30% Of Kodansha Manga Adapted Into Apps Rejected By iTunes

Masaaki Hagino, president of Voyager, an e-book development company, revealed to the ZD Net Japan website in an interview that 30% of Kodansha manga adapted by his company into apps for iTunes is rejected for censorship reasons. Hagino provides an example by explaining that even a scene where a character is bleeding excessively from a disease — as opposed to violence — is labeled “excessive cruelty.”

Citing the specific example of Hataraki Man, he stated: “Basically all manga with [office ladies] as main characters have bathing scenes. They can’t be shown taking showers. Not even baths — they’re still topless.” In the case of Hataraki Man, one of the chapters of the manga was rejected because a scene exposed the breasts of the main character during a massage.

Lending further credibility to Hagino’s claim was a tweet by Yoshitoshi ABe, manga-ka of Serial Experiments Lain, who revealed one of his works was rejected due to this image.