Author: Gabriel Persechino-Forest Published: July 31st, 2020
Amazon Leads the Charge in a Puritan Light Novel Purge
As many now know, J-Novel Club announced that Amazon had delisted several of its light novels and manga from Amazon Kindle and this includes cancelling pre-orders (Although already purchased content can still be accessed and re-downloaded, for now); titles which includes How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, Clockwork Planet, The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan, Arifureta, Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension, There was no Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (srsly?!), so I Made One MYSELF!, Infinite Stratos, Seirei Gensouki, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, Lazy Dungeon Master and I Shall Survive Using Potions! The Japanese editions on Amazon’s Japanese website however, remain available and thus this is specifically targeted at the West. J-Novel Club stated that they did not receive notifications concerning the bans and were only made aware by users contacting them about the issue. No reason was given by Amazon either when J-Novel Club later contacted them and confirmed the bans.
The issue was not limited to J-Novel Club, as Yen Press’ No Game, No Life and Dark Horse’s Oreimo and Eromanga Sensei were also banned from Amazon.
Amazon subsidiary Book Depository subsequently also banned the novels and manga from their repository.
While most of the titles had their digital versions removed from Amazon, most of the physical copies remained available for a time, though they were mostly removed since.
Amazon issued a statement to J-Novel Club president Sam Pinansky:
Amazon reserves the right to determine what is considered appropriate on its platform.
Of course, with Amazon and other platforms of its size now establishing super-monopolies unrivaled in Human history, it can be said that it is also taking the right to determine what is “appropriate” on the market itself; and more importantly, what is “appropriate” for you!
Before continuing, the full comments from publishers can be found below:
We verified today that starting July 11th, all books in the series The Greatest Magicmaster’s Retirement Plan, I Shall Survive Using Potions (Manga+LN), How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, and Clockwork Planet (LN) are no longer available for sale on Amazon Kindle (except .co.jp).
We have received no notification whatsoever about this, and only noticed due to user complaints. Also, all preorders for Magicmaster 6 were forcibly cancelled today. After calling up Amazon, they said the books were removed from sale by Kindle Content Review but couldn’t say why.
We’d like to remind everyone that ALL our books are for sale on BOOKWALKER, Nook, Kobo, iTunes, Google Play, OverDrive Libs, as well as premium epubs directly from our site at http://j-novel.club for members!
Sadly, we have confirmed with Amazon that they have opted to remove our No Game No Life titles from their platform. Happily, there are other retailers, both physical and digital, that are thrilled to help you support for these titles in the form of cash exchanged for goods!
By way of example, check out BOOK WALKER if you want to download and read in a matter of seconds, or if you want to treasure these books on your shelves, rightstuf has you covered!
A petition has been started by fans to try and stop the ongoing censorship. As of the writing of this article, it has passed 4000 signatures. Though it is unlikely to have any impact on Amazon’s policies even if it garnered significantly more signatures; but the more people that sign it the more obvious people’s discontent will be.
Fakku has also had many of its content banned from the platform (Amazon) in the past.
To those who want to offer Amazon the benefit of the doubt because the materials were “graphic”, Amazon does sell graphic and pornographic materials. It is just that they are now specifically targeting certain kinds of graphic materials for removal while promoting other types of material (Furry, LGBTQ…) even when they contain much more graphic content. To be clear, this is not an attack on Furry or LGBTQ content. Content of any type should be available to purchase for the consumer to decide what is and is not appropriate for them; this merely highlights the hypocrisy and discrepancy in Amazon’s policy. It should be obvious by this point that content is being targeted based on themes and sexuality, chiefly, content that has loli, or what could be considered loli, and content that features incest have been specifically targeted by Amazon for censorship.
This new bout of censorship did not end there however. Books Kinokuniya has banned Eromanga Sensei, Sword Art Online, Goblin Slayer, No Game, No Life, Inside Mari, Parallel Paradise and Dragonar Academy from its store chains across Australia after Australian legislator Connie Bonaros (SA-Best Part of the Centre Alliance) demanded the immediate removal and ban of the books, calling it “child pornography”.
