Forum - View topicINTEREST: Manga Up! Censors Everything from Cleavage to... Knees!?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6275 |
|
|||||
Damn. |
||||||
|
||||||
Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2658 |
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 4014 |
|
|||||
|
The fact that you have to pay micro transactions to be able to read one chapter (which is paywalled into “segments”) is insane.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
blahmoomoo
Posts: 500 |
|
|||||
You get four chapters/segments (note that not all series are split into segments; I think it depends on if a chapter is >15 pages or so) worth of credits for free twice per day... as long as you resist the temptation of reading the newest three chapters that only accept paid credits and ignore a few series that don't accept free credits at all like FMA. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
SHD
Posts: 1759 |
|
|||||
Think about it this way: to have the uncensored manga on a Nook, or a Kindle or at the BookWalker or eBookJapan apps, etc. you have to first buy it. To watch uncensored anime on HiDive, Netflix, HBO, etc. you have to subscribe to all those. However with these apps, they might as well put the manga on the internet for everyone to read for free - sure, there's points or coins or whatever the microtransaction units are called, but you get free daily points, and also in many apps you can get points by doing things that don't cost money and also the publishers see no money from. From the publishers' perspective there's three issues with this, again, from the publisher's not necessarily reasonable perspective: 1. Probably the least important, but still likely figures into the situation. A lot of manga being censored in these apps originally appeared censored in the magazines they were published in (they are I assume mostly uncensored in the tankoubon editions). The apps essentially have the same function as the magazine, except unlike many magaznies, underage readers are definitely the main target demographics for these apps, at least in Japan. Also, the apps obviously use the tankoubon copies, not the original magazine copies. So, while an underaged person could read the series in the magazines while keeping their innocent soul untainted by the sight of cleavages and knees(?), were the chapters appear uncensored in the app, parents, etc. could start making noise about the content, which is not good PR. So it's safer to prevent that by censoring them. 2. But but but it's on the internet accessible to anyone! What if it gets pirated?! Best if we don't put out the 100% untouched version. (As I said above - not necessarily reasonable! but this is one consideration that kept Japanese media companies from embracing digital content for ages, and are still making them wary. Honestly I'm only half-joking when I say I'm still surprised the pages are legible and not stamped full of watermarks.) 3. Most importantly, MONEY! Duh. My educated guess is that it's part of the deal with publishers. Of course I don't know what kind of deals the owners of these apps have with the individual publishers and copyright holders, but I'm sure that publishers get a percentage from having their manga on offer in the app. And just think about it: with these apps you can read manga either for free (daily free coins/points, or coins/points collected by watching ads, subscribing to services the app has a separate deal with, etc. etc.), or essentially for the amount of money that you decide to pay (to buy coins/points) depending on how much you want to use the app. There's no fixed subscription fee. So, for the publishers/copyright holders it basically means that sure, they get some money from the app, but technically it's possible for people to read an entire series for free, if they're patient enough. Which means there needs to be an "incentive" for users to buy the tankoubon versions, and making reading the individual chapters difficult to read, or expensive on the long run for people who read a lot and/or are impatient, is part of that. Censorship can be one(! not the one and only) of these solutions: yes, you can read the chapters in the app for free, or for a small fee, but you don't get the full experience - you can only get that in a way that makes the publisher (whether they are or aren't the app's owner) the most money, eg. buying the book. (This is also the reason why most apps take measures to restrict how much you can read of ongoing or popular/big name series, by making chapters already available as tankoubon completely unavailable on the service, by locking them behind special coins you can't get without paying actual money for, or by making them cost so many coins people will have to spend money on buying them if they want to keep reading.) |
||||||
|
||||||
|
kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
|
|||||
This is pretty close to literally turning reading manga into a gacha game. My half-serious theory is the excessive and sloppy censorship (funniest part of those sample images isn't the knee, it's the one where they blocked out cleavage in one panel, but ignored the same character in another panel) is an intentional distraction from the microtransaction madness. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
gridsleep
|
|
|||||
|
In trying to be all things to all people Square Enix once again becomes nothing to anyone. Square Enix themselves will experience censorship by being ignored by everyone.
|
||||||
Wyvern
 Posts: 1596 |
|
|||||
Yeah, that seems really convoluted. Shonen Jump's app costs two bucks a month and for that you can read up to 100 chapters a day. That's it, no coins, no segments, no imaginary currencies. I hate how Web3 seems to be built around taking simple activities and making them super-complicated for the sake of profit. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
dragonquiz
Posts: 71 |
|
|||||
Well to be fair, the translation happened in '97 in the left-to-right comic book format, instead of the right-to-left manga format, and well whatever late 90's NA mentality of the time period had. So it was both a mentality choice and probably a legal choice at the time, otherwise you'll get angry parents that these perverseness stuff are in children's manga/comics and a whole lawsuit will come bearing down on Viz's door. |
||||||
|
||||||
Replica_Rabbit
 Posts: 354 Location: Portland |
|
|||||
|
I didn't notice the censorship, because of the crazy micro transactions. I feel like this app was created to slap Manga fans in the face
|
||||||
|
||||||
harminia
 Posts: 2045 Location: australia |
|
|||||
Wow, I didn't know Nozaki drew porn. |
||||||
|
||||||
enurtsol
 Posts: 14886 |
|
|||||
|
Knees should be censored! It can be quite sexual!
Original vs. Disney Plus 
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
jdnation
Posts: 2107 |
|
|||||
|
AMAZING!!!
So what I'm gathering from this is... 1. Square Enix wants to release a manga app in foreign markets. 2. Different foreign countries have different standards. 3. Rather than create individual apps for different countries with different levels of censorship, Square decided to be lazy and just go with one blanket app for the entire foreign market. 4. Naturally, this means implementing the standard of the most censorship-demanding countries for everyone? HILARIOUS! Also, no thanks!
Well, then I guess not... but does that make them even lazier?
Considering Squre Enix is largely a video game developer, between this and the micro-transaction mobile habits, I can believe it.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
piotrus
Posts: 18 |
|
|||||
Sigh. Thank God for fansubbers aka pirates, who care about readers experience and not profits (to be spent on lawyers, suing fans). |
||||||
|
||||||
|
ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 687 |
|
|||||
Sorry to spoil this illusion but the ones hosting those pirate sites, and the people doing rush job translations/subtitles of things like Jump titles, do not give a damn about reader experiences. They care only about profits. Which is why they take free low quality labor and slap it on malware ridden sites full of intrusive ads. The majority of the views on pirate sites are things that are readily legally available (usually for free!) and actively harm efforts to keep more niche or lost media available. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group