30% Of Kodansha Manga Adapted Into Apps Rejected By iTunes

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Masaaki Hagino, president of Voyager, an e-book development company, revealed to the ZD Net Japan website in an interview that 30% of Kodansha manga adapted by his company into apps for iTunes is rejected for censorship reasons. Hagino provides an example by explaining that even a scene where a character is bleeding excessively from a disease — as opposed to violence — is labeled “excessive cruelty.”

 

Citing the specific example of Hataraki Man, he stated: “Basically all manga with [office ladies] as main characters have bathing scenes. They can’t be shown taking showers. Not even baths — they’re still topless.” In the case of Hataraki Man, one of the chapters of the manga was rejected because a scene exposed the breasts of the main character during a massage.

 

Lending further credibility to Hagino’s claim was a tweet by Yoshitoshi ABe, manga-ka of Serial Experiments Lain, who revealed one of his works was rejected due to this image.

Ishaan Sahdev
About The Author
Ishaan specializes in game design/sales analysis. He's the former managing editor of Siliconera and wrote the book "The Legend of Zelda - A Complete Development History". He also used to moonlight as a professional manga editor. These days, his day job has nothing to do with games, but the two inform each other nonetheless.

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