Bonaros is a radical feminist who casually quotes Julie Bindel as a reliable source on matters concerning women and feminism. Julie Bindel, for those who don’t know, is a radical feminist who hates men, blames all ills of society on the “patriarchy”, has a personal vendetta against heterosexuality and is responsible for pearls like these:
It won’t, not unless men get their act together, have their power taken from them and behave themselves. I mean, I would actually put them all in some kind of camp where they can all drive around in quad bikes, or bicycles, or white vans. I would give them a choice of vehicles to drive around with, give them no porn, they wouldn’t be able to fight – we would have wardens, of course! Women who want to see their sons or male loved ones would be able to go and visit, or take them out like a library book, and then bring them back. I hope heterosexuality doesn’t survive, actually. I would like to see a truce on heterosexuality. I would like an amnesty on heterosexuality until we have sorted ourselves out. Because under patriarchy it’s shit.
Bonaros is hoping to help apply outside pressure to try to conspire and coordinate efforts with activists within Japan to enact censorship and restrictions there, as stated by herself:
They need external pressure — they need their politicians to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t look at this material through the same lens that they do…
…
There is a lot of pressure being applied at the moment in Japan, but it is being done very discreetly, so what they’ve told me is the more help they can get from external countries, the more hope they have of making some inroads in terms of ensuring that their child exploitation laws are stronger.
Who, exactly, is “they”?
She then demanded that bookstores take a more “leading” role in ensuring such titles are banned on a global level:
If it is broader, can you please provide a list of the countries where the offending titles have been removed from sale. If possible, could you also please provide a list of the number of book titles impacted by your decisive action. Given the seemingly widespread availability for sale of this kind of illegal child exploitation material, a powerful opportunity exists for Kinokuniya to take a globally-leading role in taking a stand in tackling the scourge of global child exploitation.
Earlier in the year, Stirling Griff of the same political faction had called for a review of all anime in Australia over his “concerns” at what the material was depicting. Who said book burning was dead?
There are, of course, other sellers making these light novels available (For now) if you want to support them: The publishers themselves on their own stores (J-Novel Club, Yen Press, Dark Horse Comics), neighborhood comic shops (Depending on where you live, that might not hold true), Book Walker, Rakuten Kobo, Rightstuf and Waterstones.
The attack doesn’t end there though, U.S. Florida conservative congressional candidate KW Miller claimed that anime “causes a great deal of harm” to American children; he cited Dragon Ball Z as an example of “anime porn”. Just because he does not appear to be the brightest bulb in the room, don’t assume that he can’t get anime content banned; Bonaros isn’t an intellectual powerhouse either and she did it across all Australia.
Coordinated Attack on the Medium
While all of this was happening at the corporate and political level, manga artist Sumito Owara (Keep your Hands Off Eizouken!) was targeted and harassed by social justice mobs over the fact that he follows Pixiv accounts that contain loli content. Following this incident, he issued a statement explaining that he was specifically targeted by foreigners (i.e. SJWs and puritans) and he has since stopped publicly following the accounts (Even though his response was strongly worded, it still remains that he bent the knee to cancel culture). The fact that his harassers were foreigners is important, as it shows that outside pressure is being applied (Politically, on the business front and socially) to try and force the Japanese market and Japanese artists to conform to new international, extra-legal standards of censorship.
Anime News Network first reported on the attacks on Sumito. But don’t think they were doing their job, they made sure to link his twitter account, pretty much told people exactly how and why he was attacked and, while this might seem like nothing, they took it upon themselves to make it a featured article… after it had already been up for two days on their website.
Image Source: Internet Archive of Anime News Network on July 30th
So basically, they published the article and left it on their front page and after interest had waned and the article moved too far outside of the view of new visitors, they “featured” it to make sure it would continue to be seen (And it should be mentioned, it didn’t start out as a featured article when it was first published). Considering their involvement in the targeted harassment of Vic Mignogna, it is a fair assumption that they are intentionally trying to encourage the continued harassment of Sumito on his Twitter account. Especially since they did the same thing with KW Miller’s story; starts off as a regular article, then gets featured to bump it up after interest dries:
Image Source: Anime News Network
There is an obvious intent at creating controversy and attempting to direct the anger and energy of those who oppose loli, fanservice and promote feminist values within art to target and attack anime right now.
