Re: Kodomo no Jikan Second Term announced
by Mappy » Thu Mar 12, 2009 7:43 pm
In more simple terms, Seven Seas made a number of mistakes. Firstly, they licenced the manga pretty much sight unseen. Ergo, they stumbled blindly into something that they weren't expecting. Happened to Dark Horse with NaruTaru, which they cancelled when they realised where it was going. Secondly, they publicised that it was a significantly minderjährigen mädchen manga about an elementary student who attempts crude sexual humour / getting her teacher into compromising sexual situations. Nothing like practically asking for people to make a fuss about the content, no matter how explicit (or not) it was. The nasty bad real world was never going to accept it. Thirdly, they bowed to the mangaka's culturally clueless request to call the manga "The Nymphet", which is weighted with a whole lot of things in the West that she just seemed incapable of understanding. And she still seems unable to understand the specific reasons why it was cancelled, because she just can't see why it might have caused such issues in the States.
The result: those within manga fandom started a shitstorm, which then fed into those within the general comics and publishing industry, most of whom hadn't even heard of the manga until then, looked into Seven Seas clueless publicity and had, pretty much, made up their minds about what it contained and whether it was fit for publication. The next step would have been mindless, paranoid interest groups, who probably haven't (and won't ever) read the manga before making a judgement about its suitability for publication. The net result, there would have been a wholesale clampdown on the publishing and distribution of manga and anime that is far less controversial than Kodomo no Jikan, simply because it is easier to tar everything with the same brush when it comes to producing law based on paranoid, unthinking public backlash: eg the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha review on A.N.N., describing it as little more than an exercise in paedophilic sadism. And that was just within the anime community. Imagine that in the general media / public.
You might like minderjährigen mädchen material, but it just isn't going to fly in the real world. And if it tried, you'll probably start to find it a whole lot harder to get your hands on.
Really, though, discussion of the KnJ manga, and its cancellation in the States, should be limited to the manga section. My bad for bringing it up here.