, Death Note, and Dragonball have all helped keep the titan afloat despite major setbacks that seem to strike out each year. Viz Media is known for publishing kid and teen friendly titles, so it comes as somewhat of a surprise that they are currently seeking an editor specifically for the yaoi/BL genre. For those who don't know, yaoi is a term English speakers use to define male homosexual content that typically involves erotic situations of widely varying degrees of graphicness. The BL stands for Boys Love.
It seemed possible, given the squeaky clean track record Viz has in regards to mature content if we're not counting Black Lagoon and Biomega, that this posting may have referred to manga involving homosexual romance devoid of erotic content. However, it specifically states that, "Knowledge of yaoi/BL genre and market, and ability to work on adult-oriented materials A MUST." There is little room for interpretation, but again, due to the nature of the yaoi/bl genre, the graphic nature of such "adult-oriented materials" may be nothing more than suggestive dialogue and titilating imagery.
What this means for Viz Media's future publication choices is left to speculation. It's possible this is an attempt to corner areas of the manga market left previously untouched by Viz to make up for losses in teen and young adult entertainment. The anime and manga industries in North America have been suffering losses for the past few years, the reasons for which are as divergent as they are complex. You can check out the job posting here.
Summer is around the corner and that typically means reruns on TV, but not for anime! Fans of the all female mangaka group CLAMP will be please to learn that they have provided a new original story and character design for the Blood series (Blood: The Last Vampire, Blood+). It will be interesting to see CLAMP's take on the gory natural of the original movie. Appleseed makes a return in the form of a new animated series, while Nuraihyon no Mago and Baka to Test gets a second season. Other series to keep an eye out for is the child raising series Usagi Drop, R-15, and Kami-sama no Memo-chou.
The full chart can be viewed inside. (Update: Fixed image from expanding)
While the final full volumed novel of Full Metal Panic! written by Shoji Gatoh ended on August 2010, the 15th volume of the manga adaptation, Full Metal Panic! Sigma, released earlier this week announced a new novelization for the series.
The new story will take place roughly 10 years after the events of the original series and will be written by Naoto Oguro while Shoji Gatoh, will supervise. Kanetake Ebikawa, the mechanical designer for novels posted an image for the project on his twitter.
Source: Yaraon
NIS America has announced that they will be releasing a Blu-Ray and DVD combo premium set complete with hardcover artbook of the popular anime series Arakawa Under the Bridge and Katanagatari in English. Arakawa Under the Bridge originally was a manga created by Hikaru Nakamura while Katanagatari was a novel written by Nisio Isin (NisiOisiN) who also wrote the popular novel, Bakemonogatari.
The combo premium sets will retail for $69.99 each with a release date of July 5th, coinciding with North America's largest convention, Anime Expo.
Last year, NIS America released Toradora! in July during the weekend of Anime Expo and brought 2 key voice actors from the series to the show, Yui Horie and Eri Kitamura. For the perceptive folks out there, feel free to speculate in the comments.
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