Several Bishoujo Magazines unavailable at Kinokuniya

[asaqe]

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...5-bishojo-mags

From "that other site", according to ANN. Kinokuniya no longer sells Megami (And its Deluxe Cousin), Nyantype, Degenki Moeoh and Degenki Hime due to Pinup issues. I will miss the anime version of Men's Magazines.

[hinakatbklyn]

I may not have noticed it at first, but after a few months (since the beginning of the year), I assumed the magazines could not be imported here, and this article confirms it.

[Revenger1589]

Won't someone think of the cartoon children?

[Archon_Wing]

Wtf? How can any of that be confused with anything close to porn? Not to mention these are cartoons drawings...anyone with at least 2 functional brain cells would realize that.

[MakubeX2]

Not news to me here. Kinokuniya always have a policy of self-censorship when it comes to their oversea branches out of respect for the local government.

They have been tearing pages and removing posters featuring scantly-clad females from the likes of Young Jump and Young Animals amongst others around here for years before the media law relaxed.

[Vexx]

Not so much "respect for the local government" as fear of being burned as witches by the ravening "soccer mom" crowds (at least in the US).

Kinokuniya has always been circumspect about their offerings. Tread farther back into the store and it gets less puritanical. Usually, they shrinkwrap all anime magazines so this must have more to do with "vandal problems" than anything else.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by MakubeX2

They have been tearing pages and removing posters featuring scantly-clad females from the likes of Young Jump and Young Animals amongst others around here for years before the media law relaxed.

I find this "tearing pages and removing posters" accusation more disturbing than a store-wide policy of not carrying certain products. So if those were the two choices, then I would've said they're making the right decision here. But still, I have to wonder what specific sort of pressure led to this decision. As others have said, Megami itself isn't any more risqué than a lot of the content in the anime proper, so this sends a strange sort of message.

[Nadeko_Sengoku]

wait... does this mean no more Megami magazine?!

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Nadeko_Sengoku

wait... does this mean no more Megami magazine?!

No, it simply means you may have to order it from a supplier other than Kinokuniya.

[Nadeko_Sengoku]

Originally Posted by Vexx

No, it simply means you may have to order it from a supplier other than Kinokuniya.

ohhh, ok. I guess I misread that or something!

[Last Sinner]

Smaller places still sell them in the US.

Kinokuniya's actions are pretty easy to explain. They're preventing themselves from getting associated with a potential mess like the aftermath of the Chris Handley trial. Handley's conviction will have far reaching effects over the industry for the years to come. And this is one of them. Publishers, retailers and licensers are living in fear.

What's interesting is that at the anime convention I went to on the weekend:

1. The proportion of females to males was even.
2. They were mainly adutls in the 18-30 range.
3. A lot of them dressed in very spicy/elegant cosplay and loved it. Some females like doing this and seeing other women do it. They're entitled to. Not all people think the same.
4. One of the better prizes was given to a woman who dressed as a female character from a H title. The crowd loved it. Other one dressed up as Yoko from TTGL and also got a prize. Yoko may be 14 but there's a BIG difference between liking the design/aesthetics of someone like Yoko and having sex with a 14 year old. 99.9% of people will have enough brains and decency to do that.
5. The women made it clear they love seeing both males and females dressed up sexy/cute and the like.

It's horses for courses. Some people like it, some don't. The problem is when people who don't understand how things work in the industry or within the fandom simply interpret it based off of what they know without even bothering to look into it. Which leads to this whole Straight-Edge mentality. That they're better than us because they're puritan-like and live plainly. Which is blatant discrimination, really. Telling people how to live is pretty arrogant. One is supposed to live within the tenants of morality and common sense within society. As long as you don't hurt anyone, it isn't a crime to like anime girls. To be told that anything outside a single line of thinking is wrong is the beginning of the death of civil liberties and democracy. One way doesn't apply to all. It never has and never will. You can't force everyone to be under the same banner or live the same way. That's a one way ticket to hate.

My experiences on the weekend showed me women are into it as much as the men are. Keep an open mind about it and know where to draw the line with a balance between common sense and morality.

[MakubeX2]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

But still, I have to wonder what specific sort of pressure led to this decision.

Young Jump and Young Animal featured some well known iconic manga such as Tough! and Berserk. But they also choose to put Gravure idols in provocative poses as their central spreads to spice things up.

