[New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted
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Damn what a blow. Oh well I guess he had it coming. At this point I don’t know how someone in this situation would fix this. Since a apology won’t work.
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@hyferzftw I don't know how the situation could be fixed beyond an apology. I mean, there was recently the author that got in trouble for Child Porn. His series is already being published again in Japan. That's much worse, but it seems like he got off career wise a lot lighter.
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@aruseus493 Yeah, that just blows my mind. The tweets he did were indefensible but I really couldn’t find anything in the text that seemed dodgy. Even the tweets seemed no worse than some of the horrible tweets American politicians do...
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@aruseus493 I think that’s worse... WTF is wrong with people. I mean being racist isn’t good to say but I rather one be that than a person who is involved with child pornography. At least a racist isn’t contributing hurting someone physically and can just get either blocked or ignored. It’s still wrong tho just confuses me how that author got off light.
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I wonder what JNC will do now. I hope they let us know soon.
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I feel for the people who have to deal with this mess now. This is going to be a huge headache. When I first read about this controversy I didn't think it would become this much of a problem. I personally think an apology from the author would be enough. This is just overreacting.
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@the-green-death This was the most comprehensive and neutral/objective explanation I've seen:
From what I have read, the situation is a bit complicated:
There is no doubt that the official published version made it no mention of the specific war and only mentions the killing in order to make the main protagonist sounds like a total badass (albeit the execution is poor).
However the web version (the version he submitted on the Novelist Website for public viewing before it was noticed by publishers and published) did mention that directly, although no details too specific beyond the name and number killing either.
But [NEW LIFE] was officially licensed and published digitally in China, and the website posts BOTH VERSIONS to the subscribers. There were complaints, but nothing too major. When the anime was announced, more people took notice, and some start brought up that info bit from the web version, and you know what happened next...
I would blame the Chinese licensors for posting both (they are asking for trouble) without thinking too ahead for now, beyond that, no point to get more political that it should be.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros OK, hadn’t realized the web version did name Nanking. Yeah, I understand if I were Chinese that with the novelist’s tweets would be enough to annoy me. This whole thing is hard for me to judge from the outside as a white American, but the speed of the spiral does seems to be crazy over the top. No one has time to think about consequences when things move this fast. There’s actually a great book by Jon Ronson about public shaming in the Internet age called “So You’ve Been Publicaly Shamed” that’s worth a read for anyone interested in an even handed look at this rising issue.
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@the-green-death said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
but the speed of the spiral does seems to be crazy over the top.
Yup, Sam remarked that as well, that this moved way too fast from "some random guy tweeted random stuff" to "EVERYONE OFF THE BOAT, IT'S GOING DOWNNNNNN!!!"
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
@the-green-death said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
but the speed of the spiral does seems to be crazy over the top.
Yup, Sam remarked that as well, that this moved way too fast from "some random guy tweeted random stuff" to "EVERYONE OFF THE BOAT, IT'S GOING DOWNNNNNN!!!"
It doesn't surprise me at all - we just had an incident like this in the US, a popular TV show was cancelled in like a day because the lead tweeted something inappropriate. Social media policy for companies is definitely trending towards a shoot first and let (loli) god sort them out after.
~ flarecde
Reality is nothing; Perception is everything. -
It also surprises me that the country that is extremely resistant to these sort of complaints not only caved, but are also making the ship sink faster.
And I don't blame the author for saying he's going to delete this social media with the amount of death threats and "just die" comments on his Twitter. This truly is an epic sinking of a ship.
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@flarecde said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
It doesn't surprise me at all - we just had an incident like this in the US, a popular TV show was cancelled in like a day because the lead tweeted something inappropriate. Social media policy for companies is definitely trending towards a shoot first and let (loli) god sort them out after.
It kind of should surprise you; Roseanne tweeted something like a week ago, MINE's tweets were from 3-5 years ago. This was not a controversy until someone sat down and searched for these tweets. Yes, it's bad, and he shouldn't be let off the hook because it was a long time ago, but I think it's a false equivalency.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
It kind of should surprise you; Roseanne tweeted something like a week ago, MINE's tweets were from 3-5 years ago. This was not a controversy until someone sat down and searched for these tweets. Yes, it's bad, and he shouldn't be let off the hook because it was a long time ago, but I think it's a false equivalency.
