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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - For the Fans[ervice]
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tintor2
 Posts: 2172 |
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It sure is weird that Ranma had to be edited when it's on Netflix, the same plattform where I watched the first episode of Dandadan with nearly sexual assault on a minor and don't let me talk about Deviman Crybaby. Do the staff members edit characters on Netflix if they have to apply to a demography? Even the 70s Gundam had fanservice for nearly every White Base girl (extra point for Char taking a shower). In contrast the Vinland Saga anime actually censored the scenes involving nudity such as when slaves are being bought.
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bassgs435
 Posts: 377 |
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1) Words can change meanings to suit how the speakers use them: I see nothing wrong with this usage of censorship,. No one is claiming it's govermnents doing it and everyone understand what it means, so it feels pedantic to argue semantics over the meaning to me, but whatever
2) The BD myth is mentioned here and let me tell you: very few shows that air censored on TV currently get uncensored in disc. The most recent cases are Ayakashi Triangle and a single episode of Back Arrow. What happens now is that a paid japanese TV channel called AT-X gets the uncensored release if they exist. And they want exclusivity to get people paying for subscriptions. That said, the cases of Chained Soldier, Plus Size Elf, Gushing and Tales of Wedding Rings (this one is CR) getting the AT-X release streaming internationally maybe means that the japanese side realizes the exlcusivity contract has no meaning overseas. No one outside of Japan is gonna get AT-X subscriptions What BDs do now is add some bonus to the uncensored AT-X release (Futoku no Guild added new scenes and extended some others that were already present in the AT-X release, meanwhile Gushing added moaning to the lewder scenes that got muted for AT-X.), |
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scanlines
 Posts: 69 Location: in time out for bad behavior |
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It seems like a creative choice done by either the studios or production staff. Anime has been censored in China, the Middle East and in Latin America. I do see your point with the other programs, but they did the same thing with the Urusei Yatsura remake. The odd thing is that certain characters are missing from the Ranma remake... |
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FishLion
 Posts: 267 |
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I always find the colloquial meaning of "altering source material to fit local standard, especially obscuring matter considered to be adult" to be more complex. I wouldn't call Ash grabbing a sandwich instead of an onigiri censorship because it is there purely for localization purposes. On the other hand, Cardcaptor Sakura has many episodes cut from the original release (is cutting whole episodes to get to the boy character censorship? that one is a weird one) and they specifically removed all the gay elements similar to Sailor Moon. That may have been in the name of "localizing" for the audience of America that was still very sensitive to gay topics and definitely not considered appropriate for children in America at the time, but the end result is still that they hid specific topics because of their perceived inappropriateness in America. That feels more like censorship to me then localization, even if it was technically done as an economic one and not a legal one. When large chunks of the show are removed and entire character relationships are hidden by localizers to appeal to local politics, that is a sort of soft, cultural censorship even if not quite as strong as legal censorship.
I don't think toning down violence or sexual elements specifically in localizations is censorship, because those are generally accepted to be fraught subjects that most rating systems account for. It is true that local politics and culture vary regarding violence and sex, but since most places have norms of how much is appropriate, I don't think it is censorship to adjust the intensity of violence or sex to what the targeted audience expects, including things like nudity. I also don't really mind calling uncut versions "uncensored," because that seems to imply a self-censoring for broadcast/theater versions and not implying that they tried to send an uncut movie in before the man told them to tone it down. I would also consider a fully produced episode being cut for queer elements like we saw with "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" to be a sort of corporate censorship where the shifting winds of politics cause the owners to censor the creators to prevent a feared backlash, especially when the content is completely innocent aside from perceived politics. Even though Disney owns the show and has the rights they are still putting political concerns ahead of the product the studio created and trying to remove the offending content from availability. That doesn't meet the same standard as legal censorship but it certainly seems to represent the powers that be squashing voices that differ from status quo too much. What I really can't comprehend is the modern usage of the term regarding studios creating things to appeal to specific audiences. The studio has control over the final product. If shows get an AT-X cut, they made multiple cuts and published one for TV and one for places that don't need to meet broadcast standards. Calling products like that "censored" when the studio purposefully made TV and uncut version to appeal to many audiences is so infantilizing to them. Like yes, there are cultural headwinds that make the same level of debauchery present in Gushing impossible to have in every show, but the studios are making those decisions themselves. I know there's corporate