Damn, two blog posts in one day, third one over two days. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be doing this, but I am now very agitated about something. You see, a few days ago Funimation announced that it has licensed the anime version of Dance in the Vampire Bund. Now it has be revealed that they will be censoring the series. Not only in their online steaming of the series like they did with Strike Witches, but also in their home video release. Okay, I am going into extreme nerd rage mode and need to vent. The rest of this rant will be enclosed in spoiler tags for extreme pissed off bad language and stuff. Be warned....
FUCK!!! Are you people fucking retarded?!! Seriously, saying that I'm not planning on buying this Funimation release anymore is a fucking given. I'm sorry, I don't care if what you're cutting out is "not essential to the storyline" of the series. Fuck that! And who the fuck are you to say what is "inappropriate for U.S. viewing"? Really, this is fucking bullshit. Honestly, I wasn't really this angry when I first heard the news. My first response to it and my first post of the forum thread about the news was something like, oh well, guess I won't be buying this anymore. But as the discussion went on and more people made comments about the edits I just got more and more angry. Especially when people started to try to rationalize why the edits are being made.... But I'll get into that a little later. When I start talking about that there won't be any coming back....
My main arguments before I couldn't stand looking at the fucking thread anymore was this: First, how the fuck is Vampire Bund any worse than Mnemosyne or Strike Witches? Both series that Funimation is releasing totally uncut? Really! Strike Witches has plenty of nude fan service in the series and Mnemosyne has explicit sexual scenes with an apparent underage girl including one-on-one lesbian sex, a lesbian orgy, and she is even the victim of rape later in the series. Really? Why is Vampire Bund worse and in need of editing? Why was it fine and dandy to show a physically underage girl tied up nude after being violently raped but it's not okay having a physically underage girl dancing around artistically wearing next to nothing or getting lotion rubbed on her nude body while being shown in extremely bad lighting? Really, what the fuck?! I don't give a shit if you don't think having these scenes in their original form is important to the story. Nether is showing the blood in fucking DBZ but you've made a point in re-releasing that series in uncut form, didn't you? It's just fucking retarded. The only difference between Mina in Vampire Bund and the girls in Strike Witches is that Mina is actually drawn in a way that is believable for a minor. But you know what? She isn't having fucking sex!! It's all very simple nudity! And it's a fucking drawing!!! Why the fuck does it mater? Seriously?
So this brings me to the point that I really got pissed off. Some people started justifying Funimation's decision. Most people said something along the lines of, if Funimation was going to have to edit it, why bother even licensing it? The thing that really fucking pisses me off about these statements is that even though these people disapprove of the edits and say they won't be buying the DVD's, they seem to be saying that despite that fact they see how it's understandable that they decided to edit the series. Oh really?
Well, the thing that really topped everything off and completely made me lose my cool was when people started bringing in the recent Christopher Handley sentencing into the discussion. If you don't know about it, here's a response from his defense attorney that sums up the case and its implications pretty well. People started saying that in light of this case of a man getting jail time for possession of lolicon porn manga, Funimation was censoring Vampire Bund to cover their own asses. If this is at all true, if this court case had any influence in them deciding to edit this anime, then it is perhaps the most retarded fucking thing I've ever heard of an anime company doing. Hardley was convicted for having pictures of little girls and little boys fucking! Having explicit, dirty, immoral, underage sex with each other and those older than themselves! That is what is illegal here and why this man was unjustly convicted of a retarded fucking crime! I totally disagree with what happened to Hardley. It could have totally been me if I was dumb enough to go through airport security with loli or shota hentai books and happened to get searched.
But you know what? Vampire Bund is not fucking hentai! It's not porn! It doesn't include explicit sex of apparent minors! It just has some basic nudity and slight fan service of an underdeveloped body. There are more incriminating photo books in the US with pictures of real minors naked. But you know what? They're not fucking! They're simply standing or siting around in artistic ways. It's not meant to be sexual at all and Vampire Bund isn't much different. Now I'm not saying that the creators of Vampire Bund had completely innocent, artistic intentions for all of the stuff in the series. Some of it is meant as fan service however weird that may seem to some people. But it's not explicit sexual contact! There is no sex going on! It's just something that some people might find a little creepy. And you know what the most important part of all of this is? The girl isn't fucking real!!! Goddammit!! This stupid fucking law is fucking retarded!
But as I said, Vampire Bund doesn't even come into contact with the type of stuff that is illegal. Funimation needs to be bitch slapped for being a bunch of paranoid dipshits. Fuck you all!
And that's all I have to say about that. Thank you for reading.