I figured Kinokuniya thought of those offending pages as secondary contents that no one will miss, so hence forth why they remove them.

The point is that Self-Censorship from this retailer is nothing new.

[Vexx]

In a nutshell, the owners of Kinokuniya think they're operating in Bizarroland, a place with roving bands of screaming nutcases who burn witches. They simply operate well away from the spotlight of Doom.

After 50+ years of living here, I pretty much agree with their assessment

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Smaller places still sell them in the US.

Kinokuniya's actions are pretty easy to explain. They're preventing themselves from getting associated with a potential mess like the aftermath of the Chris Handley trial. Handley's conviction will have far reaching effects over the industry for the years to come. And this is one of them. Publishers, retailers and licensers are living in fear.

What's interesting is that at the anime convention I went to on the weekend:

1. The proportion of females to males was even.
2. They were mainly adutls in the 18-30 range.
3. A lot of them dressed in very spicy/elegant cosplay and loved it. Some females like doing this and seeing other women do it. They're entitled to. Not all people think the same.
4. One of the better prizes was given to a woman who dressed as a female character from a H title. The crowd loved it. Other one dressed up as Yoko from TTGL and also got a prize. Yoko may be 14 but there's a BIG difference between liking the design/aesthetics of someone like Yoko and having sex with a 14 year old. 99.9% of people will have enough brains and decency to do that.
5. The women made it clear they love seeing both males and females dressed up sexy/cute and the like.

It's horses for courses. Some people like it, some don't. The problem is when people who don't understand how things work in the industry or within the fandom simply interpret it based off of what they know without even bothering to look into it. Which leads to this whole Straight-Edge mentality. That they're better than us because they're puritan-like and live plainly. Which is blatant discrimination, really. Telling people how to live is pretty arrogant. One is supposed to live within the tenants of morality and common sense within society. As long as you don't hurt anyone, it isn't a crime to like anime girls. To be told that anything outside a single line of thinking is wrong is the beginning of the death of civil liberties and democracy. One way doesn't apply to all. It never has and never will. You can't force everyone to be under the same banner or live the same way. That's a one way ticket to hate.

My experiences on the weekend showed me women are into it as much as the men are. Keep an open mind about it and know where to draw the line with a balance between common sense and morality.

To be fair, there is some anime material that even I feel is designed to appeal to pedophiles. The Straight Edge crowd would support banning those even if they did understand them. Which actually illustrates my big gripe with the Straight Edge crowd, which is their tendency to like to shove their noses into other people's private affairs. (Edit: Well, okay, they tend to have an overly broad definition of pedophilia. That probably qualifies as not understanding what they're talking about. I'm just saying there's some stuff they're not misunderstanding too.)

You are right in that there's plenty of practices in the fandom that outsiders probably misunderstand though. Luckily, in some cases they lack the knowledge to misunderstand in the first place... you can't be appalled that 14-17 year old girls are cosplaying characters from erogames if you don't know the costumes are from erogames in the first place.

(In the case of the 14 year olds, they had only seen the non-ero anime adaptations of the works in question. Because their mother wouldn't let them play the games. She was definitely aware where they were from, but I guess she just (correctly, in my opinion) figured the costumes were modest enough that there would be no issues.)

[Last Sinner]

Well, I agree with that. There are titles out there that go too far. I would never deny that. I am aware of one guy around that is into that filth and he creeps me out to the max. Hence why I said a line needs to be drawn with a balance between common sense and morality. I don't like the idea of children/teens being exploited one bit.

My beef is that it's the small minority of bastards that give the whole community a bad name, leading to overkill censorship. There's a degree where it's legitimate protection and then there's a degree where it becames an Orwellian nightmare. The sometimes abiguous nature of anime art styles can sometimes bite itself in the backside since a claim can be made for either case.

For the record, all cosplayers at the convention I went to were 18+ even though some dressed as characters under 18 and that one woman as an ero title chick. The gothic lolita fashion event had police surveilance as did the yuri and yaoi panels. Most anime fans will acknowledge the law and work with it.

Lack of understanding stems from lack of exposure and/or people not wanting to understand since they're already convinced any way other than their way is wrong. It's the same line of thinking that leads some conservative-oriented people to think that Rage Against The Machine were pro-terrorist...when they're one of humanity's greatest representatives and legends of music.