pressure to avoid some degree of controversy, but we still need to trust studios to make what they want in the current system. They work with the executives to make a product agreed to be marketable and still represent what they wanted to create. This isn't a case of studios making a series or episode under corporate supervision before having their creative vision stepped on like with Disney, this is a case of studios understanding their limits and trying to push the boundaries as much as they can while still making a product that can be broadcast. We can't call the process of making media for distribution with a corporate editing team "censorship" or pretty much all media qualifies because books, movies, comics, games, and pretty much any other narrative medium produced for a large audience involves an editorial process that the company wants a say in. Now, if a creator was champing at the bit to include something controversial that does meet broadcast standards and the corporate team said they weren't allowed simply because they fear controversy that could be a bit of "soft censorship" in the vein of American localizers cutting gay content for CardCaptors (us localization name), but I think that only applies to completely removing content that was intended to be in place by the creator. Like for example if they were making Princess Mononoke today and told Miyazaki to cut out all the environmentalism of the film, that would be a clear cut case for me. The hypothetical executives wanted to remove a message they were uncomfortable with broadcasting even though it didn't break any decency rules. As long as the creators (in this case studios) aren't being blocked from writing controversial matters in their work for reasons other than rating standards, it really can't be called even "soft" censorship. That's why calling studio decision making censorship is ridiculous. They could all go for getting the juiciest AT-X cut available, but as the column pointed out that leads to less money for the production, studios don't want to hide the parts they focused money on during the broadcast, that's a recipe for "wait for the Blu-Ray" which isn't going to compare to mainstream success in most cases. It isn't censorship for a studio to choose to work in a system with more money available and appeal to that audience. I am all for complaining about how puritanical some parts of modern culture can be, but studios making the creative decision to reach a wide audience is never censorship. |
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Gamen
Posts: 256 |
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I'll say that I don't mind the lack of nipples in the remake; I honestly did not even remember the original had nipples. I see the Barbie/Ken (Akamatsu) doll anatomy a useful visual shorthand for depicting nudity without making it explicit and sexual. Nipples, nowadays at least I guess, would be distracting, would draw the focus in the scene away from where it should be. Cartoon characters are already heavily abstracted with fine, irrelevant details completely erased. This is the same.
Which is why they're totally necessary in Gushing. A related example is the different level-of-detail models in Homeworld. The ship models at long distances were deliberately changed to emphasize the unique shapes of the ships, minimizing or erasing minor details that would be just noise beyond what just shrinking down the model would do. Utility over fidelity, making abstraction work for you. |
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DQBunny
 Posts: 65 Location: Mechanicsburg, PA |
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I don't understand why people are losing their minds over not seeing the butt cracks and nipples on 16-year-old characters. It just feels really weird because they are minors. Plus, nipples are not the point of the story in Ranma 1/2.
If losing the nipples means Ranma finally reaches a wider audience, then lose them. The stylized nudity works for this series, especially with the other artistic choices they've made. If folks really want to see them, there's the manga and there's the 1989 anime, which as pointed out is still easily accessible. The levels of hostility I've seen from older fans obsessing over nipples on a teenager is just downright creepy. |
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strawberry-kun
Posts: 312 |
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Nah. Barbie doll nudity is just stupid. I’d rather they do literally anything else. Beams of light, well placed objects. Anything. It just looks dumb as it is now.
Last edited by strawberry-kun on Thu Nov 21, 2024 3:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3850 |
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I haven't seen the original UY, so I can't comment on how it compares in regards to nudity, but the lack of it wasn't really noticeable since they covered it up well enough.
In Ranma, it just looks bad with barbie doll look. I think that's why it's more of an issue than UY. I'd rather they be creative with foreground objects or similar than what we've got. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1480 |
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"Foreign sensibilities" was mentioned in this and the Answerman's articles, but I have to wonder to what extent the emergence of these markets --- particularly China --- may have on image-editorial decisions of anime creators. I haven't watched the either incarnation of Ranma. Have they changed the portrayal of some of the explicitly Chinese characters? When is the anime set? Is it contemporary, or does it harken back to the '80s setting of the original series? |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2572 |
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I think I'd understand the outrage a bit more if the series were framed as titillating/sexy/ecchi, but most of what passes for fan-service in Ranma just seems incidentally thrown in, so I have trouble empathizing with any real anger over it.
