Ask John: Why is Censored Content in Anime Okay in Manga?

Question:
Hentai anime that have bestiality, incest and other “disturbing” stuff are edited or have the translations slightly changed. I don’t understand why all this stuff can be published in a manga (Eros Comix’ manga have bestiality, incest and much more in full uncensored glory), but not in an anime.

Answer:
Excessively disturbing sexual content including bestiality, incest, pedophilia, and intense, graphic sexual violence are far more common in manga than in animation for a simple and logical reason- because they can be. Japanese culture seems to be far more tolerant of potentially offensive sexual & violent content in comics and animation than American culture is, so anime and manga that feature scenes of pedophilia, bestiality, coprophilia, intense misogyny, and/or scenes of graphic violence and sadism are far more common in Japan than in most Western countries. Statistically, it’s inevitable that material of this nature would exist in Japan simply based on the sheer amount of all kinds of comics and animation that exist in Japan. Japanese society tolerates this sort of material because the majority of Japanese citizens recognizes this material as fiction and fantasy, distinct from reality, and therefore extend to it the same right and protections of freedom of expression and artistic license as any other genre or style of visual art receives.

Manga is the creation of only a single artist or sometimes a small group of collaborating artists. Manga is also relatively cheap to produce and publish as it requires relatively few people to manage and relatively little money to publish. Animation is far more expensive to create because anime requires a large team of artists and animators, technicians, editors, music composers, voice actors and other supervisors to produce. As a result, animation has to be marketable to a wider audience than manga in order to sell well enough to recover its production costs. A highly offensive adult manga that only sells to a handful of consumers may earn enough to cover its production costs, but an anime that costs more to make but still sells to the same small market won’t earn back enough to cover its production expenses. Furthermore, anime is higher profile than manga. With its bright colors and heavy marketing, anime is more visible to a wider audience than manga, and therefore an easier and more likely target of controversy and persecution than manga is. In effect, manga can “get away” with more than anime can because manga often slip by unnoticed by the people most likely to chastise it.

In America it’s very rare for anime videos featuring highly offensive or controversial content to be released because few American companies that have spent the money necessary to import, translate and release an anime video want to risk jeopardizing that investment to legal or civil persecution. In a sense, it’s easier for manga to “get away with” publishing potentially controversial content because manga are much less visible. In America, translated hentai comics sell to a smaller market than adult anime. It’s simply more likely that an outraged parent or viewer will notice and crusade against anime than against manga. And since manga is already so much cheaper to produce and distribute than anime, manga publishers have less money invested in manga and less to lose than animation studios and distributors.

The double standard is de facto, dictated by circumstances and chance rather than by design. Manga publishers simply have less to lose, and less chance of encountering controversy than anime publishers do, so it’s easier and cheaper for manga publishers in Japan and America to create, publish and release offensive material to a small market interested in such material than it is for anime distributors to do so.