The critical part of this is that the smaller retail outlets are still willing to sell the magazines. It's just Kinokuniya that's cut their ties. What comes of that will be interesting. I've seen the inside of Megami a couple of times. Occassionally it can really push the line but I've never seen anything sinister. Still, those magazines aren't my thing.

[OceanBlue]

Another product of the, "We don't agree with how you live, so we're going to persecute you," mentality in the United States. Shame.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I find this "tearing pages and removing posters" accusation more disturbing than a store-wide policy of not carrying certain products.

Pretty sure that isn't the US stores from what I've read on other sites.

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Kinokuniya's actions are pretty easy to explain. They're preventing themselves from getting associated with a potential mess like the aftermath of the Chris Handley trial. Handley's conviction will have far reaching effects over the industry for the years to come. And this is one of them. Publishers, retailers and licensers are living in fear.

This is really jumping to conclusions that it has anything to do with Handley and isn't based on customer complaints or some random customs issue somewhere. There are other magazines that I've seen at the NYC Kino that have similar content and are still there every week.

[Kudryavka]

Don't kill me for saying so, but I'm amused how most everyone here is all against this act. XS

Sucks that Kino won't carry these titles, but hey, gotta cover their arses. I don't blame them for taking precautionary actions. Though I did read somewhere that some US law explicitly excludes 2D representations of children under the age of eighteen from the child pornography law; in that matter, even an H-game with eight year old lolis has no reason to get banhammered, though most on your block would not take to you well xp.

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Smaller places still sell them in the US.

Kinokuniya's actions are pretty easy to explain. They're preventing themselves from getting associated with a potential mess like the aftermath of the Chris Handley trial. Handley's conviction will have far reaching effects over the industry for the years to come. And this is one of them. Publishers, retailers and licensers are living in fear.

What's interesting is that at the anime convention I went to on the weekend:

1. The proportion of females to males was even.
2. They were mainly adutls in the 18-30 range.
3. A lot of them dressed in very spicy/elegant cosplay and loved it. Some females like doing this and seeing other women do it. They're entitled to. Not all people think the same.
4. One of the better prizes was given to a woman who dressed as a female character from a H title. The crowd loved it. Other one dressed up as Yoko from TTGL and also got a prize. Yoko may be 14 but there's a BIG difference between liking the design/aesthetics of someone like Yoko and having sex with a 14 year old. 99.9% of people will have enough brains and decency to do that.
5. The women made it clear they love seeing both males and females dressed up sexy/cute and the like.

It's horses for courses. Some people like it, some don't. The problem is when people who don't understand how things work in the industry or within the fandom simply interpret it based off of what they know without even bothering to look into it. Which leads to this whole Straight-Edge mentality. That they're better than us because they're puritan-like and live plainly. Which is blatant discrimination, really. Telling people how to live is pretty arrogant. One is supposed to live within the tenants of morality and common sense within society. As long as you don't hurt anyone, it isn't a crime to like anime girls. To be told that anything outside a single line of thinking is wrong is the beginning of the death of civil liberties and democracy. One way doesn't apply to all. It never has and never will. You can't force everyone to be under the same banner or live the same way. That's a one way ticket to hate.

My experiences on the weekend showed me women are into it as much as the men are. Keep an open mind about it and know where to draw the line with a balance between common sense and morality.

Please don't act like it's all the women who are against this. It isn't always feminists who try to crash your barely under 18-riffic parties.

[Last Sinner]

Well I didn't say that, so don't put words into my mouth when I didn't say them, Komari. How does saying that a reasonable proportion of women like that section of the industry and that they are entitled do so within the legal constraints of their country and the degree they are allowed, suddenly equate to saying that all women are to blame for the action of Kinokuniya? I don't appreciate your insinuations and embellishments one bit. I also find it amusing you ignored the part where I said I don't like those magazines.

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Well I didn't say that, so don't put words into my mouth when I didn't say them, Komari. How does saying that a reasonable proportion of women like that section of the industry and that they are entitled do so within the legal constraints of their country and the degree they are allowed, suddenly equate to saying that all women are to blame for the action of Kinokuniya? I don't appreciate your insinuations and embellishments one bit. I also find it amusing you ignored the part where I said I don't like those magazines.

Your =/= Last Sinner's.

I see your post as assuming that if women understand this mess, it's okay.