Still doubt Anime News Network’s stance on the issue? They massively censored their forum of any dissent against the censorship (Deleting dozens of posts if not more) and then had their mods take an active role in the discussion to control and manage the flow of the conversation. This includes octopodpie making sure to tell everyone Sumito has “no room for deniability” and continuing with an attack on anime fans, the insinuation that it is normal to regard people who enjoy certain types of art with suspicion and that she doesn’t agree with his assessment that foreigners are involved (Even though he was on the platform for years in relative peace and then one day everyone started screaming at him in English):
Image Source: Anime News Network Forums
Then Psycho 101 actively tried to prevent people from blaming Western influence on the Japanese market (He was very adamant that there is no political agenda at play). He did this by suggesting a purity test, that most liberal content (Such as LGBTQ content for example) would fail to pass, that advocates that censorship based on the idea of “people being shocked” is an appropriate measuring scale for morality:
Image Source: Anime News Network Forum
The staff of Anime News Network seems very concerned about making sure no one thinks there is Western influence or a political agenda at play.
If you thought that this was it, sorry to burst your bubble. The currently airing series of Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! has been massively attacked online by cancel culture mobs intent on accusing it of “pedophilia” (Is a pattern emerging here?). By the way, Uzaki-chan is 19 in the series. This isn’t the first time this particular series is targeted either, as a Western-led movement of critics previously had the Red Cross cancel a promotional campaign for blood donations featuring the character (The decision was later reversed with a new campaign featuring the character).
And to finish off, manga artist Nomio Gyunyu (Joshi Shougakusei Hajime Mashita P!) recently made statements that it was now difficult in Japan to publish loli manga. He specifically mentioned that it was now harder to almost impossible to get such material published in mainstream magazines now and that they are almost certain to never get an anime adaptation. He stated that loli does sell in Japan, but that the much larger overseas market frowns on it and as a result of Japanese companies courting that market, they are now taking steps to avoid the content. He mentioned how his own manga series (Joshi Shougakusei) was removed from Amazon JP and couldn’t get serialized on any manga apps with a warning that more platforms, regardless of countries, could now impose such censorship.
So within the span of a month or so, multiple outlets ban the sales of various light novels and manga, U.S. and Australian lawmakers make attacks specifically targeting anime, social media hate mobs harass creators to force them to sever their association with anyone producing the same type of content recently banned by major outlets, Anime News Network censors discussions on the topic and openly tries to discourage people from believing there is a political agenda at play, politicians openly talk about “discretely influencing” the market, coordinating activist efforts on a global level and trying to force Japan into compliance… It should be obvious that this was an orchestrated and coordinated attack; it’s not even an assumption or theory at this point, just a simple observation of proven facts which includes statements of admission by the parties involved themselves.
What Next?
With anime being increasingly targeted, more intense campaigns by social media hate mobs to target creators and implement cancel culture, social media sites banning loli content, the UN demanding international laws against loli content, Steam and Sony targeting video games themed around anime for widespread censorship, Amazon banning non-sexual anime figurines and now light novels and manga being purged, you can certainly expect a further escalation of censorship in the near future and it will most certainly affect anime series, movies and OVAs at some point; something which has already arguably started with the censorship of Sword Art Online‘s streams and Funimation ending its digital distribution of Interspecies Reviewer.
The censored content is very specific and consistent: Sexual material featuring women (i.e. fanservice of female characters) and loli content especially. In fact, anime-styled content in general appears to be targeted with even independent creators being banned from Patreon and Pornhub. This does not apply to men presented in any sexual situation in art nor has LGBTQ content ever been targeted in a significant way. Furry content is also allowed to be produced and promoted with content far worse and graphic than what’s being depicted in the banned materials. Starting to see a pattern? The modern 4th wave feminist agenda and political correctness ideology, spearheaded by social justice warriors and the rising of cancel culture, are responsible and it is supported by major corporations, politicians, the UN and many NGOs and activist organizations. What was once conspiracy theories is now conspiracy fact and what many “alarmists” have been warning of for years is becoming reality day by day. This is AnimeGate, it is going to get worse.
