Forum - View topic

NEWS: Square Enix Launches English Version of Manga Up! Web Manga Site, App

Its censored? What the hell... Can you tell me one of the series that is so I can see how bad it is?

Thanks for the explanation. I do remember hearing about how Apple is weirdly prudish about certain content. I wonder if guys like Netflix have to experience similar scrutiny (Netflix does have a few NC-17 films on their service).

Anyway, it would have been nice if SE was at least upfront about the censorship.

I'm guessing it's due to Apple's adult content policies. They would either have to censor content to meet Apple's standards, allow renting chapters on the website, or not release 18+ series at all.

It's the reason why 18+ content doesn't appear in the Shonen Jump app (e.g., Dandadan). I'm not sure how Manga Plus gets around it though (unless they exclude certain series on iOS, but I haven't heard of that [I have an Android phone]).

Only decent thing on the platform is they are really covering up their bases with content warnings. So much so as to go too far, saying they are not condoning Satanism and warning for "Gender."

I'm guessing it's due to Apple's adult content policies. They would either have to censor content to meet Apple's standards, allow renting chapters on the website, or not release 18+ series at all.

It can be an overrreaction to presumed attitudes of "Western fans": "Oh, in overseas this content will be scandalous, so I am gonna censor it before hand".

blahmoomoo wrote:

I'm guessing it's due to Apple's adult content policies. They would either have to censor content to meet Apple's standards, allow renting chapters on the website, or not release 18+ series at all.

kgw wrote:

It can be an overrreaction to presumed attitudes of "Western fans": "Oh, in overseas this content will be scandalous, so I am gonna censor it before hand".

Not necessarily. I don't know where the original image in the imgur link is from, and the J-Novel forum link doesn't load for me, however, I do know that censorship is not unknown in manga reading services even in Japan. I have MangaPark on my tablet (the Japanese version, sideloaded as I'd be geoblocked otherwise, I guess they only want money from Japanese readers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) which carries a lot of spicy content, from suggestive to outright porny. And most of it is censored - maybe not cleavages, but nipples, nether regions, genitals (even when they were drawn vaguely in the original, even "cones of light" are turned into just whiteness ), even some more "detailed" underwear shots, etc. are blurred out, deleted, cut, etc.

If I had to guess I'd say it's because there's no real age verification process nor a reliable way to block underage users from certain material - nor actual will to do so, I mean teenage readers seem to be the main target demographics here, and teens want to read hot sexy stuff too. So they just do what they can to make the hot sexy content available but also kind of toned down, and if someone wants the uncensored content they can buy the (I assume) uncensored ebooks from the service's ebook library.

ETA: I just downloaded both the Japanese and the English version of Manga UP, and checked Goblin Slayer (I'm not into this stuff so that was the only thing I recognized that I knew had this sort of content) and at least in the free chapter it's censored in Japanese as well, with the same ugly black bars - in fact, on one particular page the Japanese version had more censorship than the English one. So there's that. For comparison:
very NSFW depiction of sexual assault 1
very NSFW depiction of sexual assault 2
(I couldn't make screenshots so I took photos, also I didn't want to look at this any longer than necessary, so.)

Last time I looked instead of black bars there was just excessive lighting on the girls' bodies in these scenes.
I wonder if in the future this censorship will also apply to physical magazines.

Honestly, I want to believe that this is just a commercial tactic to sell tankouban and not that there is a feminist conspiracy to ban eroticism from manga.

Changeman wrote:

Last time I looked instead of black bars there was just excessive lighting on the girls' bodies in these scenes. I wonder if in the future this censorship will also apply to physical magazines. Honestly, I want to believe that this is just a commercial tactic to sell tankouban and not that there is a feminist conspiracy to ban eroticism from manga.

Trust me, we don't want this either.

It's pretty obvious what happened imo. Square Enix used some poorly-trained AI algorithm to identify boobs and paste black bars over it in order to meet Apple's content restrictions. There is no grand conspiracy here, only laziness.

Honestly, I want to believe that this is just a commercial tactic to sell tankouban and not that there is a feminist conspiracy to ban eroticism from manga.

Christ, it's 2022, but it feels like we've gone back to the 1920s when people were excited if they could see womens' knees.

Changeman wrote:

Honestly, I want to believe that this is just a commercial tactic to sell tankouban and not that there is a feminist conspiracy to ban eroticism from manga. Christ, it's 2022, but it feels like we've gone back to the 1920s when people were excited if they could see womens' knees.

Oh my dear god. One, you're about a century off with the 1920s thing (here's some 1920s fashion). (Hell, even Regency fashion was pretty loose by the standards of today's religious conservatives. Look at those loose hussies, you can see their c-c-c-clavicles!!11!)

Two, you can safely believe that this is just a commercial tactic, because whatever desperately insecure and scared little manchildren on the internet want you to believe, you can rest assured that there's no "feminist conspiracy" to ban eroticism from manga whatsoever.

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

Changeman wrote: Last time I looked instead of black bars there was just excessive lighting on the girls' bodies in these scenes. I wonder if in the future this censorship will also apply to physical magazines. Honestly, I want to believe that this is just a commercial tactic to sell tankouban and not that there is a feminist conspiracy to ban eroticism from manga. Trust me, we don't want this either. It's pretty obvious what happened imo. Square Enix used some poorly-trained AI algorithm to identify boobs and paste black bars over it in order to meet Apple's content restrictions. There is no grand conspiracy here, only laziness.

Or the much more likely (though still lazy on SE's part) scenario: underpaid contractors skimmed through the already censored JP content and slapped boxes on the same locations on the EN content.

Evidence: the first screenshot in SHD's post shows that the JP censorship isn't just boxes: one of the boxes is masked so the character's hair/armor is on top and another is shaped to block the entire upper thigh. The EN side is only boxes, and one of the small censorship boxes in the second screenshot was missed.

People who say not to believe in conspiracies are the first to conspire, this is a classic move.