Censorship laws
^^^
Even what we consider standard-fare porn in the US would be censored with pixelation over in Japan... They have pretty strict restrictions. You'll usually see the bars on hard copies, lightsaber dicks on electronically distributed stuff.
It's almost unheard of for actual, originally uncensored mangas to come out. Most of what you see provided by scanlation groups has been uncensored by the groups.
Keep in mind that the scanlator probably used digital scans from the e-book and the digital copies are almost always censored to a much larger degree than the print versions in magazines and tanks, generally. The tank tends to be much more forgiving usually favoring the censor bars etc. (and censorship in tanks vary as well), but it's a lot of work for a scanlator to have to rip apart a print copy, scan, and then clean the pages. Not to mention it costs more to buy and ship a tank as opposed to purchasing an e-version. Unfortunately we suffer for the lack of peen when it happens, but alas beggars can't be choosers.
Oh ok, thanks for the info. Makes sense now. (・о・)
There was also a ruling that happened last year, where a yaoi title was sued for infringing into the obscenity laws. Thus several bookstores have been pulling yaoi titles from their shelves. In order to calm down their distributors/sellers, there have now been...well... no dicks at all. If you notice the newer stuff has underwear covering the 'issue' or conveniently placed body parts. What is really odd about the whole ruling was that it wasn't actually a changing of the law. Instead it is the publishers themselves that are changing how things are presented so that they can assure their sellers that they won't be charged due to a law written in the '30s
But i like it when it being censor but in the same time, i hate it to be censor.
You know, I've always wondered... Why do they censor a lot of yaoi? I'm pretty sure more than 90% of us reading this stuff aren't naive girls (or guys). xDD
-goes back and re-reads again- ε=ε=(ノ≧∇≦)ノ