I don't think people care or even look at how long ago these things are. Old stuff gets dredged up on people all the time. The internet is forever, and people often forget that people change. What baffles me is why anyone with any sort of public presence would voluntarily have social media accounts in this day and age. Have your manager or publisher deal with that stuff. One mistake and you're sitting in the modern version of a viking burial.
~ flarecde
Reality is nothing; Perception is everything. -
@the-green-death Ouch. Nanking is a touchy subject among Chinese. I honestly can't think of anything equivalent in American history.
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@flarecde said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
Old stuff gets dredged up on people all the time.
Doesn't mean it's a valid complaint. Just because it happens all the time doesn't make it right. Like I said, I'm not excusing the author, but something you said years ago should not have any effect on happenings now. That said, the author is certainly the main cause of his own demise, and it really shouldn't be hard to just... you know... not antagonize people/countries on your public social media, but this outrage is also way overblown.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros said in [New Life+] Young Again in Another World Light Novel Shipments Halted:
Doesn't mean it's a valid complaint. Just because it happens all the time doesn't make it right. Like I said, I'm not excusing the author, but something you said years ago should not have any effect on happenings now. That said, the author is certainly the main cause of his own demise, and it really shouldn't be hard to just... you know... not antagonize people/countries on your public social media, but this outrage is also way overblown.
Totally agree there. Given the age of the tweets and the fact that the dude apologized, I'd think that should be that. But trial by (social) media is the thing these days, and it's about as fair as high school elections.
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@myskaros honestly, I wonder if something like that ANN article helped cause this. If someone ran domly tweeting that had never made it to our shores, would anyone here have even noticed or cared. I feel this was a case of ANN "feeding the trolls".
I also disliked their stance on the debacle with the Recover of an MMO Junkie issue. I in no way agree with the views director, but to retract their reccomendation of the anime, which was probably worked on by hundreds of people, just rubbed me wrong. Will probably not renew my ANN membership once it expires.
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@seltzermx Honestly, the thought did cross my mind. In this case, I don't think ANN itself had much impact since this was purely between Japan and China/South Korea, who probably don't rely on ANN for anything :P, but they do post a lot of pointless posts following tweets, so I wouldn't be surprised if some Japanese or Chinese blog had some hand in spreading knowledge of this around.
EDIT: Should also note that while the tweets were really old, they do fall into the timeline when he started writing New Life+, so that does conflate with Renya's fictional history.
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As unpleasant as that period of history was, the thing is that Japan were the war victors, and as such are seen as war heroes, regardless of what happened with the "spoils of war" and the atrocities that took place... And having to change Japan's thinking on what they did was wrong even though they were the victor...
Yeah, it's gonna be an uphill battle, as the problem I think is an educationally ingrained problem.
Speculation: In China, they will teach about that period of history, gloss over the battle and loss, but focus on and play up the atrocities to the nth degree. In Japan, they will focus on the battle, tactics and heroes, and gloss over when happened afterwards.
If that speculation is true, that would certainly explain the tempers shown in this storm, and because the horrors of war are being brought up, the people in charge are trying to shut it down as fast as they can before it spreads.
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Even as a person of Chinese origin myself, my initial reaction to all of this was that it was way overblown. Though I think that's just because vol. 1 of NL+ was released here around the same time as Smartphone Vol. 7, which IMO had way worse Sinophobic content. But I guess the addition of those old-but-bad tweets and an anime announcement putting the series up in the spotlight led to all of this.
And really, even as someone who's not that interested in the series (I read the pre-pubs but never felt compelled to buy the full e-books, even with these circumstances), it's a situation that sucks for a lot of people: MINE, HJ, the people who were working on the anime, JNC, and all of the series' fans. Hopefully all that happens here is a re-writing of any Sinophobic content and then things just go on from there like normal, with minimal impact to those who just want to read the LNs they like. (Though I have a feeling even if the series were to resume distribution, the overall story will be forced to "conclude" in the next JP volume...)
I guess the lesson here is, if you're involved in content creation in any way, go over all your old social media posts and delete anything that can be seen as socio-politically controversial. And, well, probably better to not talk about that stuff at all on social media, with how much of a minefield it is now.