No one’s coming for your [insert media here] they said. Stop being chicken little they said. How much content must be banned and how much censorship must be openly imposed before we realized they lied to us? When exactly are we going to stop listening to said lies and actually defend our hobbies before they all become 1984-styled, communist propaganda “diverse” and “inclusive” to the point where it is mass-produced, unwatchable, sanitized, creatively bankrupt garbage whose only achievement is checking all the new censorship board “progressive” check boxes?
There is now a coordinated and open effort to censor the Japanese entertainment industry. The UN, Western governments (Through policies and politicians), international corporations, online mobs of sjws, NGOs, activists… are all working in concert to try and apply pressure on Japan. They are hoping to force them to change their ways by pressuring the Japanese government to enact new laws, by using the leverage of the profit from the Western markets to force Japanese studios and publishers to observe new Western norms of censorship in entertainment, by harassing creators into being pressured to stop creating and associating with content they desire banned… The intent is what is called a “chilling-effect”, to create industry-wide censorship by influencing creators and companies through indirect methods of pressure. And if you think Japan is immune, Sword Art Online is already making changes in the way it depicts women in the light novels, the game adaptations and how new scenes are being adapted into the anime.
Before you trust the “Good intentions” of those advocating censorship, you should know that the United Nations has been involved in a decades long crusade to rape children from every country on Earth, game journalists who support 4th wave feminism and want women “properly portrayed” in media have a growing list of their members being found guilty of sexual misconduct raging from harassment to rape and Twitter has updated its policy on exploitation of children to allow actual abuse materials (Nudes) to be posted on its website (That’s right, you can’t post loli on Twitter anymore but if you’re popular enough and the material is deemed “artistic” you can post actual abuse materials).
Remember, those advocating censorship always desire only one thing: Power. The rise of censorship is the rise of authoritarianism and the establishment of thought policing. And those advocating censorship are always among the most depraved individuals on the planet, even though they claim to be the most righteous.
In Conclusion
I warned about this in 2018 and now everything I predicted is coming to pass. For those who are interested, the series of 5 articles I had written precisely described how celebrities were used to make anime popular and mainstream, the fans were attacked and chastised for gatekeeping and refusing sweeping changes across the industry, social and political pressure would be applied through the media and social media, corporations would use their resources and power in the market to pressure Japan and finally, how censorship would begin being implemented, first through corporate “self”-censorship and then, eventually, through actual laws.
We’ve seen this happen before. Video games were attacked, the industry pressured and gamers targeted until finally, industry-wide standards were adopted and now everything has to be “inclusive”, “portray women properly”, “offer proper representation of all groups”… The censorship in gaming has led to fanservice being almost non-existent, every new game pushing ideological propaganda and the industry heading into ever growing financial ruin and an artistic dark age. The same happened with comics and now the entire industry is in rapid freefall. This is the future for anime, unless the censorship is stopped.
If you found this article relevant, please share it. My last warning came true, unfortunately, and this warning is not to be taken lightly either. We are approaching an important crossroad in the anime industry that will determine whether we follow the path of censorship or protect and preserve artistic freedom.
Source: J-Novel Club, Anime News Network, One Angry Gamer and Article Image: altered No Game, No Life Volume 1 Cover
Along with reduced fanservice, I guess anime and manga creators soon will be encouraged to make more things with totally adult cast, and explicitly state in the anime openings or manga\novel covers that all the characters are over 18 years old. Even if it’s an anime or manga for kids, the characters will be adult; no prevalence of the teens anymore. Because anime industry is aware of fanfics and fanarts, so to reduce the amount of loli and shota content it it, by totally adult casts they will invite the otaku (including the minors) to ship an adult characters instead. Teaching that “only adults can be sexy” just by not using the minors as characters and thus potential parts of the pairings.
Also there will be no more pairings with big age difference: the characters will fall in love only with those who not more than a year older or younger than them.
“When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, THEY LOSE IT!”
– U.S. trends forecaster Gerald Celente.
And we (Otaku and Weebs alike) WILL lose it!