





Okazaki Tomoya is a third-year student who is labeled as a delinquent by others because of his constant tardiness. He has only one friend in the whole school - a slacker like him, Sunohara Youhei. He doesn't care about these anyways. On one of his late comings, he meets Furukawa Nagisa, a shy girl who skipped her last year due to her sickness and has to repeat last year over again - with her friends all graduated. Although Tomoya doesn't care for this girl at first, he becomes unable to leave her alone. Thus, he starts helping Nagisa with her wish, on the revival of the Drama Club. As he gets himself more involved in this, he starts to meet other people - which he - again - doesn't care at all at first, but later start to open his heart to them as he gets to know them...
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-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.

"Honestly, the ruling hasn't changed what Vertical plans to publish or what we have released in the past. While we have some scenes that are clearly not in the realm of lolicon, there is no doubt that many of our fiction titles and a few of our Tezuka titles have scenes that are intended to challenge older teens and adult due to depictions of violence and sexuality. Strictly sticking to manga, themes such as bestiality, incest, and rape are just a few topics covered in our Tezuka titles. We just released a new version of MW that covers almost every thing I listed and we never even thought about altering a scene. I think the Godfather of Manga would not allow such a crime to be committed.
There will be challenging scenes in the manga we plan to release in 2010 as well. While all of the characters that engage in sexual activities in Peepo Choo are adults, the teens in the comic are clearly fictional teens. Like teens in reality they might push the boundaries of style and fashion in certain ways. In other ways Mr. Smith goes beyond the realms of human genetics to have his characters seem larger than life in all sorts of ways. Such is the power of the fictional world of art. Knowing that coming into the license we, Vertical, never have had intentions to alter any of the content in the title. As is the case in the editorial process where mangaka change pages between magazine and tankoubon printings if Felipe Smith makes a change to Peepo Choo, it will come from him and we will not initiate the conversation. So in the case of the cover for volume 1, Vertical actually wanted to use the original image but Mr. Smith suggested against it. Instead we are looking to publish the original cover in the book as a spread for readers to enjoy.
Neither Chi's Sweet Home, Twin Spica, nor 7 Billion Needles have sexually provocative scenes. But even before the Handley case we did wonder about shower/bath scenes in regard to age ratings. Would a bath scene raise a rating from twelve and up to fourteen and up? These are issues publishers deal with all the time.
Our Fall release of Ayako will be a challenge as it has a few elements that might raise flags for people who are extremely critical. As an individual who respects art for what it is it is hard for me to be offended by much in manga, but I am sure some people new to the medium might not expect scenes often found in other forms of media (prose, film, portrait painting...) to be rendered in a comic book. I think Tezuka never questioned the power of comics, so in giving respect to his readers and the themes he was conveying he never was gratuitous or pornographic with his imagery. Tezuka always maintains artistic integrity with this comics. So seeing Ayako visually blossom from a young child to a young adult, through the master's panels and character art, does not appear indecent even though it is clear how old Ayako is in each of those scenes. Tezuka compares the scene to a metamorphosis, where Ayako is visually but metaphorically shedding her skin as she grows out of it with age. Not ironically the scenes free of nudity or sexuality tend to be much more violent and disturbing. However, for some reason Americans rarely protest gratuitous violence in media.
We are currently working on acquiring new titles for Spring 2010 and even then the Handley case is not influencing our decisions. At Vertical, we aim to challenge readers perceptions of manga visually while providing outstanding literary value and cultural insight. So if a title has impacted Japanese culture within the last few decades expect Vertical to have that title on its radar no matter what the genre is."
"It's a very unfortunate thing to have happened. The situation in Iowa, combined with the new limitations announced here in Japan, raise huge red flags about our ability to express basic ideas freely. With laws against, say, possession of certain illegal substances, it's easy to tell whether the law is being broken -- you just check for the substance and you have your answer. Every other law works this way. But with something like fictional illustrations or characters that don't exist, the opinion of ten different people is likely to be all over the map, and I couldn't think of a single anime character that would necessarily look over the age of 18 to 100% of people who looked at it, perhaps a remnant of the "cartoons is for kids" thinking from way back. And Tokyo banning showing of underwear? Are they aware they just banned Doraemon, which makes regular use of panty gags?
Anyway, while we don't agree with the developments, we'll obviously be making changes in the manga and other products we offer to our customers. Happily J-List (and our PG site, JBOX.com) has always sought to present a wide range of products from Japan without focusing on any one area, effectively mirroring the entire awesomeness of Japan in its entirety. This won't change at all."
"What readers should understand, at least in regard to pornographic publications such as ours, is that we've always been acutely aware of both the potential legal and ethical ramifications of what we choose for publication, and acted in accordance with them. By ethical, I am not referring to abiding a certain set of morality or religious beliefs, but rather our obligations to retailers and readers; not subjecting retailers to an unreasonable level of risk, or harming the greater manga fandom in general. This is reflected in both what we license, and also how we conduct business. (We're rather low-key, to put it politely.)
