Censorship on paid platforms - lookin' at YOU Crunchyroll
-
Square Enix just launched a new platform for 'streaming' manga (Manga Up - there's a separate thread)...one of my criticisms of the platform is that they allow for paid rentals of manga, and age/region verify in the app, yet still censor content (via the infamous 'black bars'). Now I know some manga have skimpy swimsuits etc. but I'm not talking about actual nudity here or r-18 content, they are censoring cleavage...which brings me to Crunchyroll.
Crunchyroll (owned by SONY) is a paid service (either via adds or subscription) it would be relatively straightforward to toggle content availability by region code or age verification. Instead Crunchyroll decided to air altered copies of some content - I don't know if this was done in house or not - but how they censored looks so ham-handed and amateurish that I'm pretty sure the anime creators didn't do this. Maybe it was unwise to air these series at all (on Crunchyroll) but I don't like the half measures- if you can't stream a version as it was broadcast in Japan, don't stream it.
World's End Harem was rendered unwatchable, like half the frame looked like it was scribbled over with a sharpie. Hearing what I had heard about this series, I was surprised it aired at all, but, Crunchyroll, why did you bother?
-
Sometimes it's better for your rep to not carry the product at all than to do a bad job with it.
These seem to be such cases. -
Unlike Manga Up, Crunchyroll does not censor anime. They receive materials that aired on Japanese television which are usually pre-censored for broadcasting. Getting access to uncensored materials usually requires either bluray rights, or paying a premium license similar to what the platform in Japan gets as AT-X.
My main concern with Crunchyroll is that they often get bluray rights, but years later when they release on bluray, they don’t stream the uncut versions (whereas Funimation which they are phasing out almost always did upload uncut versions).
-
@LegitPancake Although Funimation has had their own issues, they have been caught altering the scripts for their dubs to insert political messages and jokes that either don't age well or were already dated at the time of the dub's release that weren't in the original and gotten a lot of backlash for those alterations
-
@LegitPancake said in Censorship on paid platforms - lookin' at YOU Crunchyroll:
Crunchyroll does not censor anime
I can't believe World's End Harem was broadcast like that on Tokyo MX or wherever - I mean I can see High School DxD had some strategically placed 'stickers' likely done by the studio, but this looks like someone just did it w/ a felt tip stylus in Adobe Premiere, not a professional job.
on a side note - Yea I'm disappointed that when Sony bought Crunchyroll they didn't migrate the OVA's and Blu-ray versions from Funimation - They could've had those on VRV if they wanted - but I understand VRV is shutting down also
-
This is why I just watch the at-x release.
-
@poisonedbite said in Censorship on paid platforms - lookin' at YOU Crunchyroll:
This is why I just watch the at-x release.
my mistake for not being precise
title of thread should be "Censorship on International Paid Platforms Aimed at the English Speaking Market..."unless I'm being ignorant (in which case I'll work to remove my foot from my oral cavity) AT-x isn't an option, I mean is AT-X available outside Japan (without using VPN service?) do the broadcasts include English subtitles? if so I can cancel CR
-
AT-X is a premium cable service similar to HBO in the States. So yes it is inaccessible outside Japan. (Meaning the person above is simply pirating, which is irrelevant to the conversation).
-
Crunchyroll has got to be one of the worst streaming services in existance.
4kids cenorship was memes though.
-
I think this is how the regular non-premium cable stations actually broadcast the series. At the very least this appears to be why fansubs of those types of series haven't entirely died out, because CR gets the cheap cable broadcast instead of the premium broadcast which tends to feature far less censorship.
-
@Jon-Mitchell Something that people don't understand is that late night anime slots are paid TV slots. The anime production committees literally are the majority of the advertisers on the slot, and they guarrantee the TV station a certain amount of ad buys. So the TV stations about care zero about whether people actually watch the broadcast or not.
The only stations that care are the paid stations (which, are the ones that get the uncensored or lesser censored versions). So the heavy handed censoring on the "free" broadcast is very much part of the business plan and they do not care if you don't like it and don't watch it.
This unfortunately has slightly more of a negative PR hit overseas because the uncensored version is usually not available for quite a while, if ever. But I wouldn't be surprised if, say FAKKU or someone starts a streaming service that streams the uncensored versions soon after the Japanese one airs.... that you can pay extra for of course. -
This Manga Up has the worst censorship I've seen (outside of horror anime that covered all their blood in just black stuff so you couldn't tell what was going on). They're censoring a fully clothed woman wearing Jeans at the waist. Like, what? I can't imagine whatever lines are there are that offensive.
-
Speaking of Crunchyroll, I'd be willing to pay slightly more for my subscription in exchange to have access to uncensored anime. Sometimes, like the above mentioned World's End Harem, the censored version is basically unwatchable.
-
Crunchyroll has been pretty bad with this lately. 5 years ago they had no problems getting the uncensored versions of shows, and would even put both versions up so you could choose what you wanted. But they've since either gotten a lot more conservative, or the licenses have gotten much more expensive than they're willing to pay.
I was hoping that the Sony acquisition would have allowed them to go back to how it used to be. But I guess not.
-
@killerrin said in Censorship on paid platforms - lookin' at YOU Crunchyroll:
I was hoping that the Sony acquisition would have allowed them to go back to how it used to be. But I guess not.
Unfortunately, Sony is probably making the problem worse. Playstation used to be pretty loose with censorship, but over the last 4 or 5 years has become one of the strictest in regards to it, and I can easily see that extending to ALL of their businesses.
-
@killerrin I remember Crunchyroll getting access to, and streaming, a handful of uncensored shows around five years ago, but I don't remember it being particularly common and it was pretty unusual to see even at that time. Since mid 2014, as far as I've been aware, talk has always been: wait for the home release if you want uncensored.
-
@killerrin My guess is that with the introduction of more streaming platforms competing for a piece of the anime pie, the overall licensing costs have gone up. After all, there's a limit to how many new shows come out each season, so it's not quite like the LN market where titles are coming out faster than any company would be able to grab them.
Might not really impact the censored shows so much, that could just be that they're unwilling to pay the likely additional costs to host the less censored stream. If it's not going to impact the number of viewers (or more importantly, paying subscribers) it might not make a lot of sense to pay extra.
