For those of you who are not aware, DC Comics is publishing manga. You heard me: Under the label of CMX Comics, DC Comics is selling MANGA! Manga has become SO huge, that manga's biggest competitors, the American comic book companies, are starting to publish the stuff now. Batman is my favorite superhero; however, when it comes to business plans, DC tends to be a joke most of the time. This company is so confident that their characters will always sell that they have no less than 20 or more different “Batman” series and spinoffs. Same goes for Superman. Now that they're publishing manga, it appears their overconfidence has gotten them into trouble yet again.
When Del Rey announced that they would be censoring some of the nudity in Ken Akamatsu's highly anticipated manga "Negima," many fans (including yours truly) screamed “boycott!” Many of us refused to buy the series. I myself refused to even REVIEW it (even if they sent me a copy for free), and Del Rey did the smart thing by announcing that the series would be uncensored, and would just ship to the stores shrink-wrapped and with a warning sticker on it. Very smart move. Del Rey is actually very lucky in this situation, though, because if they hadn't announced that they would be making changes to the series, then they would have released a product that people would have given them hell over. Heck, fans would’ve given them hellish hell. Luckily, the announcement meant that Del Rey just received hell, and then praise.

DC wasn't so lucky. Under the CMX label, DC has released several 'Mature' rated manga. But of all the manga they licensed, none was as big as "Tenjho Tenge," the series DC hoped would put their manga line on the map and make them a serious contender in the market. I don't know why they choose this title to put them on the map, but from what I've heard, the series has a huge following in America, and DC wanted to capitalize on that following. Fair enough. However, this series is rated M (or in other words, NC-17). No big deal, right? There are lots of series with the M rating that have become pretty big successes. "Battle Royale," "Ghost In The Shell," "Happy Mania," those books by Erica Sakurazawa. The M rating may limit how many books you can sell, but it can't kill a series. Apparently, DC thought differently. Without even making a formal announcement, DC edited a lot of the nudity and sexuality found in the series. Bras were added, shirts and panties were added, close-ups became a regular, huge sound effects were used to cover up certain shots, and now the series is about mature themes without the mature elements... and the mature audience. "Tenjho Tenge" is not for kids. I feel stupid for having to point this out, but it's not. Spending five minutes reading a couple chapters of this series would make this fact perfectly clear. Spend several books with it, and it's VERY apparent that no one under 18 should even come NEAR this series!! Yet DC still thinks that they can sell this to teens, so they heavily edited the artwork and shipped the series to stores with a 'Teen' rating. The fans were not impressed.

How could DC do such a thing? There is no way DC can pass this series off as a series for teens, not without having to omit full CHAPTERS in upcoming books! Apparently the author "Oh! Great" (Oh! God, is that a horrible name) approved of the changes, but I believe this approval was because he felt he wouldn't be able to sell his creation overseas if he didn't approve of the changes. If his home address was public, I'm sure he'd soon be getting letters from fans letting him know how wrong he was in that assumption. I have to admit that the release of this series hasn't bothered me all that much. No offense to "Tenjho Tenge" fans out there, but I downloaded some scanlations of the series (seeing as how I can't legally buy the uncut version anyway), and I have to say that I don't think the series is very good. I think it's more sex than story at times, I don't find it funny, I think the characters’ personalities are complete nonsense, I don't think the art is as interesting as people have claimed it to be, and, should we get an uncut release of this book, I most likely won't be buying it. So why am I bothering to write this then? Because I find the irony of this situation very ironic (if that even makes sense). I don't support this kind of censorship, I really don't. I may not agree with the mature content found in the title, but removing it causes far more problems than it solves. I don't even think censorship works that well, especially when you have to go to such an extreme to censor for the target audience you want (much like DC has had to do with this title).

No, the reason I'm writing this is to encourage the people who DO have an interest in this title to fight for a proper release. Releases like this should be a thing of the past, they really should be. There are PLENTY of series that DC (and any other manga publisher) can release that teens could buy, but stop buying all these mature titles and turning them into something they are not! I won't fight for a proper release of this series because I wouldn't buy an uncut release of this series, and since I wouldn’t buy the uncut release, it wouldn't be fair to the fans or the publishers if I did fight. But what I WILL do is provide some links you can visit if you are interested in fighting for the title, I will print off some mini-flyers inside the copies of books at my local book stores (as more of a warning than anything), and I will continue to report on the status of this series. One thing I WILL do, should an uncut release be made available, is to buy the first book of the series and review it, and that will be my contribution to the whole ordeal (and give DC a little money for doing the right thing)! Here's the last ironic thing about this release: I wouldn't buy an uncut release of this series even if DC released it, but I'll still boycott their other series. Why? Well, the thing about this release is that DC still claims that this book is 100% authentic manga, uncut, uncensored, and unchanged. They claim this on the back cover of "Tenjho Tenge," the very same series they are (literally) chopping up to hell.

Obviously, this has me concerned. If they are claiming that a very much altered version of "Tenjho Tenge" is the real deal, then how many of their other series are they chopping up? Maybe the other series really are the real deal, and DC decided not to butcher them, but this is false advertising, and now I feel as though I can't trust them to tell me whether or not I'm getting what I paid for. I've bought a couple of the other manga that DC has released under the CMX banner, and I'm not sure whether or not I should even review them or not. Am I even reading the REAL version of the series?! This is the problem I ultimately have with censorship: it violates the author’s work of art and it violates my trust in the company. I have not pre-ordered "Hunter x Hunter" despite being a fan of the series. Why not? Because the last series Viz released under the "Shonen Jump Advanced" banner, "Ultimate Muscle," was heavily censored, and I just want to wait and see if they are really serious about releasing the series uncut before plopping down the money for future books under that particular banner. Same thing with CMX titles. I may not like "Tenjho Tenge," I may think that the title wouldn't be getting half the attention it's getting if it didn't have the censorship (heck, I'm writing an editorial on the series and I don't even LIKE it), but the treatment of the series has me worried about future books from them... especially since DC doesn't seem to have a problem with billing the censored stuff as "100% Authentic Manga."

Of course, the most hilarious thing about this whole situation isn't the fact that DC banked on "Tenjho Tenge" to be the series to put them on the map in the manga world (and so far, it's done just that in a way they didn't want), but what's truly hilarious is that DC is most likely going to eventually cave in to the fans’ demands and release an uncensored version of the series, and it will sell like hot cakes. JUST because manga fans will buy the series to "prove a point!", DC basically created a sure money-maker by censoring this series, and once the uncut version does see the light of day, it will sell ten times better than it would have without the controversy. Oh yeah, it's one of the smartest business plans ever. It's a shame manga fans don't see the scheme that is right before their eyes. Oh well, here's the link to the campaign anyway. Hope you all get what you're asking for:

(Warning!: Site contains nudity. Parents be warned.)

- -Kevin T. Rodriguez- -