In fact, I would say this is true for all North American licensees who work with adult material. We all knew something like this could happen one day.
The Handley case may change the business for us (some retailers may no longer want to carry adult manga, for example), but it has not changed, nor will it change the way we approach licensing. It's a historic moment, for sure, but the real problem is "obscenity," and that risk has always been present. We've always tried to manage that as well as we could. We try to push the envelop, but we've made edits when we felt they were necessary, and rejected licenses when we felt they would harm the fandom. Ero manga are often short story collections, and sometimes one out of twelve stories isn't appropriate for the Western market. That's when we may decide to make a cut, with the Japanese publisher/creator's blessing."
Dear Sakura-Con 2010 Exhibitors,
A previously unknown concern has been raised regarding certain comics as a result of a recent court case and law passed in 2008. Because we know a small number of our venders sell adult manga and the case involves certain manga, we want to remind vendors that Sakura- Con/ANCEA will not tolerate unlawful materials for sale in our exhibits hall. Exhibitors found in violation of local, state or federal law will be reported to law enforcement, asked to leave the event and face banning from participation in the future.
Please refer to the information below for more information:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 71 > § 1466A
§ 1466A. Obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children
(c) Nonrequired Element of Offense.— It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.
(1) the term “visual depiction” includes undeveloped film and videotape, and data stored on a computer disk or by electronic means which is capable of conversion into a visual image, and also includes any photograph, film, video, picture, digital image or picture, computer image or picture, orcomputer generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means;
(f) Definitions.— For purposes of this section—
"In terms of how this affects licensing of BL, etc., I think as a company, DMP has always been extremely mindful of what it licenses from day 1. Since we began doing BL, we have sat and gone through every single title-we mark and question everything possibly objectionable to buyers and to readers and discuss as a group how and if a title should be licensed, and to what age group it would appeal to. Obviously BL is a niche product, and in the beginning, retailers were pretty skeptical about it-but our buyers and distributors understand the product they have in their hands a lot more nowadays, and they've always been conscientious about where and to whom it's going to. The most important thing is to be clear about what it is we're selling, which we always have been-complete with the bars that state clearly on June that they're "yaoi manga"-and the creation of the June' imprint itself. The BL audience in my opinion has been a very mature, well-educated, literate bunch-that supports the artist and the medium with a passion that surprises a lot of us in the office everyday. Obviously, when you go to the June website-the very first thing on the site is a definition of what "yaoi" is.
I think the fact that the BL crowd tends to be older, has helped in the growth of BL here in the US. When we found that hard-core fans wanted titles that would typically not be licensed due to explicitness, we created a label and a distribution channel for it. As times have changed, and other publishers started doing BL and licensing more explicit material in mainstream manga, what is acceptable continues to change for mature readers, and I think that shows an evolution of the manga reader in terms of what they want to see and read. Obviously, in terms of licensing, there will be some things that we as a company won't license (like shota)-and lolicon-type manga has never really been our thing even on our mainstream line. Fan-service, yes, but lolicon/shota no-and I think that comes mostly as a personal company preference over anything derived from the recent events from the Handley case.
However, I will say this in regards to the Handley situation-the idea that what you read may translate to your behavior, is really a very sad outcome to the case. I was really saddened by the outcome, as manga and comics are fiction and imaginary, and not indicative of potential real-world behavior. It's like all those cases with people saying violence in video-games causes violence in individuals, or heavy-metal music creates violent urges. I'd hate for jury's and people to be the thought police about what's appropriate-and I feel this comes right down to it. I'm sure people can draw correlations to all sorts of things if they wanted to, but it's disheartening. There are different standards for comics and graphic novels in the US vs. Japan, and I'm sure how manga is perceived in the US vs. how it's perceived in Japan are very different, and probably will remain so for some time. It was a bit weird to see yaoi pointed out in the statement by the attorney in terms of it's legality in the US-it absolutely is-it's just in terms of acceptability by people who don't understand or know what it is. Everything is contextual in comics and graphic novels-but that's the medium we have chosen to work in. As a company-we're just going to do our best to put titles out that we believe have artistic merit, are appropriate for the ages of the audience reading them, and do our best to educate retailers and distributors about our products. I certainly hope that the Handley case doesn't deter people from reading BL mangaka like Fumi Yoshinaga, Yugi Yamada, and the upcoming Kazuma Kodaka title we have-artists who create sympathetic, entertaining characters and stories."

-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics. Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.


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