Amazon Removes Various Anime Figures Including Hatsune Miku and Kaitō Tenshi Twin Angel from Storefront Claiming Items “Promote Child Exploitation”

Amazon Removes Various Anime Figures Including Hatsune Miku and Kaitō Tenshi Twin Angel from Storefront Claiming Items “Promote Child Exploitation”

A retailer has reported that a variety of figures of anime girls were removed from his Amazon hosted storefront, with communications from the company stating they were removed for promoting child exploitation.

On February 29th, after a Twitter user posed the question “Who did this?” in response to recent fan reports to SEGA which led to the removal of the ability to see Hatsune Miku’s panties in Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix Switch (which was not a case of censorship but rather fixing an error, as her panties are not viewable in other games), owner of Chuck’s Anime store Chuck Gaffney speculated that it “might be the same asshats I’ve been noticing on Amazon.”

Might be the same asshats I’ve been noticing on Amazon.Out of nowhere a few months ago,old Good Smile Company & other official Miku listings from my store(& all sellers) got removed from Amazon; wrongfully claiming it was CP. A suspicious mass flagging of all anime products also — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

According to Gaffney, rather than removing the items from his inventory, Amazon pressured him “to manually delete them or delete my account.”

Even worse is that Amazon wouldn’t remove the listings from my seller inventory & would threaten me to manually delete them or delete my account. Listing that have been sold out for 5+ years. Been meaning to get back to selling like I used to; used to sell a ton of figma & GSC. — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

Gaffney then provided e-mails sent to him from Amazon which showed that they had removed multiple figures, all completely non-sexual, for violating their ban on items that “promote child exploitation or depict children or characters resembling children in a sexually suggestive manner.”

Here’s a screenshot of the emails from Amazon. Oldest is from 2015, newest was just back on the 21st. Not too many figures but then again being that I’ve been dormant in selling for a bit is a sign that bigger sellers got far more than me pic.twitter.com/G4Xk2JPdw3 — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

The one a week ago that got flagged as CP was one of my oldest listings: Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angels: Aoi Kannazuki PVC Figure 1/8 Scale by Max Factory. Google the figure and the Amazon listing is still there; visit the lint to see they pulled it. Here’s the email in full too pic.twitter.com/RcWzNS8CIG — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

Here’s the second most recent one, was two figures.. one a tame K-ON figure of all things. Max Factory K-ON: Tsumugi Kotobuki Figma Sora no Otoshimono: Forte Nymph PVC Figure by AMI pic.twitter.com/6CPvSIHJSe — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

The next one is one of the Mikus… Max Factory Character Vocal Series 01: Hatsune Miku PVC Figure Statue (Tony Version) pic.twitter.com/3JCOjbLV3u — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

The next one was also a Miku figure… Max Factory Character Vocal Series 01: Hatsune Miku PVC Figure Statue (HSP Version) pic.twitter.com/ZiIfYkC3sP — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

Speculating on Twitter, Gaffney believes the figures may have been the target of “some neopuritan crusade or purposefully done biz sabotage.”

I feel 4 other smaller sellers; its bad enough when just trying to convince people you are not selling bootlegs is still 2 this day a major challenge..let alone having people spam the flag functionality of Amazon to either some neopuritan crusade or purposefully done biz sabatoge — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

From the frequency on even my dormant store, I’d say it’s picked up in the past year. Is it mass flags? A retailer with a bigger list would know but seeing a K-On figma getting flagged is a damn good sign of the recent puritanical BS against anime — Chuck Gaffney (@princetrunks) February 29, 2020

As of writing, Amazon has not reversed their decisions regarding these figures.

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