Censoring CGE

I held off over the weekend, but I guess it’s time to add my two cents to the controversy over the censorship/editing of Cannon God Exaxxion.

Here’s the story in a nutshell: Dark Horse publishes the series, which was included in Dark Horse’s anthology magazine, Super Manga Blast, until SMB was discontinued last year. In a posting on the Dark Horse forums, series editor Chris Warner explained that

work with very strong adult content was created in Japan long after the series began running in the States, content much stronger than what had been established when the license was secured. Publishing this more adult content unaltered would have pulled the book into an adults-only category, which would have cut it off from a large number of its regular readers.

Dark Horse contacted the creator, who authorized some edits to bring it back to the 16+ age category.

For his trouble, Warner has been slammed by posters on that forum. Reaction in the blogosphere has been a bit more measured. At MangaCast, Ed Chavez says,

Personally, I think a mangaka can do what he wants. The creation process has artists changing things all the time (the artist might do so and who knows what editors will do, right). But as a fan, and there is no logic to being a fan, I would like to get what was licensed. So I want Kodansha’s eXaXXion.

And at Love Manga, David Taylor is sympathetic to Warner but thinks the the-manga-ka-said-it-was-OK excuse is a little wishy-washy. Also, shouldn’t Dark Horse have seen this coming?

Was Cannon God Exaxxion (CGE) a playful children’s series in the first four volumes and then suddenly took on a wholly unexpected adult theme in volume five?

David checks back to make sure, but the answer is no. Also, Warner’s argument that the pages had to be edited to be suitable for Super Manga Blast falls apart when you observe, as David does, that Super Manga Blast is no more. (Presumably the editing was done before that happened, but that’s an awful long lead time.)

With the caveat that I have never read Cannon God Exaxxion (hell, I can barely spell it), here are my observations:

1. First off, Dark Horse is a pretty good publishing house. As Chris Warner points out, they have plenty of books with serious adult content, and that’s OK because they plan and market them as such.

2. As much as we would like to pretend otherwise, manga is a commercial product. If the publishers lost money, there would be no manga.

3. Because Dark Horse does a good job with mature manga, I do think the change may have caught them unawares.

4. Warner presents this as a change-or-die scenario. The book isn’t selling all that well to begin with, and putting an M rating on it will hurt sales, as many bookstores won’t carry it, and probably kill the series. I’m inclined to believe him, because this sounds like a strictly marketing decision.

5. Hey, they talked to the artist, and he OK’d it. Presumably if he’d found the changes offensive, he would have objected, but he didn’t.

6. Major points to Warner for going on the boards and trying to explain this. Even though he got slammed, I’m glad he did it. It’s better than CMX’s obstinate silence.

I would like to see Dark Horse make another gesture, either putting uncensored pages up on the site or making the uncensored volumes (yes, that would be another edition) available through other channels, but if the series is as marginal as they say, they probably can’t spare the expense.

I also think we need to be clear on what we mean by “censorship.” I think of it as restraint imposed by the government. Self-censorship by artists, writers, and publishers happens all the time—it’s part of the creative process. I don’t use profanity when I write for a community newspaper, for example, and I usually have to cut out information for space or because it doesn’t flow logically with the rest of the story.

Here’s another example. I used to edit how-to-paint books, in which the author gave examples of his or her work and explained the techniques. I was showing a set of color proofs to my editor when she picked up her lupe, squinted at a painting, and said, “Look at that guy’s hard-on!” Yes, a figure in one of the paintings had a full erection, and I had totally missed it. Ulp! This is not something our audience would expect, and since we would be mailing it out sight unseen to our book club, the painting would have to go. We contacted the artist, and he chuckled (“I was wondering if that was going to get by you!”) and sent a replacement. No harm, no foul, except that color proofs are expensive to change.

So. We all want authentic manga, but the fact is that the marketplace sometimes dictates against it. If things have to be changed, I’m happy that Dark Horse was at least thoughtful about it, got the creator’s OK, and explained themselves to fans. I’m just sorry that Warner got slammed so badly by the fans. He was respectful to them, and he deserved the same in return.