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Nigel Planter
Posts: 113 Location: London, UK |
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The problem with moral arguments like this is that they are the same ones people use to hide away same-sex content as well. "Why do you care about kids' sexualities so much?" "You know these characters are minors, right? Why do you want them to kiss so bad?" etc. I mean, it's fine to think something is weird or objectionable, but just be aware other people are free to use the same argument against content you might care about and you can't really refute it if you do the same thing.. I say this because I know there's a strong disconnect some people have between content relating to gender and sexual orientation being removed compared to others in these spaces. FishLion's post exemplified the idea of making Uranus and Neptune cousins is more objectionable than the removal of violence, nudity, or other content based on what type of content people care about. But the reality is localization, which often goes hand in hand with censorship, is a smorgasbord and not a la cart. There's no logical argument that everyone will subscribe to to suggest why some content is okay to remove but not others. It's all personal taste and what we as individuals raised in specific cultures and environments might care about. Someone living in a country where being gay is not only morally objectionable but actual illegal is going to think that it makes perfect sense to omit a gay kiss just like a country that finds its immoral that a woman is in a swimsuit or showing cleavage must be altered to cover a character up. I find media and art in general to be a representation of not only individual creators but their culture as well. So if the original Ranma manga and anime adaption has naked teenagers then I see no reason people can't complain if it's removed. In this case I find it odd because I would question how someone could even be a fan of Ranma if they object to all the nudity in the first place. Or what they must think of Rumiko Takahashi who draw this stuff in the first place. Unless they only specifically like a version they read or saw that removed all of it which is entirely possible. Some people only like the original DIC dub of Sailor Moon, or the 4Kids dub of various anime since they grew up with those versions as children and have fond memories of them. Maybe future generations will stand by this version of Ranma and think the lack of nipples and butts is the preferable version. |
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CreativelyFwrd
Posts: 9 |
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Is the series not supposed to be titillating? Everyone I knew who grew up with the original anime found it to be very fanservicey. Even with just the reboot there was a lot of comments on the last couple of gymnastics episodes of girls in leotards, and despite the Barbie doll anatomy naked characters were still pretty sexual. It's not like they could air this reboot on Cartoon Network or even Adult Swim fully uncensored so it's still more sexual than what most would allow. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6360 |
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Well placed objects, beams of light, steam, or in High School Of The Dead’s case smears of black paint. Aren’t any less dumb.
Actually you can refute it since removing depictions of same sex relationships is something that’s rooted squarely in anti LGBTQ behavior. Whereas removing or editing nudity is usually done without any offensive intent. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2572 |
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I guess I'm implicitly comparing it to something like High School of the Dead, Chained Soldier, or even Mushoku Tensei? Ranma occasionally walks around naked, but camera and body angles are generally pretty matter-of-fact, leotards have been the most compromising thing most of the female cast have worn so far, there's not really ever anything explicitly sexual said between or about characters, and even Ranma's nakedness hasn't that I can recall ever really been used in a scene where there's any real genuine sexual tension---it's usually (always?) just played off as an embarrassing gag, with him rushing off ASAP. If I compare that to the infamous supersonic bullet-through-bouncing-boobs scene from HotD, or just about any of the sexually charged scenes in CS or MT, I walk away thinking three of them see sex and titillation as part of their core identity (and sales pitch, I'm sure), while the final one probably realized a few naked butts and breasts were good for keeping peoples' attention, but doesn't really seem to invest energy into that aside from the simple fact of their appearing here and there. That's not to deny that I could see how it might have felt pretty racy to encounter it 25 years ago in a semi-mainstream setting, particularly as a teenager starved for access to anything very similar. And, maybe I'm also missing some leering camera angles this time around (Caitlyn, reviewing it, certainly seemed to find some in the fighting-in-leotards episode), or would view it differently if I'd seen the first version when I was growing up. So far, though, the show feels to me like what it really cares about is light gag comedy / neat fight choreography / relationships between awkward crushing teenagers and not much else. All the hubbub this has caused is probably going to make me stare at each new episode way more carefully than I have so far.  Maybe I'll start seeing something I haven't up to this point.
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strawberry-kun
Posts: 312 |
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1000% disagree but opinions and all that. You do you. I still think the way the new Ranma handled nudity is the worst possible way to do it. Heck, I’d rather they go the 4kids/Toonami route and throw swimsuits on them. At least they’d look like humans. |
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