Tokyo Ban on "Virtual Crimes" Passes
Tokyo’s ban on anime, manga and games featuring “virtual crimes” or which are “likely to interfere with the healthy development of youth” has passed after the DPJ agreed to support it.
The DPJ’s only addition to the critical
portion of the law was a short rider which requests “prudent application
of the law in light of any artistic, social, scientific or satirical
merits the work might express” – it does not however add any legal
obligation to consider these, or establish any clear or indepdently
enforced criteria for judging whether a work can be declared “harmful”
or not.
Even more bizarrely, the final draft actually removed a passage that
imposed “a duty not to possess [photographic] child pornography” on
Tokyo residents, whilst leaving the section banning erotic manga and
anime (and explicitly excluding photographic materials) all but
unchanged – that the bill is intended exclusively as an “anti-otaku” law seems to be beyond doubt.
It is very difficult to objectively assess the scope of the law –
along with vague and subjective terms like “interfere with the healthy
development of youth,” the law also includes “etc.” on the end of most
of its examples, leaving it quite unclear, for example, whether the
“improper glorification of illegal sexual activity, etc.” applies to
only virtual sex crimes, or all crimes in general – presumably the
interpretation adopted will be whichever is convenient to censors.
Similarly, the ban’s mention of “rape and other sexual acts which
violate societal norms” seems inevitably to point to a ban on depictions
of homosexuality, considering who was behind the law.
The generally expected form the law will take is that of a
“amakudari” (a pervasive system of sinecures for retired bureaucrats)
body which will inspect all anime, manga and games, with only those
titles receiving approval as “healthy” able to be sold regularly in
Tokyo shops – the rest will be relegated to the “adult corner.”
The most immediate and direct effect of the law will almost certainly
be to see ecchi manga such as To Love-Ru, bishoujo titles such as
Champion Red and most BL manga, as well as any seinen manga with
especially mature themes, banned from general sales – presumably most
will then be cancelled due to a lack of suitable magazine or tankobon
distribution channels, with a few perhaps being resurrected as 18+
ero-manga.
As has already been seen,
publishers will also likely be purging future anime, manga and games of
any content liable to fall foul of the law, and removing older titles
from distribution.
The law probably also spells the end of most late night anime in
Tokyo (and by extension, everywhere else), which it would appear to ban
under its distribution clause; given the vague wording of the current
season alone it seems Ore no Imouto, Panty & Stocking, Yosuga, Sora
no Otoshimono, Milky Holmes and others would all fall foul of its
various stipulations.
There is also some doubt as to whether Comiket will be able to be
held under the new regulations – if not, its cancellation or removal to
another prefecture seems likely, although a lack of sufficiently large
spaces may severely complicate this.
The law is expected to be signed into law on the 15th after an additional vote and then come into effect in July of 2011,
so with magazine, tankobon, anime and game release schedules being what
they are, it seems likely its effects will be felt much sooner; in a
genuinely democratic state there might be scope to overturn it before
then, but from what has been seen so far it seems unlikely publishers
have the guts or savvy to do anything about it. [Source: Sankaku Complex]
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