Hello everyone,
Yesterday after quite some time (7/8 months) I started watching again Hyakka Ryouran, an anime series we already reviewed in the past in this blog, in uncensored form as it was greatly affected by the so-called censuring syndrome that many fanservice anime are now receiving on a daily basis.
The way of doing censuring are very different between the various series, but most of them are very annoying for the viewer. Do you remember the incredible censoring in Kodomo no Jikan that made the whole show impossible to enjoy? And "Oniichan no Koto" with various cats covering half of screen most of the time?
As for me, I started hating ink after watching Hyakka Ryouran, there was ink every half second trying to cover what was the main focus of the series. I mean, there is a story, but it is a little overshadowed by all these pretty girls. :P
After watching it in uncensored form I sure was shocked by how the show was "better" without all that pointless ink covering the scenes here and there. I mean, the story was mostly the same (except for some scenes that now make some sense after removing the ink drops), but sure it was annoying having to stare at ink every couple of seconds and thinking "what is happening behind the ink?!".
And now after the various "buy more and we'll make another season" incentives/menaces from directors and authors (see the first comment by Alex in the last Hidan no Aria post to know more about it), I started to think again about all the guys that in the past thought "this is not censuring for protecting the health or moral, its just a way to promote the final product in the dvd/bd form" as after all, most of these censuring are directed to mild scenes that nowadays are present even in prime time film / shows.
What I think about it? Well, I generally agree with directors and authors that tries to incentivate the BD/DVD sales in any possible way. Let's be honest, without DVD/BD sales (the main source of income of this job) anime would just disappear like thin air within a couple of years as all the products that do not make a profit in the real world.
Do we really want this?
Obviously, I would not just buy blindly every crappy series out there just for the sake of "promoting anime" (I'm not rich to be able to do it), but if I really enjoy a series I do buy the DVD version of it as a way to incentivate the authors to create more and more of it.
Nowadays importing from Japan is not a big issue anymore (its not even costly as anime dvd aren't heavy anyway), and most japanese websites do ship in countries other than Japan (see bk1.jp) so the "I can't get it here so there is no other way" excuse doesn't sound that right after all.
So, in the end returning to our main talk of censuring. This season what kind of censuring will bring us? There are plenty of fanservice series this time around and I think the uncensored final version will be the only hope for us! (let's hope to find this season a series to buy too)
See you soon,
feal87