Ask John: Are Uncensored Hentai DVDs Actually Censored?

Question:
Recently a lot of people have complained about censorship in Nutech’s uncensored DVD titles like Night Shift Nurses and Haitoku No Shoujo. In the original version of Night Shift Nurses there was supposed to be a scat scene, and Nuthch was suppose to release a second episode of the Haitoku No Shoujo series in which a woman is raped by two dogs. I know that a lot of anime/hentai fans are not into scat or bestiality, but isn’t it false advertising to say that a video or DVD is completely uncensored then find out that it is missing some scenes or even complete episodes from the original version?

Answer:
Before attempting an answer, it’s necessary to clarify two points. Night Shift Nurses is not a NuTech release. Night Shift Nurses was released in America by Central Park Media, not NuTech. And as far as I’m aware, NuTech never announced or even hinted at any plans to release more than one episode of Haitoku no Shoujo in America. Now, to the answer, proper.

Roughly 20 minutes of footage from the first 3 episodes of Night Shift Nurses is missing in the American release. However, there’s no “false advertising” at work here because CPM has never promoted Night Shift Nurses as “uncut” and has never tried to hide the fact that the series was heavily edited for its US release. It’s not fair to criticize CPM for not going out of their way to make certain that every possible customer knows that the American version is missing footage. Just like AD Vision’s release of Angel of Darkness 4, the American release of Night Shift Nurses is uncensored, but it is not uncut. Furthermore, it’s virtually impossible to establish an industry standard for what constitutes “edited” or censored or “cut” because nearly every anime release in America is “edited” at least to the extent that the original Japanese kanji credits and title screen are replaced with American versions. If we strictly classify which American anime releases are exactly identical to the original versions released in Japan, hardly any releases from Pioneer, AD Vision, CPM, Manga, Viz, Urban Vision, Media Blasters and Bandai, among others, would technically be purely unedited. There are numerous fans that consider something like an American logo either a necessary evil or a forgivable concession for the American market, however there are also fans like myself who prefer to watch Japanese animation, not “Americanized” Japanese animation. To obsessive purists, the opportunity to watch anime the way Japanese fans watched it doesn’t seem like too selfish of a desire. But I digress.

Whether missing episodes is considered “censoring” or not is debatable. In most cases, missing episodes is not thought of as intentional censoring. Media Blasters has been accused of “censoring” their release of the “Maiden” series (Kara no Nakano Kotori) by releasing only 4 out of 5 episodes and not localizing the episode that featured a main character that looked unusually “underage.” On the other hand, Media Blasters is seemingly not releasing Bible Black OAVs 3 & 4, and Central Park Media is not releasing Night Shift Nurses OAVs 4 & 5, but these decisions are thought of as no different than Bandai not releasing all of the Love Hina animation, which has nothing to do with “censorship.” These are simply licensing circumstances, not intentional censorship.

As far as we know, NuTech Digital is one of the few American companies to have released every single one of its original licenses totally unedited and unaltered, save the removal of the digital censoring present in the Japanese versions. NuTech does not make changes to their anime releases that other companies including AD Vision, Bandai, Pioneer and Viz commonly do. As far as we know, there is no footage missing from the American version of Haitoku no Shoujo 2. The first Haitoku no Shoujo OAV is not available in America. Haitoku no Shoujo: Gibo Shiikuhen is totally unrelated to the story and characters of the second OAV that’s available in America, and does include a bestiality scene. Since bestiality is illegal in 27 states and Washington DC, it’s possible that NuTech simply decided not to license the first Haitoku no Shoujo OAV rather than release it in America edited.