Have you forgotten completely?Â Let me refresh your memory:

History Time!

February 2010, a proposal by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly to revise the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths, a city ordinance that has been in effect since 1964, to restrict manga that depicted fictional characters who appear to be under the age of 18, failed to pass.Â This so-called “nonexistent youth bill” carried language that was too broad for some of the assemblymen, and members of the manga industry vociferously opposed it.Â Attempts to revise the proposal were met with similar oppositions, and the proposal was rejected in June.

Undaunted, Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro tried again in November.Â This time, in addition to other ideas that are irrelevant to this discussion, the proposal eliminated the “nonexistent youth” component but went a bit more broad.Â The first major change was “any manga, animation, or pictures (but not including real life pictures or footage) that features either sexual or pseudo sexual acts that would be illegal in real life, or sexual or pseudo sexual acts between close relatives whose marriage would be illegal, where such depictions and / or presentations unjustifiably glorify or exaggerate the activity.”Â Offending manga publishers who produced content fitting the criteria could face such stiff penalties as having to answer to a committee with serious repeat offenders possibly being called out by Ishihara himself in PUBLIC.Â Gasp!Â Still, this proposal was met with stiff resistance from members of the industry and defenders of liberty, though it was praised by Japanese Parent Teacher Association.

After a bit more deliberation, the bill was approved by the Metropolitan Assembly’s general affairs committee on Dec 13.Â However, the committee modified the proposal slightly to include a non-binding (meaning they don’t have to do it, but they probably should) condition that regulators take into account “merits based on artistic, social, educational, and satirical criticism criteria”.Â In other words, a manga that breaks the rules, but still has a purpose other than just to be smut, should be ignored.

My Turn To Be A Jackass.

Starting to remember?Â Well, here is the first and LAST time I’m linking anything by Sankaku Complex, and I only do it here because they’re basically the hoodlum fuckfaces that set all you schizophrenics off in a frenzy of paranoia.Â Most of you wouldn’t have even known about this ordinance change if it weren’t for them.Â And while I have to give them credit for getting the word out, I also have to deride those misfits for making sure that they did it in the most Chicken Little way possible.Â The lot of you got suckered in by a tabloid.Â It’s a good thing they didn’t tell you that aliens are here and they’re raping away your waifu’s purity, or the suicide rate would have quadrupled overnight.Â Starting to remember all this now?Â Good.Â I’m here to tell you that you all overreacted, and I’m going to do it in the most smarmy way possible to rub your noses in it.

Or I’d like to, but since I’m an elitist bastard, I already knew I was better than you all, so whatever.Â Pay no attention to the waffling I do above, the money quote is at the end:

In the end, there is a reality to all of this that needs to be stressed, and that reality is that we just donâ€™t know what this is going to do.Â Because of that, I have one simple plea to my fellow idiot fans.Â If you would please, repeat after me:Â â€œI will not panic until I have reason to do so.â€Â Wait and see what happens.Â Most of you probably wont even remember this law exists in about three weeks.Â For the rest of you, keep your eyes open later this year to see if anything really has changed.Â My gut says that nothing big will come of this, but you never know. – Me

Most of you forgot three weeks later.

Nothing big happened.

Some folks are going to disagree with the “nothing big” comment, and that’s fine.Â Wait for it, I’m not done with the article yet.Â But, really, all the hang wringing and frenzy of activity was gone by mid January.Â Maybe folks like me, pleading for patience, helped stem that tide of insanity, but I’m not THAT confident in my persuasive abilities.Â Basically, like with any other story involving Brittney Spears shaving her head or Rick Santorum sleeping with a dead baby, the interest level waned and the short term memory of our information age won out.

But I’d be remiss in my duties as an objective observer if I didn’t include all information (that I can find anyway) regarding the manga industry in the post Bill 156 world.Â So here goes:

So What DID Happen?

Naturally, people involved in the industry rebelled immediately and in somewhat strange ways.Â Dan Kanemitsu and others published a doujishi called An Idiot’s Guide to Tokyo’s Harmful Books Regulation which sold out of it’s first thousand copies easily at Comiket 79 and went into a second printing.Â I shit you not, it’s right here.Â A promised English release has yet to materialize. Disregard that!Â I suck cocks!

In a more direct assault on Tokyo in general, Comic 10 Society, along with Shueisha, Shogakukan, Kodansha, and other companies planned to boycott participation in the Tokyo International Anime Fair in March (2011).Â Though the boycott is aimed at harming the city of Tokyo directly (with an estimated 10 million yen loss in revenue), the TAF is organized by the Association of Japanese Animators, who are also opposing the bill.Â Thus, while harming Tokyo, the boycott would also harm other members of the industry.Â Perhaps as a result of that, the boycotting firms planned their own convention, the Anime Contents Expo, in Chiba, just to the east of Tokyo, that would run at the same time as the TAF.Â Both conventions were cancelled, however, in the wake of the disastrous tsunami that hit the Sendai region of Japan earlier that month.Â Ishihara was pleased.

The ACE plans are still in effect, though, and the convention will run in March as planned, with many planned participants from last year coming this year.Â The boycotts are also still in effect, and many corporations, including Kodokawa Shoten and Aniplex, are not attending TAF.

