With the Japanese recent ban on eroge games as a result of the Rapelay fisaco, it caused outrage in the anime/otaku community and yes… I have to agree that these Feminism/Activist groups have crossed the line since it’s a violation of freedom of speech….
Again, not every eroge game have content like Rapelay and some companies release all-ages version without any naughty content like Key for example… but in today’s society… Westerners think that anything that contains you-know-what is equal unhumane because other hollywood movies contain these kind of scenes as well and I never hear outrage because of it. The problem today is that these feminist and activists groups are overreacting and controlling what content he/she can watch or enjoy… While I don’t like these scenes and try my best to ignore them… (Also, I don’t play bishoujo games very often (only if I’m curious/interested, which is rarely) and I perfer not having naughty content) I’m strongly against any form of censorship and banning of content because regardless… it’s still freedom of speech and people should enjoy whatever content they want….
As long westerners remain prejudiced to this kind of content… it’s not likely to change… but you can try writing a letter to the Japanese Government (if you know Japanese, of course.)[poll id=”7″]
I really hope things improve. The anime industry thrives off of visual novels. Some of the top anime are produced from visual novels like:
– Fate/stay night
– Clannad
– Kanon
I personally own Fate/stay night and Chaos;head, and will probably own Clannad very soon. It really disappoints me seeing all this negative attention with visual novels.
Not eroge have content like Rapelay… it’s only a select few that do focus on controversial subjects like rape and child exploitation… but a vast majority don’t and focus on relationships… but the problem is that eroge is no harmful than violent video games… and activists for many years like Jack Thompson tried to ban violent videogames, but failed… There is little proof that video games cause people to commit crimes… and these laws end up getting shot down since it’s unconsitutional (violates freedom of speech, reguardless… since it protects media to freely express, reguardless as long it doesn’t break laws).
Also, Clannad is not a eroge visual novel, and is completely free from that content… This is the case with Planetarian and the non-expansion version of Little Busters!
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/07/04/nitroplus-partners-with-jast-for-english-eroge/
Good news! Nitro+ is teaming up with JAST.
So we’ll be getting some english versions over here. The first release will be Demonbane.
I already have the Japanese version of Chaos;Head, but I’d buy the English version right away if it came out.
@Shark: It’s not the matter of the content… Art is meant to be free from restrictions so people can create stories and artwork that is good… I have seen paintings that have nudity and do they censor it? No… Do art museums censor the nudity on the sculpture? No… so I disagree with your comment… because censorship, pornography or not just limits the art creativity a person can make in their works.