Ah censorship, one of the lamest evils in the world. Changing “You fucking suck, I’d rip your dick in half in a heartbeat!” to “You fricking stink, I’d split your banana in half in a heartbeat” just never has the same impact. This season has multiple anime that have built themselves up around a hardcore vibe (When They Cry and Akudama Drive being the prime examples). And with hardcore vibes comes hardcore censorship. Today I want to talk about this unwanted intrusion and try to determine the worst form of censorship. Mainly I see three methods that are used to tone down an anime.

1. Removing or changing scenes

This is when they say “fuck you dood” to the original author/source and either alter what is said or done, or leave it out altogether. I decided to put them under the same category because when you remove a sensitive scene or detail  you remove something that probably had a purpose if the source was quality. This can change what the audience perceives to be the author’s intent which at that point, it’s basically the same as changing a scene’s dialogue or events. Most of the big English distributors like Crunchyroll and Funimation are guilty of doing this. I can’t seem to go two weeks without hearing the latest uproar about how they changed some shit in the translations that wasn’t in the source.

2. The Mosaic

This type of censoring style is seen all the time in hentai. They don’t wanna show you the goods, so they make it into a malformed blob monster that you can tell is supposed to be dick. I’ve seen this done a few times to gore as well if someone has turned into a pile of guts, they explode and then you see the blurry mess. At that point your brain sort of fills in the blanks as to what it could be.

Careful now, overuse may backfire.

3. The Black Hole

This is the most recent type of censorship that I’ve seen really take off lately. Got some gore you don't want? Need to show something crazy but whoa not that crazy? Slap a black hole on that bitch. This one’s nothing new to the table, however in my eyes it’s prominence has really blown up in recent years.

What the fuck am I even looking at?

Okay, let’s get the obvious out of the way. Removing parts or changing parts of the original work is easily the worst type of censorship. This can completely misconstrue what the author wanted if done poorly, and if done correctly can leave scenes feeling like there is something missing or that something was supposed to hit the audience harder. The REAL fight comes in when discussing Mosaic vs. The Black Hole and honestly, I’m about tired of these goddamn holes man. When I was watching When They Cry, I couldn’t help but be disappointed when my man Keichi summoned The Black Hole to protect his guts from Rena. I know when anime are airing they have to conform to TV broadcast rules and all so I should have expected it, but I can’t lie and say it doesn’t take me out of the show pretty hard. The same goes for Akudama Drive, this show is the most high adrenaline, fuck bitches shoot shit anime this season and then when it summons The Black Hole it feels so childlish. There’s so much gore they have to have the hole cover half the fucking screen sometimes and let me tell you that’s an immersion breaker. At least with mosaic, the shit is blurred but you can still kinda tell what’s supposed to be there. It’s undeniably ugly, but I think the Hole is more jarring and ultimately worse to watch. 

Censorship is always lame but it’s clearly not going anywhere anytime soon. Plus it gives people a reason to buy the physical copies to remove the mosaic/black hole which helps support the studios who are willing to make fucked up shit so I suppose that’s one light in this dark tunnel. Does censoring get on your nerves? Which is more tolerable, the black hole or the mosaic? Leave a comment below, but don’t use any n a u g h t y words!