It should be mentioned that the Sendai tsunami, in attention to being terrible by itself, had an unintended effect on this issue.Â Originally, Ishihara planned not to run for a 4th term as governor of Tokyo, but in the wake of the disaster, he decided to not only run again, but won re-election handedly, with praises for his handling of the disaster efforts during the crisis.Â Thanks Mother Nature, you bitch.

In April, the first major event of the new ordinance met with much groaning and wrist slitting.Â The Tokyo Metropolitan Government brought out it’s first list of objectionable material.Â Before anybody even saw the titles included, comments of doom and gloom surfaced in the usual places.Â But once everybody saw what was being targeted, the general consensus was that this wasn’t so bad.Â Sure, fans of Aki Sora were devastated, but since that manga is basically porn without the porn label, I didn’t see what the big deal was.Â I still don’t.Â However, this might be the first and only indication of a publishing company actually panicking about the ordinance modifications.Â In response, Itosugi Masahiro, the mangaka for Aki Sora, discontinued the work on April 5, and also mentioned that Volumes 1 and 3 of the manga would no longer be reprinted for release.Â She did not say whose decision it was to discontinue the project, but by her other comments, we can infer it wasn’t she.

The other five manga listed were met with a whole lot of “huh?” and even more “whatever”.Â Most western audiences had never heard of them, and the folks who did know were too few to make a loud voice.Â Thus, the only real casualty of the “war” so far seems to be Aki Sora, to which I give a heartfelt “whatever” of my own.Â Let’s face it, despite Ms. Itosugi’s comments to the contrary, there is nothing in Aki Sora that is poignant, thoughtful, provocative, or in any other way meaningful.Â It does not explore the taboos so much as glorifies them with sexual scenes fit only for Showtime soft core porn.Â And don’t think I haven’t read it.Â There’s a reason I’ve read it.Â It’s fap material.

So who cares if this publication got moved to the adult’s only section.Â That’s probably where it belonged in the first place.Â Akita Shoten may have overreacted to the listing when the decision was made to cut the project–and yes I’m flat out blaming them for this–but overall I don’t think the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly made a wrong decision here.Â The other titles?Â We can quibble on those details.Â But not this one.

Besides, it looks like Akamatsu Ken (you know, the Negima and Love Hina dude) is fighting the power in his own way.Â While Aki Sora isn’t slated to appear on the website yet, and may not due to ownership rights to the material, there’s always a possibility that you can still get your hands on your material that can’t be sold to children in Tokyo manga shops.

Another event that should be mentioned is the filing of a suit against the ordinance modifications back in April.Â You’ll have to forgive me as details on this subject are heavily in Japanese and my ability to translate aren’t good.Â But according to other folks, mostly in the AnimeSuki.com forum thread related to Bill 156, the suit was defeated but has moved on to a higher court of appeals.Â No news has been posted on this subject since.

Summarizing And Me Being A Jackass Again.

And… that is it.Â Since the new rules went into effect on July 1 of last year, we have not heard of another list of, nor individual, titles by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly slated for status change to adult material.Â Since they never had any impact on the anime industry to begin with, we’re still getting a whole bunch of anime featuring fanservice, sexual innuendo, incestuous themes, and all sorts of other nasty stuff that Ishihara would recoil in disgust at.Â The industry has not, at all, backed down in the face of censorship by one city’s governor.Â Try as he might, Ishihara has not really effected anything.Â It is also completely irresponsible for anybody to say that the rule changes have PREVENTED manga from being created or published, because you have no evidence that this is the case.Â You can try, though.Â Like I can stop you from being stupid.

And stupid is what you have been.Â Since the beginning, stirred up by one asshole’s attempt at stirring you up, you’ve been irrational, overreacting morons.Â You can call Ishihara a fascist all you want, for all the good it will do, he’s still going to be in charge.Â You can hate the idea of questionable material being labeled with a much more serious sticker, and I’ll be right there with you because of my libertarian ideals regarding self governance.Â But what you can’t do is take back the time you lost fretting over whether or not your favorite hobby would be completely destroyed by one city’s attempt at “protecting” youth from objectionable material.

Next time, fucking listen to me and don’t panic until you have reason to do so.Â THINK about shit before you react to it.Â Unless that thought is where you have a desire to jump off a cliff.Â You have my blessing to Darwin yourself at any time for any reason.Â Will make my life easier.

Still don’t want to heed my advice?Â Fine, here’s Danny Choo’s take on the situation:

I don’t see any change at all in the content. When I go to a shop and pick up a manga, the content hasn’t changed. Well, some of the content does surprise me, some of it is really graphic, people stabbing each other and eyes popping out. So I don’t see anything change in terms of people producing the content. Where I do see a change is in terms of how the content is displayed. In Japan, legally, material aimed at folks over the age of 18 has to be separate. It’s very easily done; you’ve got a bookshelf and a card stuck up that says that anything on this other side of it is for people over 18. Apart from that, nothing has really changed. I think one of the reasons why many people started to make a fuss about it was for Google juice, for blog comments basically. “Oh god this is the end of anime!” And they’d build comments and a buzz around their blogs. That’s why I didn’t write about it at all, because I knew it was bollocks really.

Yeah.