Picture Perfect Paranoia

Finally, I has a post!

Seriously, though. By now, regular readers of this blog may or may not get used to intermittent updates like this, but it’s a fact of life. Like fellow anime blogger Michael, I’m an official medical school student. Thus, updates like this.

Anyway, just to show you how out of the loop I am in the anime blogosphere: I have just heard/read that accessing eroge websites outside Japan is now banned, as exemplified by the latest news on the Philippine branch of eroge company minori.

The following message can be seen on the front page when trying to view the company website outside Japan:

minori official website.
This website cannot be browsed excluding Japan.

Some foreigners seem to be having an antipathy against EROGE.
Therefore, We prohibited the access from foreign countries, to defend our culture.
Sorry for you of the fan that lives in a foreign country.

minori Inc.

Lifted from SankakuComplex, the stream of events:

• An Irish rag on a slow news day picks up the story that importers have been selling Rapelay via Amazon. The theme is that the game encourages rape and is child pornography.
• Amazon completely drops the product, including in Japan. Other retailers soon follow suit.
• Feminist busybody group “Equality Now”, which organises spam campaigns to keep its members busy without actually having to deal with problems directly, targets the game, accusing it of human rights violations and telling the Japanese government it should be banning this sort of thing, like low crime paradises such as the UK.
• The developers tell the foreign feminists to get lost.
• Soon after the Rapelay developers cave in and completely remove the game from distribution.
• Equality Now’s Japanese lawyer (the group has no presence in Japan) drums up anti-eroge media attention.
• A Japanese diet member, an avowed feminist, picks up on the scandal and starts calling for a ban. Objections start with the opposition and minor parties and soon the ruling party jumps onto the bandwagon.
• A “study group” is organised(sic) to decide how best to ban the games.
• Broadcaster TBS falsely reports that the EOCS has banned the games.
• The EOCS bans the games.

Thankfully I’m not an avid connoisseur of these eroge games, but what I fear is the impact these measures will have on the industry itself. Sure self regulation is good, but what if in excess? What will happen to the hundreds of jobs lost just because they were associated with the said industry? Where will they go from there? What about the social stigma that will now be attached to these people?

I wonder if this is progress in the right direction…